Excerpt #55 from my book, Religion, An Obstacle to Human Progress
Ancient religions are troublemakers.
Always have been.
Always will be.
Yet, institutional inertia carries them forward.
Their nonsensical and suffocating dogma is in our faces daily.
Religions vie with each other for followers and funds.
Their pompous leaders have the audacity to tell us what to do, when to do it, and with whom we
are allowed to do it.
Many people, a growing number, are weary of all the divisiveness, intolerance, self-righteousness and violence
religions breed.
Whenever we read the obscene stories, the voluptuous debaucheries, the cruel and tortuous executions, the unrelenting vindictiveness with which more than half the Bible is filled, it would be more consistent that we call it the word of a demon than the word of God. It is a history of wickedness that has served to corrupt and brutalize mankind. – Thomas Paine
Whatever good religion has done through the years is dwarfed by the amount of trouble it and its sanctimonious and hypocritical leaders and adherents have caused.
That the Mideast, the seat of our monotheistic religions (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam), is perhaps the world’s most troubled place speaks for itself.
Why has a religious turn of mind always a tendency to narrow and harden the heart? – Robert Burns