Rationalists should attempt to destroy religion.

Most people in the world believe that the creator of the universe wrote or "inspired" one of their books. Unfortunately, there are many books that pretend to divine authorship, and each makes incompatible claims about how we should live. The diversity and profundity of these claims range from banal proclamations on the procedure of rituals to divisive and irreconcilable claims about the pleasures that await martyrs in paradise. Despite the ecumenical efforts of many well-intentioned and loving people our religions are still some of the key factors behind an appalling amount of violence and hatred. It is, of course, true that religion is not the only form of dogma that plagues our world. Although I think a fairly strong case can be made that its one of the most invidious. National and political dogmas regularly divide us both as individuals and collectively as societies. Racial dogmas and tribalism have certainly done their fare share of destruction. However, religion is, to my knowledge, the only system of belief that makes a transcendental difference between in-group and out groups. Religion posits a difference not merely on the basis of nationality or skin color; it posits a transcendent barrier between people that can mean the difference between an eternity of happiness or suffering. No greater impediment stands in the way of us creating a global civilization then our irreconcilable religious differences. If we are to create a global community where genocide and war are ancient relics then we must first fundamentally transcend our petty and parochial religious superstitions and they hatred they inspire. One way in which people choose to defend religion is to claim that it provides the only effective means of spreading morality in a society. If we take Christianity as just one example this claim seems highly suspect. The God of the Bible hates sodomy and will kill you for it but he rather enjoys the occasional human sacrifice. On just a cursory glance it would seem clear that God doesn't have his priorities quite straight. It gets worse if you choose to read further. Consider the injunction in the Old Testament to stone women to death that aren't virgins on their wedding nights. At the very least this would be an impractical approach to decreasing infidelity, probably an immoral one. The Bible is a very long book, it contains pages and pages on how to kill people, how to beat slaves, and detailed instructions on how to sacrifice a wide variety of animals. These are distinctly inconvenient facts for anyone that wishes to claim that it represents humanities purest distillation of ethical wisdom. The fact of the matter is that there is a values vacuum in religion. There is a values vacuum in an organization like the Catholic Church that preaches the sinfulness of condom use in Sub Saharan Africa where millions of people die every year from AIDS. [1] There is a values vacuum in that same institution that shelters its pedophile priests, literally an army of child rapists, by moving them from parish to parish so they can avoid prosecution. There is a values vacuum in a religion like Christianity that, very often, views abortion as a more pertinent societal ill than genocide etc. One only needs to turn on his television set to witness the needless suffering caused by adherence to religious myths. The genital mutilation community is almost entirely religious. Likewise the suicide bombing community is almost entirely theocratic. And the few places on Earth were slavery is still practiced it is done so out of deference to divine warrants. There is another popular route to defend religion and it usually seeks to outline the utilities or usefulness of religion. I would highly caution anyone from taking this approach. Before you choose to take this view you may wish to muse over the following questions. How useful is it that millions of Muslims believe in the metaphysics of martyrdom? How useful is it that Jewish and Palestinian settlers on the west bank believe that God promised them a piece of land? How useful is it that the Sunni and Shia have such heart felt differences about their religious faith? How useful is it that the Catholics and Protestants of Northern Ireland have been murdering each other for decades on the basis of their differences? How useful is it that the Bible enjoins edicts for the genocide of peoples and entire nations? How useful is it that millions of children are preached to everyday about the hellfire that awaits unbelievers? How useful was religion when it came time to tackle the root cause of infectious disease? One is tempted to respond, in short, (not very). A future world in which rapture ready Christians are facing off against jihadists is as frightening as it is unconscionable. If this doesn't strike you as sufficiently terrifying imagine that a regime with the mentality of the 911 hijackers acquires nuclear weaponry. The prospect of mutually assured destruction in such an instance would not be a sufficient deterrent if they viewed martyrdom as plausible metaphysics. After all, what good are threats against an enemy that is willing to kill themselves in the process of bringing about your own demise. As a species we must fundamentally transcend the pettiness and stupidity of religion in order to help preserve our own survival. It may even be ethical, in certain situations, to kill people merely because they hold certain beliefs. This may strike some as an extraordinary claim but it merely enumerates some rather basic and obvious facts about our world. Some people have placed themselves so far beyond every measure of peaceful persuasion that the only way to stop them is to bring about their destruction. Members of Al qaeda would certainly fall under this category. There is, after all, no mode of conversation that will likely get Osama bin Laden to reconsider his worldview. My methodology of conversation is not apt to produce favorable results in all mediums or different parts of the world. I would be, for instance, palpably reluctant to stand in the town center of Mecca and outline the irrationality of Islam, for reasons better left unspecified. The goal for reasonable people in the future should be to design a method of conversation that is both non-offensive to reason and can also be absorbed by the general public. Further, we must create ways of talking about happiness, eudaimonia, ethics and spiritual experience that never requires us to believe anything on insufficient evidence or to delude ourselves. The approach reasonable people should take to overthrow religion should be bloodless. A war of ideas is not waged with rifles; it's waged through conversation. When the stakes are high we must choose between conversation and violence booth at the level of individuals and at the level societies. And the only thing that guarantees that our conversation about the world and reality is open-ended is an unfettered willingness for us to have our beliefs updated by conversation. Reason and faith are two ways of looking at the world that both carry consequences. At the dawn of the 21st century we must be receptive to the former and stridently oppose the embodiment of its antithesis, religion. Only then will we stand a reasonable chance of healing some of the deepest fractures that divide our world. All the best, Freeman Sources [1] http://www.catholic.org... Definitions Reason- rational motive for a belief or action Religion- A religion is a set of beliefs and practices often organized around supernatural and moral claims, and often codified as prayer, ritual, and religious law. Rationalism- Reliance on reason as the best guide for belief and action. No semantics please. The rebuttal should be something along the lines of "Religion should not be destroyed by rationalists because…"