What's your biggest beef with religion?

[vulcanlogician]

Mine: It's anti-intellectual. -- It discourages and disparages intellectual curiosity.

Personally, I do not think that is even remotely fair or accurate. I think you're painting with far too broad of a brush.

While it is true that a narrow strain of self-promoting American evangelicals seem to encourage willful ignorance, the whole Christian tradition is filled with prominent scholars, scientists, and thinkers. The influence of Christian intellectuals extends from the early Church Fathers to the founders of the scientific revolution like Pascal, Liebnitz, Francis Bacon and even Swedenborg. Then there are notable Christians like John Ruskin, Milton, Gladstone, and Bonhoeffer. David Bentley Hart is one of my favorite contemporary theologians and I don't think anyone could seriously call him anti-intellectual.

Neo, I posted a beef about religion ... not simply Western Christianity. There's whole world full of people, notably muslims, who use their religion to stifle intellectual progress of millions of people. Try genuinely teaching college philosophy in Pakistan without people shooting you to death in the street.

Tausif Ahmed Khan, the former head of the mass communication department at Federal Urdu University of Arts, Science and Technology in Karachi, said that Dr. Rehman had no disputes with anyone. However, he said, Dr. Rehman had completed his doctorate under a liberal Muslim scholar who was shot to death in September after being accused of blasphemy.

People who think outside of religion's box are commonly blackballed if not right out killed in other parts of the world. We've outlawed such things in the West. But before we got around to it, people got their heads chopped off all the time for saying stuff with which the religious establishment disagreed.

Funny you mention Leibniz, because he was heavily influenced by Baruch Spinoza whose works in philosophy were banned across Europe and whose head could have easily ended up on a pike had he made a wrong turn somewhere. Who wanted Spinoza dead? The Christians. Why? Because they hated his thinking! He posed no danger to anyone and did not advocate violence. The Christians at the time merely saw fit to extinguish anyone who wasn't a proper echo chamber for their vision of the world. There is a word for that: anti-intellectualism. If Leibniz had failed to get his hands on a copy of Spinoza's illegal works, his heavily religious cosmology would not have held the form that it did. So (indirectly) bringing up Leibniz speaks to my point.


What about contemporary America? Roughly a third of the country is malinformed about the scientific consensus concerning evolution. A third of the population is not a "narrow strain" of the self-serving evangelical population. An additional third thinks evolution was a "guided process." I disagree with the "guided process" interpretation, but it's not outright fact-denying anti-intellectualism. It's the fact that 34% of people think all life existed in its present form that makes me point the finger at religion. It's pretty obvious who is pushing these patently false scientific views and convincing people that there are disagreements among scientists where there are none.

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I'm sure most of us have multiple "beefs." But this thread isn't about those. Just about your biggest one. Theists encouraged to participate.

Mine: It's anti-intellectual. -- It discourages and disparages intellectual curiosity.

Your complaint is too broad. There are religious groups that encourage and have developed thousands of years worth of writing, critical thinking, and curiosity. Religion launched modern science. Seems you need to narrow things a bit since it is trivially easy to find a defeater and render your point invalid.

Yeah, so I kind of touched on this with Neo. That is true, and you have a point.

It's a beef that I have with religion-- not just yours. The religious commonly see fit to "discourage and/or disparage" intellectual curiosity.

Do they ALWAYS do it? No. I didn't say they did, either. But there is a pattern of behavior there.

Does the pattern exist apart from religion? Yes. And I have a beef with it there too.

It might be where I live as well. I know people... good natured people... who were given such a hard Biblical inerrancy line, they might consider Rene Descartes devil worship if they ever bothered to even pick up one of his books. They aren't freaks of nature or anything, but some cultural phenomenon spooked these folks away from intellectual growth and free thinking. And I can't describe to you how much I think they were done a disservice. I don't think religions influence (in contemporary times) affects any more than a third of the population this way. But still, a third is way too much.

It doesn't make religion evil, but it is a beef I have with religion.


As I pointed out to RR, you theists are certainly allowed to have beefs with religion too. Hell, I'd think you'd have more beefs than us since it's actually a part of your life. I bet you do, but don't wanna share with us irreverent folks