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Abandon Religion
By Punkerslut
Why Abandon Religion?
It is so commonly believed today that religion is a source of goodness and charity for so many people. It is also believed that to oppose religion is also to oppose the goodness and charity stipulated to be with it. When I ask others to abandon religion, they will reply, "Why would you want to abandon something that has produced so many helpful things?" But I am not asking people to give up the affectionate and tender ways, laced with gentleness and humanity. I am not asking that they give up mercy or justice, things which are just as easily attainable without religion, if not easier. I am asking people to give up their fear of hell and daemons, their belief in a soul and ghosts, their hope of an afterlife and a god, the creeds founded on the credulous superstitions of their ancestors. I am not asking the human species to relinquish the things that are good and accompany every warm heart -- I am asking the human species to ameliorate the ideology that a god exists that will punish nonbelievers and reward believers, that will smile at the sufferings of the damned and fortunes of the saved. I am asking others to abandon religion, which has been a never-ending source of intolerance for those who have harnessed any sort of bigotry.
There may be those who persist in the assertion that religion is inseperable from goodness, and goodness from religion. Would any religionist be honest to state that without god, they would allow themselves to be heartless and brutal -- to become the epitome of savage behavior, of unspirited meanness and sincere hatred? Would anyone who called themselves close to god, and with good intentions, if this individual were to suddenly discover that there was no god, would they find themselves to be less considerate, less hopeful, less charitable? If any religious person can honestly say yes to this, then it would only be right to be suspicious of the claim that they are hopeful, kind, or charitable now. God, this mythical being who lives apart from the physical world, and his existence are only questions of science: he either exists or he does not. If he did not exist, it would hardly deprive anyone of ethical or moral behavior. If a city, a road, a mountain, a lake, or a natural formation did not exist that we had believed to exist, at discovering this, would we abandon all humaneness and all forms of goodness? Only those who had reveled in hypocrisy and deceit can truly say so. There is nothing innately special of the mythical beings called gods that means their existence gives privilege to moral behavior.There are, though, the genuine claims that we should not abandon religion on the grounds that religion has portrayed a truthful and honest view of the world. Though this claim made be made on the foundation that we ought to pursue the truth, it often fails short of that, because religion has universally been the opponent to investigation and inquiry. There have been times and eras where the church had disallowed the public from reading or writing, and had made it punishable by death to be found with a Bible written in local languages. In 391, Christians burned down one of the world's greatest libraries in Alexandra, said to have housed 700,000 scrolls. [The New Columbia Encyclopedia, 61, and Eisler, The Chalice and the Blade.] The tale of Galileo should not need repeating, but perhaps the tale of Giordano Bruno or Francisco Ferrer need repeating. Though Galileo was only threatened with death for his claims, Giordano Bruno was burned to death for his ideas in 1600 and Francisco Ferrer was shot to death for his beliefs in 1909 -- both executed by the Roman Catholic Church. Giordano Bruno, the great thinker, and Francisco Ferrer, the great educator; a day does not go by where their grave loss is mourned by Rationalists and Humanitarians world wide. Gregory the Great had the library of Palatine Apollo burned "lest its secular literature distract the faithful men from the contemplation of heaven." [Barbara G. Walker, The Woman's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1983) 208.] The history of Christianity and organized religion runs parallel to the history of oppression and slavery. Examination and inquiry have been restrained, and this can be found in the evidences that every historian ought to be well aware of. Even today, we find the same radical fanatics, burning Harry Potter books, and on the same exact claim that it will deprive children of the religion of Christianity. We also find Christian fanatics working to ban books in public libraries, including works by Mark Twain, J. D. Salinger., and Maya Angelou, sometimes on the exact claim that these works are "unChristian."
But asside from the fact that religion tends to disallow Freethought and investigation, inquiry and science, can it at all be permitted to call itself truth? As well as having a long history of suppressing honest and sincere attempts at sciennce and truth, religion is also founded on superstition and myth. When man did not understand the origin of the rainbow, he postulated that it had divine origin. When man did not understand the origin of the human female, he made the same claim. When man did not understand anything that was of natural phenomena, he often times ran to the easy and simple belief that it was created from a god or a spirit or a ghost. Even beyond that, though, the evidences and claims of religion are synonymous with many cultural myths.As I have discussed in other works, Santa Claus and god both have a remarkable amount of similarities: both are mystical beings, both live far away, both have no evidence, both are only believed because they are taught by community and elders, both have not been demonstrated, both have supernatural powers, among an enormous amount of other similarities. But if one is not content to believe that a man exists who delivers billions of presents to children on one night of the year, then why would one be content to believe that a man exists who delivers billions of souls to heaven or hell?
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Writer Profile
Andy Carloff
Punkerslut (or Andy Carloff) has traveled all across the United States and has experienced American life in the urban centers, as a homeless squatter and as a blue-collar, working-class laborer. Since high school and early development, he has composed a variety of ideas on education, politics, and economy. His positions are ultra-leftist: politically an Anarchist, economically a Socialist, and culturally a Syndicalist. His writings are available through his website: http://www.punkerslut.com
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