There are many things that we can debate and argue over with religion. If you had to pick ONE thing which religious belief or practice would you pick as having had the most damaging effect on Humanity?
Too often, religion is a pilar of tyranny.
Too often, tyrants rely on religion to oppress people.
Either as a church official or through an associated monarchy
Guilt
Feelings of guilt have no useful purpose
Guilt, as with any other feeling of pain, has only one purpose......lets you know something is wrong.
Probably the idea of Original Sin. It's led to a lot of tragedy and neurosis (which did give us Woody Allen).
Original Sin, hmmm.... isn't this the neverending result that the rest of us humans must endure, unlike the one and only "immaculately conceived" savior, being conceived sexually while Sex is The Greatest Sin/Taboo of All?
@Ann-Elysse Like everything else in the Bible the apple is merely a metaphor for something else. That something, I believe, is sex. Lust is what opened their eyes. Making lust a sin, something for which a person must repent and feel shame over, creates neurosis. Neurosis is a tree which keeps on blossoming and drops many new seeds.
Simple!!!
All of the religions are dangerous, some have mellowed only to return to their death cult status with the next know-it all generation!!!
Submit to Authority-666 pay taxes Masonic lodge secret religion racist devil worshippers. Nothing being done to provide free brick homes for everyone on Earth built by true masons: free from mortgage free from rent free from taxation free from governmental terrorism and free from religious oppression.
I like your point about the masons.
@Mcflewster not many people like it or they don't understand it.
The attempt of supremacy over other creeds. The Crusades, the Holy Inquisition, the nowadays Religious Police in certain Muslim countries. Probably there will be more to point out.
Its anti-education, not just in the sense of its direct disputes with science, secular philosophy and honest reportage, which are bad enough. But as much anything else, because it wastes time and resources which could be spent on real education, on the pedaling of pseudo-education.
In other words every time someone spends an hour learning a religious text, it is an hour lost that they could have spent on something of far greater value. Especially so if they are deluded by it into thinking that what they are receiving is "education".
Climate Change denial via religion. "Any planetary changes are Gods will, and its all gonna burn in the end before he remakes it, SFW about global warming?"
As a dogmatic ideology amongst the believers.
One true god is sort of like one true Scotsman. I do not debate (at least not long and drawn out) because it proves nothing. I'm still surprised by the comment of the idiot in You Tube who wanted me to "give him proof" of why I no longer believe. I do not have to have proof for changing my mind due to lack of evidence. However, if you pray while standing on one leg and have your tongue in your cheek, then hop around a bit and try not to fart, maybe god will bless you. If he did not you still have some sin in your life, or it is because of something that you father did.
Your story shows that religionists are worried in part about lack of evidence
@Mcflewster I have noticed in my lifetime that they are so worried about lack of evidence that they make up evidence. This is a fact that is there in every argument where believers offer their proof of their god. It is a major reason that I am no longer a believer today. For the most part, I avoid these arguments and simply jump to the end right away to prove that it means nothing.
The whole of it.
It IS difficult to separate a single one.