Religion is poisoning our society by teaching hatred, cruelty, and “offensensitivity
Berkeley Breathed
Before I go any further, I want to state that I am an atheist. I don't need a capital "A" in front of the word because that implies atheism itself is an organized religion, which it is not. I wasn't always an atheist; my parents were Free Thinkers who encouraged me to go to church with my friends as a child to understand what religion was all about. It all seemed innocent and fun at the time; I didn't realize this was mental preparation to implant their religious beliefs onto me and keep me in their grasp for the rest of my life. My parents were right all along.
After several years of attending church, I thought I was mature enough to decide and choose to believe. This happened during the 1970s when people seemed nicer to one another—not perfect, but more tolerant. That feels like much longer than 50 years ago. Things weren't ideal in the past; we have made tremendous progress, but I believe that is the exact reason for the religious extremism we see today. Freedom chips away at the basic control structure that religion relies on to maintain authority and collect money from its followers.
When I went to college, things started changing. My roommate was a "Born Again Christian," a phrase I hadn't heard before. After only a few days, he started trying to convert me. I told him I wasn't interested, but he took that as a challenge. The tension grew to a point when I said to him that he risked bodily harm if he didn't shut the fuck up about his religion. I told him I never tried to push my beliefs onto him and that he should give me the same respect.
Eventually, tensions calmed. However, I was still troubled when he tried converting other students by saying, "Surrender your life to Christ." That statement ran counter to what I believed as a Christian at the time. I hadn't given up on my faith yet, but this roommate was a harbinger of things to come. I deeply opposed the idea that I should surrender my life and give control to anyone else.
He invited me to dinner at his parent's house because he didn't live far from campus, but I lived several hundred miles from my parents. It was probably around Thanksgiving, but my memory isn't what it used to be. When I was there, I witnessed a scene that nearly drove me to violence. My roommate told me he was adopted, and we bonded over that because my Mom was also adopted.
At some point while I was there, my roommate exploded in anger at his adopted Mother and drove her to tears about some religious statement. His Mother sounded like the Christians I was around growing up. I lost my temper with him and physically threw him out of the room and tried to comfort his Mother. She told me that my roommate and his adopted brother grew up the same way, but my roommate started changing late in high school when he was hanging out with some new Christian people at high school. That was when he became "Born Again."
I was furious when I left that house. I started to realize that some people used religion as a weapon. This was in the early 1980s, so I decided that my roommate was just fucking crazy. That was my first experience with what one might call the weaponization of religion. Sadly, it wasn't to be my last. The allegedly "Moral Majority" Christians were becoming a political force like my parents warned me about years earlier. I told myself that this was just a phase that the country and Christians were going through, but with each passing year, my faith dwindled because I saw no action from what I call "Traditional Christians" to stop the growing spread of fundamentalism. I spoke out against this type of religious extremism that I saw every day.
In the Navy, my best friend was a devout Catholic. He viewed everything through the lens of his faith, but he rarely practiced what he preached, which led me to recognize the hypocrisy of religion. Although he opposed extremists, it was only because they didn't want the Catholic Church in their ranks. I didn't understand this at the time, but eventually, it became clear to me that it was all part of the control religion uses to manipulate its followers. My friend was a prisoner of his church; nothing could breach those walls. Yet, that didn't stop him from pursuing every woman he could while engaged, and he repeatedly lied to his fiancée about it. At one point, when his fiancée was coming to visit, he asked if I would help him keep things secret. I told him I wouldn't and that he needed to sort out his own mess. He married a Pentecostal who agreed to convert to Catholicism. When the wedding day arrived, I still remember my friend's father coming with a giant crucifix that stretched from shoulder to shoulder. It looks ridiculous.
I realized that I was drifting away from religion because it was unmasking itself as nothing more than a cult used to control people once they started participating in their churches. Since I was at a university, I was exposed to people of other faiths for the first time, and none of them tried to convert anyone to their faith. They left everyone alone. That was the way I had accepted religion in the first place. The problem was that the religious fundamentalists were determined to gain power. Once again, the traditional churches were silent. It was then that I decided that religion wasn't for me because the teachings were manipulated to suit the religious extremists. If they didn't offer resistance, they were happy to ride the coattails of the extremists. That attitude proved to me that the entire religion thing was 100% pure bullshit. So long as a person could claim they were "saved," then they could do anything they wanted without fear of repercussion.
Gradually, I abandoned religion altogether and returned to any pparents'Free Thinking mindset. The only difference was that when my parents were alive, religion had not become the cancer that it is today. Every encounter with a fundamentalist or extremist convinced me that I was on the right track not to believe any of them. Their arguments and attacks became more vicious when I came out as a Gay Man, but I expected that from them. Intolerance was a cornerstone of their control system. I read books on group psychology and cults. I found that the only difference between religion and a cult was the societal acceptance of certain beliefs and granting them state approval to conduct their business. This allowed them to continue to gain political power and infect the nation with their cancerous beliefs.
The exposure of religion as merely a tool for controlling people unfolded right before my eyes. Yet, my fellow Free Thinkers and I were consistently shouted down from the pulpit and on the street. As the internet age dawned, that same cancer spread across the world, making the political power grab glaringly obvious. One only needs to glance at any social media site to witness the blossoming of the toxic fruit religion produces. I used to argue with such individuals until I realized it was a waste of my time. I didn't have to care about them because they only wanted to argue, criticize, harass, and bully others.
I live on my terms now, and I've never been happier. Those who say they feel lost without religion are afraid of what they might discover if they were given free thinking a chance. Isn't it amazing that the angriest and most unpleasant people are ruled by religion and by the politicians who use it to manipulate them? Nothing is ever quite perfect enough for them. They always need some group to persecute in the name of their God. They pretend to be happy when most of them go through the motions because that is what is expected of them and demanded of them by their religious and political overlords.
The Republican Party has mastered the incestuous relationship between politics and religion over the last 50 years. It is almost impossible to differentiate between the manipulative and exploitative systems today. When the political stance contradicts what their religion supposedly teaches, the religious leaders quickly fall in line with their Führer, Baron Von Shitzinpants, yet they never question the inconsistency. When religion supposedly taught Kindness and Compassion, now they embrace Hate and Fear because that meshes with the Republican Party and their Dear Leader. We are facing the consequences of toxic religion screwing up our nation while too many people willingly go blindly along until we remove religion and stupidity from our political and justice systems., and get on with governing in a sane and rational way to repair the damage that religion and stupidity have done to all of us.