Religion has no justified existence so it is unjustifiable or neither justifiable or unjustifiable
If religion is untrue then it has no justified existence. There should be something else there not it.
And a religion having a justified existence does not justify it getting too much power or running schools to preach its message.
If it is harmful then it has no justified existence. Timothy Keller in his Making Sense of God would tell you as he does in the book, "Terrible deeds have been done in the name of religion, but secularism has not proven to be an improvement."
If that is true then there is an equal playing field. But religion STILL has no justified existence. Secularism and religion being both a pain does not mean that you can have one or the other on your menu. The difference is that secularism still covers the essentials and religion is accessories. That matters. Religion cannot be really a hospital for bad people and flawed people and if secularism is as bad as it that means that religion is telling a lie and that matters. It has to be challenged. For that reason secularism is more basic and essential and should be stuck with.
If the problem with secularism and religion is that people won't do the right things and do bad things then the problem is with people. Or is it? It can be the philosophies failing to touch the people. In that view, religion is lying that it is a force for good as in something that cures people with sacraments and prayers and words from God and secularism is not for secularism has never claimed to be a miracle cure for human nature. Secularism does not need to lie but religion does.
Failures of secularism are just bad luck. Failures of religion are down to its being a lie.
Secularism and religion being equally disastrous do nothing to refute the notion that religion's reason for being like that is that it is lies so even then it is still unjustified and secularism is.
People who are spiritual may like some authorities equate the spiritual with the mental. So feeling good in yourself becomes spiritual. You can do this without setting up any formal group or being part of one. An informal group or even no group can do the trick. So it follows that if a spiritual system has a justified existence it does not need to become a formal entity. If it does it by default has no justified existence.
The questions are: "Does an informal spiritual group have a justified existence?" The answer is always maybe.
"Does a formal spiritual group have a justified existence?" The answer is always no.
Our morality has problems in itself and in how we apply it. Cracks appear when we have tough decisions to make. For a religion to say this dodgy morality is sanctioned by God is terrible. It is bad for the same reason as saying a bad novel is sanctioned by the greatest divine novelist of all.
If religion is unjustifiable then its members should leave it and let it fall like the house of cards it is.
The justifications for religion are awful ones.
Usually it is argued that it is part of your culture.
Many say religion should exist despite the harm it does for not all people in
the religion are bad. The argument presumes that without religion we would still
have something to persecute and kill people about. That argument lets it slip
that they admit religion can be harmful. If people fight about resources
and politics adding religion to the mix is a new excuse for fighting or for
amplifying the existing fighting.
So without religion then there would be still trouble but the trouble is made
worse when religion exists and that gives people something extra to hate and
kill over.
Those who praise religion as good and then say if we were
not shooting each other over it but something else are in fact not being very
complimenting to religion after all. They are either stupid or sarcastic.
It cannot be called an endorsement.
Religion or not we would still have had World War 1 but think of the many wars
we would not have had. There would have been no Thirty-nine Years War. There
would have been no sectarian bloodshed in Northern Ireland. There would be no
battles among people of the same culture who have minor faith differences. Take
for example the Sunnites and the Shiites.
Religion has no justified existence. However this is not a black and white
matter. Some faiths are more justifiable than others.
Nobody should be in a religion like Christianity when there are religions that
have no violent scriptures and have nobody taking up arms in the name of faith.
A religion that does not really improve enough people is doing one of these:
1 Making no difference to how good or bad people are.
2 Making them worse.
And if it is not improving anybody today what if it makes
them worse tomorrow? Not improving risks making things worse and that risk
is bad.
If it makes no difference then its existence is not justified because it causes
an us versus them mentality that may do grave harm in the future. It is the
future you have to think about. If a religion is not helping then it is
dangerous to let it thrive.
The not all bad argument is used by every grouping in the world and is an excuse
for the religion doing nothing productive or making things worse. All religions
are not the same. Not all religions can be needed by their followers or society
to the same degree. If a religion is needed and it does harm we have to tolerate
it. The not all bad argument is hardly an endorsement of the religion so much as
a plea for tolerance. If a religion has no justifiable existence then it
deserves to be destroyed by an education campaign!
How can a religion made up of people that should find something better have a
justified existence? Don't be in a religion that you are better than.
One can ask: “If you want to say it is okay to be in a religion that enables
evil then why are you not heroically better than that religion? Why are you not
doing the good it fails to do? How good is your good really when you could be in
a religion that is more supportive?"
It is bad enough to be heroically good and in a bad religion but worse to be in
one when your goodness is normal run of the mill goodness. You leave yourself
vulnerable to corruption. To do that is to be corrupt already!
The religious cherry-picker implies that religion is good and should not be
dropped altogether. But how could religion be good if people need to tailor it
to their own lives and morals? It is not religion they think is essentially
good. It is themselves. It is thinking that that leads to violence and evil and
the demonisation of others who they lock horns with. There is no honesty in a
cherry-picker. It is all about them wanting to think that God changes truth to
suit them.
Excuse insults the bad person
Religions have all kinds of people in them. If a bad person blames the religion
for being a bad influence or for subjecting him to some spirit or paranormal
power that has dangerous effects should we blame him not the religion? That
would be dismissing what he is saying in order to keep the religion looking
good. A religion is a system of people but is not the people. The system can
never come first. It is disgusting to use the not all bad excuse to victimise a
bad person for the sake of treating a pile of doctrine and nonsense as sacred.
Ideas and doctrines never deserve protection. People do. Debasing the bad person
only adds fuel to the fire.
When a religion claims to be more than an organisation
Here is an example of how dangerous a religion that claims to have the keys to salvation is. We all accept that any organisation that does terrible things should collapse - especially if its evil surpasses what most other organisations get up to. But the Church says, “No we are different. No matter how much harm we do we are still holders of the sacraments which are essential for salvation and which are unique medicine to live a good life.” That is extremist when you think about it – it is a way around the obvious truth that the Church has no justified existence and the fault lies with Catholic culture that does not allow people to make informed choices and forces baptism and confirmation on them when they are children.
A religion like Catholicism that teaches that it is the divine forging of a relationship between members that is closer than a family or neighbourly relationships is asking to be considered as a whole. It stands to reason that certain kinds of organisations have to be considered as a whole.
Finally
If a religion asks for even one person to be killed that is far more important than any other doctrine for human life is so precious. No other good or doctrine would compensate for that anyway. Nor can it in the slightest. And the other reason they would not compensate is that It is easy for religion to be used to justify many evils when it justifies a lot of evils itself anyway. Why it gets a free pass and other organisations do not if they do harm is very worrying.
