Religion Impedes Moral and Human Advancement

I introduced a friend of mine to an LDS blog I had been posting to, this was his observation:

“I’ve been looking through some of these blogs. There are some people who will believe the church is true no matter what preponderance of evidence shows that it is not true. They will always interpret the facts in a way that makes perfect sense to them. These folks claim they know the truth, and there is no amount of outside stimuli that will change their minds. There must be some part of human nature that drives people to want uniformity. Everybody should be, look, and act and believe in the same thing. If you don’t believe, there must be something wrong with you. That makes no sense to me. The only thing that does make sense is that is how humans evolved. The ones that gathered into groups and worked as a team were the ones who survived and killed off the groups who couldn’t organize as well. And religion seems to be an artifact of something that evolved with us over the millions of years…”

I agree with this and believe a study of the origin of man and ancient religions there does seem to be substantial evidence to support this. We can see how Religion has evolved. Overly simplified and just one of many examples, you start with humans that feared much because they did not understand much about their natural world and while in the infancy of discovery used myths to explain natural phenomena , storms, lightening, thunder, were perhaps a God’s anger; There were many ideas on how to keep the Gods happy, one example would be human sacrifice. Many of these earlier God myths clearly were incorporated into all three of the current monotheist religions that dominate our world. As we have discovered more and more about our natural world and no longer use God myths to explain so much we have also started to discard many of the things contained in our ancient sacred texts, slowly we are becoming much more moral not because we believe in some ancient writing but because our social conscience and morals continuously evolve as we as a human race discard these old and outdated beliefs, for real morals and as we put these moral principles into practice and we see the benefit to society we move even further ahead. Unfortunately it seems with every step forward, some religious fundamentalist group comes along and moves us back again. In my opinion religion is and has held back real moral and intellectual growth as a species. From current issues such as stem cell research, global warming, intelligent design and so and so on, and in the past the way it was used and still is used as a method for control and power over the masses etc.

My Daughters Wedding

Today my Daughter will be married in a LDS Temple. 

I am not permitted to attend.  I am not angry, just sad that my Daughter will not have her father or mother present at her actual wedding.  Quite possibly the LDS perspective would be that it is sad because I made the decision to leave the church and how awful for me as her father to now not see his daughter be married.  I have seen stories where an inactive father comes back into fold because he he can’t bare the thought of not seeing his daughter’s or son’s marriage, and also becoming a source of his new found testimony.  I have wondered if that is why the Church is so unbending on this issue as it sometimes works as a tool to prick someones heart or emotions to return, as there do seem to be many ways this situation could be resolved but for whatever reasons the leaders of the church still hold to this rule.   

 I love my daughter and I think her future husband is a fantastic young man.  They have made this choice to start their life together in a way that is very important to them, this I respect, I do not begrudge them even a tiny bit for following their beliefs. I do feel it is very unfortunate that certain people will be excluded from this ceremony as neither of my daughters parents will be with her as she is married.  My daughter is just simply following her beliefs it is the LDS church leadership that have made the choice that has this unfortunate element of exclusion. 

We will celebrate today, I will wait for their arrival at the reception location , there I will celebrate with them honor them and be with them on this memorable occasion.  I will watch the exchange of rings and vows as part of a ring ceremony before the reception.  We will visit and see friends, family and loved ones get reacquainted with those we have not seen for awhile because of time and distance.  It will be a wonderful day. 

Where do we get our Morals from? Evolution? Social Conscience? Religion?

Religion or Social Conscience?

I would suppose to some the question would be like which came first the chicken or the egg? It does seem however a good understanding of  evolution might just answer this question.

It seems those that believe in religious faith feel very strongly that without religion we would be an ugly society or world without morals. This is something I very strongly disagree with.

I think history has clearly shown how we as humans have evolved and developed our morals and values despite of religion. If you look around us even now most of the wars and horrific things being done by one culture or government to another have an underlying religious theme. Religion is not necessarily the instigator but tends to be  pretty good at justifying. Not just wars or physical harm, I think the larger problem today is the intolerance it breeds whether it be subtle or aggressive.  Most people of religious faith truly believe that they are tolerant and accepting of others.  I have witnessed first hand and think that a strong belief in an absolute truth based on religious myth can not truly allow a person to fully accept others who do not believe as they do.  It will and does cause divisiveness within families.  Religion hurts us as a society.

Do you think that we would have allowed our country to get into the current conflict with the middle east if there was not an underlying religious theme?

Here is an interesting link of an article I found: Scientist Finds the Beginnings of Morality in Primate Behavior

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/20/science/20moral.html?ex=1332043200&en=84f902c89c5a9173&ei=5124&partner=digg&exprod=digg