Reasons why I say Religion is harmful Throughout history, religion has been a force for control, repression and authoritarianism. Examples include the Catholic Church’s attempts to suppress free speech with its Index of Prohibited Books, the wholesale persecution of purported witches throughout the Medieval and Early Modern periods in Europe and the New World, and the 15th Century forced conversion and repression of Jews and Muslims in Spain. As late as the 19th Century in England, atheists who had the temerity to openly advocate their beliefs were jailed, and even today laws still exist in many parts of the United States forbidding atheists from serving on juries or from holding public office. I wouldnt say that religion has promoted the social progress of mankind. I say that it has been a detriment to the progress of civilization, and I would also say this: that the emancipation of the mind from religious superstition is as essential to the progress of civilization as is emancipation from physical slavery. - Culbert Olson (1961) It has also been a reactionary force deeply opposed to intellectual and scientific advances. For example, for over a millennium (from the time of St. Augustine until the Renaissance), Christianity, the dominant religion in Europe, deliberately arrested the development of science and scientific thinking, limiting systematic investigation of the natural world to theological investigation. The scientific discoveries of the ancient Greeks and Egyptians were, as far as possible, suppressed and destroyed for centuries by the Christian Church, and were only later re- imported back into Europe via Middle Eastern sources. As a result, scientific knowledge progressed hardly at all during the so-called Dark Ages, and the populace was mired in the deepest squalor and ignorance. Even when scientific investigation into the natural world resumed in the Renaissance of the 16th Century, organized Christianity did everything it could to stamp it out (the cases of Nicolas Copernicus, Galileo Galilei and Giordano Bruno are good example of this). The Church also opposed the introduction of the printing press, concerned that the scriptures and other knowledge would become easily available to the masses, thus by-passing the traditional vetting and interpretation of the clergy. Despite some significant back-pedalling, the conflict between religion and science continues today as Christian fundamentalists demand that their creation myth be taught in place of, or alongside, the theory of evolution in the public schools. Religion has also been accused of the repression of literature and the freedom of the press, examples being the Catholic Church’s Index of Prohibited Books, the Muslim fatwa against author Salman Rushdie for his 1989 book “The Satanic Verses”, and violent Muslim demonstrations against the Danish cartoons depicting Mohammed in 2005.
Posted on: Tue, 13 Jan 2015 07:34:33 +0000
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