I am saddened and disappointed by the impoverished role religion has played in the development of humans, including me. While I am thinking primarily about ‘religious institutions’, I am aware that there are few religions without a religious institution. Not only has religion neglected to promote healthy human development, it has actually opposed and destroyed the development achieved by others. Humans have been served poorly by religion.
I acknowledge that religions often encourage and promote virtuous behavior and that is a significant contribution to individual and community growth. A prime feature of religion, however, is to restrict behavior and thinking in a narrow, defining manner. That is how a religion and its members maintain their separate, unique identity.
In a literal way, religion is about thought and behavior control. It has been used in that way by many individuals who wanted to acquire or maintain power. Inevitably, that has included stamping out any opposing views. That often has involved torture, death and war. It has also meant the loss of knowledge.
The success of any religion requires having members who are willing to live by a fantasy. Faith requires putting reason and experience aside in favor of a hypothesis that is undemonstrated or unproven. Having faith in something is part of belonging to a particular religion. Religion requires a certain amount of living in ones imagination or the imagination of someone else.
Historically, that has meant the destruction of ancient learning about the natural world by Christians because what the pagan Greeks taught did not support what the Church taught. It has taken humans more than two millennia to catch up with what the Greeks of the 5th century BCE had concluded about the essential nature of reality. It took the work of free thinking people like Einstein to re-discover what the ancient Greeks knew and the Christian religion could not tolerate.
Thanks to religious thought-control, the western world had to go through intellectual dark ages. Supporters of Christian religion wanted control of people, which meant controlling their thought. They, unfortunately, were very successful, and most humans languished. People lived in a fantasy world for many, many years.
While religion has exercised behavior control in beneficial ways, religion has also guided people in many misguided directions. The list is lengthy and includes crusades, burnings, witch trials and intolerance. But for me the real disappointing thing has been the dishonest way religion has encouraged faith and discouraged intellectual growth.
People like the mystics were attacked and pushed aside. People who explored the natural sciences, such as Galileo, Darwin and Teilhard, were vilified and kept from inspiring others with their discoveries.
I’ve come to the conclusion that faith and religion are highly over-rated. All my life I have struggled to reach outside the confines of religion, and have been seduced back inside so many times. Now that I have finally stepped outside, I see what an impoverished edifice religion is.