My opinion that religion isn't innately harmful is really grounded on the meaning of the word 'innately'. Defined to mean, 'an inborn characteristic; naturally.' I am not contending that people have not done horrible, horrible things in the name of one religion or another. That claim would be insane. But I would contend that the idea that religion is the underlying cause of these atrocities is not true. I will instead make the argument that human nature and tribalism is the real underlying cause of these atrocities, and religion is used as a justification for these actions.
Firstly lets define religion, because this word holds many meanings and I only believe my statement holds true for certain definitions. "Religion: the service and worship of God or the supernatural." There is nothing innately wrong with the worship of the supernatural or god. What is innately wrong is when people use those beliefs to justify negative, often tribalistic actions.
Take, Christianity and the Bible. The Bible is a collection of parables and stories that loosely directs and define Christianity. It is full of many contradictions. Indeed, the Bible even has two contradicting creation stories in Genesis alone (
https://www.bibleodyssey.org/en/passages/related-articles/two-creations-in-genesis). So if you look hard enough you could find a justification for nearly any action, and a contradiction that condemns that same action. So if your goal is to find a justification to commit atrocities against your neighbor, you will find that. But it also tells people to love your neighbor and forgive others. In the end it is the society and individuals that decide what to believe, and how to interpret the Bible. This leads us to the point that it is not the religion that causes people to commit atrocities, but instead it is the people and societies who choose how to interrupt a religion that cause these atrocities. Thus I would contend that people would commit atrocities with or without religion. Surely these atrocities would have taken a slightly different form, but if a society is violent, tribalistic, and warmongering; wars and genocides would still occur.
One could claim that, 'Christianity is innately bad because it holds these contradictions that allow us to use them as a justification to commit atrocities.' But again, this is not an innate issue with the religion, but instead a reflection of the societies that follow these religions. Take the Bible, the Bible is really not 'the Bible.' There is no one version of the Bible instead there are many, many versions of a bible that have came about through a slow process of societies and people editing, translating (often poorly), and curating stories within different versions of a bible to reflect their beliefs. For example, one commonly found version of a bible found around the United States is the Jeffersonian Bible. Thomas Jefferson (our third president and one of our most influential founding fathers) literally edited a bible removing certain passages and changing the wordings of passages he didn't believe (
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jefferson_Bible). This leads to the point that it is not religion that creates beliefs that allow people and society to commit atrocities, but instead it the tendencies and beliefs of a society or person that are reflected in the way a religion is expressed that cause people to commit atrocities.
To summarize, religion does not cause a person or society to be bad, it is the people or societies that cause a religion to be bad.
Finally, I find the idea that religion is bad because it stops people from searching for the 'truth' (another loosely defined term that we could have an endless debate on, what is 'truth' and who decides what those 'truths' are?) to be blatantly false. For the vast majority of recent history, it was religion and theologians that made up almost the entirety of the educated class that drove the western world's science and our understanding of the world forward. For example, the Muslim middle eastern scholars, Gregor Mendel, Charles Darwin, the list of religious scholars goes on and on. Even today, you will find many religious academics. Yes, many scientists are not religious, but that is not because religion inhibits science, but instead it is just because science is another belief system that can replace religion (there is even a strong argument that is dependent on the definition of the word religion, that argues science is really just another religion.)
@Riku I was raised as a member of the United Methodist Church, where I went to church nearly every Sunday until I was around 17 or 18, when I stopped entirely. But the process of me no longer believing in Christianity was a slow shift that took many years.
Edited 1/30/2019 23:13:55
