“… Across this remote region, deep in the highland forests, the pattern was repeated over and over.

Churches were ransacked, entire villages razed and their inhabitants forced to flee into the forests.

The violence, which began on Christmas Eve, has now largely abated, but the plight of the people has not.

Many are now living in the shells of their burned out homes, all their possessions lost.

The conflict has pitted Hindu against Christian, tribal against non-tribal.

All share some responsibility for what has happened, all have suffered. Years of relatively peaceful co-existence of these communities, living a fragile rural existence, has been shattered.

The Christian community blames the virulently anti-Christian rhetoric of Hindu nationalist organisations; and one person in particularly, a revered local holy man, Lakhanananda Saraswati. …”

Via BBC >
What’s behind the Christian-Hindu violence? Let’s not make this more complicated than it is: religion.

“Christiane Amanpour is on vacation in France. Sort of. The CNN star also is putting the finishing touches on a six-hour documentary airing next week about the often volatile mix of politics and religion.

She has spent the past eight months on the project, traveling around the world – to the West Bank to spend time with Jewish settlers, to Iran to film Shiite Muslims, to the United States to sit down with Christian conservative Jerry Falwell just before his death, and to Jerusalem, ground zero for all three religions.

The result is “God’s Warriors,” a provocative look at the fundamentalist foot soldiers who fight in the name of their faith.”

Via SignOnSanDiego.com > 

“WHEN Times editors assigned me to the religion beat, I believed God had answered my prayers.

As a serious Christian, I had cringed at some of the coverage in the mainstream media. Faith frequently was treated like a circus, even a freak show.

I wanted to report objectively and respectfully about how belief shapes people’s lives. Along the way, I believed, my own faith would grow deeper and sturdier.

But during the eight years I covered religion, something very different happened.” (cont’d)

Cont’d at LaTimes.com >

A well-written account of one man’s journey away from his faith as the result of covering news stories related to religion.

A great interview of Hitchens, author of “God is Not Great,” can be found here.

Take a minute to check out this well articulated argument for religion as a wholly negative institution. The author makes an excellent point… what good has religion done that an atheist (or secular organization) couldn’t of done? Very little to none? So why tolerate its deadly baggage?

This blog is about specific instances of harm and suffering caused by religion and religious faith around the world. It is a response to the argument I am so often confronted with when I tell religious people that the world would be better without religion:

“But, what harm is religion doing anyone? Why does it bother you so much that I believe certain things? Religions do so much good in the world, why would you want to stop that?”

This blog is a direct answer to those questions. I hope that every post I make to this blog will help someone - religious or not - to see that religions are not benign organizations that only do good. Rather, that they cause and allow real harm and suffering, grotesque crimes against humanity, and wholly unnecessary conflict. There is something amiss with what these religions are teaching if people who most firmly believe in them are capable of such atrocities.

I do believe in “live and let live” but religions don’t. People attack each other on the basis of their religious beliefs. I would not be safe in many parts of the world because I am an atheist (and I’m not talking about far away lands here). That is not “live and let live.” For as long as religion is a source of negativity and violence in this world, I will not “live and let live” and neither should anyone else. I will speak my mind, your overly sensitive, close-to-the-heart beliefs be damned. It is absolutely absurd that religious institutions and religious followers are afforded so much tolerance from our society but they don’t give any in return.

And now, I can hear in my head the reply of the typical “moderate” religious person:

“But you are lumping us all together! I am not an extremist, I am not hurting anyone. I am a good person and religion helps me be better. Why should I stop believing in something just because of a few nutcases who are ruining it for everyone?”

To them I say this, the nutcases are not ruining anything for you, they are helping you (in an unfortunate way). They are exposing religion for what it is at its core and helping you to see that what you believe is not true. You can still be a good person - perhaps a better person - when you realize that religions are not divine sources of truth in this world or dispensers of the ultimate morality. I don’t hate religion or religious people but I do feel that it is time to leave religion and faith in God in the past and move forward into more secular thought.

Recently there has been a call to arms (figuratively speaking) among atheists spear headed by, among many others, Dawkins, Harris, Dennet, and Hitchens. I have heard that call and am here to answer it. Religion *is* a problem and the sooner we realize it and spread the word, the sooner we can leave these archaic beliefs in the past, replace the benefits religion provided with secular institutions that fulfill the same role, and begin to progress as a species. Let’s finally leave the dark ages and see what we are really capable of when we stop believing in ancient myths and mystical worldviews.

When you are asked, “What harm is religion doing anyone?,” I hope that you will point them here so that they can read for themselves a chronicle of the undeniable role religion is playing in violence and human suffering, everyday, all around the world.

Also, if you become aware of a relevant news story that I have missed, please email it to me.

Hitchens has a refreshingly different approach to exposing the absurdity and harmful effects of religion (compared to Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins and the like). While Harris’s and Dawkins’s latest books have a bit of overlap, I found very little to no overlap of material in “God is Not Great.” As a profoundly well read historian and journalist, his lexicon is a bit out of my reach and many of his literary allusions were lost on me but I enjoyed the challenge. I have to admit that I prefer the streamlined, accessible, “no nonsense” writing of Harris but I did appreciate Hitchens writing style for its unique qualities. Though he is discussing dark subject matter, his tone remains upbeat most of the time.Unlike Dawkins and Harris, he gives many accounts of his firsthand experiences/encounters with religion and the religious.The content of the book weaves a compelling argument for “how religion poisons everything.”I highly recommend it for anyone interested in learning about how religion affects our world.Get the book HERE.

From Reuters.com: “More than 70 percent of Egyptians, Pakistanis, Indonesians and Moroccans believe the United States is trying to weaken and divide the Islamic world, a poll released on Tuesday showed.

The survey by WorldPublicOpinion.org also showed more than 40 percent thought that was the primary goal of the U.S.-led war on terrorism, while only 12 percent believed Washington’s aim was to protect the United States from attack.”

Full article here:

http://www.reuters.com/article/politicsNews/idUSN2332112320070424?feedType=RSS

Religion is often hailed as a sort of glue that holds people together - morals, families, countries. This oft-repeated mantra doesn’t hold up in reality though. Rather, religion tends to divide people into groups that disagree with one another on issues they believe are paramount to the fate of their eternal souls.

A recent survey of Brits shows that the majority, 82% in fact, are aware that religion is a cause of division and tension:

Full article here.

Click to hear Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens discuss why, exactly, the world and everyone in it would be better off there were no religion.