Continuing now with the final section of the case against God which I outlined here:

6) Belief in the “God” concept is worse than merely wrong or illogical. It inspires patterns of thinking and behavior which negatively affect us all. Whatever good this belief may have inspired owes nothing to its basic, dangerous irrationality and will survive our rejection of that irrationality.

B) Consider the effects belief in “God” has at the family level:

It has been said that “The Truth shall set you free.” Yet the dogmatic “truths” associated with most conceptions of “God” seem calculated to bind us, restrict us, and force us to act in ways contrary to our own best interests.

In the name of “God,” millions of children are forced by their families to attend church services against their will in order to be indoctrinated into belief systems which the majority of mature minds reject.

In the name of “God,” millions of children are taught by their families to avoid, reject, and look down upon children who are being indoctrinated into another religion or who have escaped religious indoctrination entirely.

In the name of “God,” untold numbers of children are cruelly disciplined and/or denied appropriate medical care.

In the name of “God,” some parents actually kill their children in order to “rescue” them from this “evil” world and hasten their experience of an imaginary heaven.

Although “God” and religion are said to bring families together, that togetherness often comes at the terrible cost of the unfair exclusion of those who are different. Offspring who fail to live up to arbitrary, “God”-inspired parental standards often find themselves disowned and banned from their families. (Many are disowned for nothing more than having been born gay.) When offspring mature, they are often expected to marry someone within the faith regardless of what they themselves might want. (In some times and places, “God” has dictated that they actually marry someone from within the immediate family. In other times and places, devout parents simply told their offspring who they would marry.)

Once married, many people raised within a particular “God” tradition are expected to engage in sex only in certain ways and usually with producing children of their own as a goal – once again, regardless of what they themselves might want or what their individual situation justifies. For untold millions of people over hundreds of years, Christianity has managed to transform the natural pleasure of physical love into a “sin” giving rise to torturous levels of fear, shame, guilt, and self-hate. As a result of the “God”-given command to go forth and multiply, untold millions of children have been born to parents who did not want them or could not attend to their most basic needs. Celibacy – the unnatural yet common “God”-demanded alternative for the unmarried, the widowed, and members of the priestly class – often leads to its own severe psychological and behavioral problems (as Garry Wills makes clear in his book, Papal Sin.)

Although theists would have us believe that “holy matrimony” is the foundation of our society and a much better alternative to whatever unions atheists engage in instead, the simple fact is that the rate of divorce among Christians is actually higher than for non-Christians – and the rate of divorce among atheists is about one-third lower than it is for Protestants and Jews according to this Christian research organization. (Another Fun Fact: Abortion seems to be fairly common among Catholic women. It fact, the abortion rate seems to be 29% higher for Catholics than it is for Protestants.)

C) Consider the effects belief in “God” has on society as a whole:

Most “God”-inspired belief systems seem to be extremely patriarchal. They inspire institutions largely run by and for men. These institutions have oppressed women within the church and the family, and have often prevented them from participating outside the context of the church and the family altogether. This is perhaps most obvious in Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, and other countries where conservative Islamic belief systems hold sway, but it is also apparent in countries where Roman Catholicism predominates. India and Japan are other places where different “God”-inspired belief systems have inspired or excused similar anti-female prejudices and behaviors. These “God”-based anti-female prejudices and behaviors continue to influence many if not all areas of American life today.

“God”-inspired anti-gay prejudices and behaviors are a similar curse many societies continue to bear.

Black slavery was sanctioned and supported for centuries by various “God”-inspired beliefs systems. American slave owners frequently and vehemently defended slavery on the basis of their “God”-based religious beliefs. Americans in all walks of life continue to live with the terrible, enduring legacy of those beliefs and the horrid practices they gave rise to. For Americans who belong to the Ku Klux Klan and many other white supremacy organizations, such “God”-based religious beliefs remain an essential part of who they are and the way they live their lives.

In India, Hinduism continues to underpin perhaps the most oppressive, enduring, and unfair class system the world has ever known.

Although theists often tout their “God”-given laws as the one and only source of human morality, the fact remains that numerous studies have revealed atheists to be at least as moral as theists, juvenile delinquency does not correlate with atheism, atheists are under represented in American prisons, and violent criminal acts actually seem to occur moreoften in areas and among people considered to be more religious.

Go to Part 6D