Religion is bad

I will first clarify a few of my points and then add new ones. Ok. I certainly approve of the general condemnation for religious extremists, which I frequently see in media. I note this is not a position sustained by principle, but by pragmatic necessity. Not meritorious. The true challenge exists in becoming aware that extremists exist only as the direct result of moderates providing them a cultural shelter. After watching many videos and reading many articles, I've discovered a pattern of cognitive dissonance in many religious moderates: on one hand they distance themselves from the often violent means employed by extremists, but on the other hand, they actively maintain a taboo against challenging faith-based dogma, when faith-based dogma is the single causal root for the very same extremists' actions they disapprove of. Example: it is expected of moderates to condemn the murder of homosexuals at the hands of extremist Christians, but at the same time, moderates hold sacred and defend the holy book that unambiguously states homosexuals must die, from any kind of condemnation. It is important to clear a common misconception: extremists do not typically practice a deviant or factually incorrect version of their religion, but all the opposite: they are often the best versed. It is the moderates who follow religious teachings half-heartedly. The teachings themselves are often extremist. Example: if christians truly believed an eternal lake of fire awaited the millions of non-christians in the world, wouldn't tolerance constitute a form of cruelty? Wouldn't coercion and pain in this life, be preferable to eternal torture in the after life? Extremists agree of course, and will go to any lengths to save peoples' eternal souls. But its the moderates who protect the root beliefs of heaven and hell that give rise to this zealotry. This must be no more. Religious moderates must not go unchallenged in the public discourse. Intellectual challenge stirs humanity's natural love of knowledge, which is religion's worst enemy. Religions do have some good qualities but more harmful than good. All religions are bad. No argument against religion will prevail exclusively by pointing out examples of bad religions. Likewise, no argument against religion will prevail exclusively by pointing out examples of bad people who are religious, nor bad deeds done in the name of religion. Declaring some religions are bad implicitly acknowledges some religions would be good. Mentioning bad people or bad deeds, simply shifts the focus of judgment away from the overall concept, and over to a narrower window of either individuals or periods of time, neither of which is mutually inclusive with the idea of religion itself. Instead, focus must be kept in the one common thread that is always present at the core of all religions, regardless of time, ethnicity, or particular adherents, and the single cause why all of them without exception are in various degrees harmful to humankind: Faith in religion. People often ask how one can find happiness without faith in a religion, and who or what should humans put their belief in, instead, for salvation? let us first define Faith. Not faithfulness, nor hope, but Faith: the ability to bypass natural skepticism in order to elevate unsubstantiated premises into the category of belief. Faith allows belief in God without proof of a God. Faith allows belief in immortal souls that will be punished or rewarded after death, when conveniently no one ever returns from death with confirmation. 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. Faith creates zeal out of nothingness. Faith must be installed during childhood, for that is the only time when evolution deemed it advantageous for humans to believe premises without testing them. Imagine you grew up to adulthood, and never once heard of the Bible, nor of anyone else who knew about it. Imagine you find the Bible one day in a book store, and you read it. Would you immediately reorganize your entire moral scale around it, thinking this must be the ultimate truth? Or would your natural skepticism raise alarms over thousand-year old concepts you found intuitively immoral, such gender inequality, slavery, or genocide? Adults ask these questions when considering a book. Children do not, when listening to their parents. Can you imagine yourself having been happy up until that moment? Sharing thoughts and beliefs is indeed the foundation of a free society, but please notice that true freedom of choice can only exist in the presence of informed choices. A choice between premises that offer no evidence, no testing of hypothesis, no logical foundation whatsoever, is no choice at all, thus antithetical to freedom. 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. Indeed, not having to test the veracity of statements such as: "do not run near the cliff", or: "do not approach wild animals", for example, does allow human children to survive long enough to develop their own critical mind in adulthood. Unfortunately, by then it is often too late to reverse other childhood statements such as: "God watches you invisibly all the time, and will bring you reward or punishment depending on his approval or disapproval of your actions". Because of its long-term effects of enabling faith-related claims to bypass all rational verification checkpoints and install themselves directly as belief, religion is a form of child abuse. This amazing attribute never escapes notice from oligarchy, and has historically been used as enabler for many forms of slavery, as it continues to do so today. Along with oligarchy, Theocracy has been the worst form of government. If there is a god and a real religion then this is supposedly the best form of government, according to Christianity, Islam and Judaism. No other form of government is more intolerant and oppressive than Theocratic oligarchy which religions support. The Christian inquisition was the worst act of religious violence in human history. Worse than the holocaust! Today most of the wars are caused by religion. Religion makes people follow other people blindly in fear. Most of the time following people they have never met! For example the prophets in the bible. Science and innovation is looked at as evil or immoral. Religion oppresses people and make people live very small pious lives while living in fear of torture if they become happy by indulging in their desires, hopes and dreams.