I always get asked why I am so vocal against religion and just leave it as is. At the outset not raising one’s voice seems to be the most logical and neutral point. However, if I dig deep, I get a totally different point. What they want me to do, is not to raise concerns on the atrocities happening. For example, women are second class citizens in most religions. Should I not vehemently oppose that? What if women have become tuned to it? Still, it doesn’t mean the covenant is right. This so-called neutral viewpoint is a very malicious way that people are using to essentially silence any opposition to their atrocities. Here are my thoughts on why it is paramount for us to oppose and obliterate organised faiths.
Discrimination as a right
People of faith feel violated anytime they are called out on discriminating others. They claim to actually be discriminated when asked to treat people equally. They feel it is against their religious freedom. The irony is, all fighting religions unite when it comes to promoting discrimination.
Let me give you examples of the same. Every religious organisation says it is discrimination if they are asked to treat people of LGBTQ community equally. I want to cast everyone’s mind to the infamous baker in the US who wanted to not sell his cakes to gay weddings. In India, the upper caste people dislike to called out on their discrimination. Most of them still believe God has given them the power to do certain activities and the rest have to merely obey. Anytime the topic of niqab or burqa comes up as a way to discriminate women, it is seen as an intrusion into the private affairs of a religion. The list can go on, but left to themselves there is no semblance of hope that people of faith will treat everyone fairly. In fact, they see it as a divine right to discriminate.
Request for special rights
Religion always wants special rights, kind of right which you don’t give any other concept. If anyone says he or she is a person of faith, there is an implicit expectation is to get respect. Further, there is a difference between tolerance and privilege. We seculars want tolerance, we do not want privilege for the religious. We do not want faith to hold rights like building temple anywhere, right to inflict it on others. You never see an atheist standing in the middle of the street holding a microphone and abusing faith. For one, most of them are inherently rational and have enough shame to not do such things. Second, it is annoying and intrusive to everyone else. However, when a religious person does that people listen. Above all, there is an expectation to not question it.
Extraordinary Claims without any evidence
Every religion makes extraordinary claims but none provides any evidence. The closest someone has come is a question, “Do you think all this just popped into existence?”. Even if let’s say we grant 80% of most religious books are true(which they aren’t), that still doesn’t prove the remaining 20% as true as well. Every scientist has proven someone else wrong but hasn’t disrespected them for that. Listen to scientific research presentations, you will see researchers caveating their work and talk only about one subject with confidence. Religion claims to answer everything while answering nothing. From creation to evolution, from civil code to military rules, religion claims to have an answer tp everything. The bigger problem is there are hundreds of religions and no two is mutually compatible. Claims of faith and truth are non-overlapping magisteria.
Creating a false equivalence with science
Religions have started putting them in the same bracket as science. I am sure many readers have seen pamphlets of “Judeo-Christian Science”, “Vedic Science”, “Islamic Science”, “Scientology” etc. There are two malicious approaches in creating this equivalence.
1. Religion is an alternate theory which holds equal weight.
2. Religion and science are not mutually exclusive but religion encompasses science.
Let me take evolution and explain the ones above. The first group consists of people who claim their Creationism is a theory which has the same authenticity as evolution. The second group of people are ones who say God helped created the laws due to which evolution happened. I personally find the first one repulsive and the second one dangerous.
Preventing knowledge development
Religion adheres to practices which prevent development. For example, they have been against immunisation, contraception, stem cell research, space research to name a few. They are against people gaining more knowledge and improving their critical thinking. These two are the pillars of development which will negate the theories presented by religions.
Adherence to Bronze age civil codes
The people who do the Triple Talaq, the genital mutilation of both boys and girls, the excommunication of LGBTQ community, the extortion by grooms under the name of dowry are not psychopaths but normal individuals. These are people who feel they are on the moral side when they do this. I would like to quote Steven Weinberg, “Religion is an insult to human dignity. With or without it, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.”. Some of these practices are inexplicable but for the divine will.
In conclusion, religion doesn’t stay peacefully indoors. It has corrupted the society and like a virus wants a free pathway to continue doing the same. The most neutral stand is to contain its impact and ensure it doesn’t inflict any more damage on the lives of millions of innocent people.By fighting religion, I am in effect doing exactly that.
Organised Faith doesn’t have legs to stand on its own. The core principle of logic is one cannot assume the existence of ‘A’ to prove the work of ‘A’. The only way the existence of God can be proved is by assuming the existence of God. This is a fallacy, which has to be eradicated. There is no reason to believe God exists or any good can come from these beliefs. People have claimed a modicum of success by showcasing the charitable work done by religion or by raising questions which science hasn’t answered yet. When a secular person does any charitable work, he has no expectation of eternal support so does it purely out of good will. However, when a religious person does a similar deed, one cannot say the same. Religion suppresses the critical faculties of its followers, so they end up doing what it asks, irrespective of whether it is good or bad. Anyone who claims any religion as peaceful is lying. There are people who are peaceful in spite of being religious or following a religion. No religion is inherently peaceful or non-damaging.
Demystifying a skeptic's world 