While it is clear that a lot of people gain solace from religious faith, isn't this obviously a false kind of solace, akin to people who need to take drugs to cope, or those poor sorts with OCD who can't make out their front door without going through pointless (to the rest of us, anyroad) rituals?
I would no more excuse religion on the basis of it being a coping mechanism than I would excuse the dangers of drugs abuse because it helps some people get through the day.
On a no less practical level, is the ostensible 'good' done by religion worth the vile and obscene horrors that ALL religions have always perpetrated? Human sacrifice, mutilation, pointless restrictions on diet, sex, and bodily functions, the inculcation of false ideas, abuse of the young (both physically and psychically), the systematic retardation of event attempts to expand human knowledge, murders both wholesale and retail, the promotion of war, the coddling of fascism, etc etc etc.
Sorry, but the coping mechanism of religion isn't NEARLY enough to save it from the ash-heap of history to which it so rightly belongs.
Boru
I would no more excuse religion on the basis of it being a coping mechanism than I would excuse the dangers of drugs abuse because it helps some people get through the day.
On a no less practical level, is the ostensible 'good' done by religion worth the vile and obscene horrors that ALL religions have always perpetrated? Human sacrifice, mutilation, pointless restrictions on diet, sex, and bodily functions, the inculcation of false ideas, abuse of the young (both physically and psychically), the systematic retardation of event attempts to expand human knowledge, murders both wholesale and retail, the promotion of war, the coddling of fascism, etc etc etc.
Sorry, but the coping mechanism of religion isn't NEARLY enough to save it from the ash-heap of history to which it so rightly belongs.
Boru
‘I can’t be having with this.’ - Esmeralda Weatherwax
