Why I criticize religion

What a great day to be having this conversation!  Happy Darwin Day everyone!!

This morning I woke up to see an interesting question on my facebook page from someone I have alot of respect for .  The question was obviously a response to the many criticisms of mono-theistic religion I've made on my facebook page over the last few months.

Facebook is an inadequate forum for posting a decent response to his questions (it's not the forum that's inadequate, it's the formatting allowed in posts that in inadequate), I decided to post the questions and my responses here, unedited, except to mask the identity of the  people  I've quoted, and in come cases, to add to what I said on facebook, as that forum is designed for sharing short quips and links and not to a deep discussion.

You may ask why I use so many videos or quotes about what others have said, or research/experiments others have done, instead of using my own words/work to describe my thoughts.  Well the plain answer is that there are far far more intelligent and educated people than I, who've spent entire lifetimes answering these questions.  While it is critically important to do your own soul searching and your own self-exploration, why re-invent the wheel?  When studying, when you come across something particularly brilliant, or well said, or well done someone else has come up with, why not use it (and credit them for it) in your deliberations/discussions?  It's important to understand I've come up with my own morality, my own point of view on my own, through my own life experience, and then while doing research to challenge my own point of view, I've learned of people like Hitchens, and Sagan, and Harris, and Dawkins, and Einstein, Darwin, Galileo, and Tesla.  They are the apostles of the rational and the real, instead of the apostles of a fabled messiah.

In order for me to give you the answer you're looking for, you'd have to define your use of the word spiritual or spirituality. My answer could vary greatly based on your use of the word. If left to use my own definition, I would define spirituality as our understanding of our place/position/role within nature, and our understanding/appreciation of the arts, which I think are both very important.  In fact, using my definition of the word, the term "emotional inspiration" would probably be a more precise fit to that definition than the word spiritual.

I would describe the way I think most people use the word spiritual as being able to understand or appreciate that which is super natural.  Ofcourse I think that is garbage, because I believe absolutely nothing exists outside of nature.  Everything that exists is natural, and if it appears to be supernatural, that simply means we don't really understand it yet.

In the video below, Steve Weinberg puts into words where my spirituality derives from.  

Below, Christopher Hitchens does a great job of explaining how spirituality can exist outside of theistic religions, and how atheists can experience it.

Below, is a mix of several things Sam Harris has said on the topic of atheist spirituality.  He goes into more detail than Hitchens did above, and I think his comments about Christian physics and muslim alebra, and ethics/morality are profound.

Below, possibly my favorite video clip of all time, Carl Sagan beautifully and poetically describes a spirituality absent of any need of a deity or prime mover.   If you listen to him as he describes humanity as it exists on planet earth, and combine that with an understanding of our place on earth and our role in the food chain, and the extraordinary beauty of life on planet earth you'll come close to understanding my view of atheist spirituality.

This next video is kinda silly, but if you forget it's part of a Disney movie, and imagine the real beauty that exists that this video is trying to convey, and add that to the three above, that would be the best way I could describe my view of spirituality. Life, Death, Art, Music, Love. To me, that is spirituality. The mystery and beauty of birth, life, and death, and the art, music, and love that happens in between birth and death.

When you speak of blanket derision, it seems like you say that like it's a bad thing. If, instead of the church, I was criticizing the mafia, a pedophillia ring, or an organized group of con-men/fraudsters, or a wide spread conspiracy to control us and our government, I would have hundreds of thousands of hits to my weblog and youtube pages. People would be agreeing with me, patting me on the back, adding their own personal stories for additional context, and demanding we do something to make it stop. Wrap all of that into one group (a mafia, a pedophillia ring, an organized group of fraudsters fooling people into enriching them, and a wide spread conspiracy to control us) and call it the church, all of the sudden you're deriding religion and attacking people. Why should anything be a sacred cow, protected from any criticism. If I bring ANYTHING into the public square, why shouldn't it be examined for it's merits and criticized where appropriate?

When you consider the negative side affects of those religions, I don't think opposing them is a bad thing at all, even zealously opposing them.  If you take away any spirituality from the discussion for a moment (because clearly spirituality can be enjoyed with out mono-theistic evangelical religion, religion doesn't have a monopoly on spirituality), and just look at it's actual origin vs it's self-proclaimed origin, and look at it's real impact on humanity, instead of it's self-proclaimed impact on humanity, very very little positive can be found relative to the amount of bad that can be found.

Please keep in mind when I speak of good and bad, I'm not talking about absolutes, I'm talking about our perception of how these events/people have affected us and our own lives.  I'm really just talking about positive and negative affects on individuals and groups.  Of couse, one has to acknowledge there is both good and bad in everything and everyone.  But the relationship to of good and bad of lets say christianity vs budhism is similar to the relationship of good and bad between someone like Charles Manson and your spouse.  When we talk about good and bad with respect to Charles Manson, we have to acknowledge both are present, but we're talking about much different scale than we would be when discussing the good and bad of a person you'd consider your lover, who also would have both.  As a world religion, Buddhism has it's good and it's bad, but when you're looking at the impact Budhism has had on humanity over the course of our history, you really have to drill down deep to find any negative.  You have to go back centuries to see Budhism being created as a tool for a small wealthy aristocracy to control large groups of poor people in order to maintain their hold on their wealth.  You have to drill down deep into the personal, to evaluate how a budhist philosphy discourages accomplishment and achievement, and outward growth, by focusing so much on internal growth and discarding the material, and as bad as those things may or may not be, they really only impact the indivdual subscribing to that philosophy and the loved ones immediatley surrounding that person.  They really are nothing more than a personal lifestyle choice, that is as legitimate as any other choice available.  

Such a huge difference in scale from the impacts on humanity of the three pillars of Abraham, Islam, Christianity, and Judaism.  Imagine for a moment we lived in a country governed by a Budhist theocracy, like tibet, and compare that to a country governed by a christian or an islamic theocracy, like the Afghanistan under Taliban rule or 15th century England or spain.  The difference in scale of positive to negative between those two countries is so large it's hard to reconcile in your mind...  Like looking at a parcel map and trying to figure out in your head how many square inches are in a section of land.   Some could do it, but for most of us, it's just way to large a gulf to wrap your mind around.

"By comparing something so vast and complex as religion to mafia or pedo rings is either pointless hyperbole or the words of a fanatic."

It's not pointless hyperbol, it's actual reality.  The catholic church operates like the Italian Mafia.  Is very  secretive, very powerful, and very wealthy.  The only difference is one operates in the name of a specific family, to enrich that family and it's associates, and the other operates in the name of a fabricated god, to enrich it's top clergy and it's associates.  The tools of the trade are almost the same.  Violence, intimidation, and  suppression/hiding of information.  The exact same can be said of Islam, except that Islam doesn't appear to be as good at it as the Catholics are.  Muslims seem to believe more of what their saying than the vatican does, and to be less concerned with amassing wealth than the vatican is.

When it comes to the broad view of their affect on humanity (that's not even drilling down, like we were forced to do with Budhism), the horrible crimes of the church against man kind are obvious slaps to the face.  Hitchens does a great job of describing them in this video:

Guilty of torturing and murdering untold numbers of people in the name of their religion, It's most recent serious crime against humanity is covering up and protecting one of the largest and most wide spread pedophile rings in recorded history.  Protecting pedophile priests will be the legacy of the catholic church.

Sam Harris also had some great comments on the impact of the catholic church on humanity while speaking at the University of Notre Dame.  There's nothing like saying it right to their face!

As you drill down, into the less obvious, their crimes continue to afflict us.  As individual groups, these organizations work hard to retard technological progress in order to maintain their grip on their control over us.  They work hard to infiltrate themselves into our governments to control us with legislation, and into our neighborhoods to control us with social pressures.  Control of the individual is the goal, and not just control over our bodies and our actions, they desire control of our minds, and not just during our lives...  As Hitchens says, there is no escape from this enslavement, even in death.

I criticize these three religions (in the order in which they have impact on my life, christianity more than the other two, and Islam more than the other one), because they are dangerous, they are controlling, and they wish to control all of us through legislative and social pressures.

Sam Harris describes that in a really good video z.  and Hitchens brilliantly describes my views on religion and why I think it's so important to criticize it in this video:  http://youtu.be/5b1aIuoCq4w?t=1m51s.  Mono-theistic religion really is a poison that fouls everything it comes in contact with.

Mono-theistic religion has infected humanity like an illness.  It drives us to seperate/segregate/ostracize each other at best, and causes us to murder and torture each other at worst.  It is what is the ugliest, and darkest, and most evil about us, and, like a virus, it works it's way into our governments, and our schools, and our neighborhoods, and begins replicating itself, over and over and over, infecting everyone it can, and using it's new hosts as another means of covering it's tracts, and enabling it to continue devouring and destorying all that is beautiful and loving about humanity.  Oh yeah a little bit of good is also done in the name of mono-theistic religions, but tolerating the mountain of bad in order to have the tiny amount of good, considering these religions don't have a monopoly on the good, inspite of their incessant claims to the contrary, doesn't seem very logical at all.

Facebook has become a means of transmission of this disease.  Like other viruses use sneezing on a crowded train, this virus has discovered how easily it can do it's dirty work by transmitting itself from one to another on facebook.  I see it so much in my facebook news feed, I've decided to speak up when I see it.  When I see the lies and fraud spewed into my newsfeed, I counter it by providing information, usaually information about the fraud, but sometimes just general information about religion or science or logic.

It used to be that these zealots had to stand on the street corner and yell at me through a bull horn, or go visiting people door to door, and knock on my door, and somehow get me to answer it.

It often feels like this

As long as I didn't leave my home and didn't answer my door, I didn't have to deal with these fools.  Today, all it takes is the click of the mouse and a few thousand likes and all of the sudden your evanglical garbage is right in my face, on my facebook page.

Here are some examples of the way this virus attempts to replicate itself on facebook.

Put on the whole armor of god, because the strongest people are those who consentually submit themselves to a lifetime, and an eternity after life of voluntary enslavement.

Remember what I said about enslavement?  A child of the king!  Yes that's what I want...  To be ruled by a king!  So, press like on facebook, or face the eternal punishment of hellfire.

Well good for you...  Why must you brag about it?  Shouldn't your actions speak louder than your words?

How awful would that be if it were true?  Nothing I ever do will ever matter unless it is about loving someone else's god.  Give me a freaking break!

Powerful huh?   Stop whatever you are doing right now and just watch what happens.  Stop the surgen performing heart surgery, stop the pilot flying the plane, stop what you are doing right now and just watch what happens!

How about no?

Like and Share, so that our silly message can fool your friends too!

So much for personal responsibility huh?  What happened to "god helps those who helps themselves..."?  Nope, today it's don't nurse it, don't rehearse it, just call on god, he will reverse it...  How convenient.  Why don't you tell that to children starving to death or dying of cancer.  Why doesn't god reverse that?

"Yes lord, sene me an angle..."  

An angle?  Like a triangle or an angle stop valve?

It's not simply that these people have chosen a life path, a lifestyle, or a religion of their own choosing.  If that were the case, you'd see me railing against budhism and hinduism, and paganism.  No I am a big supporter of the 1st amendment and of personal liberty.  I believe in the liberty of all of us to be able to individually choose for ourselves, our own lifestyles, or own religions, etc.  No the problem is that these people do not believe in that themselves.  Of course they claim to.  They often use the 1st amendment to hide behind to protect and enable the  atrocities  done in the name of their religion, but the truth is they they don't believe I should be able to make simple, lifestyle and religious choices for myself or my young children.

These people don't allow that I may have my own god, whatever it may be.  They don't allow that my religious and lifestyle choices are as legitimate for me, as theirs are for them.  They don't allow that our diverse country should be secular, so that is serves all people, regardless of their religion.  No, these people feel entitled to integrate their religion into my government in order to use my government as a tool to control me through legislation.  This letter from Billy Graham's son is a great example of that.  It ended up in my news feed because someone I played an internet game with posted it to their page, so it ended up on my wall.

The author, Franklin Graham, is not some random christian.  He is the son of, and heir to the religious industrial complex his father, Billy Graham, built in Washington DC.  Billy Graham was a trusted counselor and advisor to every president of my entire life except our current president.

Listen (video below) how Hitchens describes Billy Graham giving Nixon anti-semetic advice.

Here's a fun quote from Jerry Falwell, "I hope I live to see the day when, as in the early days of our country, we won't have any public schools. The churches will have taken them over again and Christians will be running them.”  - America Can Be Saved! (1979) Sword of the Lord Publishers, Murfreesboro, Tennessee, p. 52-53, quoted at "The Rise of the Religious Right in the Republican Party"   More fun quotes from Falwell.

These people aren't interested in co-existing with their neighbors enjoying peace and  tolerance, they are bent on converting me, and if they cannot, then controlling me through legislation, and if they fail at that, then controlling me through social pressures in my community.

For all of the conspiracy theory nuts we have in this country..  For all of the birthers, truthers, spotters of Kenyan Socialists, and preppers of all kinds, instead of relying on conspiracy theories that don't actually exist or can't be proven, why don't you spend some time worrying about the actual conspiracy by the christian church to  influence  and control the Americans using the U.S.Government, as talked about in the letter above written by Graham, or as evident by the collusion between the Mormon Church and the Catholic Church during the Prop 8 fight.

Of course it's not just the rosary beads and secret underwear, there's plenty of blame to go around.  I remember watching this jackass (Benny Hinn in video below) on TV when I was a kid.

This con artist would place a pile of letters on a table infront of a TV camera and pray over them, saying he could feel a woman in Virginia being healed of lukemia by his prayers, and that god was healing a man on Tulsa of Alzheimers disease, etc.  Then he'd ask you to send him a check so you could receive your healing.


A few years ago Pat Robertson claimed to leg press 2000 pounds using the power of god, and then with Jerry Falwell, claimed the WTC attackin Sept 11 happened because god wanted to punish the US for being ungodly.  

I could go on and on about the ridiculous claims people make on television and the internet about what their god has done to us, or what their god will do for us, in order to either scare us or bribe us into joining his church and sending to his prophets his obligatory 10% of our meager paychecks.  I'm not going to do that because I think I've made the point about their fraud.  Why is it we prosecute other people for fraud, but these criminals are allowed to hide behind the 1st amendment?

Now don't get me wrong, I'm not suggesting we shred the first amendment and begin prosecuting these idiots.  As far as I'm concerned, with few exceptions if you're stupid enough to write one of these baffoons a check, you probably deserve to be  separated  from your money.  As PT Barnum told us, there is  a sucker born every minute, and I acknowledge we must tolerate a certain amount of these shenanigans in order to maintain the religious liberties we have in this country.  But isn't it ironic that these same people who hide behind the first amendment in order to continue defrauding people out of their money (and their devout followers), are always the first to whine and whine the loudest when you attempt to challenge them on their ridiculous claims?

I know what you're saying, I use the name Jesus Christ "in vain" as often as I can, but if you're suggesting I am "narrow-minded" I guess that would depend on your definition for your use of the word. I believe I am very open minded, as I can be persuaded to change my position on almost anything when someone makes a compelling evidence based argument that persuades me to do so. If you define closed minded or narrow minded as someone being unwilling to consider every silly unsupported argument, or unwilling to follow every god, prophet, or seer that comes along, then I'm guilty as charged.  As Hitchens liked to say, "What can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence."

Since when did our community become one where you can't challenge ridiculous claims, or ridiculous ideas without being labeled as "closed minded" or bigoted?  If we were never able to challenge these stupid ideas, then the Catholic church would still rule the western world, as it did during the dark ages.  We would still live in a world that denied science and prohibited scientific and  intellectual exploration.  Imagine that.  Imagine if we still lived in a world where the government denied the planet was round, or that disease is caused by micro organisms and not by gods punishment, and imprisoned or killed anyone who disagreed with them, like they did to Galileo and Cranmer, and many many others.

I typically don't, and still haven't yet in this discussion, talk about my own religious beliefs, values, etc, at least not with any specificity because I believe religion should a very personal, very private vice (kinda like masturbating) that should be kept at home, at church, and among close friends who all know they share each other's proclivities for such activities.

In conclusion, I'll leave you with a wonderful and witty song about Jerry Falwells god, written and performed by Roy Zimmerman.  If you have any comments or questions, leave them below and I'll do my very best to answer them as soon and as  completely  as I can.  Or you can email them to me, or post them to my facebook page, and I'll move them here and then respond to them.  Feel free to challenge what I've said here.  I don't claim to have a monopoly on the truth, we're all pursuing truth together, sharing information with each other as we can.  Enjoy the song, it's one of my favorites!