RSS
Home
Why tear down religion when it does good things?
Print
Email
RSS
Subscribe
More good can come from truth (whatever it might be) than anything else. Untruths might still be beneficial, but those benefits are short-term. When we operate under false pretenses, we eventually reach a point where those pretenses grind against reality. They start to fail and stop being so helpful and beneficial.
This is essentially the function of science: discover where our understanding starts to break, figure out why it’s breaking, and consequently expand our knowledge about the universe. Newtonian physics broke at a certain point, and Einstein worked out why. The old model worked, and worked very well, but it wasn’t the complete picture.
So it is true that religion teaches things like integrity, love, kindness, charity, and compassion, which are all good things. But it may be possible that religion is teaching them through a false pretense – the wrong model.
But even if it isn't true, it still teaches good things.
Teaching children about Santa Claus can have a lot of good benefits and encourage positive behavior. It’s a model that works, but only until the child gets older. At some point, there is a confrontation between the untruth and reality. And at that point, the benefits of belief must be abandoned in favor of the benefits of reality. Pursuing Santa at this point would be considered delusional.
In other words, there is a whole framework of beliefs and teachings that come along with religion, and when that framework conflicts with reality, it causes problems. This is why we see things like witch-hunts, the Inquisition, the Mountain Meadows Massacre, 9/11, and female genital mutilation. When we accept that certain things are true, in our efforts to do God's will, real harm can be done.
Of course, we’re not involved in anything this dramatic. But we are involved in things like gay marriage, evolution being taught in schools, sex-ed, abortion, or stem-cell research. Our beliefs about souls, the devil’s plan, and God’s desires inform our feelings about these kinds of things, and if those beliefs are untrue, false pretenses, then we could inadvertently be doing harm to others and even ourselves. We could be treating people unfairly or limiting scientific progress for no reason at all.
We invest a lot of time, money, and emotion into these beliefs and perhaps they could be better spent. Religion teaches of heaven and hell when we might be better off focusing on planet earth.
Some might feel like attacking religion is an attempt to take something good and positive away from them, but perhaps it's the opposite. Perhaps it's an attempt to provide something better: truth.
With that, we have a better ability to deal with reality and make the best choices. That includes being compassionate and moral, perhaps even moreso, because our decisions are based on reality and not supernatural claims or superstitious beliefs.
Email Jonathan: slcfreethinking@gmail.com
Read Jonathan's other articles on science and religion
Related Articles:
Comments
