IS RELIGION A SCAM?

Today I will start a series featuring some of the more controversial past issues covered in this blog site:

• Is religion a scam?
• The 10% simple solution for world peace.
• Genetic engineering for the perfect baby.
• Three strikes and you're dead.
• School teachers are not important enough to deserve more pay.
• Geospas in Hawaii.
• The hydrogen economy.
• The Blue Revolution.

I advance some of the above, but do not necessarily personally believe they are necessarily morally or otherwise justified, or not.  However, each topic, I think, deserves to be debated.  Perhaps one or more will be picked up by others to foster or fight.  I am nearing the end of my useful life and welcome others to carry on the effort.

As this is Sunday, it's obvious which controversy will initiate the series.  Here is a recent article entitled, Organized Religion is a Scam:

• By Harry Seitz, who describes himself as writer and returned Peace Corps Volunteer.
• If we can't put them in prison, we should tax the hell out of them.

• 
  To quote:  How can con-artists get away with swindling the poorest and most vulnerable citizens out of millions? They call it religion, which allows them to cheat the government, too.
• Also:  Why does god need billions of dollars and an army of pastors hounding people for money? And why do these pastors need private airplanes, yachts, mansions, and megachurches?

• 
  He cites that many of them belong in prison:
• Jim Baker has been sued for selling a fake COVID-19 cure.
• Benny Hinn collects over $200 million a year peddling faith-based treatments for cancer and other diseases.
• Kenneth Copeland and Robert Tilton have made millions selling “seed faith,” the concept that giving money to them wins favor with god.
• Creflo Dollar defended his Rolls Royce, acquired via his church, saying “Just because it (my life) is excessive doesn’t necessarily mean it’s wrong.”

• 
  We contribute over $80 billion to churches each year, and it's all tax-deductible.

Which conveniently leads me to a Washington Post article, for the title is You Give Religions more than $82.5 Billion a Year:

Seitz wrote another article, Why Religion has Got to Go:

• 
  In 1968 the U.S. Supreme Court decided it was unconstitutional to allow the teaching of creationism in public schools.
• Creationists later argued for the right to teach the "debate" between creationism and evolution.  This got struck down by the Supreme Court in 1987,=.
• Then came intelligent design, and a district court in 2005 struck this down.

• 
  Today, there are people who don't accept evolution, anthropogenic climate change, or that the world is spherical.  There is no objective evidence to support the validity of any religion.  Absolutely none. Whatsoever.  This is exactly the same amount of evidence there is to support the existence of Superman.

• 
  Further:  I used to say believe whatever you want to as long as you leave the rest of us alone, but that just isn’t good enough. The religious want to dictate policy in public schools and hospitals, or to keep mutilating female genitalia and taking child brides, or to keep hacking animals to pieces in their basements. And some of them are willing to crash airplanes into buildings in order to make their point.

• 
  And:  There comes a time when it’s no longer appropriate to believe in Santa Claus, and that time is long overdue for religion. And the enraged indignation you receive for even daring to compare Jesus or Allah to Superman or the Smurfs is just further evidence that it has got to go.

• 
  Finally:  If you believe in one conspiracy theory, you’re more likely to believe in others, and religion is the mother of them all — the ultimate self-contained, self-contradictory load of bull. The more religious a region is, the more likely the people are to be uneducated, repressive, and engaged in war. Nations with the highest rates of religiosity, such as the Middle East, tend to have higher violent crime rates, higher infant mortality rates, higher poverty rates and higher rates of corruption in comparison to more secular nations like Denmark and Sweden. This is true across nations and within them.
• 
  Well, one more:  It’s like kids arguing over Superman and Batman, except kids at least have the sense not to kill each other over it.

Who is Harry Seitz and why do I give him so much print time?  Just went to Google, asked if religion was a scame, and saw his name at the top.  As I too have used that Santa Claus analogy, thought that was convincing enough.

Some of Seitz's books can be found here.  Nothing related to religion.

But, aha, Lee Simon has written a whole book called:  Organized Religion--The Greatest Scam of All.  Simon is a former history teacher and a thinker/student of religions for over fifty years.  He has written ten books as an atheist.  They're all very cheap.  Said Amazon.com:

This little book is for those who believe and for those who no longer believe. It is an argument against organized religion. It is written in easy to read, easy to understand English. It is, if I may say so, an eraser for the mind. The topics discussed are these: Heaven and Hell; morals; absolute truth; the soul; creation myths; dogma; social control; consciousness; science; faith; evil; and absolute truth.

This is not an academic treatment of those topics. It is thoughts of the author, who has been thinking about these things for over 50 years. If nothing else this book will challenge your thinking if you are a believer; it will support your thinking if you are not.

Read it with an open mind, an open heart, and a desire to replace the scam with reason and rationality.

Here is a counterpoint from Rev. Fr George Ebere Adimike, former press secretary to the Archbishop of Onitsha.  He is the son of a noted religious leader from Nigeria, Pa Adimike.

Entitled, Outgrowing God:  Is Religion a Scam?

• He says absolutely not, beginning with:  ...without religion, morality has no firm foundation, no supernatural content and context and can most likely produce mischief-making egomaniacs.
• Adamike considers the most fundamental question to be:  What is the meaning of life?
• He goes on to mention Hobbes, Marx, Freud and others, including the Bible, so his elocution is more classical, compared to the rant of Seitz.

• 
  A quote:  As human existence meanders through mediations of understanding and vision, faith in God becomes the motor of a purpose-driven life. And similarly, religion supplies the right values to the end-tailored existence. By so doing, faith in God and practice of religion become coefficient factors in life equation. Arguably, nothing harms countries and cultures as moral disarray in which ineffective, destructive or unreliable compasses compete at an equal plane. Without fear of exaggeration, Godless world would be a hell and a world without religion would be a jungle of beasts. Religious precepts help put in check the free-flowing instincts that can destroy us

• 
  He says:  Perhaps in a bid to rescue humanity from frying pan, unconscionable secularists are pushing humanity into a lake of fire. In actuality, nowhere is headache cured by cutting off the head, and so, we cannot solve the algebra of religion by burning the algebra book. The situation in the anti-theistic and secular nations is a necessary caveat for the religion-bashing choirs. For instance, the secularised developed countries have alarming incidences of suicide not prevalent in developing religious nations. Religion offers a powerful coping mechanism; it sells hope, which drives people into and sustains them in active engagement with the world. The value of this hope becomes very manifest at the moment of personal crisis when all the frivolous arguments against religion at the night of one’s experience disappear. Through faith, one rightly feels enraptured by the divine grace and finds no justifiable need to police mystery, which one knows by experience.

In short, Adamike provides the standard justification for religion.  Of course there literally are thousands, if not millions, of other expositions supporting the validity and reality of religion.  I've read Kant, Locke, Pope, Kierkegaard and more.  Yet, that compelling message was always missing, and plain common sense has prevailed.

So which side wins?  There can be no winners.  Even religions differ in beliefs:

A poll by Ipsos for Reuter News a decade ago reported on a survey conducted in 23 countries among 18,829 adults:

• 51% of global citizens definitely believe in a divine entity, while 18% don't and 17% aren't sure.
• Indonesia  93%
• Turkey  91%
• Brazil  84%
• China 14%
• Russia  10%

• 
  Similarly, 51% believe in some kind of afterlife.
• Indonesia  62%
• U.S.  41%
•  Those who say they do not believe in God or any Supreme Being:
• France  39%
• Sweden  37%
• Japan  33%
• Germany 31%

I have to wonder about the accuracy of the above poll, for in November of 2021, the Pew Research Center said that 73% of Americans believed in Heaven (versus 41% as cited above).  In detail:

The difference in surveys is usually in how you ask that question.  But further about this Pew poll:

I was surprised that of all U.S. adults, only 39% would go to Heaven, while 32% would not qualify.  Especially tough if you're Evangelical, for only 21% are good enough, while they think 71% won't make it.  If you're White and Catholic, 68% will get there, while only 20% won't.

So is religion a scam?  Depends on your point of view.  Clive James has been quoted to say:

I'll close with a performance that kind of reminds me of a cult.  Actually, if you look closely, you will see evidence of a link with the upcoming 2024 French Summer Olympics.

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