THE DOCTRINE OF "RELIGION IS A HOSPITAL FOR SINNERS" BLAMES THE PATIENT

Blaming the patient without being able to prove that it is their fault and without being able to prove religion really has supernatural powers to heal the evil side of people is proof that religion is an oppressive social construct.

Religious wisdom says that if you go to God as if he were a shopkeeper there will be no overnight transformation. “God does not sell you the fruit of love and compassion but the seeds.” This is what any religion, scam or otherwise, would say. But it means by the time you have tested it may be too late – you may now be corrupted or a fanatical terrorist. Religion gives you the doctrines as if it wants you to feel, “I will believe God works in this religion if he does this and that.” That is you dictating to God. If religion did not give desperate people the illusion that it works well enough it would not have any followers. Just because God is not regular with the help does not mean the believers are not dictating to him for they say a little is enough. A dictator does not necessarily ask for a lot. Part of the dictation is expecting God to sometimes act.
 
Everybody knows that no religion will be saved from being evil or feeding evil by its faith or its good principles. Some people seem to talk as if recognising and having good principles is enough to start the inevitable process of improving if gains are modest like a sort of ethical or supernatural placebo. Principles make people think of them as placeboes though they are anything but. Is it confidence that a human being we are taking about or confidence that a religious human person can change? If it is the latter then what we have is plainly sectarian. How could sectarianism help form a hospital?
 
The "we are the way to treat sinners and heal them" is can be an excuse for the religion refusing to take any responsibility for the harm done. It can be an excuse for treating the guilty as if their bad behaviour does not matter. It can be a smoke-screen to cover up the fact that the religion does not fix human nature. Religion says we are all sinners but though they do not intend this to mean it has no power to cure sinners it could be taken as saying exactly that! If the religion is man-made then it sounds ridiculous for it to claim to be a hospital for the immoral. It needs to say it channels a higher power that overcomes evil. "We are here to be nice to sinners for we can treat them with our prayers or sacraments or rites" is exactly what a bad or man-made religion with no supernatural power to help people would say. That is why the claim needs investigation. A religion and its people would generally need to be very special before it can say it's a hospital! And the religions all say the change from evil person to good person is gradual and a life's work. It is what you tell people to keep them dangling on over false hope. The gradual progression excuse serves to disguise the fact that religion's treatments do not really work. What would you think of a mathematics teacher who says his teenage students don't know their tables but that this is fine for they have all their lives to learn them? A real hospital cures many people fast. A real hospital does not blame the patient for lack of co-operation all the time when a treatment doesn't work.

Lets compare religion with a real hospital.

Hospital                                     For the sick
 
Religion                                     For the sinner and the saint (though the implication of hospital for sinners is that saints are not welcome!)
 
Hospital                                     Naturalistic - does not use magical or supernatural treatments
 
Religion                                     Uses supernatural treatments - because such treatments are based on arguments from ignorance (I don't know how this worked therefore it uses supernatural power) every religion contradicts the others on how to treat.
 
Hospital                                     Not judgemental
 
Religion                                     Says that if you suffer everlasting torment in Hell, or fail to receive and enjoy God's blessings it is your own fault. Nobody has the right to accuse people of misusing their responsibility unless there is proof that God really cares or that Hell exists. These teachings function like threats.
 
Hospital                                     Has a cautious self-correcting system for diagnosing the illness - cautious optimism
 
Religion                                     Invents sins, exaggerates sins and makes people feel they have offended God when those people should spend all their energy worrying about the people they have hurt. Does not care if it slanders people by saying they have offended God - that is slander if there is no God.  Is uncautious optimism for the treatments for sin such as sacraments just work.
 
Hospital                                     Provides treatments that have been tested and continually tries to learn from mistakes and make improvements
 
Religion                                     Gives dubious remedies such as prayer and sacraments. Makes no effort to see if they actually help - some people thinking they help them does not mean they help - and ignores the fact that these treatments for sin fail miserably in most circumstances.  Goes as far as to say that it is prayer that brings medicine into being so it is really prayer that is behind all good medicine.

Hospital                                     Is there to help you
 
Religion                                     Is there to help you but not for you but for God. You are a means to an end. Jesus said we must love God with every fibre of our being. He did not say we are to love anybody else like that - only God alone.
 
Hospital                                     Has a code of ethics - ethics cares only about people
 
Religion                                     Has a moral code supposedly revealed by a God who has done all the thinking so if we question him we stupidly think we are smarter than him! Cares about religious morality more than people.
 
Hospital                                     Is pro-science
 
Religion                                     Is pro-science except where science challenges religion. It likes to say that you must take a wait and see attitude and science will be proven wrong. That is a fundamentally anti-science view and denies that it is up to science not religion to decide when a wait and see is appropriate. A religion that cherry picks science has no regard for science at all. It feigns its reverence for science.

So?  The treatment religion gives is based on lies and hypocrisy and denigration of good. Religious people do not love good as it is but as they want it to be. Religion is not a hospital for sinners any more than an outfit that claims to cure cancer with ice cream would be a hospital.

Religion likes to make out that if it does evil, that it is not to blame and individual members are. It takes no responsibility and yet it will not say that demons are good but only individual demons are bad. The only excuse it can come up for to bolster its alleged innocence is that it is a hospital for sinners. A non-judgemental person would prefer to blame the religious system of doctrine rather than the person only.
 
If religion were a purely moral system, it could perhaps be excused if members do evil. Religion is easily mistaken for a purely moral system but it is not. It is a mixture of religious practices, theology and morality.
 
When a religion is being created, it first has to look at the people it wants to target. The religion must be devised after looking at human nature. Religion looks at the people and sees that they give birth and marry and work and die. It sees that nobody is totally good. It sees how people try to be really good and work hard at it during their lifetime with perhaps only moderate improvement. And everybody backslides. Life alone is the hospital for "bad" people.
 
We are all in the same boat. Thus religion has no business claiming that it is a hospital for sinners for not only is it untrue but it is condescending. A religion that does not really help and lies that it does help is to blame if its members go astray. Lies enable people to develop the courage to be bad.
 
A real hospital for sinners starts with the evidence that it cures people of antisocial and evil and godless traits. Instead of that, religion argues, "Human nature is contradictory and not all good and therefore we can say we can help." This is really saying that people are sinners anyway so the religion can claim to be a hospital and people stay sinful that is because they are human. It is not logical. Religion tries to slot in with how people are while pretending to be able to change them when it knows fine well it is not. Suppose all people have the flu all the time. You can't create a hospital for the flu for there is no point! Your calling it a hospital is pretending it is what it is not.
 
An ad hominem argument is against the person whose arguments you dislike or want to discredit. It is an attack on the person making the argument not the argument. An ad hominem is not ad hominem when it is religion we are talking about. The true religion will not be merely correct in what it says and convincing. It will show its power in the lives of believers. If Christianity is extremely persuasive but nobody shows signs that God is supernaturally helping them to become better human beings and children of God then the religion is decisively refuted. It is a case where something seems to be almost proven and then the case collapses. The badness in Christians refutes Christianity. The more bad Christians there are the stronger the refutation becomes. The more a religion claims the power to raise people above human weakness and wickedness the worse it is if the people are no better than normal. If they are worse then there is no more to be said.

Any religion or group can claim to be therapy for badness. Because of that claim, a religion refuses to take responsibility when a member does something that is very bad even according to the religion's books. The religion should if it is merely man-made. Man's religious system has no intrinsic power to help another person become good which will mean that the religion does not help or it hinders. You may as well not have it at all.
 
Man is not intrinsically good and has a nasty side that is intrinsic though it differs from person to person. A man-made religion then has an intrinsic violent streak. Religion claims to be divine not human so that it may cover it up and blind people to it.
 
A religion that wants to hide the fact that it has no special power to heal human corruption and malice will still claim to be a hospital for sinners. This puts the blame on the bad person in the religion and not the religion. In fact if this blaming does not make the bad person worse, then that is down to luck. The person has avoided decline in spite of the religion.
 
Blaming the sinful patient could mean the person is being accused of not responding to the care given by the people in the religion.
 
This could mean the person is being accused of not responding to the care given by God's power and grace through the religion.
 
It will mean one or both of them.
 
The religion then is harmful. It accuses falsely.  It sucks you into getting involved.