Some friends roll their eyes and call me a fanatic because I spend so much time fighting religion. But I think it’s supremely important to try to rid humanity of false supernatural delusions.
It’s a struggle first recorded in Ancient Greece – and it flowered especially three centuries ago in The Enlightenment, when thinkers challenged the “divine right of kings” and disputed church tyranny. Ever since, intelligent rebels have sought to break the worldwide sway of magic tales.
Today, most freethinkers feel sure there’s no God, no Satan, no heaven, no hell, no hereafter, no miracles, no prophecies, no virgin birth, no resurrection, no redeemer, no Holy Trinity, no visions, no angels, no demons to cast into pigs, and all the rest. Christianity is a fantasy of fairy tales – in other words, lies.
The fact that billions of people have swallowed this baloney for centuries makes you wonder about the vaunted reasoning power of humans. Struggling against supernaturalism should be a moral duty for every science-minded modern person.
Currently, we’re winning the battle in advanced, educated, northern democracies. But not in the Global South, where Pentecostal babbling in “tongues” is surging.
Through history, hundreds of the best thinkers, scientists, writers, scholars, reformers and other “greats” have doubted church religion. Wikipedia lists multitudes of Nobel Prize winners who called themselves atheists. We current skeptics can be proud to be part of such company.
Entertainer Steve Allen lived in hotels for appearances – and reading Gideon Bibles in his rooms horrified him. He said nobody should ignore religion because, if it’s true, it’s the most important fact of human life – and if it’s phony, it must be denounced as a fraud.
The human brain is the most complex object in the universe. It should be used to discern truth, not to invent mysticism.
The battle probably will never end. We have a deep obligation to keep fighting the delusions.
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