Religion is historically among the most difficult experiences to define due to its personal and “divine” nature, but that doesn’t stop those with curious minds from asking, What is religion? The best giveable answer is that religion is a deeply rooted and highly individualized lens through which a person views the world. It is a tie that binds people together through faith and practice regarding what an individual finds to be the divine or absolute. We have religion because, historically, as well as mythologically speaking, we can’t not. Humans believe in something omnipotent for the same reason they do many other things: to make sense of the unsensible. Reality is a sort of sensory overload for the general population of mankind, and the concept of religion was created to solve that problem. The belief in the divine is a way to answer questions we could not possibly discover otherwise. However, the real question lies within the intent. Is religion beneficial to our world and its people? And the answer, I have found, is no.
While the grounds for the creation of religion was to answer questions, it seems that over the course of history, religion has only raised more. Why is this acceptable? Religion, specifically that of Christianity (as it is the only religion with which I have any experience), tells its followers that if a question is not to be answered completely within said practice’s holy text then they must simply be content with not knowing and letting it rest in the hands of its God. Theism, in this respect, strips mankind of its most primal need: the need to discover and to answer. Since the beginning of time, humans have been an exploratory species. We are always figuring, solving, searching for the answers we need to feel more comfortable in our realm of life. It’s the age old, world wide truth that humans fear most what we cannot know or understand. Religion plays off of this, while giving a false sense of security to its followers by telling them that they themselves do not need to know because someone else more benevolent and powerful already does.
Secondly, the belief in the divine is toxic due to its “reward and punishment” inner workings. While religion does have a positive influence in the sense that it gives many people direction and purpose in their lives and prevents the spread of chaos by outlining good values and morals, it teaches people to expect the universe— or more accurately, their God— to give something back. It is a sad truth that most people avid in their theism do the tenderhearted things they do because, in the long run, they are expecting to be rewarded for it. Conversely, believers of Christianity are raised expecting to rot in a fiery inferno forever for even the slightest wrongdoing in life. This is the belief system that has raised 31.5% of the entire world’s population. There are over 2 billion people on Earth that believe that because they follow a very simple, basic code of moral conduct (i.e. not killing people, cheating on their spouses, or helping the needy) they deserve special treatment in the form of everlasting paradise after death. And this is toxic thinking in that with this idea some people in the world deserve better than others simply for where they choose to put their faith.
Lastly, religion is a complex that places itself above nearly everything else. While there are technically thousands upon thousand of religions in the world with an unlimited number of belief systems, each one manages to claim themselves as the only one, true religion out of them all. This in itself is a cultural divide. Lives have been lost and wars have been fought for the purpose of one side getting to claim victory and prove a point. A toxic ideal if ever there was one.
In conclusion, religion is not a beneficial practice for society. Granted, it provides a wide, diverse range of ways to perceive the world in which its followers can understand, but it also creates an equal amount of problems. Religion denies people truths and teaches them to expect to gain something from doing nothing, all while claiming that each individual one is somehow more important and correct than the others that surround it. It is a complex and complicated theory to explain that religion is needed at an individual level, but not a societal level. Belief in the divine is essentially a human made way to answer the questions we ask ourselves to which we can never discover an answer. It is a necessary and important ideal for each individual to claim their own religion or lackthereof for a personal reason, but once theism escapes the grasp of the individual and moves into a larger crowd, humanity finds that the very thing that was created to bring them together, is what will tear them apart.
