Many people believe that religions teach good stuff. Well, good or bad depends a lot on points of view. However, let’s ignore that aspect for a while.
The religious teachings are not the problem.
The problem with religion is not what it teach. The problem is in how people believe and defend the teachings.
I’ll give you an example. Say I have a scientific believe that knocking someone’s’ head with a sledge hammer will lead to higher intelligence.
I then market my “discovery” and start a doctor practice. What will happen? What happen is people will come to my practice, get killed, and die.
Now I’ll probably go to jail for killing people, but let’s ignore that aspect for a moment.
What happen is I have disproved the believe that hitting people in the head increase intelligence. I don’t hold that belief by faith. I correct my believes based on evidence. When the evidences show otherwise, I change my beliefs.
Now I no longer increases people’s IQ with sledge hammer. I increase their IQ with genetic therapy, for example. So the damage that I cause are limited.
What about if I am religious?
Well, I’ll just belief on my opinion irrelevant of the evidence. Once my patients die, I will declare that the cause is lack of faith. I will condemn those who do not belief on my one true method as heretical.
You see how the number of people that die will be much more?
We see something similar in religion. To stop corruption, for example, we would naturally demand less government interferences on consensual acts.
With less government, humans, following their nature will mainly perform acts that are mutually beneficial. This will mean that the only ways they can achieve their interests are by profiting others. We will end up profiting each other rather than killing each other.
Is that what religious leaders would prescribe? No. Religious leaders will demand that the key to end corruption is to teach religious values in schools.
That means more governments. That means governments decide how to run your life. Then the natural will happen. People will start bribing governments officials so that their life can be run more correctly. More corruption!
In fact, in Indonesia, for example, it’s not a coincidence that the most corrupt departments are religious department and education department. Apparently, corruptors know the profit made by the false statements and hence support these false notion all the way.
Then what? If religious people are scientific minded, and some are, like the liberal Muslims, or libertarian Christians, they will change their mind. But not typical religious people.
Most of them simply say that the corruptions happen due to lack of morality. That the solution of the problems are even more governments. You see why corrupt governments endorse religion so much?
When Tsunami hit Indonesia, scientifically minded people will come up with ways to build banks on the seashore. Who knows one day we will be able to generate electricity through Tsunamis. Religious people will simply say that Tsunami happened because God was mad. God was mad because you watch porn or read secular articles on the net.
Then what will happen? I don’t know. Just more oppression I guess. The next time Tsunami hits, there will be about the same number of people killed.
I must admit that religions teach many things that improve our standard of living.
Jesus, for example, taught that the greatest among us are those who serve. That’s seem like a case for capitalism. Under free trade capitalism, the greatest among us are the one providing the best services to the most customers.
This is not obvious. Imagine if you live during Genghis Khan era. You come to the great Khan and says, “Hi great Khan. I have a good book for you to read. It’s called, “Up your service.” With this book we can improve our customers’ satisfaction and hence our interests.
Gengish Khan would get really confused. That’s anachronistic. What’s the point of satisfying customers. Before capitalism, the way to get rich is to kill others, not to build better products or improving others’ satisfaction. If you wanted to get rich in ancient time, you read “Art of War in 13 Chapters.” You don’t read “Up your service.” Capitalism change that.
Is capitalism a Christian value? Well, most of us would say no. If you go to church, they’re not going to teach you to improve customer service. Church is there to teach you not to watch porn or have free sex outside life long monogamous marriage. So what happen?
What happen is, those who will lead our future to a brighter side do not resort to religions to make their point. They use sciences. Even though their acts often matches religious teachings more, they simply use science to make their point.
We don’t choose capitalism because the pope says so. We choose capitalism because we know it works. We know scientifically, empirically, theoretically, that capitalistic principles are one of the main ways to get us prosper. This while many Christians often condemn capitalists and greed.
Not only that, women prefer the rich. Under capitalism, the richest among us are those who serve. If sex is free, those who meekly serve others through capitalistic means will get richer. Then they will attract more women. Then they’ll produce more kids.
Hows’ that for “The meek shall inherit the earth,” which is another Jesus teaching? Now when did the last time you hear a born again Christian support elimination of all laws against consensual sex?
Other religions are pretty much the same. I am not familiar with Islam. However, from the little that I know, I saw a similarity. For example, proponent of low tax do not typically quote Quran. The Muslim’s bible requires the productive to pay only 2% of their income for wealth redistribution.
Proponent of low tax uses scientific findings to show how lower tax will more properly align humans’ nature to productivity for the good of all. They do not need to resort to Quran to make their point.
Proponents of free sex, often points out, that since women prefer the rich, free sex can greatly reduce disparity of wealth and improve overall prosperity. That’s because males will have strong intensives to get rich. Also, richer males will mate with more females and produce more kids. Hence, richer males will distribute his wealth to more kids. Hence every body will start of with roughly more similar chances. This will reduce disparity of wealth.
Finally, did you ever wonder why your dentists are paid too high? That’s because your dentists are under represented in the gene pool. Those with rare talents will make more money, and become abundance. When they become abundance, their talents will worth less. Again this will reduce disparity of wealth.
In fact, I’ve read that this is the reason why the Muslims’ scripture condone polygamy. Monogamy, which rations females in equal share for everyone manners to all males pretty much remove males’ main, if not sole’ intensive to make a lot money. That’s how the early Muslims could afford feeding all their poor with only 2% redistribution of wealth. All the poor are single males that are very cheap to maintain.
So people that support free sex will, arguably, move societies closer to what the Quran’s intended. Do those who support free sex use Quran’s as their justification? The usual cases are the opposites.
It’s obvious. So even though the values that the libertarian promotes tend to match the desired social norms prescribes by religious scriptures, smart well intentioned people simply resorts to science. They do not use religions as their justification to motivate us to follow their ideas.
People resorts to religious justification when they have hidden motives too embarrassing to describe openly.
For example, if sex is deregulated, then women prefer the rich. What those who fail to contribute enough to the society will do? What would those already over represented in the gene pool but still greedily make way more kids while enslaving the rest of us to support their kids would say? They will say rich are evil. They will say that deregulation of sex is evil. They will spend night and day condemning free sex and free trades oppressing productive people with better offers.
We would expect that people who are sexually unattractive to oppose free sex. It’s the same reason why those who give you bad offers oppose free trades. The real purposes are to get rid tougher competitors. It’s that simple. However, they’re not going to say, I support governments’ regulation on sex because I am sexually unattractive. Attractiveness is partly self fulfilling subjective. So what would they count on? Guess what? Religion.
Corruptors often want governments to decide what you should learn in school. That way they can corrupt more money. They can also ensure that you don’t learn the good stuff that’ll make money so you stay in poverty and hence more likely to demand more governments. This is obviously a highly unproductive acts. Yet, naturally, the corruptors want people to support their agendas. So what would political leaders often promote? Guess what? Religion.
Religions are not the only problems. Virtually all ideologies are held like religions. People just pick Communism, Nazism, fascism, democracy, without thinking ahead of what would naturally happen under all those ideologies. When people held ideologies like they held religions, then we’ll run into the same problem religions have given us.