A problem throughout history, so what's changed? (Religion)

Member Name: theanarchistkid

Product:	Religion
Date:	30/03/01 (395 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Can introduce postive aspects into life.

Disadvantages: Can destroy free speech.

Throughout history, religion has generally hindered progress in medicine and science. This is a fact that is appreciated by many historians and there's very little that can be said in religion's favour throughout the ages. Now that Religion appears to be diminishing is western culture, can we expect to see the morals and ethics of our society going to waste?

Looking back in time over the last few centuries, it is immediately apparent the effect that religion has had on science and technology. Looking at medicine for example, disection was frowned upon, study of human corpses was illegal and abortion/operations/certain treatments and many other things were also looked down on my the church. During prehistory, it is believed that religion dictated more or less everything that humans did. All illnesses were blamed on the supernatural, so even primitave man believed in God(s). Why can't society progress away from an archaic belief that is no longer socially relevent whatsoever.

Now, I'm not going to claim to be an expert on religion, because I'm far from it. I hold no belief in any supernatural power, I've never read the Bible voluntarily and I don't attend church. I can look at the subject of religion from a fairly neutral point of view and can hopefully be fairly unbiased when discussing its virtues. For a start, the one thing that I do know about Christianity is that a lot of Christians think that the first two humans on Earth were Adam and Eve. The origins of human life are still fairly sketchy, but we know that we evolved from apes, so it's highly unlikely that Adam and Eve just appeared out of nowhere. Assuming that they did exist, surely they must have 'sinned' in order to reproduce. For a start, they could not have been married, therefore they lived in sin. I'm assuming that the Queen holds Christian beliefs, although I've never asked her, in which case, I have as much right to the thrown as her.
If Adam and Eve were the first two humans on Earth, surely we all have royal blood?

If one of the first things in the Bible is incorrect, how do we know that anything in it is true? Did God really create Earth? Probably not. Was Jesus really the Son of God, or did Mary just have a fling with another bloke and not want to admit it to Joseph? These views may seem somewhat extreme and I hope that nobody is offended by them, but they are perfectly valid points. It's not just Christianity which is flawed, all of the religions that I know about have some kind of fundamental flaw in them.

The actual existence of any higher being is extremely questionable. Many bands that I listen to have questioned it in their music. For example Propagandhi say 'How can you justify belief in a God that doesn't exist?', which is a fair point. Marilyn Manson is constantly questioning organised religion (no, I don't like him; I think he's a prat!). Bad Religion, a little known punk band have taken a stance against organised religion from their outset and they also have some very interesting lyrics which would no doubt offend a lot of people. The truth is though that there is no proof that God has existed so why should people assume that he does. I may be slightly cynical, but I refuse to believe anything until it has been properly and scientifically proven.

Speaking of Marilyn Manson, he calls himself a Satanist. Yet he's constantly putting down religion and saying how organised religion is a bad thing. Contradictory? Yep! It seems to me that he's using religion just to gain media attention, which either says something about his morals, or the weakness of the media. What shocked me when reading about Manson in a magazine is that Satanism isn't actually 'Devil Worshipping'. Instead, it merely encourages thinking about your actions, and that the biggest sin on this Earth is stupidity. What is wrong with this? Surely it'
;s just common sense. Does this mean that I'm a Satanist? I certainly hope not!

I've always viewed religion as an excuse to blame human error and flaws in our own design on someone else. If a train crashes, I could easily say that it's the fault of God and he's just punishing the passengers but in reality it's probably machine failure or human error. I'm reluctant to totally speak too strongly against religion because I think that a lot of people will be offended by it. This is a speaker's corner however, so I'm perfectly entitled to air my views.

I think that religion is used as a crutch to support what is unfortunately a failing society. If people can blame disasters on God rather than look into the real causes for it, then it's quite clear which option they're going to take. In a world which is currently dictated by science and technology, it's interesting to see that religion is becoming less and less popular. Certainly around where I live, very few people attend church and the people that do are mainly elderly. This may be a reflection on society's changing views on religion. Now that science can give ratinal explanations for most things, do we really need religion at all?

I don't doubt that for some people, religion may have saved their lives. For people in prison so discover God and come out again and be totally reformed seems like a good thing to me. But what I think is that it's not because they're putting their faith in a particular God, it's because they're considering their actions and thinking about the consequences of them. The same goes for people that discover religion at a later age (eg outside childhood), they start to think positively about life in general so it's no wonder that their quality of life seems to improve.

There are times when religion is a good thing but conversely, there are times when it's a very bad thing. A lot of wars
are caused by it, just look at some of the recent disputes in the middle east. A whole host of murders are caused by it. Even the holocaust was caused by it. Obviously, it would be totally unfair of me to blame the holocaust on religion, but it was a key factor in it all. I personally think that Nazism was almost a religion in itself; an organised group of people worhshipping a leader.

I tried to remain fairly subjective throughout this opinion, but it's a very contentious topic. I would be very interested in knowing other people's thoughts on it, so if you either agree with anything I've said, or disagree, please leave a commentary and I'll try and reply to them all.

Ultimately, I don't believe in God or any other kind of supernatural being. If you do, then that's fine. Each to their own.

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