Religion
From AtheistWiki
A religion is a group of dogmas and rules that involve supernatural explanations for aspects of life.
Religious beliefs are called dogma and religions vary in the quantity and quality of this dogma. believers of a religion also vary in indifference, secularity and knowledge of the dogma of their religion (mostly written in so called holy books]]. Most believers of a religion are indoctrinated in their childhood.
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Main elements
Most of the world's religions share several features:
- mythologies about creation.
- Superstitions of some sort in respect of what are claimed to be life's mysterious questions - what happens before life/after death or whatever.
- A necessity to have faith in the religion's beliefs.
- Some sort of rules about how to live.
- More mythology about the future of the world. This is called prophecy.
- Almost inevitably some sort of proselytizing.
Scope of religious ideas
Most religions are collections of superstitions, myths and arbitrary rules. Buddhism is perhaps more of a philosophy, but this is the minority situation.
Religion and the supernatural
It can be assumed that the supernatural answers of religion evolved to allow societies to deal with questions which were then unanswerable: - why does it rain, where does night come from, why does it get cold in winter. As science has become better able to answer these questions religion's role in society has reduced. Eventually consigning to it (and god) to ever smaller gaps.
Religion and science
Historically, religion's needed to "explain" natural phenomena. In general religions have discouraged naturalistic and explanations and as science has improved its explanations of natural events the two fields have experienced increased friction.
As all religions rely, at some level, on supernatural explanations a truly scientific religion is obviously on oxymoron.
Religion and law
Religion developed rules as a way to help societies to deal with and overcome problems thousands of years ago. Though these rules may have been useful in the past, they clearly have little to tell us about life in the twenty first century.
Modern personal religions
Nowadays, many people create a "personal philosophy" that is a contradictory mixture of the religious, philosophical, and moral concepts that they feel is appropriate for them.
Of course, there are sadly still many people who insist that every teaching their religion promotes is the absolute truth - these people are called fundamentalists.
NOMA
There has been an attempt to save religion from rational inquiry by saying that it makes no scientific statements - or that it should not be understood to be making scientific statements. The idea is that science and religion operate in fields so distinct that each one cannot examine, or comment on, or have anything to do with the other.
This idea is called NOMA, and it is mistaken. First of all any interaction of a god with the physical world world would most certainly be within the scope of science as it would have demonstrable real-world impacts. The only way to remove god from the physical world is to assume some sort of deist god - and that is certainly not the god of most religions.
Furthermore the supporters of NOMA seem quite coy about where their NOMA line should be drawn. Religious beliefs are the basis of creationism, intelligent design and theistic evolution. While many science-friendly NOMA advocates happily attack creationism, they then hold the NOMA shield up to defend other (their own) religious beliefs - a position which could seem a little intellectually dishonest.
Reasons for rejecting religion.
There are a number of reasons why many sane people reject religion
Religion is Anti-intellectual
All religions have in common that they are faith based. People are taught to believe ancient unsubstantiated claims instead of relying on their own senses, evidence and critical thinking.
Indeed, as Christopher Hitchens said: "What can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence."
Religion is Anti-scientific
Some religions try to appear "science-friendly" by avoiding statements that clash too obviously with modern science.
As all religions rely, at some point, on faith it is easy to show that they are not scientific. A key test of whether or not a hypothesis is scientific is the question of falsifiability. What evidence would the hypothesis' supporters accept as being able to falsify the hypothesis? By definition, as religions are based on faith and not evidence, no evidence can be presented which would persuade a religion's followers it is wrong - and consequently no religion can be scientific.
Religion needs a creation
The very concept of creation depends on time. Something that did not exist before a given point in time comes to existence through the act of creation and exists from that time on. The universe clearly cannot have been created in this sense, because the universe is spacetime and thus there is no time outside of the universe itself.
God and religion
It seems to be clear that a God in the sense of a miracle-working, interventionist deity does not exist - as no evidence of his miracle working, interventionist activity can be found. In this case absence of evidence is indeed evidence of absence.
It is of course possible that some kind of completely and utterly non-interventionist "god" exists outside of our universe. But even if that were the case, it follows that a non-interventionist god cannot interact with the physical world in any way. In particular, he cannot write books, nor can he answer prayers or perform miracles. So whether or not a non-interventionist god exists, religion is wrong.
Religion and Morality
One of the things which many (probably most) religions claim to possess is the authority to give eternal moral (or ethical) guidance to their followers. However, the fact that religious beliefs have frequently been important factors in causing or exacerbating divisions between peoples - sometimes even resulting in warfare - rather devalues religion's claim to the moral high ground.
Furthermore, it is quite clear that religion's ethical advice is not eternal, as many religions' ethics evolve with society. Take, for example, the issue of slavery. It is nowhere condemned in the Bible which even has rules to regulate it. A few hundred years ago many religious people held slaves and thought it was a good thing. Now most Christians (with the possible exception of believes in Dominionism ) reject it utterly along with the rest of society.
This evolution or religious beliefs is clearly not a bad thing, but it rather removes religion's authority to claim absolute moral standards or to pontificate for all time about morality.
Religion and Soul
Many religions claim that the soul is some kind of spiritual entity that every human is supposed to have, and which is supposed to survive when the physical body dies. But since this thing is non-physical, it again cannot interact with the physical world. So we have the same situation as with "god": a "soul" could hypothetically exists, but it can have no connection with the physical world.
Respect
Finally we have the suggestion that religious ideas should, for some reason, deserve a special measure of respect not given to, say, Homeopathy, or UFO conspiracy theories. (The concept of NOMA, mentioned above, is part of this.) But why should religion deserve this special status of being "respected"?
If religions can make a forceful, rational intelligent case then they would be respected for that. If they are unable to present a forceful, rational intelligent case, then whatever respect they get should be based on their failure to do so.
We are also sometimes told that we should respect religion because some sincere, intelligent people believe in it. But this is simply repetition of the argument from authority fallacy. Indeed one could quite easily produce a list of sincere intelligent atheists.
