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Religion's holding power – a man-made brain cage
People have to be taught religion. One is not born with it, so we're all born atheists. Again, we non-believers aren't born with faith and then somehow lose it via some unnatural process. Religion is an unnatural process. We also don't get religion before we can communicate and learn, no matter how many times we're baptized.
You never see someone be Christian from the start in a Muslim part of the world or a part of the world untouched by Christianity. As we become indoctrinated as children, we remain atheists to all religions but the one we're taught. Atheists just choose to reject 1 more religion.
Religion has brought plenty of suffering and death into this world, so one has to wonder about the benefits to humanity, especially on the survival aspect. We also know religious stories evolve over time (and borrow heavily from each other). Maybe religion isn't around for OUR survival but for its own. In other words, maybe particular beliefs survive ONLY because of their own staying power, even if it's detrimental to its host. I was already on this track before I read Dawkins' ideas on that. The gist is that certain beliefs are more likely to stick in the psyche than others, and those will be carried forward. These beliefs evolve AND have also been "intelligently designed" to maximize effect and staying power by those trying to spread the faith - either by changing the ideas themselves (the bible has been edited many, many, many times...look up the Council of Nicaea, Protestant Reformation, Council of Jamnia, Council of Trent, Council of Rome – all reassembling and removing books...) or by tweaking the presentation of those ideas (we know that evangelical preachers queue the music and other components of their services to pull at the heartstrings (and therefore the purse strings) of their flock. Fleecing is an apt term here. WE are doing this (and letting it be done) to ourselves. The fact that religion leads to unnecessary suffering and death in this world is of no consequence to religion itself or to those who make money off of it. Dawkins also touched on another surprisingly large category: clergy who have lost their faith but yet continue because that's the only training and job they have.
Richard Dawkins has a wonderful theory on how religion persists despite truth and without clear benefit to the faithful. This is a logical explanation of how religion can persist in spite of not being true AND not being good for us.
Religious faith is a bad byproduct of a good trait.
Children, especially in ancient times, got a lot of survival benefit from listening to their elders and believing what they were told. Constructive messages are "don't eat untried red berries", "don't swim with crocodiles", "store food for the winter in ways that prevent spoilage", etc. Children who listened unconditionally were more likely to survive, so the trait became more widespread. After all, ignoring the red berries or crocodile messages would get a kid killed (and removed from the gene pool) in a hurry. The problem came about when imaginary stuff about vengeful supernatural beings came into the mix (as a species, we were always fond of fiction). Like a computer program, the inputs are faithfully processed because neither children nor computers have a way to critically analyze what they're taking in. Imagine a computer that could decide to not accept certain commands if they were useless, a waste of energy or even destructive. A child being able to differentiate between good and bad commands is just as improbable at this point.
A similar instance of a bad byproduct of a good trait is moths' being drawn to a flame. They have amazing navigational abilities using points of light, and those traits have served them well for eons. Now that humans are here with lights, most of what we see are moths being distracted in droves and destroying themselves. Think of religion as the lights or flames; it's an apt comparison on many levels.
Another trait we humans have is an ability to attribute intention to people - to know if they care for us or want to harm us - especially elders or authority figures. We don't just stop with people, though. We attribute intention to animals, inanimate objects (anger at a computer for working slowly), and sometimes weather. We even attribute intention to imaginary beings via our interpretation of events even though those events have a real-world explanation. It's a useful trait with survival value, but we overuse it. If I trip over a broom, I have a moment of anger towards the broom and blame it for being in my way. ...Did I just describe a very typical reaction or admit that I'm mentally ill?
Yet another trait that religion can manipulate is the tendency toward romantic love. It's not really that one other person is much more lovable than all the others, but in romantic love we can develop what one can argue is an unhealthy attachment to one particular one. Even Dawkins said more of a polyamorous approach would make more sense, per situation (Sue likes to watch baseball so I'll take her with to the ballgame while Beth might be more fun to be with for video games later). My particular view is that romantic love is too consuming, to irrational and is more focused on need than love. The difference is that need is all about you while love is all about the other person. If you read or listen to the joyous chatter of someone who's "high on god", it has that feel to it - the protected, watched-over and loved feeling (what they get out of it, not what god supposedly gets out of it). I've also observed people of faith slipping a bit, not feeling as close to god. The look like they're hunting for their next fix, and they also talk about it in terms that are like romantic love they're missing. I've yet to see a struggling Christian decide to go out and help people as a way to find god again. I'm sure it does happen that way, but I've just never seen it and doubt it's a typical impulse. The typical response to a “crisis of faith” seems to match the sulking that's done during relationship problems.
"High on god" is another angle I was thinking about well before I read up on the topic. Supposedly one can get addicted to a lot of things. Why not god? I'd bet the brain chemical patterns match up perfectly. The issue is that getting high on god is often socially reinforced as a good thing. The bad thing to me is that these people are wasting their energy on an imaginary relationship instead of putting the effort towards real relationships with real people with real benefit.
Religion specifically targets children. The faithful should pick on people their own size! How different would the world be if indoctrinating children was no longer done – if nobody was exposed to religion until they were old enough to think critically? I'm sure the religious would support such a measure for children growing up in other religions but not endorse it for their own “true” faith.
Read up on hell houses – theatrics used specifically to scare kids into religion and away from “sinning”.
This from http://religionrevealed.blogspot.com/2011/12/give-me-child-until-he-is-seven.html:
St. Francis Xavier (1506-1552) is a genius of another kind. He said: “Give me the child until he is seven and I’ll give you the man”.
Indeed! Nothing underscores the flaw in religion better than this quote from 500 years ago. Back then, St. Francis fully understood that a child’s brain could be contaminated at an early age, and once the seed was planted and nourished with weekly doses of dogma, the child would grow into a man (or woman) unable to rid themselves of the noxious belief system planted in their innocent unsuspecting, unquestioning brains. ME: What a terrible end to innocence!
Hell is depicted as really, really bad to make a bigger impression and distract from how utterly unlikely it is. I can relate to having a situation where there's a 1% chance of something terrible, and that 1% looms so large that it hardly leaves room for anything else. I felt that in action when I was awaiting the results of an HIV test. Even though my risks were very, very low, it scared the hell out of me and held much more power than it needed to (test was negative).
Each religion details a problem you didn't know you had and then prescribes a fix for that problem. It's akin to a doctor diagnosing you with a truly terrible disease (that can continue to afflict you even after death) and prescribing his very own supplement line to fix it. How conveeeeenient! ...Doctor, I'd like a 2nd opinion!
Completely personal relationship with god – it's completely personal because it's imaginary. The nice thing about an imaginary friend is that you can change his/her traits to suit your needs. He is your personal god because you designed him, and he's personal because he exists in the construct of your mind. That's how we get Christians who hate on gays and Christians who are gay...and many other forms of cherry-picking and designing of one's own personal god. The bible does not speak of a personal relationship with Jesus. Maybe the homoerotic "fall in love with Jesus" concept is the cause of homophobia among Christians?
Relationships take effort. This type takes a whole lot of imagination, too!
I think the term "Christian" is overused. Many accept the label because of some positive connotation it has for them or because their family endorses it (or forces it upon them). They accept that label even though they question and perhaps don't believe the things that would make them Christian. Like religious moderates, these people give cover to religion and the more radical people in the faith. Progress could be made if these people would stand up for themselves and/or stop being lazy when it comes to figuring out their beliefs.
Research has shown that harsher, more monotheistic religions come from harsher regions of the world (aka the Middle East).
That makes sense because with a harsher life comes a need to explain away a lot more suffering and death. Religion is just an older, less sophisticated way to explain and understand the world.
People from gentler climates where life is easier tend to have multiple gods, and those gods tend to be friendlier. That makes sense because they simply have fewer “god must be angry or hate us” moments.
Unfortunately, when a harsher religion goes head-to-head with a gentler one, the harsher one is more likely to win. This is “survival of the fittest...religion style”.
Comparing religion to a virus: there's A LOT of similarities.
There are specific traits that make a religion more virulent – the fear, the drive to spread it, the comfort it brings, resistance to other religions, etc.
It takes advantage of the young and the weak in much the same way.
Not all things that give comfort are good – alcohol, smoking, most drugs – to name a few. I'd imagine early southerners took great comfort in counting on slave labor.
It's clear we don't need religion anywhere near our government. Sweden, Denmark, France, Norway, Hong Kong and Japan are in the top 10 of the world's least religious countries, and they're considered the most prosperous, happy and have the highest living standards. These countries are also more charitable toward aid organizations and the developing world. I suggest that's because they know it's up to us. Again, the world's happiest countries are also the least religious; contrast that with almost anywhere in the Middle East where they have a surplus of religion.
There is no proof that atheism is correct, BUT the burden of proof is on the one making the claim (the religious), not the one who doesn't believe it, partly because one can't prove a negative. These are truly extraordinary claims, so they require extraordinary evidence. It's not that atheists actively disbelieve in god; it's that they suspend belief awaiting more evidence – a more sane alternative than anything I can think of.
There's no dogma attached to being a non-believer, and there's nothing to defend.
Think about your status as a Thor atheist. You don't believe in him, right? (This Thor example was mostly provided by Peter Boghossian.)
Any stories about Thor are absolute fiction, right?
If someone who believes in Thor confronts you about your lack of belief in Thor, who carries the burden of proof? Do you need to justify your lack of belief, or is it up to the believer to convince you (if you let them)?
Do you feel you can dismiss the believer's point of view without listening to him tell you how great Thor is for hours on end? Clearly, you have the right and the tendency to not go down that path – to cut the conversation short and not lose any sleep over it. I opt to do this with Nordic gods as well as the Christian gods, Islamic gods and any other uninvited deities that wander into the conversation. The faithful seem to think the rest of us need to entertain their crazy talk and consider it as a real possibility. No, we don't. Everyone who believes something else is completely off their rockers, right? Well, so are you...and in exactly the same way.
How much faith or dogma does it take to be a Thor atheist? ...Discuss...
How about your lack of belief in Islam, the fastest-growing religion in the world? Those people reject your faith just as easily as you reject theirs, and there are sooo many of them.
Guilt is just a control mechanism built into religion by its makers, and it holds sickly power. Some of the rules are impossible to follow, especially the "thought crimes" of adultery and envy. How can we be held accountable for thought crimes - crimes with no intention or deliberate action??? This is how we were wired. Maybe God should be on trial for this one. It's a set up, just like in the garden of eden when god supposedly planted the forbidden tree right in the middle of the garden and supplied a convincing talking serpent. Keep in mind this was the tree of knowledge; maybe if we were not meant to think, god simply shouldn't have included the requisite gray matter. One also has to wonder what the all-knowing god was doing at that famous moment of deception? ...This story is implausible and pathetic, and it's just one of many. God needs to get better script writers. Maybe one of the creators of Breaking Bad is available?
Generally, god punishes people 3 generations down from the offender. (Is that fair? ...discuss...). Original Sin has gone on a lot more generations than that and for equally unjustified reasons. According to St. Augustine, it's passed through semen...guilt in a convenient jiz-sized package! Original sin is just a lame attempt to get us to hold ourselves in contempt.
It's not just the guilt that can be the issue. It seems to me that the goal of the impossible laws is self-loathing and less self-reliance. The idea is to get people to distrust themselves and think they need something outside of themselves to be okay – much like a smarmy salesman might convince you that you need his snake oil to clear some imagined affliction. The best a person can do to be happy, healthy and GOOD (largely a byproduct of happiness), is to become the most of his or herself they can. That's more of a humanistic approach to things, and that's the opposite of what religion will feed you.