I want to be clear here: if I lived in Europe, I would not give two shits about religion. But this is America. Every single president has been Christian. Obama, as far as I know, was the first president to even acknowledge that Atheists existed and were a part of American society. The only reason I even care is that in America, religious belief informs public policy.


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The above is pretty consistent with what you guys are saying. There is a very large chunk of the poplulation that believes in God driven evolution (whatever that means). Still, fully 40% of the population believes that God created humans in their current form. I ask: how is a person who believes that informed enough to take part in an informed debate about anything? Maybe they're good people, maybe they're not. Like I said before, there's not really a correlation between morality and religion.

In the United States population, 76% of people identify as Christian, while only 15% identify as not religious (source). In Congress, the disparity is much larger: not a single member of congress in either house identified as unaffiliated with a religion, and only six members do not specify a religion, which amounts to 1.1% of the 535 members of congress. That implies that the non-religious are completely unrepresented in congress. By contrast, 90.3% of congressman are Christian, and 7.3% are Jews, a total of 522 out of 535 congressmen (source). Nearly 98% of the people we elect to congress are informed by old testament theology. Only two congressmen are Muslim. In the face of those overwhelming odds, how does religion in this country just "grow up"?

The inherent problem is that religious organizations are as much political organizations as spiritual ones. They donate to political campaigns. They endorse candidates. As implied by the above numbers, you absolutely have to appeal to a religious group to get elected, with few exceptions.

And like any political organization, religious groups seek to hold on to their power. And religions gain and hold power by indoctrinating people and keeping them indocrinated. Something like evolution is a vitally important debate topic, and a very divisive issue, precisely because it is a playing field where the non-religious have direct evidence that what is written in the bible is not true. And in the face of that evidence, fully 40% of the adult population of the United States still believe that human beings were created by God in their current form. That is not some fringe lunatic group: if you break down the groups by belief, that is the largest. More people believe that than believe that God guided evolution.

In addition to that, 55% of the adult population in this country believes that homosexuality is a sin (source). How exactly is that a positive thing in any way? Why do we need to hold on to this outdated way of looking at the world? There are just so many fucking people in this country who believe things simply because the bible deems it so. I realize that you (mainly Gwahir) are espousing that Christianity take the good, and leave the bad, but from a religious establishment perspective, isn't the goal to force the belief of all of it? Religion relies on fear. Many people are simply afraid to reject anything their pastor says to them. That's why you have 40% of people rejecting evolution, and 55% believing homosexuality is a sin.

I will grant that the large number of people who believe in God guided evolution is encouraging. But I keep going back to that first group: the one that rejects evolution entirely. It's a scary thought that 40% of the adult population believes that. It really leads me to believe that religion in general is not a source of enlightenment, but an excuse to shield one's eyes from the truth. Free thought is a source of enlightenment. Intellectual curiosity is a source of enlightenment. Religion is an excuse to hide one's head in the sand and reject the evidence that exists in the world as to what's out there, what it all means, and how it came to be.

Ultimately, my recurring question is this: how do we as a society reform religion to take only the good? Wouldn't it be easier to just reject the bible entirely as a work of fiction (or at best a flawed oral history in book form, with the acceptance that all supernatural occurrences are fictional), and then come up with better ways as a society to teach morality to our children?