Ban Religion - are you for or against it and why?

[The Grand Nudger]

Every time I hear religion proposed as a genetic imperative I begin to feel disappointed that I may have received defective code (obviously I apologize if you meant evolution in a different context). So lets say 80% of people are religious, and apply my analogy of the ban on slavery. South Carolina, 1720...roughly 65% of the population were slaves. That we cannot do something about an issue because to many people are for it (or part of it) is no argument at all. There's even a name for this argument.

Now perhaps when we attempt to legislate something out of existence it doesn't just disappear. I would freely offer that the distance in time between 1720 and 1960 is huge, and that we are most likely not done repairing the damage that the institution of slavery has caused. If those opposed to that institution employed the logic you've employed here and decided to let it run it's own course, perhaps we would have ended up where we are, but I wouldn't agree with the position that was taken even if we did. Taking that further, if we banned the expression or continuation of religion today, it's likely that come the year 2251 there would still be a discussion about the lasting effect of religious thought on the human landscape, but at least we'd be that much further along.

I'm simply stating that in my opinion, the institution of religion is a relic that belongs in the same dustbin that the institution of slavery now rots away in. I find it difficult to understand why we would wish to reserve a special status for this particular delusion. The work has already begun with regards to making religion something one reads about in a history class. Religion, in my opinion, not only has nothing to offer us, it is a barrier to human progress. At it's best it is benign, and at its worst genocidal and apocalyptic.

How someone could come to the conclusion that religion has no basis in reality, look at its track record of oppression and tyranny (obviously atrocities perpetrated by human beings for human reasons- but again I'd love to strip this scapegoat from those who would use it to justify abuse), and conclude that we should probably just let it take care of itself, is strange to me. On most issues I'm an optimist with regards to our future, not so much when it comes to religion. It has been refined over thousands of years to be subversive and convincing, appealing to the worst parts of the human psyche, surviving not because of the nature of human beings but in spite of it. No explanation of the world is sufficient once the mind has decided that godidit. This sort of magical thinking has absolutely limitless potential for destruction and suffering.

That people willingly subject themselves to absolute intellectual ignorance, and that others allow them to do this on the grounds that they have a right to delude themselves in such a manner is not a position that I am comfortable with, even though I understand that it borders on the classic definition of facism. Sometimes the opinions we form are uncomfortable, even to ourselves.

The spineless comment was not in any way meant to be taken personally, you know I love you baby. I'm just abrasive at times.