Religion is Evil

/ January 17, 2016

evilreligion

I see religions not as misguided, but as actually evil.
Not for what they are, but for what they make us become.

I am a frequent and outspoken critic of religion. Most of my criticism has been of the pernicious effects of religion on public discourse and government policy.

But an even more troubling aspect of religion is its affect on people’s concept of justice.  If one believes that there is a god, and that god is just and fair, then the urgency to make things right in the here and now becomes relatively unimportant, as god will sort it out. The Hitlers and Pol Pots will be punished, murderers will be held to account, even those who are cruel to animals will get their comeuppance!

And if people buy into the whole idea of god giving humans dominion over the animals, so is born the root cause of all animal abuse, cruelty and exploitation.

 

 

Author’s Notes:

• I am unaware of any other blog with the Armory’s mission of radicalizing the animal movement. I certainly hope I am not alone, and that there are similar sentiments being expressed by comrades unknown to me.

If you know of other blogs dedicated to animal rights and the defeat of capitalism, please comment with a link.

• Be sure to follow the Armory and share it with your Facebook friends and email contacts, as well as on Twitter, Google, and all other social media platforms. Our influence and effectiveness is dependent upon you!

• Natasha Sainsbury, of Good Karma Graphic Design, has joined Armory of the Revolution as Editor, and is responsible for the transformation of the blog’s appearance. Visit and follow her blog V Kind.

• If you are not already subscribed to the Armory, please do so before you leave.

There’s a button to Follow us in the upper right sidebar.

• Be sure to visit Armory of the Revolution’s new commissary and bookstore: The Supply Depot

You will find recommended reading on Animal Rights, revolutionary theory, politics, economics, religion, science, and atheism. There is also a section of supplies for animal liberationists, hunt saboteurs, and social revolutionaries. This is all brand new, and we will be adding lots more merchandise in the near future!

• Feel free to comment. I encourage open discussion and welcome other opinions. I moderate comments because this blog has been attacked by hunters and right wing trolls. I approve comments that are critical as well as those which agree with me. Comments that I will not tolerate are those that are spam, threatening, disrespectful, or which promote animal abuse and cruelty.

Related posts

21 thoughts on “Religion is Evil”

  2. Mercy and Compassion
    The Qur’an is clear about the special lives of animals:
    Seest thou not that it is Allah Whose praise all beings in the heavens and on earth do celebrate, and the birds (of the air) with wings outspread? Each one knows its own (mode of) prayer and praise, and Allah knows well all that they do. Sura 24:41
    There is not an animal (that lives) on the earth, nor a being that flies on its wings, but (forms part of) communities like you. Nothing have We omitted from the Book, and they (all) shall be gathered to their Lord in the end. Sura 6:38 http://www.islamicconcern.com/halalvegetarianism.asp

    Like

    Reply

  3. I don’t agree, I’m very faithful to my religion and I love and defend animals and people who are being treated unjustly. Its people who are evil not God. Everything good comes from God. Anything bad comes from the consequences of our own deeds. Plenty of atheist people abuse animals and people and do all kinds of crimes because they have no one to answer too. Many are also depressed because they dont know the meaning of life. Religion answers the questions. For the record.. in Islam its forbidden to abuse Gods creatures. Some people (muslims) still do it that makes them evil, not God or Islam. God says the animals are communities just like us and they will be called by God. I used to be catholic and animal abuse was never advocated. Its not Gods fault people are sinners but they will answer to God in the end. Quran 14:42 Do not ever think that God is unaware of what the transgressors are doing. He only respites them until a day where the eyes stare in horror.

    Like

    Reply

    • I also used to be a Catholic. But to say that animal abuse was never advocated is equivalent to damning with faint praise.

      This is from the Catechism of the Catholic Church: “It is contrary to human dignity (shades of St. Thomas Aquinas here!) to cause animals to suffer or die needlessly.” That “needlessly” opens many doors of misery to animals. Also: “One can love animals; one should not direct to them the affection due only to persons.”

      The above were taken from section 2418 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, which deals with the Seventh Commandment, Thou Shalt Not Kill. Thus giving to animals either money or good care is equivalent to thievery, since all should belong only to human beings.

      In the years I wrote letters to the editors to Catholic journals and bishops and talked with members of the clergy, I could not even get a condemnation of bullfighting!! One priest noted that it was “part of the culture.” Well, Father, infanticide was part of some cultures, witch burning was part of European culture, suttee was part of Indian culture (widows required to immolate themselves on their husband’s funeral pyre). The Church would deem all of them sinful and barbaric. Catholic theologians and the curia need to reevaluate and change the institution’s position on animals too. But they won’t. It would alienate too many good church goers.

      Like

      Reply

    • BreezeCyclone, Thank you for this. Exactly what I think must be the case. We can NEVER judge a race or a faith on a general assumption caused by what some do! I have seen e.g. a documentary here in New Zealand, the reporter interviewing a good-living Muslim family. When asked why they tend not to fully ‘integrate’, the mother replied that it’s mainly because they do not want their daughters to meet up with drugs and alcohol, become pregnant etc….

      Like

      Reply

  4. This is refreshing to me. For years as an animal advocate I have been saying that we need to confront the hypocrisy of religion. No matter how much we talk to people who believe God wrote the bible, we will never get them to change their views on abusing animals….Why? because God in the Bible approves of animal cruelty. . We maybe able to help religious people or inspire them to change, but if they believe God wrote the bible, we are lost and so are the animals. There are scriptures in the bible that approve of animal, human abuse, rape, genocide, etc. To make the point I have 2 religious sisters who believe God gave us animals to kill and eat because they cherry pick the scriptures from the bible they want to follow, and disregard the rest they don’t want to follow. So we need a plan to reach these people. As long as the pope, priests, ministers, etc. believe animals are here for us to use and abuse, nothing will change. What can we do to change this?

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

    • Hi, all, A very absorbing book just published on Amazon, and soon in hardback, is “The Last Letters of Jesus” written as an historical novel following ten years of intensive research into the facts of the situation at the time of Jesus (Rabbi Yeshua)’s death. The Judean Jews practiced animal (blood) sacrifice, and tried to convert the Israeli Jews to that horrific practice. Jesus, the Essenes, John the Baptist and the Israeli Jews totally rejected blood- sacrifice of any kind – animal or human. Jesus had to choose, and He continued to choose the Way of Life, not Death. It cost him His earthly life. I ‘couldn’t put the book down” Utterly ab sorbing. http://www.lastlettersofjesus.com It covers all the points I had never been able to accept re what Christianity had taught us!

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply

  5. Logic eludes people when they use religion to excuse animal abuse.

    For example, the Church insists that people have a special status before God, a special relationship, because they have souls and animals do not. The problem: Souls have no physical properties. They cannot be seen, heard, or measured. Therefore, human beings cannot prove they have souls. And since a negative cannot be proven logically, they cannot prove that animals do not have souls. So people have no inherent right to abuse animals based on the possession, or lack thereof, of souls.

    A second problem has to do with the attributes of God, Who is said to be all-powerful, all-knowing, all-just, and all -merciful. If God were all-powerful, He could have devised a better creature than H. sapiens, with all the species’ weaknesses and evil tendencies. If God were all-knowing, He would have foreseen that human beings would be guilty of original sin and that they would have many undesirable qualities, including an inclination to cruelty. If God were all-just, He would punish human beings for harming animals and would have given animals souls so they could be compensated in Eternity for the suffering done in Time. If God were all-merciful, he would not allow animals to be tortured at all because they are wholly innocent and cannot do anything to merit pain and suffering.

    Why don’t we just take God out of the equation and admit H. sapiens is a deeply flawed creature but one that has the moral capacity to be held accountable for ALL acts of cruelty.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

  6. To be honest, I see that as kind of circular… It takes evil people for violent religious ideology to even exist in the first place. Religion is a symptom of human evil, not a cause. I definitely agree with how warped and damaged religious peoples’ concepts of justice and ethics seem to be… Particularly when they were indoctrinated as children. Identical to carnism, actually. I think that religious (of which carnism is one) indoctrination in kids amounts to child abuse and is exceedingly damaging to their developing minds and sense of reality and morality.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

      • Hmm, maybe I should have used a comma. Violent, religious ideology. 😛 I wouldn’t think of benign or benevolent as being applicable descriptors of the concept of religious doctrine at all, so didn’t feel the need to differentiate. What I meant by saying the word violent was actually to reinforce that religious dogma is inherently violent to begin with. I also consider killing or stifling reasoned discourse, logic, or free thought and ethical exploration/observation, etc. as violent as well.

        I do like a few of the atheistic worldviews… I have borrowed a few concepts from Buddhism in my own worldview, and greatly enjoy the teachings of a few Buddhist philosophers as well as some of the ideas of Wicca and Hinduism. But even those ideas should never be forced upon anyone; they are simply there to explore if you so choose, and if in your travels you reach those same conclusions on your own and happen to enjoy that philosophy as it *already* agrees with you, then you can decide to affiliate yourself with it and I have no problem with that.

        The point is, though, that it’s the religious people treating their religion as something objective and trying to force it on others that defines ‘religion’ itself. The word “Religion” itself literally translates to “A group of religious people” in my mind, and I can’t even fathom how others could possibly think it means anything else. I don’t like to speak of or treat religion as anything other than what it really is… An aspect of human psychology. To make the claim that religion has an existence of any kind outside the mind of the religious person is exactly the same claim that they themselves are making, and that’s what needs to be discouraged.

        There is a very, very clear difference to me between the words ‘religion’ and ‘worldview’. So, to me, to say “Religion is evil” in an objective way like that is kind of self-defeating. Something that does not exist, even within the frame of logical thought itself, cannot be evil, or good; and to me the word religion itself is inextricable from the religious people themselves and their specific beliefs. Religion is a description of the state of mind of a religious person; no more and no less. Maybe that person is evil, sure. In fact, it’s much more likely than not. But that’s really all that you can say as that’s all that exists in the sphere of conceptual space to begin with.

        TL;DR: When I hear “religion is X” that is identical to hearing “The psychology in some humans that leads to religious belief is X”. There’s no such thing as religious dogma per se, just a bunch of crazy people who try to enforce their crazy and hurt others in the process of doing so. Those are the ones who are evil, as they are essentially going around hurting and manipulating others for no reason (spouting a bunch of unintelligible gibberish = no reason. :p)

        Like

  9. No, Roland, my Friend. It is ‘man’ who is evil; NOT GOD.

    JESUS is Perfect.

    It is so-called Christians who have caused you to reject Christianity. JESUS Himself is Perfect and Wonderful – always ‘there for us’, for you and I; never hurting or harming any one single sole/person; Teaching; Healing – making whole; Loving; Comforting. It is NOT JESUS who has Hurt you; Harmed you; been Hypercritical; LIED to you; Cheated you. It is ‘man’. So-called Christian ‘man’ who does those things to us – to you and I Roland. NOT JESUS. Never. JESUS Himself is Perfect and Wonderful.

    You and I are Vegan-Fellow-Warriors and Facebook Friends Roland. We are ‘in GOOD Company’, for :

    TODAY JESUS would NEVER EVER be a “meat eater”. He would be a Vegan. Simple.

    Want 100% PROOF; yes 100% ?

    Read at eBook – it is a Free Read :

    http://epublishbyus.com/cry_out_by_jesus_the…/10042317

    Lord Bless, Michael.

    Like

    Reply

  10. Yes, that is one of the false ideas within religion – at least in the West……that God will do it all for us – that according to the story of original sin, we are all useless sinners who needed a blood-sacrifice to appease God for our sins. (There is a book just published on Amazon which tells a very different story  –  based on ten years of research into the situation at the time of Jesus’ crucifixion, and the war between the Judean Jews with their belief in and practicing of the vicious animal-sacrifice…..and the Rabbi Yeshua (Jesus) and his followers, Israeli Jews. He totally rejected the Judeans’ practice, and it cost Him His life..   –  lastlettersofjesus.com/)   And no wonder people can’t accept the false god of judgment and punishment depicted by Paul..    So many people believe that God it is who sends troubles and tragedies, yet if one examines them there is ALWAYS the element of human error. Professor Lloyd Geering, decried for his pronouncements, said, “The only hands God has are our hands…”  It is WE who must try to correct the wrongs on this planet.

    Like

    Reply

Leave a comment

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.