In 1925, the state of Tennessee in the United States enacted a law prohibiting the teaching of evolution in school classrooms. To test the effectiveness of this law, the American Civil Liberties Union sponsored a test by funding a biology teacher named John Thomas Scopes to teach evolution through certain chapters of George William Hunter's civic biology textbook. As expected, the teacher was accused and the case, known as the Scopes Trial or the Monkey Trial, gained nationwide attention. The teacher was ultimately found guilty. It wasn't until 1967 that the law was repealed. This is just one example, as even today, there is still a certain degree of conflict between religion and evolution in many schools in the United States and around the world.
In 1928, Zhang Weizong's book "Evolution ABC" was published by ABC Book Company and distributed by World Bookstore. It mentioned that an American magazine, after consulting opinions from famous scholars around the world, came to an important conclusion that Charles Darwin's "On the Origin of Species" was "the work that had the greatest impact on human thought" in the 19th century. Of course, we don't know if this is true or not, but it does show its influence. Today, I want to talk about my religious views as an atheist, not some grand and empty theory, but a simple statement.
Religion, in general, is an organizational form.
In my understanding, religion is a systematic theoretical faction based on theism, with a tightly organized structure and the ultimate goal of widespread dissemination to make everyone a sect believer.
Religion does not equal theism, and theism does not necessarily mean religion. This is the premise of our understanding. Regardless of how religious organizations understand and interpret themselves, what they demonstrate is an organization. So when we mention Christianity, we are referring to the organization created by Jesus and his disciples; when we mention Islam, we are referring to the organization created by Muhammad and his followers. The same goes for Buddhism, Judaism, Mormonism, Sikhism, Taoism, and so on.
In many cases, we do not actively mention religion because religion has a strong ideological stickiness, and people are easily influenced by religious values. Mentioning religion, unless it is praise, is likely to provoke anger. Religion has unavoidable flaws from almost any perspective, but it still appears to be something like a perfect carbon 60 structure, which appears to be a sphere but actually leaks air everywhere.
Religion has attributes of despotism, inclusiveness, and other chaotic properties.
In terms of specific forms, we find that monotheistic religions often exhibit a form of despotism, while polytheistic religions exhibit great chaos. Despotism is manifested in their extreme exclusion of other religions and the prohibition of comparing non-divine figures with gods. Many things are determined by gods, and everything is subject to a supreme being. Chaos is manifested in the fact that some religions often have thousands of gods, and different gods have different believers. Some believers may believe in a few gods and not believe in others, such as Hinduism, which may have more gods than some countries have people. With so many gods, a person may not be able to count them in a lifetime, so this kind of religion often establishes a main god and the others are subordinate or minor gods, and their manifestations are simply making people prosperous in some kind of divinity, such as superpowers, so people often mix them with reality.
Monotheistic Despotism
The monotheistic systems of Christianity, including Christianity, Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy, Judaism, and Islam, are all monotheistic religions. The important theories of these monotheistic religions are based on an unquestionable divine creator. People only have the power to admire, worship, and praise this creator, but not the power to criticize, oppose, or insult. This is the characteristic of monotheistic religions.
In the Confucian traditional system, there is a so-called "gentleman theory," and in Christianity, there is the concept of the righteous. By promoting the concept of the righteous, the behavior of the unrighteous can be corrected, and people can lose their doubts about religion and become gatekeepers of the monotheistic empire. This is an important characteristic of the Christian series.
Although the United States appears to have deep grievances with Islam on the surface, Christianity and Islam are of the same origin and even worship the same god, both being monotheistic religions. Therefore, they must have some points of cooperation, such as opposition to atheism. During the Cold War period when the United States and the Soviet Union were in confrontation, they had already targeted the Middle East for propaganda, as evidenced by some declassified documents stating that "the three monotheistic religions in the region all oppose atheism in communist doctrine, which can be an important asset in promoting Western goals in the region."
The Americans used the hatred of the Islamic world towards unbelievers as the ideological root and used various means to propagate the coercion of atheism. Combined with some local extremist fundamentalists of Islam, people could not have a rational understanding of atheism. Therefore, it is not surprising that the Monkey Trial occurred in a country like the United States.
We know that in modern human society, there are two things that compete for human values: politics and religion. Politics is something that everyone encounters, but religion is not. Therefore, an important issue in today's society is to resist political despotism. If all countries in the world achieve political democratization, will monotheistic religions be the next target? I don't think so. This kind of theism organization, which appears to have an extremely despotic form, is not something that can be changed in an instant like politicians. It has been passed down for hundreds or even thousands of years. In this way, their prestige is much higher than that of any human politician. Therefore, people who are not part of the religion will not try to criticize and deny the despotic system of monotheism within the religion. At the same time, in some religious scriptures, it has long been written about the consequences of doubting the religious leader, and people may not be afraid of going to hell themselves, but they will certainly behave more faithfully because they are afraid of not being able to go to heaven. As a result, the despotic system of monotheistic religions will be perpetuated within the religion.
Polytheistic Chaos and Tolerance
When it comes to polytheistic religions, at least half of the people will think of Hinduism, but religions like Buddhism and Taoism are essentially the same. It's just that Buddhism and Taoism bring together all the named Buddhas and immortals, and they may not have as many as a single hair of Hinduism. The biggest problem with polytheistic religions in reality is that they lack cohesion. Ordinary people may not specifically believe in a religion, but most people believe in both Buddha's blessings and the gods of wealth and longevity. This creates a mixture of religious beliefs in a person, and their religious understanding is relatively more peaceful compared to monotheistic religions.
In this way, polytheistic religions appear to be very inclusive. Even when Buddhism entered China more than a thousand years ago, it merged with Taoism and Confucianism, forming a harmonious relationship without any signs of conflict. This seems to indicate that in order to achieve peace, religions need to undergo a process of polytheism transformation. However, this situation essentially treats religion as a sacred object, to the point where a supposedly "atheistic" religion like Buddhism can still give rise to some bizarre sects that believe in releasing animals, as if they were the arbiters of deciding whether other lives should exist or be destroyed.
As for Hinduism, we often hear people say that Hinduism has many gods, but how many exactly? No one knows, but many Hindus do not believe that there are so many gods. They may prefer to believe in one or several main gods, and there are no other gods besides them. However, a minority of people believe that there are billions of gods, and this is still a fact. This fact equates gods with a cheap spiritual filler. No matter what happens to a person, they pray to all the gods at once. Then when the problem is solved, they believe it was the help of a particular god. As a result, religion has a more stable job market.
Religion has exclusivity.
In any religion, except for Taoism, there is generally a strong sense of exclusivity. This exclusivity is not only manifested in their language, doctrines, and scriptures but also in the daily behavior of ordinary believers. For example, in Christianity, believers of other religions, such as Buddhists, are considered to be demons (this was said by a distant relative of mine who worked in the Christian church), while in Islam, Jews and Christians are referred to as "People of the Book," and atheists are called "Kafir," considered more abominable than "polytheists." Even Buddhists also criticize these so-called "external paths" as they consider them. This exclusivity has created countless religious conflicts and ethnic struggles in history, resulting in extremely brutal acts of violence, including massacres.
The most intense exclusivity is religious conflicts, and even religious wars, not only between different religions but also within different sects of the same religion. This is evident in the contradictions between Protestantism and Catholicism, which exist in both Christianity and Islam. Therefore, there have been bloody and unmentionable scenes in their history. This has created a situation where there are thousands or even tens of thousands of different sects under a religion, and large sects often do not interact with small sects, considering themselves naturally just, while other sects are considered deviant.
Religion has active dissemination.
In 1974, the "World Congress on Evangelism" led by "religious leaders" Billy Graham and John Stott was held in Lausanne, Switzerland. This congress, which church historian Mark Noll believes is the biggest turning point for Christianity since the 1910 Edinburgh World Missionary Conference, is still being held today. In 2010, the third Lausanne Congress was held in South Africa, bringing together over 4,000 Christian leaders from 198 countries and regions around the world. This congress is now called the "Lausanne Movement" and aims to achieve so-called "global evangelization." They refer to those who have not yet received Christian baptism as "unreached peoples." This movement has proposed an important evangelism strategy, using issues such as global poverty, injustice, environmental protection, and human trafficking to gain attention. Unfortunately, due to China's religious policies, this movement has not sparked much backlash in China.
In 2013, a forum of Asian church leaders was held in Seoul, South Korea. A Christian leader from Beijing claimed that by 2030, they would send 20,000 missionaries to China and signed a "Seoul Commitment," declaring the implementation of "universal evangelism" in China, essentially cultivating all the "unreached peoples" who do not believe in religion to become children of God.
Even in China, many Christians choose to distribute evangelistic pamphlets in crowded places. I have personally seen this in Shanghai subway stations several times. These are just branches of the global Christian missionary movement, and other branches use various means to try to recruit people into their own sects. This has even led to the development of cults in South Korea.
In recent years, the most famous expansion of Islam has been the population growth of Middle Eastern refugees in European countries, which has caused changes in the religious situation in Europe. Although this influx of refugees into Europe is essentially due to the rise of certain terrorist organizations, it has also brought great shocks to Europe, to the point where Christianity, which originally had a large base in the West, has had to find new ways to spread its message, focusing more on China and other Asian countries. This will inevitably make China an important battleground for Christianity and Islam to compete for territory. In earlier years, even in some remote areas, we would find that many elderly people and left-behind women and children would be developed into Christians.
Christianity has a so-called Great Commission, which is to make the whole world believe in Christianity. However, this is obviously unrealistic. According to the law, religious believers cannot evangelize outside religious venues, but people always find ways to do it. Therefore, they continue to recruit believers on a large scale.
Religion has a strong anti-intellectual nature.
In addition to attacking evolution, religious believers, especially those who are not well-educated, often have a strong anti-intellectual nature. It's not that they lack knowledge, but they are unwilling to accept new knowledge. For example, a large number of Christians and Muslims still believe that the earth is flat in this day and age, and some extreme religions even propagate that women should not show their faces or wear makeup.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, some Christians in Europe and America even advocated drinking hand sanitizer to treat the virus, and even treated COVID-19 as a devil, attempting to exorcise it through spiritual means... The result is all nonsense. Our scientific technology itself is a product that has moved away from religion, but no medicine can cure ignorance.
Do people believe in the virgin birth? Of course, there are. It is precisely because of this evil beginning that people are more likely to believe in things that are obviously less credible than the virgin birth. In this way, religion becomes even more important in controlling people. Ignorance may not be inevitable, but it is necessary to rely on ignorance to have a more extensive religious dissemination. If everyone were like Russell, there would be no religious believers.
Religious believers often have poor morals.
In the past, we were always taught that people with faith have higher moral standards. In reality, it is ironic when it comes to these people themselves. For example, in Christianity, prominent figures in various countries have been exposed for having a history of child abuse, and the number is not small, forcing some church leaders to publicly apologize.
Just this point alone contradicts their so-called theory of having moral standards due to faith. Switching to Buddhists, some Buddhists are so ignorant that they have no knowledge of the ecological composition of the earth. They believe that all animals should live and engage in indiscriminate release activities regardless of time or place, resulting in the proliferation of invasive species and the destruction of the ecological environment, causing great harm.
But in the end, religion is just a form of organization and should not have any right to be immune to criticism. Otherwise, humanity becomes an appendix itself, meaningless. In Shelley's essay "The Necessity of Atheism," he quotes Bacon's assertion:
Atheism brings rationality, philosophy, natural worship, law, honor, and everything that can guide people towards morality.
We may not be filled with absolute arrogance towards atheism, but at least we should not treat it as an enemy.