What the world needs and the best that can happen to anyone

[Angrboda]

I think we do that naturally.

You think everyone is doing that? You don't see any room for improvement?

Yes, I feel it is our natural inclination to try to be good. When you codify such impulses into Gods and religions, you simply handicap the natural process. Wanting to do better is expressed implicitly in your very question. You didn't learn that from God. You were born with it. The question you ask, whether or not I see any room for improvement simply illustrates that it is an imperfect process. We want better, naturally, the question at the heart of my response is, what is the path most likely to yield improvement? The assumption, I think, that you're making, is that because religion and God place being better as a goal, that doing so is more likely to result in improvement than simply trusting our natural inclinations. That's an assumption I challenge. The history of man has been that religion and God tend to retard growth, rather than facilitate it. So I'd say your assumption is a false one. Simply because a movement posits progress as an explicit goal, doesn't mean that movement is the best way to achieve those specific goals. I can understand that it seems reasonable to conclude that having an explicit goal tends to improve the odds of one achieving that goal, and perhaps that's correct, but we tend to individually form such goals, just as you have. So the question becomes, does trusting to individuals to form such goals on their own work better than organizing them around Gods and religion? The history seems to be that, while individual efforts vary widely in terms of success, so do religious efforts. However, religion also fosters processes which work against such noble goals, like an us vs. them mentality, the belief in divine mandates, the dogmatism of social mores, the reification and worship of myth over reality, superstition, bigotry, and so on. I suppose one might suggest that we simply haven't found the right religion yet, but that very step puts you on a path to oppressing those who disagree with whatever religion you feel is the right one. The very impulse itself seems flawed. As a practical matter, utilitarianism suggests that the greatest good is to be had when individuals are each allowed to rationally choose what is in their own best interest. Perhaps that's not true, but it seems equally as plausible a theory as the religious one which has, historically, failed us. Religion promises progress, but a promise by itself doesn't ensure fulfillment of that promise. The question you ask, can we improve, would be better rephrased as are we more likely to improve with religion, or without it? I think the history of men shows the latter. When we leave things to individuals as a whole to determine what is best, we do better than when we try to organize men's natural inclination to be good around the views of one person, or a small group of people. The latter is religion.

Just as a side question, how is the persecution of Bahai's working out for the theory that religion and God are a good path to love and harmony?

The civilization of man has increased just to the same extent that religious power has decreased. The intellectual advancement of man depends upon how often he can exchange an old superstition for a new truth. The church never enabled a human being to make even one of these exchanges; on the contrary, all her power has been used to prevent them. In spite, however, of the church, man found that some of his religious conceptions were wrong. By reading his Bible, he found that the ideas of his God were more cruel and brutal than those of the most depraved savage. He also discovered that this holy book was filled with ignorance, and that it must have been written by persons wholly unacquainted with the nature of the phenomena by which we are surrounded; and now and then, some man had the goodness and courage to speak his honest thoughts. In every age some thinker, some doubter, some investigator, some hater of hypocrisy, some despiser of sham, some brave lover of the right, has gladly, proudly and heroically braved the ignorant fury of superstition for the sake of man and truth. These divine men were generally torn in pieces by the worshipers of the gods. Socrates was poisoned because he lacked reverence for some of the deities. Christ was crucified by a religious rabble for the crime of blasphemy. Nothing is more gratifying to a religionist than to destroy his enemies at the command of God. Religious persecution springs from a due admixture of love towards God and hatred towards man.

~ Robert Ingersoll