Why Religion Does more Harm than Good in the World

you're out in the meadow and you see an ant climbing up blade of grass she climbs and she climbs if she falls she gets back on the blade and climbs again climbs again she falls and she climbs and she climbs and she climbs until she reaches the very top of the blade of grass and you might wonder what on Earth is the ant doing this for what what benefit occurs to to the ant is she looking for food is she looking for mate is she lost is she trying to get home wrong answers in fact no benefit at all occurs to the ant well then is this just fluke yes it's just fluke it's brain fluke Lancet fluke di celium dendriticum parasitic little brain worm that has to get into the belly of cow or sheep in order to continue its reproductive cycle what does it do it commanders passing ant climbs into the ant's brain and drives it like an allterrain vehicle up the blade of grass to position where it is more likely to be eaten by cow or sheep host manipulation by parasites here's another one sort of fascinating very similar actually Toxoplasma Gand is parasite that infects FS mice and in order to continue its life cycle it has to get in order to reproduce it has to get into the belly of cat well now what would you do if you were in mouse and you wanted to get into cat you would turn the mouse into Mighty Mouse make the mouse bold Fearless though it runs out in the open that's what mice do when they are when they are infested with Toxoplasma gandia they're more likely that way to be eaten by cat what we have in these cases we have hijacker that parasite that infects the brain and induces suicidal behavior on behalf of cause other than one's own genetic fitness gosh that's scary does anything like that ever happen to us yeah well want to remind you that the Arabic word Islam means submission it means surrender of self-interest to the will of Allah but Islam is not alone in Christianity we have the same theme no other species only us we're the ones that can live for an idea that can die for an idea it's ideas not worms that hijack our brains these are ideas that can copy themselves that get that can make us copy them not only rehearsing them in our own brains over and over but spreading them to our friends and our neighbors and our family and populating the world with many copies of these ideas and it comes back the point we made earlier about ideas not having human rights because think people think when we criticize religion we're CR criticizing people who are religious which is couldn't be further from the truth because we think they're victims too absolutely mean the word islamophobia is all about that people think that if you criticize Islam you're criticizing Muslims quite the contrary they're the primary victims of Islam think one can tell very great deal about person or an institution or society according as to whether it is believed that we the species or we or ourselves as individuals are present here because of the laws of biology in particular the laws of evolution by random mutation and natural selection or whether we're here because of the divine plan great deal hinges upon whether or not you you subscribe to one or other of those veltan sha or world view and the subtitle of my book on this subject which is called God Is Not Great is how religion poisons everything and sometimes get taken up on that people think that must have said it or put it like that just to get an arresting subtitle as sort of sales tactic or or so forth they say what do you mean really everything Italian food tantric sex chess what you will and say as matter of fact yes do mean everything because think that the cult of faith and the the the instinct to worship and to prostrate ourselves to practice religion or have it practiced Upon Us in other words is is poisonous of everything because it it attacks us in our our deepest and most intimate and essential Integrity it says to us in effect that we don't have free will and that we don't have the right to decide for ourselves on what is right we can't tell right action people say to me not realizing how insulting the question is how would you have morals if it wasn't for God how would you know pause here just to say and think on the campus of of university named for Roger Williams it'll be readily intelligible why think that's insulting one of the reasons think is is this if I'm hearing this from one of the practitioners of organized religion I'm not going to grant them the assumption that they so readily make in their own favor that they already know by being Christian or Muslim or Jewish more about morality than do mean shouldn't it be that those who practice organized religion should begin by making few apologies for themselves on this score how dare they say say that that I'm on their Turf when we're talking about ethics and morality it isn't who mandate things like the mutilation of the genitals of children for example which is in all cases religious commandment it isn't who ask for suicide and murder to be fused into one action in the name of God the suicide murder Community is almost exclusively not absolutely 100% but very nearly exclusive God-fearing and faith based one how how dare the Assumption be made that we can't talk about these things without license from some kind of church I've recently in the United States just stated that teaching creationism is child abuse and think it is namely if you withhold knowledge or you do anything to children that puts them at competitive disadvantage as adults it's child abuse it's mild forms of child abuse but it's it's it's it's like withholding Med medicine withholding knowledge that later on will cause kids to become less competitive because evolution is the basis of Modern Biology and and teaching things that are basically lies even if they're well-intentioned is child abuse mean people it's not that people are doing this to be evil but they're they're hurting their children especially of course telling kids they're going to go to hell that's definitely child abuse it it is inappropriate and teachers not only should not be doing this but in fact if they are they should be removed in my opinion because the purpose of Education as I've often said is not to validate ignorance but to overcome it ask yourself common sense if you were Divine being say you had an ant colony that you made in your house would you be offended if those ants didn't pay homage to you five times day and if they didn't if they didn't look up to you or didn't recognize Your Existence would you destroy them no mean it just seems so petty so why should we believe in hateful unmerciful Petty satom masochistic homophobic sexist God it's just irrational it's not sensible there's nothing it's and the and the point is it and and and don't want to don't want to single out Islam here and know I'm offending some people but the same is true for the god of Moses if you really believe that the scriptures were were literally true the morals in that book are reprehensible faith is really just believing in something for which you have neither rational arguments nor good evidence William Clifford who wrote very nice essay about faith using as an analogy ship owner who was about to send to seea ship full of immigrants this ship owner the Clifford imagin is uncertain whether his ship is seaworthy enough to make the long Voyage to bring the immigrants to the new land but he thinks about it and he says well look after all there's Divine Providence and how could Divine Providence allow these good people who are going to establish their Futures men women and children even who are at least the children innocent of any sin how could he allow them to drown on the way to the new world so will have faith in God and won't bother to inspect the ship to see whether it's seaworthy because have faith that it will reach Australia well of course as say we know that some ships did not and we would fault this ship owner and say you can't just have faith in that way you need to check the evidence you need to look at it the ship owner's Faith would have put lives at risk and unfortunately in the real world today Faith also put lives at risk in fact the refusal of the Roman Catholic Church to tolerate the use of condoms even in regions of subsaharan Africa where the risk of Contracting HIV AIDS is extremely high has undoubtedly not merely put lives at risk but cost perhaps millions of innocent human lives we pay high price for the religious faith of some religious leaders religion is not provided to us by Revelation it doesn't come from the heavens it doesn't come from the Beyond it doesn't come from the Divine it's man-made and it shows it shows very well that religion is created invented imposed by species half chromosome away from the chimpanzee it shows doesn't it