It is a fact that the world today is very religious. One needs only to examine how many religions there are as opposed to the single direction of “Atheism” to see this. Many feel that the tendency towards some sort of faith is proof for the existence of God. Many claim to derive great power from their religious practices. Many believe that their specific belief system is the only truth and that the whole world should be converted to their views. So why not you? There are about as many good arguments against religion as there are for it.

The religious drive was developed in very primitive societies. Human beings could not understand what they saw and experienced. Lightning was a scary mystery and crop growth was subject to scarcity and abundance at apparent random. People needed religion to explain the world to themselves. Religion was their weapon against the fear of life and the fear of death.

Despite the fact that people have meanwhile discovered science to explain the world to themselves, ancient religion survives well, as does the fear. One reason for this could be a type of “sheep” or “follow the leader” mentality. People are unwilling to trouble themselves with too much critical thinking, and therefore accept whatever they learn from their parents. This is the conformist paradigm.

Another reason is, as mentioned above, fear. There are all sorts of fear attached to religion: eternal damnation takes up a significant part of the religious energy. Christians for example believe that all non-Christians are damned to eternal hell. In more immediate terms, some are afraid that that life itself would be meaningless without religion, not to mention what such a lack of belief would mean for death.

This fear is responsible for many a religious atrocity. Religious leaders use it to their own advantage and the disadvantage of many. In ancient societies, human beings may have been simple enough to listen to their leaders without thinking about what they heard. But we live in the information society.

We have the freedom and the right to choose what to believe and what to discard. We are intelligent enough to decide what makes sense and what does not. We have the knowledge to determine who is self-serving and fraudulent and who is genuinely interested in serving the human evolutionary process.

We no longer have to kill or maim to bring our point across, and yet this still happens. We are no longer obliged to believe any specific thing, and yet we still do. Not learning from history seems to be our only consistent trait.

If more people grounded their views in the human rather than the religious viewpoint, perhaps we might have less starvation and murder in the world. We may have fewer power-hungry leaders who kill in the name of God, more who serve life rather than death, and peace rather than fear. A loving heart can change everything.