Why religion damages society (1)

Most of the things that makes our lives better come about because of human discovery - cars, computers, medicines, public health, high food production, and so on. Take these away and life gets shorter, more painful and a fight just to survive. Just look at the difference between life here in the developed world and life in the third world.

The thing is that these advances in human knowledge come about because we have inquisitive minds. Why does that happen? How does that happen? And by trying to answer these questions we make discoveries and progress is made.

The problem with religion is that it deliberately tries to styphle these inquiries because they say they have the answers. "Why does this happen? - because God says so" or "How does this happen? - by God saying it should". Islam says that everything you ever need to know is in the Koran - that book written 1200 years ago out of a guy's dreams. So no need for any other research or inquiry. Look how the Catholic Church tried to stop Galileo from pursuing his theories on the sun, the planets and the universe, because they felt that everything you needed to know was in the Bible.

Thank god that the power of the christian church waned enough to let true scientific discovery develop. If the church had its way, we would all be living like the third world.