Excerpt #35 from my book, Religion, An Obstacle to Human Progress
The basis of religion is irrationality. Violence is often required to perpetuate religion since facts, reason, and logic are essentially irrelevant. – Bob Phillipoff
After the September 11, 2001 attack, Osama bin Laden, in a psychotic videotaped message prepared for broadcast on October 7, on the Central Asian equivalent of CNN, celebrating the World Trade Center and Pentagon disasters said the following: “Here is America, struck by Almighty God in one of its vital organs, so that its greatest buildings are destroyed. Grace and gratitude to God. America has been filled with horror from north to south and east to west, and thanks be to God.”
Complimenting the suicidal airplane hijackers, bin Laden added, “God has blessed a group of vanguard Muslims, the forefront of Islam, to destroy America. May God bless them and allot them a supreme place in heaven.”
Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction. – Blaise Pascal
BEWARE THE FURY OF THE SELF-RIGHTEOUS.
“Why should all religions lead to war and violence whenever they gain any degree of power? The answer is simple. Because all religions are false or untestable, they cannot – unlike science – appeal to any external standard as a test of the truth of their claims. When a scientist claims the earth is round, there are many observations which can be performed to test the claim. But when religionists claim their god is one (Allah), or triune (as Big Daddy, Junior, and The Spook), how can their claims be tested?
“There is no way to appeal to facts to support such nonsense. Either people accept such claims willingly, through weakness – of intellect or because of emotional disturbance – or they must be forced to accept them. Only force will work, when facts are absent. All religion, I think, if believed strongly enough, must inevitably lead to war and misery. While Atheism does not automatically bring peace to the world, at least it eliminates one major pretext for violence.” – Dr. Frank Zindler, former professor of Biology and Geology.
OUR PROBLEMS ARE ROOTED IN OUR BELIEF SYSTEMS.