Religion is bad

First off, you give a long rant about extremism by giving specific examples of religious extremism, and then you go on in your next paragraph and say that examples are meaningless in this type of debate; therefore your first paragraph is moot. "Faith allows belief in divine beings who influence and then judge humans, yet remain suspiciously invisible. Faith allows belief in codes and regulations that permit and in some cases encourage violent intolerance towards people of different faiths, overriding mankind's natural altruism." Altruism...really? People are naturally altruistic? You make this unsubstantiated claim about the being of mankind and open yourself up to the philosophical debate of "Is there ever a truly unselfish act?" In my opinion the answer is no, and I'd be willing to debate this later. "Faith must be installed during childhood." Also not true, faith can be found at any point in time. You are assuming that everybody is naturally skeptical of things they read. If that were the case then why would Phishing emails work so often? People in general are easily convinced and assuaged and that is what religion does for those people. Religion may not be right for everybody, but most moderate sects of religion (the great majority of religion) tend to be good for people as they provide comfort. Not everybody has the same reasoning skills as you or I and would be much happier with their lives being controlled by a doctrine. Just because something is illogical does not mean it is bad. Illogical things are illogical, nothing more, nothing less. The goodness or badness of something is measured in its effects, and as you give examples of the few extremists that exist, you cannot let a small percentage of people ruin a large concept. Religion in its simplest form instills a code of morals that is generally beneficial to society. You then say: "Faith is not entirely alien to human nature, as it is indeed advantageous from an evolutionary point of view for human children to believe all of their parents' statements without having to test them." You gave an example of the beneficial nature of religion in your own argument and it does not only stop there. You then claim that religion is a form of child abuse...really? How is it abuse to teach your children what you believe is true. Religious people have a different mindset than non-religious people. People get comfort out of religion that lets them continue with their lives! Why should we look down upon religious people who are clearly content with themselves because of religion. In many communities religious centers are the only support that people can get, it helps people. "The Christian inquisition was the worst act of religious violence in human history. Worse than the holocaust!" Remember earlier in your argument when you specifically said "No argument against religion will prevail exclusively by pointing out examples of bad religions."? This is clearly an example and I could point out atrocities that were not religiously inclined but as you said, examples should be moot. You cannot have it both ways, either examples are moot or they are not moot. "Today most of the wars are caused by religion" ...really? Today there is one war partially caused by religion...Afghanistan. The Jihadists started the war based on their religion. Again this is a minute percentage of the religious population. WWI was caused by complex political issues, WWII was caused by an atheist regime invading another country. Vietnam was caused by the threat of communism...should I go on? Iraq was caused by a personal vendetta that G.W.Bush had against Saddam Hussein and wasn't even justified with religion, it was justified with threats of WMDs in the hands of an unstable dictator. That claim you made is totally unsubstantiated as you try to substantiate it with prophets from the bible. FYI the bible didn't happen "today" by any stretch of the imagination (I assumed Today meant modern times like the last 100 years-ish). Your entire argument is a re-hashing of your first round statements in more detail. You say at some point that "all religions are bad" and then you generalize with the western religions. You didn't even address any of my arguments about comfort, and about other religions like Buddhism, and Taoism. Why are they bad? If you claim that all religions are bad you have to prove why they are bad. Buddhism is both a religion and a life choice. People who become Buddhists want to live peacefully and simply. Why is this bad? Again you don't address the issue of science and innovation. You assume that it is a good thing; however, progress isn't always good and I am not conceding that point to you. In order for impeding science and innovation to be bad, science and innovation have to be proven to be good. While science can save lives, it can also take lives away; therefore I conclude that science and progress is a neutral fact and therefore impeding it is neither good nor bad.