{"id":175,"date":"2021-03-06T22:14:08","date_gmt":"2021-03-07T04:14:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.writingforlife.net\/?p=175"},"modified":"2025-10-04T08:28:10","modified_gmt":"2025-10-04T14:28:10","slug":"the-downsides-of-religion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.writingforlife.net\/index.php\/2021\/03\/06\/the-downsides-of-religion\/","title":{"rendered":"The Downsides of Religion (aka Humanity Has a Lot to Lose, Too)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

This is the promised part 2 to the last post addressing Pascal\u2019s Wager.\u00a0 Buckle your seat belt, because this is going to be a long one for what was originally an individual supporting point.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Religion – and Christianity, my particular focus here – has its benefits.  It can provide peace of mind if you\u2019re sure you\u2019re saved.  It provides community.  In God you gain a friend who will never betray you or be unavailable to talk, whom you can be completely honest with (because like, he already knows all your secrets anyway), and is the ultimate \u201cI\u2019m personal friends with the owner\u201d card should he share your interest in a particular moment.  But, there are a lot of catches.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

Go to The Downsides of Religion<\/a> to keep reading!<\/p>\n<\/section>\n\n\n\n

\n

Choosing to be a Christian isn\u2019t a no-loss\/only-gain choice.\u00a0 It costs us, perhaps more than the chance of God’s being real is worth.\u00a0 The following examples may not be true for some people, but for many they are.\u00a0 I\u2019ve given most of them under the temporary assumption that all Christians believe in loving your neighbor and showing basic kindness to everyone, in order to avoid the counterargument that I\u2019m only thinking of the more militant believers who have missed those Bible verses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

  1. You spend Sundays and possibly Wednesdays in church. You spend time praying and reading the Bible.\u00a0 That time could have been spent in other ways (for example, writing).<\/li>
  2. You tithe, and\/or donate money to religious causes, spending thousands<\/em> if you\u2019re an adult.\u00a0 That\u2019s money that could have gone to St. Jude\u2019s, or your car payment, or your college fund, or something more productive than funding missionaries.<\/li>
  3. People sometimes pray and assume that\u2019s all they can do, when in fact they could have made a practical difference to help someone.<\/li>
  4. Religion frequently clashes with science, which slows down advances that could improve the quality of life for all of us.\u00a0 (The objection by some Catholic bishops to Johnson & Johnson\u2019s Covid vaccine is an example.)<\/li>
  5. Yes, religion may have many benefits in regards to mental health, but it also creates problems for some people.\u00a0 What if your elderly grandpa is a non-believer?\u00a0 You and\/or your Christian family will have anxiety over that, and grieve (needlessly) that he went to Hell should he die still a non-believer.\u00a0 What about the guilt you feel over sinning, when in fact what you did wasn\u2019t that bad and you were beating yourself up for nothing?\u00a0 What about the kids who are frightened into believing because they\u2019re terrified of Hell?\u00a0 Then of course there are the people who are encouraged to just trust God and pray more when they should be getting professional help for legitimate mental illnesses.<\/li>
  6. Religion is also a source of discrimination and other social issues. What if religion is wrong, and all the time someone spent preaching against homosexuality did nothing but make many people feel bad about themselves, and potentially tear apart families?\u00a0 What about the lesbian teenager whose family disproves of her identity because they believe she\u2019s living in sin?\u00a0 Even if they don\u2019t disown her, not having their support has an impact.\u00a0 Or the bisexual guy who, until the recent court decision, could have legally lost his job for his sexuality?\u00a0 What about the teen pregnancies that happen because adults assume that their kids \u201cwouldn\u2019t do that kind of thing,\u201d and consequently don\u2019t educate them on how to use birth control and have safe sex? (Fun fact, people do “that kind of thing” even if taught it’s sinful.)<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

    As I said before, not all the things I listed will be true for everyone as individuals.\u00a0 There are some Christians who don\u2019t oppose homosexuality.\u00a0 Many support science to some degree.\u00a0 Not everyone is particularly worried about getting to church on a regular basis.\u00a0 But, looking at the group overall, all these issues are present, and they stem from the religious foundation(s).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Choosing to be Christian, or otherwise religious, is not merely a \u201cfire insurance\u201d choice.\u00a0 You have to consider both the gains and<\/em> the losses.<\/p>\n<\/section>\n\n\n\n

    <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    This is the promised part 2 to the last post addressing Pascal\u2019s Wager.\u00a0 Buckle your seat belt, because this is going to be a long one for what was originally an individual supporting point. Religion […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":172,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[16,17,14],"class_list":["post-175","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-thinking","tag-atheism","tag-christianity","tag-religion"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.writingforlife.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/175","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.writingforlife.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.writingforlife.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.writingforlife.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.writingforlife.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=175"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.writingforlife.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/175\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":176,"href":"https:\/\/www.writingforlife.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/175\/revisions\/176"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.writingforlife.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/172"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.writingforlife.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=175"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.writingforlife.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=175"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.writingforlife.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=175"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}