Anti-Religion

Its 10:07pm. Often, you'll find me playing a game or two of spider solitaire at this time of night. Since that's not a possibility anymore, I find myself using my brain instead, writing this here blog. And that's awesome.
So I'm reading a book I bought a few days ago entitled "The End of Faith." On the back cover of the book, Johann Hari of The Independent magazine provides a quote. He states, "Sam Harris launches a sustained nuclear assault...The End of Faith is a brave, pugilistic attempt to demolish the walls that currently insulate religious people from criticism...The End of Faith is badly needed." Upon reading that, and after skimming over the contents of the book, I got a little excited and I had to buy it, despite having no idea what "pugilistic" meant.
For years now I've been vehemently anti-religion. Of course, this shouldn't be confused with looking down on believers, because it would be silly to find fault with billions of people around the world who practice one religion or another. I was one of the believers when I was younger, and if circumstances had been slightly different, I would still be one. That said, I'm am so anti-religion its crazy. Religion has had it soooo easy for soooo long. If I could name something that has had the least amount of criticism in relation to the criticism it deserves, it would be religion in general or faith in particular. Religion has retarded society's intellectual and emotional progress; is responsible for war after war, and as a result, the death of millions; deprives believers of happier lives; acts as a cover and a tool for those who wish to wield power over society; condones and supports a subserviant/totalitarian hierarchical structure; increases conformity and hinders creativity; and speaks something akin to blasphemy when it calls humans and natural human behavior sinful, threatening us all with hell for being who we are. So, yeah, I'm not a fan of religion. Neither is Sam Harris, the author of The End of Faith; Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason. He really calls religion out and holds no punches when he writes things like:

"The idea...that religious faith is somehow a sacred human convention-distinguished, as it is, both by the extravagance of its claims and by the paucity of its evidence-is really too great a monstrosity to be appreciated in all its glory. Religious faith represents so uncompromising a misuse of the power of our minds that it forms a kind of perverse, cultural singularity-a vanishing point beyond which rational discourse proves impossible. When foisted upon each generation anew, it renders us incapable of realizing just how much of our world has been unnecessarily ceded to a dark and barbarous past."

Of course, Harris backs up his harsh criticism with facts and solid points. One demographic observation that I found entertaining was that "120 million (Americans who interpret the bible literally) place the big bang 2,500 years after the Babylonians and Sumerians learned to brew beer."

Maybe one of these days, the argument against religion won't be derided as evil or unfair or insensitive the exact moment it is made. Its funny, society has granted respect to something that 1) harms us in all the ways mentioned before, and 2) is backed by the least amount of reason, evidence, or internal consistency (the Bible). Anyway, I know what Christianity's answers would be to the challenges Sam and I pose, and at this point I'm just unwilling to pay the price of simply "having faith" or "feeling the spirit". Too often, those answers have led to tragedy for both society and individuals.