The harms of religion

[FallentoReason]

It's really easy to disprove any religion at all, but what I'm having a hard time doing, is explaining the harms of it, or just the harm of believing in a god. I'm not talking about brainwashed idiots, I'm talking talking about normal religious people who teach their children to believe in whatever they do; what is the harm?

I think the deepest issue with religion is the intellectual prison that you have to reside in for it to work. Being a deep thinker myself I found it hard to express my questions about certain things to friends because knowledge in anything but God's ways is not really encouraged.

I got a pretty big shock from this last night actually. I went to Bible study with a friend (long story as to why I go...) and on the way home we were discussing different denominations and also my desire to want to venture out to different churches purely to see how they differ to my Pentecostal church. He was very much against the idea. Long story short, his arguments as to why I shouldn't question theology were as such:

"Some things are not meant to be questioned"
"I stopped asking myself these questions because I know God is real. That's all I need"

I asked him about his thoughts on other denominations such as Seventh Day Adventists and their belief that one doesn't go to heaven straight away but has to wait for the second coming of Christ. I also told him that I believe they got that teaching from Matthew where it says that the undead rose from the ground when Jesus died on the cross. I knew that this question would make him realise somewhat what I was getting at, which is the issue of not knowing what interpretation is right. Well... his response kind of left me speechless: *hesitation* "Isn't that in the Old Testament"?

The more one is convinced that religion X is true, the less one relies on knowledge to truly understand reality, whether that also includes an understanding of your own holy book. Disabling one's own ability to reason is lethal in my opinion.

Another quick example of the possible physical damage that religion can bring about:

I was talking to a different friend at Bible study about my search for what the Gospels are really trying to say. I was telling her how if we're meant to believe that all of it is real, then why don't some things from the Gospels every happen in reality? An example I gave was from Mark 16 (the bit that was added on later.. but nevermind that...) and how it says that one will not be affected by deadly poisons. Well, I've seen Christians get a little tipsy before from beer (a poison), so where does that leave us with the literal interpretation? Long story short, she reassured me that God will reveal the true meaning of that passage and that "who knows, one of these days you'll surprise yourself and you'll drink something deadly and nothing will happen"!

It worries me that such a religion can a) disable an individual's reasoning and therefore b) open the door to countless fundamental misunderstandings about what actually happens in reality.