RELIGION DOES NOT JUST HURT OTHER RELIGIONS BUT ITS OWN PEOPLE

Religion cannot hurt other religions without corrupting and using its own people. It abuses its own.  That is what we are looking at.

Some faiths go as far as to say,"everybody who is sincere in any religion actually belongs to us though they don't know it. God is so much bigger than our errors.  We are united more than anything else."  That is parroted a lot by liberal Christianity.  Despite Jesus saying he alone was way and truth and life and nobody gets to God but by him and very gate to God but him was a liar, fundamentalist Christianity says that too but only of the Jews who lived before Jesus.  It is evident from the Old Testament that Jews could be saved.  What is wrong with this "inclusiveness".  It is not doing the work to make those people included.  Jews are not treated as religious equals and cannot become popes, or priests and hold on to their faith.  Hindus are not invited to Catholic chapels to do blessings.  And so on.  The inclusiveness is a toxic social placebo for the pain of division.  It makes you feel warm and you are doing nothing.  The Letter of James in the New Testament speaks of those who wish the poor well and give them nothing.  The placebo might be nice but it does grave harm and you will harm in order to hold on to it. It is not a cure but a lie based on making you feel good.

Just a word of caution.  The religion uses the religious label to control people so its own refers to those it imposes the label on or pretends the label belongs to. So by its own we mean those who are made to feel as if their belonging is actually true.  There is a sense in which you are your own person so if the religion is just a social construct or a pretence then there is no belonging to it.  I can have the case of money and believe it belongs to me and I to it and be wrong.

A religion always exploits its own

A religion is a system. The system should be distinguished from the people who claim to be in the system. Most members only imagine they are members or are too scared or unknowledgable to obey their religion properly. That is why you see them making no effort to defend and promote the more sinister teachings of their religion such as stoning adulteresses to death. The system should still be condemned and seen as fundamentalist. If some of the people commit awful crimes in the name of their religion and because the system tells them they should do it, then they are not crazy people but obedient ones. They are living up to the system. The advice then "Crazy people do crazy things. So don’t overreact" would be irrelevant. It is really just an excuse for refusing to admit that some religions endorse cruelty and fanaticism. That whitewashing only helps the fanatics. Much fundamentalism is not obvious. It is fundamentalist for religion to claim to own marriage. It does not. Only the state bestows the rights that are associated with marriage.  There are many more examples and every liberal is fundamentalist with something.  If there is enough fundamentalism without religion then don't be involved with religion.

When a religion picks on its own
 
People of a religion killing their own has nothing to do with proving the religion is okay or good. The argument that Christians who kill Christians are thereby proving they are not being Christian is rubbish. The hint that Christianity is too good to hurt people is insulting. And it is nonsense to say a religion is proven good even if it persecutes its own but is bad if it persecutes others. And the argument is central if you wish to make out that religion is always good. It is always top of the list for commentators.
 
The common advice that if a bully picks on you you must try to see that it is all about the bully and is nothing in you is toxic. Why? Because the victim knows though she or he did not cause the bullying there is something about her or him as person that the bully reacts badly to. Religion sorts of exemplifies such advice when it seeks to blame the individual members of the religion and not the faith system. By faith system I mean the body of doctrine and religious practice and religious morality not the people. It is evil to blame the person to exonerate the faith. Moreover, religion does not ask that anybody accept that the faith is good and beautiful regardless of whether they believe or not. No religion hates the thought. To ask people to accept that religious faith and a religion is wonderful is trying to persuade them. If it were really that great it would not need the asking.

Tries to oppose and undermine truth
 
To create a mental disconnect between a person and her place in the world is also to create an emotional disconnect. To oppose truth willfully or unwilfully is to give evil people permission to harm. Why not if truth does not matter? If you condemn them you will make them worse for they will see you as hypocritical and unfair. The condemning makes you worse not better. A faith that causes evil to flourish is actually better than one that does not but which allows evil to flourish. When your faith allows the evil of others to flourish, it is worse than one that lets the evil in you flourish.
 
We are keen to pay no heed when members of our religion do evil as long as it is not us doing the evil. That is why Catholics stay in the Catholic Church despite its role in protecting and encouraging child abuse by priests. We tend to categorise people as good or evil instead of admitting that instead of being good or evil, those people are countless shades of gray. Some are darker than others.
 
Even if atheism and secularism sometimes lead to evil, we need them. We do not need religion so we cannot say, "Evil will happen anyway, so religion should be supported even if it leads to some evil or even if some of its members are bad."
 
Faith in the supernatural is giving tacit approval to doctrines and practices and religions that protect those who do harm in the name of faith and God and religion. You may keep your hands clean but your heart is far from clean.
 
People who make a supernatural claim and who tell you to make excuses if it seems to be false are trying to stop you from seeing that it is false if it is indeed false. They do not inspire trust.
 
Religion in manipulative fashion wants to be labelled as good
 
Religion defines itself in a way to make itself look good or at least to deflect being tarnished by the behaviour of its members and its lies. But a definition is only words and means nothing – it is the evidence that must define what something is. If a playschool advertised itself as perfectly and only good we would roar with laughter. But a religion can get away with it for it claims to be dealing with powers we do not understand that can avert human evil and destructiveness. It hides its dark dealings under the cloak of mystery.

A rock proves by its appearance and absence of personality that it is not a human being. See the point? It is not up to religion to define itself as good or indeed up to anybody. We must look at the evidence and proofs and follow those. They do the defining in a manner of speaking.

Messing with the definition of religion could be dangerous
 
Those who redefine religion as goodness are just being stupid and it is insane to imagine one faith is as good and realistic as another. Messing around with the definition of religion may have people deciding what is good and calling something religious if it agrees with that. That is why some ignoramuses say that it is unchristian of Christians to stop gay marriage. They define gay marriage as good and equate good and religious. Something you agree with morally is not turned into something religious just because you agree with it.
 
If Islam is a religion based around grave violations of human rights then to say it is not a religion is to claim the right to persecute it and deny it is religious persecution. Messing around with the definition opens the door to the likes of Donald Trump who say that Islam is not a religion but a political ideology with some religious trappings. Get the right definition instead of hurting human rights by equating religion with good or defining religion in a way that suits your own political objectives. If Islam is not a religion then why not say Catholicism is not a religion but just something else wearing a religious face?
 
The moral is you can define religion as whatever fits your idea of human rights and invite persecution against a particular religion by saying it is not a religion for it wants women chained to the sink and abortion rights banned. And saying it is only partly a religion is just as bad. The religion will not be bestowed the rights you give a religion if you define it as a half-religion or quasi-religion or pseudo-religion.

FINALLY

Believers know fine well they are being complicit in the harm their religion does to society.  They know that in say a Catholic or Protestant area, the Hindu family is not going to get the level of inclusion that a family of their own persuasion will.  Even if the Catholicism or Protestantism is nominal this will happen.  Even if they are lukewarm and careless this will happen.  The religionists are consenting to their own exploitation from the religion.