The absurdity of religion

Introduction   We owe what we know about our wonderful world to science Science has taught us how hills come to be formed, how trees grow, how light originates in the Sun. No knowledge came from people who believed they were receiving instruction from God. Most religions hold that there is some sort of immortal soul in all people. The arguments are too long to develop on this page, but I have shown that the concept of an immortal soul is logically unsupportable elsewhere on these pages. How should we live our lives? Philosophers have taught us about ethical behaviour by argument and rational discussion over millennia. How could any intelligent and well informed person believe that it is preferable that we should base our behaviour on what someone wrote following what he believed was a discussion with a god hiding in a burning bush (Judaism, Christianity, Islam) or after receiving instructions from an archangel in a cave (Islam)? Religion has led people to do horrendous things over thousands of years. I have written about some of the many examples of genocide and killing in a piece on Christian intolerance. As Nobel laureate Steven Weinberg said, "Good people will do good things, and bad people will do bad things. But for good people to do bad things – that takes religion." How obvious does it need to become that religion causes more harm than good before people will drop the delusion? There have been long and bloody wars between Protestants and Catholics (both calling themselves the 'true' Christians) and between Sunni and Shia (both calling themselves the 'true' followers of Islam). Of course there can be no resolution to these disputes because both sides are equally deluded. In the twenty-first century we have Islamic extremists killing other Muslims as well as non Muslims, the rise of the bloodthirsty Isis group in the Middle East and similar religious fanatics in Africa, Thailand, the Philappines and elsewhere. In Indonesia, which has been a example of tolerance between adherents of different religons in the past, the Christian governor Ahok of Jakarta was recently jailed for two years on the charge of blasphemy. His crime: he said clerics had used a Koranic verse to mislead voters by telling them that Muslims were not allowed to vote for a Christian. Home Top Index It is human to look for explanations for anything that happens. Before science people looked to the supernatural in an effort to understand the world; it didn't work, but the habit continues to this day. Over the last few centuries it has become increasingly obvious that science provided a path to enlightenment and superstition is a dead-end.   This section added 2025/05/17 There is the Bible and there is the Church and never the twain shall meet? As I've written on another page on this site, there is a huge amount of absurdity in the Bible. Not only absurdity but also cruelty, injustice, acts against any reasonable standard of ethics, and contradictions. Quite separate from the Bible is the organised church. Those who wrote the rules for the church seem to have created them with very little justification from the Bible, very often no justification from the Bible, and often enough they made rules and indulged in actions that went totally against the teaching of Jesus. Do I need do more than mention: The burning of those accused of heresy; The tortures used by the various inquisitions; The centuries of cruel and unjustified treatment of people who's sexual inclinations were unacceptable to the Church; The massacres inflicted on the Protestants by the Catholic Church and the massacres inflicted on the Catholics by the Protestants; Centuries of persecution of anyone who had some view slightly different to the officially accepted view; Centuries of not allowing anyone to express doubt about God and religion in general (atheism). None of this was justified by the teachings of Jesus, who all the branches of Christianity held was the Christ, the Son of God on Earth.   This section added 2022/04/15 God's DNA As I write this Easter is approaching and we are reminded by some that Jesus was God’s son. If we accept this, science tells us that half of Jesus’ genes and half of his DNA would have come from his mother, Mary, and half would have been that of his father, God. Home Top Index If the science of genetics was known at the time of Jesus geneticists could have worked out which parts of Jesus’ DNA came from which parent. Wouldn’t it be wonderful to be able to study God’s DNA? A great mystery This mystery of religious belief has two parts: Why do so many people believe the fiction of one religion or another without any evidence for the truth of such beliefs? The susceptibility to believe in a religion must have come about through organic (Darwinian) evolution; what, if any, advantage would belief in religious delusions give to people that would improve their likelihood of passing their genes on to the next generation? There are even greater mysteries. Why do so many people believe this unfounded nonsense, these fairy stories? How could any thinking person believe the nonsense printed in the Bible and other 'holy' books? Yet billions of people apparently do. This, I believe, has to be at least one of the world's greatest mysteries; how can humans, who have come so far in the understanding of the Universe, believe such absurdities? Science, as the best way we can learn about the world, has now been accepted by all open-minded thinking people for several centuries. Considering all this, wence comes this apparently wilful ignorance? And considering the depth and almost ubiquity of this ignorance, is it any wonder that we can’t control our climate changing emissions and other environment destroying ways? I am reminded of a story I once read: "An alien searching for intelligent life forms visited the Earth. He came across two people arguing about some point on religion. After recording that there was no intelligent life on Earth he went on to the next planet on his list." Home Top Index What advantage could being gullible in this way give to humans in the 'survival of the fittest'? Humans developed the strong propensity to believe in the supernatural, gods in particular, through evolution. Features do not normally develop by evolution unless there is some survival advantage to them, or at least to the genes that they pass on to their offspring. What possible survival advantage could a false belief in sky fairies have had for our ancestors? Richard Dawkins, in his book, The God Delusion, suggests that religion might have developed as a secondary, accidental, effect hitching a ride on some other feature that did have a survival advantage, but in my reading of his book he didn't convincingly suggest what that primary thing might have been.   This section added 2026/07/26 Another mystery We are told that the death of Jesus on the cross somehow gave humanity a chance of salvation. How many people, like me, look for some form of logic in this and totally fail to see it? How many Christians even think seriously about it? It is completely without any logical validity, it just makes absolutely no sense! Whether or not Jesus was 'the Son of God', how could his death have 'saved humanity'? The attempts to explain how Jesus' death could atone for the sins of humanity that I have seen on the Internet simply fail to stand up to rational thought. Unintelligent design Unintelligent design is explained very well in a page of Psychology Today - Unintelligent Design: Anatomy is full of evidence that a "creator" wasn't very smart. By David P. Barash Ph.D. Home Top Index Just a couple of examples Dr Barash uses include: The very unintelligently designed birth canal, where a baby needs to be squeezed through the narrow confines of the pelvic girdle; The spine, which evolved for tetrapods (four legged animals) who's spines are parallel to the ground, but is very troublesome in humans where the spine is vertical. I encourage readers to refer to Dr Barash's article for more examples and a more thorough explanation.