EXAMPLES OF DANGEROUS RELIGION

Believers in the supernatural or people who think the supernatural is possible fear the unknown. They fear the supernatural as an unknown force. Their devotion to the supernatural is bittersweet. They want it one way and another way they do not.
 
Believers see supernatural claims and religions and how they often seem to support and enable evil and harm. That does not send them a very nice message. This adds to the fear. For some, the evil side of religion is relished for the believers think they are placating a malevolent force and keeping on the right side of it.
 
Believers know that if you believe in the supernatural you may be at risk of being led astray by somebody using evil forces or by a person pretending to have supernatural powers or knowledge. There is that worry too. You don't want to waste your life being devoted religiously to lies and maybe lose your money and make a mess out of your life by believing dangerous rules.
 
Believers know too that if their faith makes them happy they cannot know if they would be happier not believing or believing in something different.
 
So there are concerns about believing in the magical or supernatural. Believers are notorious for confining religious devotion to rites of passage, birth, coming of age, marriage and death. Ways of doing that vary. Take the Catholic. The Catholic goes to the absurd Mass making all sorts of promises to God and its all forgotten as soon as she leaves the Church. Religion is put into its little box for it is seen as too insane and dangerous to become the whole of your life. It is put into confinement. It is still however playing with fire in small doses.
 
The number of people who are intelligent is rather small. The number of those who make an effort to be intelligent and thoughtful in religious matters is even smaller. And most of the intellectually cautious may be intelligent in one thing and not another. For example, the useless writer may be a genius-level mathematician. Religion makes very serious claims - is it right to put such stuff in the minds of a stupid and careless society?
 
If human error is allowed then Christianity should praise the person who kills his baby after it is baptised to save it from Hell assuming that really is an error.
 
Here are examples of how religion commonly does harm:
 
#It puts forward huge ideals, ideals that are not just important in themselves but because they are sacred to a God. Ideals can be discouraging and unhealthy. Bringing God into it only acerbates that tendency.
 
#Religion based on God teaches that he reveals his will for us and knows what is best for us and so we must obey even if we don’t understand his commandments
 
#With secularism and atheism, there is no way it can be right to kill an innocent person. If you believe in God and miracles it could be right to. That religion makes the question arise is a bad sign in itself.
 
#Religion says you need to believe in its dictates to be moral - that is an excuse for manipulating you! It is the essential ingredient of sectarianism.
 
#Jesus is worshipped as God and the evidence that he is God is not strong enough
 
# The doctrine of God goes with the notion that we never really get independent of God
 
# The Church approves of war to prevent a nation being enslaved by an enemy (page 73, Apologia). Enslavement is not as bad as being killed. A truly good religion would not wage war over enslavement.
 
#The doctrine that evil is not a power but defective good is insulting and extremely insensitive to depressed people
 
# If the Catholics are really in love with God what do they need to talk to the saints for?
 
#Roman Catholics, for example, know that religion can be dangerous and they fear their own religion which causes them to fear others.
 
#The Roman Catholic Church declares that all people who are not Roman Catholics will suffer punishment in Hell forever.
 
#Islamists committing mass murder for their religion. The most horrendous example of that in modern times is 9/11.
 
#The papacy doing nothing while the Roman Church in Yugoslavia conducted genocide against Orthodox Christians and Muslims.
 
# It is cruel to say God gives us victory over sin when we are so often defeated. That blames us for it rather than the God who simply cannot help us for he is not there!
 
#People say that if a Bible that is said to be written by God commands grossly evil things that those who obey it are using religion as an excuse. What must we make of that? They are callous soft-soapers.
 
#Christian Psalms have people supposedly inspired by God saying that those who pray properly will never be hurt. Clearly biblical Christianity urges people to depart from reality.
 
#Christianity shows an alarming tendency to hypocrisy. Take this example. The apostle James says it is no good to tell a poor person who has nothing that you wish them well and to keep warm and eat well. He says that faith without good works is as useless as that. Compare that to the Catholic who recites in the creed that there is one, holy, Catholic and apostolic Church and who makes no effort to bring people into the Church. James says that his recitation is useless. All Catholics are doing by going to Mass is reinforcing their hypocrisy and turning it into a habit.
 
#The Church says that if you take holy communion without faith you eat and drink judgment to yourself and that brings suffering and death as the apostle said. This is vindictive superstition.
 
#The predominant moral view in the world is utilitarianism. This is a hard philosophy to work out. It is made impossible if you introduce the idea that the greatest good is giving people the opportunity to find God and have their hearts changed by him. We have trouble enough deciding what is best for people instead of worrying about God as well. God is only a hindrance to helping others properly.
 
#We have the right to evidence that the sacraments change lives and the evidence is not there.
 
#Rather than say we are born good, the Church says we have original sin and are hostile to the love of God from the first moment of our existence. We are hostile to the love of righteousness. Proof is needed to say things like that. The Church cannot prove it 100% and therefore it should not be accusing. Claiming that original sin is forgiven in baptism does not help. The accusation is still real.
 
#The Church claims that faith is a gift from God. It is of supernatural and not natural origin and means you firmly and without doubting accept all that God has revealed in the Bible and through the Church. Faith is necessary for salvation. This means that merely being firm and stubborn in religion is necessary for you to think you really have supernatural faith! It is a recipe for pure bigotry and fundamentalism.
 
#Doctrines such as that it is not up to us to punish but God are saying that religious faith comes first. I'd rather advocate punishment than that superstition.
 
# Jehovah’s Witness parents refusing to let their children have life-saving blood transfusions.
 
#Prayer has to put God’s will first in order to be acceptable to him. If it doesn’t it is blasphemous. But we know that people matter not religion or God which means prayer, it is morally acceptable, is only acceptable if it is human-centred.
 
#A person cannot win with prayer. If it is devotion to god that is fanaticism or putting faith before people. If it is not, it is an attempt to fool a God and to expect help from him when you don’t respect him. It will only train you in disrespecting - thus you become a possible danger to others.
 
#Catholics who believe they have the right to kill pharmacists who supply the morning-after pill which they believe to be an abortaficient.
 
#Jesus Christ saying that we must serve and feel love for God above any person on earth.
 
#Mormons rationalising and lying to cover up the fact that their prophet Joseph Smith was a fraud.
 
#God telling the prophet Moses to set up a law that decreed that adulterers, and former believes in Moses and homosexuals were to be put to death as cruelly as possible. The favoured method was stoning.
 
#Religions that say if you give enough money to its leaders that you will get healing and be allowed into Heaven to enjoy everlasting happiness when you die.
 
Religion is harmful.
 
Those who say that if you are a bad person and a religious one you could be a worse one without religion need to ponder some things. 
 
Only under religion is the following allowed,
 
#Attempts to justify the vicious things that God has commanded - e.g. he allowed parents to murder their incorrigible sons in Deuteronomy.

#Mutilation of the penis of baby boys and sometimes the genitals of baby girls.

#Public order difficulties over alleged apparitions and miracles.

#Drinking polluted holy water.

#Banning medical help in order to rely on prayer.

#Spending thousands on buildings that are only occupied for one hour a week while the oncology wards are craving cash.
 
Only religion rejects the fact that, ”We have prejudices. It is not illegal to have them. What is illegal is the refusal to put them aside for the sake of our freedoms. For example, a Catholic hospital cannot have the right to put people to the back of the waiting list for life saving care just because they are atheist.”
 
One man’s freedom is always the oppression of another. Without religion there would be less oppression.
 
Religion gives some people a short-term emotional lift. Depressed people who feel so lethargic that they do not commit suicide though they really want to may get a religious lift and commit suicide. They will reason, "It is not much of a sin for I feel compelled to do it. And God is there to take care of my family and friends. That thought actually encourages me." Better to be an atheist!
 
People remember how something makes them feel better than how rational it is or anything else. Religion exploits this. We should be suspicious of religion - it must be regarded as possibly conniving and manipulative until proven otherwise.