We should judge religions by empyrical evidence in lieu of religious texts.

I will argue that we should completely ignore what's written in religious texts when judging a religion.Rebuttals As for one group dramatically deviating from the religious texts, that's why we use the mean in math. For example, let say morality was judged on a scale from 0 to 100. Let's say a small group has 0 morality. While the rest of the religion has an average of 40 for morality. We would take the numbers of the group and multiply by zero. Then, take the rest of the religion which has an average of 40 and multiply by the number of that religion, lets say one billion. Finally we would divide by the total number of members in that religion.In that case the small group would have a negligible affect on morality, the morality would still be 40 or 39 of the religion depending upon the size of the group. New argumentsPart of the problem with religious texts is which are emphasized. An angry person might only see anger in the religious texts. A pious person might only see piety. A selfless person would focus on the selfless parts and so on. Yet, there is so much more to a religion than just the texts. There is songs, community, street preachers, slogans, billboards, etc. There is no way to sort through that tangled web. Then, there is the question of how much weight do we put on a religious text? With religious texts having so many characters within, contradictory passages, and multiple ways of interpretation, there is no way to know. Perhaps more importantly is that religious are very much text based as opposed to image based.Simply reading a book, any book will make you patriarchal. Viewing television will make you more matriarchal. Therefore, a society reads will be more patriarchal and a society that watches T.V. will be more matriarchal. Simply put the act of reading holy texts is more important than what the texts actually says. Literally your brain is wired differently if your a reader versus a viewer. I propose that the reason the three Abraham religions are so violent is the act of reading causes humans to become overly patriarchal. Think about, if you read, you are putting the letters into a hierarchy, that's masculine. Images, you take in all at once and there is no hierarchy, that's is equality and feminine. The alphabet is patriarchal. [1] The point is we focus so much on what is written in various religious texts and sometimes we miss the obvious. That the act of reading changes our society into a more patriarchal society with more hierarchy. Written religion has had a huge affect on society, not because of the words, but because of the alphabet. Religion's main impact on society is encouraging people to read as opposed to the arts like painting, sculpturing, etc. Imagine what society would have been like if the religious texts were instead religious drawings. I think we would have had greater equality. Secondly, scientists are always trying to control variables. By examining both the texts and empirical evidence we are adding more variables. Which complicates matters and leads to greater chance of error. Thanks for the debate.Sources1. https://www.brainpickings.org...