Originally Posted by jerkules

When religion primarily teaches moralizing, shaming, quilting, judging, and retribution, then clearly it warps peoples' minds and convinces them that their own culturally osmosed beliefs are divinely inspired. It becomes a scapegoating pathology to justify ones own abhorrent behavior and feel that one has divine providence to be awful, especially when one believes that it is "Good" when God is awful.

When religion centres its teachings around curiosity about the natural world, the cultivation of genuine compassion for fellow beings, and the practices of introspection and meditation, then it is an indispensable tool. These can be thought of as secular teachings as well, but the word religion used to mean "careful contemplation of the divine." Categorizing people into camps of theists and atheists or believers and non-believers is not terribly useful. Within all of these groups exists the very real capacity to either separate human beings on superficial grounds or unite human beings based on a deeper and more profound understanding of life.