06/17/2009 06:47:57 AM EST
The Fall of Theism
posted by DaeguBill
For millennia, humans have been subjected to the whims of many kinds of powerful individuals and organizations. Of these people and organizations, none has caused such devastation with immunity to criticism as religious leaders and their corresponding organizations. Fortunately, the increasing number of educated individuals in the world in addition to the great access to information the Internet provides has led to a Renaissance of rationalism. In the coming years, the chokehold of theism on the minds of the masses will slowly come undone.
The result of this Renaissance will be manifold, however, of fundamental importance are two key areas of improvement: a spur in scientific and technological development – no longer held back by superstitious beliefs – and a higher level of morality among the vast majority of the world’s population.
As even those with a minute knowledge of history understand that time and time again, organized theistic religions have hampered or completely blocked scientific and technological development. From the case of Galileo, being forced to recant his findings that the solar system is heliocentric and not – as the church believed then, geocentric – to the more recent criticism of stem cell research, to numerous other examples, theistic religious organizations have continuously impeded the advancement of science and technology throughout history. Without organized religion, science will prosper for two reasons contemporarily. First, religious organizations will no longer sponsor political parties (financially and otherwise) in order to influence party politics. The examples of the fundamentalist Christian movement in America and the fundamentalist Islamic movement in numerous Arab countries demonstrate the strong influence of religious organizations have on political parties to this day. Obviously, these religious organizations demand certain restrictions on science, such as stem cell research and – according to the Catholic Church’s recently released Seven Modern Deadly Sins – genetic modification. Second, if organized religions disappear, more people who would have lived under the haze of religious may go into scientific fields that their science would have previously discouraged. The sheer number of people who alter their understanding of the world according to their religion is exceedingly large. This untapped human capital will only help the development of science and technology in the future.
Additionally, non-religious people are simply more moral than religious people. Of course, this statement is provocative, and extremely hard to believe by religious people; however, it is true. As Christopher Hitchens often asks, “Name one thing that a religious person would do that a non-religious person wouldn’t” – that is name one noble act that a religious person does that a non-religious person would never do. Unfortunately, for theists, there is no answer to that question because humans are fundamentally moral with or without religion. Further, Hitchens follows up this question with another: “Name something that a non-religious person would never do that a religious person would do”. Unfortunately for religious people again, this question is quite easily answered: suicide bombers, covering up pedophilia scandals in the Catholic Church, female genital mutilation, circumcision of infants or young children, knocking on peoples doors in an attempt to change said people’s beliefs, and the list goes on. Thus, in a future without organized religion, people will no longer go against their natural morality in order to fulfil the artificial morality of their religion.
Sadly, people often dismiss this idea with the belief that more deaths occurred in the 20th century from atheism or secularism than religion. The argument states that because Hitler, Stalin, and others were not religious, the reason they killed or allowed people to die was because of their atheism. However, this is a non sequitur because there is no connection between these leaders’ atheism and the crimes they committed. Hitler killed Jews because he hated Jews, not because he was an atheist; Stalin starved millions because he was blindly and callously committed to a political ideology, not because he was an atheist. At no point did either of these leaders say that they were killing on behalf of atheism. In fact, during the Nazi era, the Catholic Church sided with the Nazi regime. Therefore, if a theist wants to argue that Hitler went to war and exterminated Jews because he was an atheist, then they must also accept that the Catholic Church agreed with the idea of Hitler going to war and killing Jews. Further, any religious organization that had a Holy War of any sort is not in a position to criticize other war criminals without first looking in the mirror.
For these reasons, I look forward to a future without religion – hopefully a near future.
