Religion has been the primary catalyst of war, genocide, murder, rape, destruction, oppression, segregation, and a million other overlapping offences… But all of these I can forgive of religion, for one simple reason: It’s human nature, we’d do it anyway. The four horsemen of the apocalypse aren’t fictitious; they are just the personification of four common atrocities that have ravaged humanity since its inception two hundred thousands years ago. No, I can forgive religion of all these monstrous offences, because it’s just the convenient excuse. If we didn’t have religion, we’d just think of some other scapegoat to maim and kill and conquer one another.
However, there is one thing I can never and will never forgive religion for, and I’m talking about fundamentalist religion as a whole here; I’m not critisising any particular pious individual, I am instead regarding the entire institution of western religion, is an unappreciation of the world around us; because to try and deny, forbid and oppress an understanding of the process of natural selection and evolution is throwing a tarp over the greatest masterpiece ever conceived.
