godisdead

I don't think that religion makes people better. Better - by what standard?

What you're saying in your first sentence is something I can agree with. But I think it contradicts your second statement. Religious people are good to the degree that they are only paying lip service to the ideals they have sworn obedience to. Stuff like self-sacrifice for God for example. Only those religious people who are hypocrites are better and they are better to the degree that they are hypocrites. You can't live on earth by the standard promoted by religion as it is directly opposed to everything you need to do to survive.

Those who are fanatics are consistent in their views, they are radicals, which means nothing but the fact that they are true to their beliefs. If you want to see which ideals religion promotes have a close look at what happens when religion is actually taken serious.

You will find that people will abandon reason and promote and enforce blind leadership to an ideal that is directly opposed to allowing man to survive on earth. What is promoted is giving up your life for God, living in poverty, fighting people who don't agree with your beliefs. Take a look at the Dark Ages, take a look at islamic fanatics. That's the ideal of religion carried out to its fullest.

Taking religion serious means promoting Intelligent Design, promoting that the earth is flat and that the sun revolves around the earth. And it involves burning those at the stake who say otherwise.

The best thing that has happened to Christianity was being confronted with the era of enlightenment and the current crippled version of Christianity finally allows people to live happily at least a little bit.

That Islam hasn't really gone through such a period of neutralization is what you can see in all these radical idiots claiming that it is the greatest thing in life to die for the sake of God and kill as many heretics as you can in the process.

And even if you take the violent part out of it, what remains? You promote ideals like turning the other cheek in face of injustice, blind belief over reason, blind obedience over free self-expression, original sin over self-esteem, poverty over wealth, chastity over sexual activity.

What a miserable life you must lead if you truly want to live by these ideals.

They are directly opposed to the what nature demands of man to survive.

Or as William Blake put it so eloquently:
"As the caterpillar chooses the fairest leaves to lay her eggs on, so the priest lays his curse on the fairest joys."

This is the nature of religion.

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