Religion is unchanging. From the first muddled sources (i.e. the four sources of the Torah), pages were cobbled together (some 800 years after the life of Moses in 700-800 BC) and were expounded to reveal ultimate truths about the universe. Because dogma cannot change, religions cannot progress - and rarely make exceptions. Institutions struggle to keep up with modern findings, and certain individuals hold a monopoly on their supposed 'truths'. These individuals thus hold all the power and their followers are at their mercy - monetarily, educationally, and spiritually.
The truth is 'revealed' to certain empowered individuals; thus, what they say goes unchallenged amongst their followers, and everything they surmise is almost universally uncritically examined.
As I've said before, religion exists because of two human aspects: fear and vanity. We are helpless creatures adrift in a changing and unpredictable world, and so we like to think that there must be some divine purpose for our being here - after all, we are different from all the 'other' animals.
Religious people hold dear to the idea of virtue - that doing certain things is divinely ordained and acceptable. However, some religious practices contravene ideas of contemporary morality. For instance, some Christians are reticent to fund healthcare research, and often go as far as refusing themselves or their immediate family members medical treatment. Some Christians believe that disease and disability is a purification for sin and that, somehow, innocent children deserve to be riddled with cancers, bone disorders, chronic infections and other disorders; that the maimed have been maimed for a reason; that HIV is a punishment for homosexuality. (Christians and Jews believe that we 'inherit' the sins of our forefathers, and thus we remain forever tainted.*)
By allowing themselves to believe that all this suffering is part of a divine 'plan', they allow themselves to tolerate suffering that no conscientious person could. Not only do they tolerate it: sometimes they actively seek to encourage or enhance it. And this isn't confined merely to health: religious people in general tend to have issues with gender, race and sex equality, socialistic policy, the teaching of science, the expounding of certain knowledge, sex education, race mixing, inter-race marriage, gay rights, women's rights, and all manner of other things.
Religion is a force for evil because it retards moral and scientific progress. It hankers after dead traditions, dubious history, ridiculous notions; it panders to the darker side of human nature. It's a force of arrogance and convinces people not only that their god is the 'right' god, but that somehow they are different from other forms of life and thus can trample on anything they consider to be beneath them.
Religious people assume that god is needed for moral purposes. 'Without a god,' they ask, 'where would we get our morality?' Well, not from scripture, I can tell you. The very fact that we pick and choose chapter and verse suggests that we have certain ways of distinguishing moral categories that are apart from religion. We don't acknowledge parts of scripture that tell us to kill our children if they're disobedient, to stone homosexuals to death, or to stone rape victims to death if they don't scream loudly enough. Why not? Because we know it's wrong. We have a sense of what's moral and we pick and choose scripture to justify our moral inclinations. If you still feel that scripture does hold some moral worth even though you're inclined towards atheism or agnosticism, ask yourself why. There are far better moral examples, most of whom declared no belief in a personal god - and most of whom were far more moral and humble than Jesus; such people as Socrates, Plato, Confucius, Lao-Tzu, and the Buddha - all of these examples actually predate Christianity by up to 600 years.
The truth is that morality existed long before religion and is an evolved process. Morality doesn't come from religion; religion comes from morality. Early agriculturalists - living some 10,000 years BC - knew that to be successful, it was best if they didn't kill each other. Most of them were related - probably cousins - and conceded it was pretty wise if they didn't go around killing whoever they pleased: that would tend to undermine the whole agricultural community thing. So, they didn't kill each other; rather than doing this, they tended to be compassionate and discriminate against greed and violence (which aren't good for small communities). Compassionate behaviour aids the development of societies; greed never rules the day, although it does exist in small amounts in all species (although greedy subjects are often shunned after repeatedly exhibiting greedy behaviour).
Religion rejects any contradictory evidence, and most religious institutions tend to come around to the truth much later on. Only in the 1990s did the Vatican finally concede that Galileo was right about the Earth orbiting the Sun - some 300 years after his death and some 20 years after we entered the space-age! In our day, the Vatican still rejects evolution - although certain figures - especially Pope John Paul II - have accepted that it is no longer to be considered a 'theory' in any sense of the word.
What is the solution to all the problems that ail us in the 21st century? Well, firstly, religion (along with all other forms of superstition) needs to go out of the window - not in whole; just in government and the public sphere. We cannot continue living in such ignorance of science and the scientific method when our very lives depend on it. Light bulbs and agriculture don't work on prayer - and neither do generators, televisions, or medicines (not to mention nuclear bombs). We don't need any deity, and we don't need religious institutions. Believers will persist, but literal readings of scripture can't.
Scripture is nonsensical and self-contradictory, but that's only because it's not meant to be taken literally. We all know that Joshua didn't destroy the walls of Jericho just by blowing a horn; we all know that none of the Jesus miracles happened; we all know that the Earth wasn't created in six days - or any of that other guff. These are all, obviously, myths and can only be taken as deep metaphors. Early Jews and Christians underwent deep spiritual changes but didn't have the language capacity to explain them away. Thus, all they could do was somehow aggrandize these experiences to show how magnificent their awakenings were. Also, these early tribespeople were mostly illiterate, and of course knew nothing of science, history, geography, cultures outside the middle-east, Europe and central Asia - and a host of other things. The Bible cannot be taken literally or as historical fact - most of it never happened and never could have happened.
Religion is slowly dying all over the world: it cannot win. The only way religion will prevail is if, somehow, religious war obliterates all human life on this planet. What's the solution? Reason isn't small-mindedness. We should be open-minded, but not open-minded to the point where our brains jellify and come out of our ears. We should be skeptical of everything, and shouldn't concede anything to any institution because we feel that it either pleases people or is relatively benign. Intolerance shouldn't be tolerated, and the truth should always win over human emotion and wishful thinking. Science and ignorance do not combine; if we allow them to, this combustible mixture will surely blow up in our faces. It's time to put religion to bed for good and wake up from our childish reveries - the future is knocking at the door, and bigger, grander things await us than superstition and fear. God is a luxury we can no longer afford - at least not an external god. But if that's not 'god', then what is? Maybe all notions of god have finally died - and for the best. Language change alone cannot keep up with theological interpretation. Our ideas have progressed, and are progressing, sufficiently to let go of god. God is dead, and things have never looked brighter.
*The usual riposte to this is that Jesus overturned Original Sin by dying on the cross. However, certain questions follow. Jesus was born to a virgin - Mary - who was descended from Adam, and thus must've inherited Original Sin. If this is so, then Jesus is also a fallen being. However, Catholics got around this by postulating in 1852 the Immaculate Conception - that, aside from Jesus, Mary is the only person ever to be born without Original Sin. Like most Catholic doctrine, this is made-up; conjured out of thin air to get around dead-ends. Ironically, this creates more confusion and prompts us to ask the question: why would God make such an unnecessary theological pretzel? Why make humans fallen in the first place? The idea of Original Sin reduces human dignity and prompts believers to ponder the benificence and wisdom of their supposedly wonderful deity - deserving of ridicule and gall rather than genuflection and praise.
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