The worst invention of all time: Religion

Religion is a strange thing; interesting, fascinating and disgusting. I have never liked it, and I don’t need it. Religious belief has screwed up people’s minds for thousands of years, and still continues to do so, more or less. More in Muslim countries, less in the Christian world. What has religion brought us? War, killing, repression (of women), misuse of power, and so on. No good.

Maybe it’s not religion itself that is the problem. Emperors, family fathers, people with power have used religion to justify encroachment and harassment that would have happened anyway, with a different cause. However, many religious texts and leaders support and recommend such acts. For me it doesn’t matter which issue is the more important. The effect is the same. I don’t care what messy thoughts swirl around in the heads of Christians and Muslims and Jews and Hindus. But it has a very bad impact on the world we live in.

Religion has always been challenged by free thinking and science. Religion’s only significant contribution to science has been to slow down its development, banning and rejecting ideas that did not fit in with religious doctrine. The most harmful and tragic effects can be seen in countries where religion still has major impact on government and lawmakers; sharia laws, refusing girl’s education, claiming land on the West Bank with reference to the Bible. It’s insane.

In most countries, the fraction of religious people has decreased with increasing level of education. Religious regimes (like Iran) have the main base of support in the uneducated part of the population. That’s good, there is still hope that rationalism will win in the end. It is easy to understand that people of ancient times called on gods and ghosts and goats to explain strange phenomena that they couldn’t understand; the stars in the sky, volcanoes, earth quakes and floods. Thousand years ago, the scientific domain was small and the religious domain was large. Today it is opposite, due to the development of science.

However, there is still a long way to go. There are countries where the majority of the population supports creationism, rather than evolution (according to polls). Part of the Muslim world is at a development level corresponding to the Middle Age. Religion is irrational, a question of belief. You do believe in God (one or more) or you don’t, as simple as that. As science evolves, it continues to move previous mysteries from the religious domain to the scientific domain. Science is providing a logical and rational explanation.

There will always be things that can not be explained by science. The religious domain is shrinking, but will never become zero (I even know religious scientists!). The existence or non-existence of God can never be proved. There can always be something else, something more, that science has not been able to explain. Who pushed the button to trigger the Big Bang? Who cares? Do we really need an explanation for everything, right now? I don’t, I can live (and die) happily with the fact that there are still things yet to be understood. I have no problems accepting that the death is the end, we’re recycled back to nature. I have no need for an eternal life in Heaven. It would probably be just boring anyway, and God is a mean and tyrant despot (according to the Bible) that I wouldn’t like to be near to eternity and beyond.