Historical records of criticism of religion goes back to at least 5th century BCE in ancient Greece, with Diagoras "the Atheist" of Melos. In ancient Rome, an early known example is Lucretius' De Rerum Natura from the 1st century BCE.
Every exclusive religion on Earth that promotes exclusive truth claims necessarily denigrates the truth claims of other religions. Critics of religion in general often regard religion as outdated, harmful to the individual, harmful to society, an impediment to the progress of science, a source of immoral acts or customs and a political tool for social control.
Every exclusive religion on Earth that promotes exclusive truth claims necessarily denigrates the truth claims of other religions. Critics of religion in general often regard religion as outdated, harmful to the individual, harmful to society, an impediment to the progress of science, a source of immoral acts or customs and a political tool for social control.
History of criticism of religion
In his work De Rerum Natura, the 1st century BCE Roman poet Titus Lucretius Carus wrote: "But 'tis that same religion oftener far / Hath bred the foul impieties of men". A philosopher of the Epicurean school, Lucretius,
believed the world was composed solely of matter and void and that all
phenomena could be understood as resulting from purely natural causes.
Despite believing in Gods, Lucretius, like Epicurus, felt that religion was born of fear and ignorance, and that understanding the natural world would free people of its shackles. He was not against religion in and of itself, but against traditional religion which he saw as superstition for teaching that gods interfered with the world.
At the beginning of the 16th century, Niccolò Machiavelli
said: "We Italians are irreligious and corrupt above others... because
the church and her representatives have set us the worst example". To Machiavelli, religion was merely a tool, useful for a ruler wishing to manipulate public opinion.
In the 18th century, Voltaire was a deist and was strongly critical of religious intolerance. Voltaire
complained about Jews killed by other Jews for worshiping a golden calf
and similar actions, he also condemned how Christians killed other
Christians over religious differences and how Christians killed Native Americans for not being baptized.
Voltaire claimed the real reason for these killings was that Christians
wanted to plunder the wealth of those killed. Voltaire was also
critical of Muslim intolerance.
Also in the 18th century, David Hume criticized teleological arguments for religion. Hume claimed that natural explanations for the order in the universe were reasonable. An important aim of Hume's writings was demonstrating the unsoundness of the philosophical basis for religion.
Christopher Hitchens, journalist and author of God is not Great
In the early 21st century, the New Atheists became focal polemicists in modern criticism of religion.
The four authors come from widely different backgrounds and have
published books which have been the focus of criticism of religion
narratives, with over 100 books and hundreds of scholarly articles
commenting on and critiquing the four Horsemen's works. Their books and
articles have spawned debate in multiple fields of inquiry and are
heavily quoted in popular media (online forums, YouTube, television and popular philosophy). In The End of Faith, philosopher Sam Harris focuses on violence among other toxic qualities of religion. In Breaking the Spell, philosopher Daniel Dennett focuses on the question of "why we believe strange things". In The God Delusion, biologist Richard Dawkins covers almost every facet of religion injecting both snarky irony and humor. In God Is Not Great, journalist and polemicist Christopher Hitchens focused on how religious forces attacks human dignity and the corruption of religious organizations. In the Oxford Handbook of Atheism,
according to Thomas Zenc the four books were published during a time of
intense debate on political, religious and sociological questions. The
works share many common themes yet notably differ in scope, style and
content. While according to Zenc the beginnings of a broader narrative (New Atheism) seems to have emerged it does not, stand up to the full definition of a movement.
Response to general criticism of religion in a historical context
Today, religion is broadly conceived as an abstraction which entails
beliefs, doctrines and sacred places—even though the ancient and
medieval cultures that produced religious texts, like the Bible or the Quran, did not have such conceptions or ideas in their languages, cultures, or histories. However, there is still no scholarly consensus over what a religion is.
Before the 17th century religion was conflated with every day life. Religion as a modern Western concept developed from the 17th century onward. For example, in Asia, no one before the 19th century self-identified as a "Hindu" or other similar identities.
With the existence of diverse modern categories of religion such as monotheism, polytheism, pantheism, nontheism and diverse specific religions such as Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Taoism, Buddhism
and many others, it is not always clear to whom the criticisms are
aimed at or to what extent they are applicable to other religions.
Criticism of religious concepts
A sign by the Connecticut Valley Atheists in Rockville's Central Park, Vernon in December 2007, that criticizes religion and draws attention to the September 11 attacks,
with the group issuing an explanatory press release: "Clearly, 9/11 is
the work of fanatics. However, we feel that religion even in moderation
provides a foundation for fanatical groups to thrive"
Some criticisms of monotheistic religions have been:
- Religion is wrong as it is in conflict with science (i.e. Genesis creation myth)
- Revelations may conflict internally (i.e. discrepancies in the Bible among the four Gospels of the New Testament)
- Conflicting claims about the one true faith.
Explanations as non-divine in origin
Social construct
Dennett and Harris have asserted that theist religions and their scriptures are not divinely inspired, but man made to fulfill social, biological and political needs. Dawkins balances the benefits of religious beliefs (mental solace, community building and promotion of virtuous behavior) against the drawbacks. Such criticisms treat religion as a social construct and thus just another human ideology.
Narratives to provide comfort and meaning
David Hume
argued that religion developed as a source of comfort in the face of
the adversity, not as an honest grappling with verifiable truth.
Religion is therefore an unsophisticated form of reasoning.
Daniel Dennett has argued that, with the exception of more modern religions such as Raëlism, Mormonism, Scientology and the Bahá'í Faith,
most religions were formulated at a time when the origin of life, the
workings of the body, and the nature of the stars and planets were
poorly understood.
These narratives were intended to give solace and a sense of
relationship with larger forces. As such, they may have served several
important functions in ancient societies. Examples include the views
many religions traditionally had towards solar and lunar eclipses and the appearance of comets (forms of astrology).
Given current understanding of the physical world, where human
knowledge has increased dramatically, Dawkins and French atheist
philosopher Michel Onfray contend that continuing to hold on to these belief systems is irrational and no longer useful.
Opium of the people
Religious suffering is, at the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.
According to Karl Marx, the father of "scientific socialism", religion is a tool used by the ruling classes
whereby the masses can shortly relieve their suffering via the act of
experiencing religious emotions. It is in the interest of the ruling
classes to instill in the masses the religious conviction that their
current suffering will lead to eventual happiness. Therefore, as long as
the public believes in religion, they will not attempt to make any
genuine effort to understand and overcome the real source of their
suffering, which in Marx's opinion was their capitalist economic system. In this perspective, Marx saw religion as escapism.
Marx also viewed the Christian doctrine of original sin as being deeply anti-social
in character. Original sin, he argued, convinces people that the source
of their misery lies in the inherent and unchangeable "sinfulness" of
humanity rather than in the forms of social organization and
institutions, which Marx argued can be changed through the application
of collective social planning.
Viruses of the mind
Richard Dawkins, author of The God Delusion
In his 1976 book The Selfish Gene, Richard Dawkins coined the term memes to describe informational units that can be transmitted culturally, analogous to genes. He later used this concept in the essay "Viruses of the Mind" to explain the persistence of religious ideas in human culture.
Response to virus of the mind criticism
Both the religious and non religious are critical of Dawkin's meme theory which has mostly been abandoned. John Bowker
criticized the idea that "God" and "Faith" are viruses of the mind,
suggesting that Dawkins' "account of religious motivation [...] is [...]
far removed from evidence and data" that it is unreasonable to extract
certain behaviors solely through religious memes. Alister McGrath has responded by arguing that "memes have no place in serious scientific reflection", that there is strong evidence that such ideas are not spread by random processes, but by deliberate intentional actions, that "evolution" of ideas is more Lamarckian than Darwinian
and that there is no evidence (and certainly none in the essay) that
epidemiological models usefully explain the spread of religious ideas.
McGrath also points out that it is surveys in the United States report a
high life satisfaction rate among the religious is not comparable with a
virus.
Mental illness or delusion
Sam Harris compares religion to mental illness, saying it "allows otherwise normal human beings to reap the fruits of madness and consider them holy". According to a retrospective study on Abraham, Moses, Jesus Christ, and the Apostle Paul, they may have had psychotic disorders
that contributed inspiration for their revelations. They conclude that
people with such disorders have had a monumental influence on
civilization.
Psychological studies into the phenomenon of mysticism link disturbing aspects of certain mystics' experiences to childhood abuse. Clifford A. Pickover
found evidence suggesting that temporal lobe epilepsy may be linked to a
variety of so-called spiritual or "other worldly" experiences, such as spiritual possession, originating from altered electrical activity in the brain. Carl Sagan, in his last book The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark, presented his case for the miraculous sightings of religious figures and modern sightings of UFOs coming from the same mental disorder. Vilayanur S. Ramachandran suggests "It's possible that many great religious leaders had temporal lobe seizures and this predisposes them to having visions, having mystical experiences". Michael Persinger stimulated the temporal lobes of the brain artificially with a magnetic field using a device nicknamed the "God helmet" and was able to artificially induce religious experiences along with near-death experiences and ghost sightings. According to John Bradshaw "Some forms of temporal lobe tumors or epilepsy
are associated with extreme religiosity." In his research recent brain
imaging of religious subjects praying or meditating show identical
activity in the respective human section of the brain which Ramachandran calls God-spots.
Psilocybin
from mushrooms affect regions of the brain including the serotonergic
system, which generating a sense of strong religious meaning, unity and
ecstasy. Certain physical rituals may generate similar feelings.
In Michael Shermer's book Why People Believe Strange Things
he theorizes on how emerging mankind imposed made-up explanations and
bizarre rituals for natural phenomena they didn't and couldn't
understand. This is similar to the arguments made by Daniel Dennett in Breaking the Spell
however Shermer's argument goes further in that the peculiar and at
times frightening rituals of religion are but one of many forms of
strange customs that survive to this day.
Immature stage of societal development
Philosophy and Christian Art, W. Ridgway, 1878
Philosopher Auguste Comte posited that many societal constructs pass through three stages
and that religion corresponds to the two earlier, or more primitive
stages by stating: "From the study of the development of human
intelligence, in all directions, and through all times, the discovery
arises of a great fundamental law, to which it is necessarily
subjective, and which has a solid foundation of proof, both in the facts
of our organization and in our historical experience. The law is this:
that each of our leading conceptions – each branch of our knowledge –
passes successively through three different theoretical conditions: the
theological, or fictitious; the metaphysical, or abstract; and the
scientific, or positive".
Response to criticism
In his book Is Religion Dangerous?, Keith Ward
notes that not all false opinions are delusions and that belief in God
is different as many great minds and people who live ordinary lives and
believe in God are not irrational people. Hyperreligiosity or even "intensely professed atheism" can emerge from emotional disturbances involving temporal lobe epilepsy.
Harm to individuals
Some have criticized the effects of adherence to dangerous practices such as self-sacrifice.
Inadequate medical care
Saint Francis Borgia performing an exorcism, Francisco Goya
A detailed study in 1998 found 140 instances of deaths of children
due to religion-based medical neglect. Most of these cases involved
Christian parents relying on prayer to cure the child's disease and
withholding medical care.
Jerusalem syndrome
Jerusalem has loaned its name to a unique psychological phenomenon
where Jewish or Christian individuals who develop obsessive religious
themed ideas or delusions (sometimes believing themselves to be Jesus
Christ or another prophet) will feel compelled to travel to Jerusalem.
During a period of 13 years (1980–1993) for which admissions to the Kfar Shaul Mental Health Centre in Jerusalem were analyzed, it was reported
that 1,200 tourists with severe, Jerusalem-themed mental problems, were
referred to this clinic. Of these, 470 were admitted to hospital. On
average, 100 such tourists have been seen annually, 40 of them requiring
admission to hospital. About 2 million tourists visit Jerusalem each
year. Kalian and Witztum note that as a proportion of the total numbers
of tourists visiting the city, this is not significantly different from
any other city.
The statements of these claims has however been disputed, with the
arguments that experiencers of the Jerusalem syndrome already were
mentally ill.
Honor killings and stoning
Honor killings once well known in the Western are now extremely rare,
however, they still occur in other parts of the world. An honor is when
a person is killed by family for bringing dishonor or shame upon the family.
Stoning is a form of capital punishment whereby a group throws
stones at a person until death ensues. As of September 2010, stoning is a
punishment that is included in the laws in some countries including
Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Yemen, the United Arab Emirates, and some states in
Nigeria as punishment for zina al-mohsena ("adultery of married persons").
While stoning may not be codified in the laws of Afghanistan and
Somalia, both countries have seen several incidents of stoning to death.
Until the early 2000s, stoning was a legal form of capital punishment in Iran. In 2002, the Iranian judiciary officially placed a moratorium on stoning. In 2005, judiciary spokesman Jamal Karimirad
stated that "in the Islamic republic, we do not see such punishments
being carried out", further adding that if stoning sentences were passed
by lower courts, they were overruled by higher courts and "no such
verdicts have been carried out".
In 2008, the judiciary decided to fully scrap the punishment from the
books in legislation submitted to parliament for approval.
In early 2013, Iranian parliament published official report about
excluding stoning from penal code and it accused Western media for
spreading "noisy propaganda" about the case.
Genital modification and mutilation
According to the World Health Organization, female genital mutilation
has no health benefits and is a violation of basic human rights. Though
no first tier religious texts prescribe the practice, some
practitioners do believe there is religious support for it. While it is
mostly found in Muslim countries, it is also practiced by some Christian
and Animist countries mostly in Africa. GFA is not widely practiced in
some Muslim countries making it difficult to separate religion from
culture. Some religious leaders promote it, some consider it irrelevant
to religion, and others contribute to its elimination". The practice is
illegal in all Western countries and it is also illegal to transport a
girl to another country to carry out FGM. Multiple parents have been
charged for committing this crime in the United Kingdom with those
charged being exclusively from Muslim countries.
Male circumcision is a cost effective way for disease prevention and helps reduce medical costs overall.
The health benefits of male circumcision exceed the health risks by at
least 100 to 1 and there are no long-term adverse effect in terms of
sexual function or pleasure. As such, some have argued that failure to
circumcise a baby boy may be unethical because it diminishes his right
to good health.
Counterarguments to religion as harmful to individuals
A metareview of 850 research papers on Religion in the United States
concluded that "the majority of well-conducted studies found that
higher levels of religious involvement are positively associated with
indicators of psychological well-being (life satisfaction, happiness,
positive affect, and higher morale) and with less depression, suicidal
thoughts and behavior, drug/alcohol use/abuse". In addition, various surveys done by major opinion poll organizations in the United States including Gallup, a review of 200 papers, a meta analysis of 35 surveys another review of 498 papers and the handbook of religion. Surveys suggest a strong link between faith and altruism. and a meta analysis of 34 recent studies
showing that membership of religious groups in the United States was
positively correlated with membership of voluntary organizations, higher
level of commitment, better self-esteem, are twice as likely to have a
more satisfying sex life and lower risk of suicide, higher levels
self-esteem, self-actualization and life satisfaction.
A cross-national investigation on subjective well-being
has noted that, globally, religious people are usually happier than
nonreligious people, though nonreligious people also reach high levels
of happiness.
As of 2001, It should be noted that almost all of these studies were conducted within the United States and deal with subjectively reported life happiness. There is no significant correlation between religiosity and individual happiness in Denmark and the Netherlands, countries that have lower rates of religion, lower discrimination against atheists and where both the religious and non-religious are normative.
The 2013 World Happiness Report mentions that once crude factors are
taken into account, there are no differences in life satisfaction
between religious and less religious countries.
Despite honor killings occurring in multiple cultures and religions, Islam is frequently blamed for their institution and persistence. Professor Tahira Shaid Khan notes that there is nothing in the Qur'an that permits or sanctions honor killings, and attributes it to broader attitudes that view women as property with no rights as the explanation for honor killings. Khan also argues that this view results in violence against women and their being turned "into a commodity which can be exchanged, bought and sold".
Harm to society
Some aspects of religion are criticized on the basis that they damage society as a whole. Steven Weinberg, for example, states it takes religion to make good people do evil. Bertrand Russell and Richard Dawkins cite religiously inspired or justified violence, resistance to social change, attacks on science, repression of women and homophobia.
Hartung has claimed that major religious moral codes can lead to "us vs. them" group solidarity and mentality which can dehumanize or demonize individuals outside their group as "not fully human", or less worthy. Results can vary from mild discrimination to outright genocide. A poll by The Guardian
noted that 82% of the British people believe that religion is socially
divisive and that this effect is harmful despite the observation that
non-believers outnumber believers 2 to 1.
According to one study, membership of a religious group can
accentuate biases in behavior toward in group versus out group members,
which may explain the lower number of interracial friends and greater
approval of torture among church members.
Holy war and religious terrorism
Entry of the Crusaders into Constantinople by Gustave Doré (1832–1883)
While terrorism is a complex subject, it is argued that terrorists
are partially reassured by their religious views of God's support and
reward for their actions.
These conflicts are among the most difficult to resolve,
particularly where both sides believe that God is on their side and has
endorsed the moral righteousness of their claims. One of the most infamous quotes associated with religious fanaticism was made in 1209 during the siege of Béziers, a Crusader asked the Papal Legate Arnaud Amalric how to tell Catholics from Cathars when the city was taken, to which Amalric replied:"Tuez-les tous; Dieu reconnaitra les siens", or "Kill them all; God will recognize his own".
Theoretical physicist Michio Kaku considers religious terrorism as one of the main threats in humanity's evolution from a Type 0 to Type 1 civilization.
Suppression of scientific progress
Galileo Galilei facing the Roman Inquisition, Cristiano Banti
John William Draper and Andrew Dickson White, authors of the conflict thesis, have argued that when a religion offers a complete set of answers to the problems of purpose, morality,
origins, or science, it often discourages exploration of those areas by
suppressing curiosity, denies its followers a broader perspective and
can prevent social, moral and scientific progress. Examples cited in
their writings include the trial of Galileo and Giordano Bruno's execution.
During the 19th century, the conflict thesis
developed. According to this model, any interaction between religion
and science must inevitably lead to open hostility, with religion
usually taking the part of the aggressor against new scientific ideas. The historical conflict thesis was a popular historiographical approach in the history of science during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, but its original form is almost entirely discarded by scholars today. Despite that, conflict theory remains a popular view among the general public and has been publicized by the success of books such as The God Delusion.
Historians of science including John Hedley Brooke and Ronald Numbers consider the "religion vs. science" concept an oversimplification, and prefer to take a more nuanced view of the subject. These historians cite, for example, the Galileo affair and the Scopes trial;
and assert that these were not purely instances of conflict between
science and religion as personal and political factors also weighed
heavily in the development of each. In addition, some historians contend
that religious organizations figure prominently in the broader
histories of many sciences, with many of the scientific minds until the
professionalization of scientific enterprise (in the 19th century) being
clergy and other religious thinkers. Some historians contend that many scientific developments such as Kepler's laws and the 19th century reformulation of physics in terms of energy were explicitly driven by religious ideas.
Recent examples of tensions have been the creation-evolution controversy, controversies over the use of birth control, opposition to research into embryonic stem cells, or theological objections to vaccination, anesthesia and blood transfusion.
Counterarguments to religion as harmful to society
Some studies show some positive links in the relationship between religiosity and moral behavior and altruism. Some studies have shown similar correlations between religiosity and giving.
Some argue that religious violence confuses religious moral rules and behavior with non-religious factors. This includes the claim that events like terrorist bombings are more politically motivated than religious. Mark Juergensmeyer
argues that religion "does not ordinarily lead to violence. That
happens only with the coalescence of a peculiar set of
circumstances—political, social, and ideological—when religion becomes
fused with violent expressions of social aspirations, personal pride,
and movements for political change" and that it is unreasonable to attempt to differentiate "religious violence" and "secular violence" as separate categories.
While others assert religion is not inherently violent and while the
two are compatible they are not essential and that religious violence
can be compared with non-religious violence.
C. S. Lewis suggests that all religions by definition involve faith, or a belief in concepts that cannot be proven or disproven by the sciences. Not all religious people subscribe to the idea that religion and science are mutually exclusive (non-overlapping magisteria) as do some atheists including Stephen Jay Gould . Biologist Richard Dawkins has said that religious practitioners often do not believe in the view of non-overlapping magisteria.
According to a survey most religious groups in the United States have no general epistemological conflict with science or with the seeking out of scientific knowledge even if there are epistemic or moral conflicts with their faith. Strict creationists tend to have very favorable views on many of the different sciences.
A study on a national sample of United States college students found
that the majority of undergraduates in both the natural and social
sciences do not see conflict between science and religion.
Cross-national studies polled from 1981–2001 on views of science and
religion have noted that countries with higher religiosity have stronger
trust in science.
Morality
Richard Dawkins contends that theistic religions devalue human compassion and morality. In his view, the Bible
contains many injunctions against following one's conscience over
scripture and positive actions are supposed to originate not from
compassion, but from the fear of punishment. Albert Einstein stated that no religious basis is needed in order to display ethical behavior.
Survey research suggests that believers do tend to hold views
different from those of non-believers on a variety of social, ethical
and moral questions. According to a 2003 survey conducted in the United
States by The Barna Group,
those who described themselves as believers were less likely than those
describing themselves as atheists or agnostics to consider the
following behaviors morally acceptable: cohabitating with someone of the opposite sex outside marriage, enjoying sexual fantasies, having an abortion, sexual relationships outside marriage, gambling, consuming marijuana, looking at pictures of nudity or explicit sexual behavior, getting drunk and "having a sexual relationship with someone of the same sex".
Children
In the 19th century, philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer argued that teaching some ideas to children at a young age could foster resistance to doubting those ideas later on.
Islam has permitted the child marriage of older men to girls as young as 9 years of age. Baptist pastor Jerry Vines denounced Mohammed as a pedophile for marying and having had sex with a nine-year-old, referring to Muhammad as a "demon-possessed paedophile".
For example, one organization cites the case of a 10-year-old girl who was forced to marry and was raped in Yemen (Nujood Ali), a 13-year-old Yemeni girl dying of internal bleeding three days after marriage and a 12-year-old girl dying in childbirth after marriage. Yemen currently does not have a minimum age for marriage.
Latter Day Saint church founder Joseph Smith married girls as young as 13 and 14 and other Latter Day Saints married girls as young as 10. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints eliminated underaged marriages in the 19th century, but several branches of Mormonism continue the practice.
Homosexuals
A Westboro Baptist Church picket in Northlake, Illinois on November 29, 2005
Homosexuality is unambiguously condemned in Abrahamic religions
where prohibition and execution of those who engage in male homosexual
activity are found in the Old testament of the bible and in the Quran.
Homosexuals are also condemned in the New Testament several times but
without obligatory punishment. In the United States, conservative Christian right groups such as the Christian Legal Society and the Alliance Defense Fund
have filed numerous lawsuits against public universities, aimed at
overturning policies that protect homosexuals from discrimination and hate speech. These groups argue that such policies infringe their right to freely exercise religion as guaranteed by the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment of the United States Constitution.
Most secularized Christian countries have legalized homosexual activity and several have legalized same-sex marriage. However, not all historically Christian countries have done so such as Russia and Uganda
which have introduced discriminatory laws ranging from anti-propaganda
laws to corporal punishment. Homosexuality is still illegal in most Muslim countries and several of these countries impose the death penalty for homosexual behavior. In July 2005, two Iranian men aged sixteen and eighteen were, supposedly, hanged for homosexuality, causing an international outcry.
They were executed after being convicted by the court of having raped a 13-year-old boy. The case attracted international media attention. The British lesbian, gay and bisexual group OutRage!, alleged that the teenagers were executed for consensual homosexual acts and not rape.
Racism
Burning cross often used by Ku Klux Klan to intimidate minorities
In line with other findings suggesting that religious humanitarianism
is largely directed at in-group members, greater religious
identification, greater extrinsic religiosity and greater religious
fundamentalism were associated with racial prejudice. This is congruent
with the fact that 50% of religious congregations in the US are racially segregated, and only 12% have a degree of diversity.
Religion has been used by some as justification for advocating racism. The Christian Identity movement has been associated with racism.
However, there are arguments that these positions may be as much
reflections of contemporary social views as of what has been called scientific racism.
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints had excluded African Americans from the priesthood from 1860 to 1978. Most fundamentalist Mormon sects within the Latter Day Saint movement,
rejected the Church's 1978 decision to allow African Americans to hold
the priesthood and continue to deny activity in the church due to race. Due to these beliefs, in its Spring 2005 "Intelligence Report" the Southern Poverty Law Center added the Church to its "hate group" listing because of the church's teachings on race, which include a strong condemnation of interracial relationships.
Women
A woman with burqa on walking by the road in northern Afghanistan
The content of the holy books of Abrahamic religions
contain severe restrictions on the rights of women ranging from
prohibiting women from certain behavior and activities to requiring
women to submit to the will of their father and or husband.
According to Polly Toynbee, religion interferes with bodily autonomy
for both genders and fosters particularly negative attitudes towards
women's bodies. Toynbee writes: "Women's bodies are always the issue -
too unclean to be bishops, and dangerous enough to be covered up by
Islam and mikvahed by Judaism".
It is argued that religious sexual discrimination leads to unequal relations in marriage, creating norms which subordinate the wife to the husband. The word בעל (ba`al), Hebrew for "husband", used throughout the Bible, is synonymous with "owner" and "master".
This mirrors the Abrahamic view of God as an omnipotent, perfect power,
where this power is one of domination, which is persistently associated
with the characteristics of ideal masculinity. Sheila Jeffreys argues:
Religion gives authority to traditional, patriarchal beliefs about the essentially subordinate nature of women and their naturally separate roles, such as the need for women to be confined to the private world of the home and family, that women should be obedient to their husbands, that women's sexuality should be modest and under the control of their menfolk, and that women should not use contraception or abortion to limit their childbearing. The practice of such ancient beliefs interferes profoundly with women's abilities to exercise their human rights".
Islam
Feminist Julie Bindel
argues that religions encourage the domination of men over women and
that Islam promotes the submission of women to their husbands and
encourages practices such as child marriage.
She wrote that religion "promotes inequality between men and women",
that Islam's message for a woman includes that "she will be subservient
to her husband and devote her life to pleasing him" and that "Islam's
obsession with virginity and childbirth has led to gender segregation
and early marriage.
Islamic laws
have been criticized by human rights organizations for exposing women
to mistreatment and violence, preventing women from reporting rape and
contributing to the discrimination of women. The United Nations say that Islam is used to justify unnecessary and harmful female genital mutilation, when the purposes range from deprivation of sexual satisfaction to discourage adultery, insuring virginity to their husbands, or generating appearance of virginity. Maryam Namazie argues that women are victimized under Sharia law,
both in criminal matters (such as punishment for improper veiling) and
in civil matters; and also that women have judicial hurdles that are
lenient or advantageous for men.
According to Phyllis Chesler,
Islam is connected to violence against women, especially in the form of
honor killings. She rejects the argument that honor killings are not
related to Islam and claims that while fundamentalists of all religions
place restrictions on women, in Islam not only are these restrictions
harsher, but Islam also reacts more violently when these rules are
broken.
Christianity
Christianity
has been criticized for painting women as sinful, untrustful, deceiving
and desiring to seduce and incite men into sexual sin. Katharine M. Rogers argues that Christianity is misogynistic and that the "dread of female seduction" can be found in St. Paul's epistles. K. K. Ruthven argues that the "legacy of Christian misogyny was consolidated by the so-called 'Fathers' of the Church, like Tertullian, who thought a woman was not only 'the gateway of the devil' but also 'a temple built over a sewer'". Jack Holland argues the concept of fall of man is misogynistic as "a myth that blames woman for the ills and sufferings of mankind".
Christian religious figures have been involved in the Middle Ages and early modern period witch trials, which were generally used to punish assertive or independent women such as midwives since witchcraft was often not in evidence, or activists.
Animals
Shechita slaughter of a chicken
Kosher slaughter has historically attracted criticism from non-Jews as allegedly being inhumane and unsanitary, in part as an antisemitic canard that eating ritually slaughtered meat caused degeneration and in part out of economic motivation to remove Jews from the meat industry.
Sometimes these criticisms were directed at Judaism as a religion. In
1893, animal advocates campaigning against kosher slaughter in Aberdeen
attempted to link cruelty with Jewish religious practice. In the 1920s, Polish critics of kosher slaughter claimed that the practice actually had no basis in Scripture.
In contrast, Jewish authorities argue that the slaughter methods are
based directly upon Genesis IX:3 and that "these laws are binding on
Jews today".
While supporters of kosher slaughter counter that Judaism requires the practice precisely because it is considered humane, Research conducted by Temple Grandin
and Joe M. Regenstein in 1994 concluded that—practiced correctly with
proper restraint systems—kosher slaughter results in little pain and
suffering and notes that behavioral reactions to the incision made
during kosher slaughter are less than those to noises such as clanging
or hissing, inversion or pressure during restraint. Those who practice and subscribe religiously and philosophically to Jewish vegetarianism disagree, stating that such slaughter is not required while a number, including medieval scholars of Judaism such as Joseph Albo and Isaac Arama, regard vegetarianism as a moral ideal, not just out of a concern for animal welfare, but also the slaughterer.
Other forms of ritual slaughter, such as Islamic ritual slaughter, have also come under controversy. Writing for PETA, Logan Scherer said that animals sacrificed according to Islamic law can not be stunned before they are killed.
Muslims are only allowed to eat meat that has been killed according to
Sharia law and they say that Islamic law on ritual slaughter is
designed to reduce the pain and distress that the animal suffers.
According to the Farm Animal Welfare Committee, halal and kosher practices should be banned because when animals are not stunned before death, they suffer needless pain for up to 2 minutes despite some Muslims and Jews arguing that loss of blood from slash to the throat renders the animals unconscious relatively quickly.
Response to criticism of morality
Not all religions are hostile to homosexuality. Both Reform Judaism and the Unitarian Universalist Association have advocated for equal rights for gay and lesbian people since the 1970s. Hinduism does not view homosexuality as an issue.
Many Christians have made efforts toward establishing racial equality, contributing to the civil rights movement. The African American Review sees as important the role Christian revivalism in the black church played in the civil rights movement. Martin Luther King Jr., an ordained Baptist minister, was a leader of the American civil rights movement and president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, a Christian civil rights organization.
Corrupt purposes of leaders
Corrupt or immoral leaders
Caricature of Mormon leader Brigham Young's wives at his death
Dominionism
The term "dominionism" is often used to describe a political movement among fundamentalist Christians.
Critics view dominionism as an attempt to improperly impose
Christianity as the national faith of the United States. It emerged in
the late 1980s inspired by the book, film and lecture series "Whatever
Happened to the Human Race?" by Francis A. Schaeffer and C. Everett Koop. Schaeffer's views influenced conservatives like Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, Tim LaHaye, John W. Whitehead
and although they represent different theological and political ideas,
dominionists believe they have a Christian duty to take "control of a
sinful secular society", either by putting fundamentalist Christians in
office, or by introducing biblical law into the secular sphere. Social scientists have used the word "dominionism" to refer to adherence to dominion theology as well as to the influence in the broader Christian right of ideas inspired by dominion theology.
In the early 1990s, sociologist Sara Diamond and journalist Frederick Clarkson defined "dominionism" as a movement that while including dominion theology and Christian reconstructionism as subsets, it is much broader in scope, extending to much of the Christian right. Beginning in 2004 with essayist Katherine Yurica, a group of authors including journalist Chris Hedges, Marion Maddox, James Rudin, Sam Harris and the group TheocracyWatch, began applying the term to a broader spectrum of people than have sociologists such as Diamond.
Response to criticism of dominionism
There are few full adherents to reconstructionism are limited to conservative Christians.
The terms "dominionist" and "dominionism" are rarely used for
self-description and their usage has been attacked from several quarters
noting that the term is vague, unfairly links evangelicals to
extremism, is highly exaggerated and are more akin to conservative smear
in the likes of a conspiracy theory.
Journalist Anthony Williams charged that its purpose is "to smear the
Republican Party as the party of domestic Theocracy, facts be damned". Kurtz also complained about a perceived link between average Christian evangelicals and extremism such as Christian reconstructionism.
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