Slaves To Religion: Mankind's Often Ungodly Invention

Religions that insist only their way is the right way and that only their so called holy books are the true word of god merits challenging. These religions protect and shield themselves from criticism, some more aggressively than others.
Rejecting religion does not make one an atheist. Even if someone is an atheist, it is still their right to criticize religion. Take away the ability to criticize religion, and then all that are left are mindless worshipers.
Humans have free will. We are not meant to be slaves, and we are not meant to be slaves to a religion.

There is no religion on the face of this planet that is the right religion for all of humanity. Before the aggressive, imperialistic expansion of certain religions that insist only their way is the right way, and that all those that disagree must be punished, in this life or the next or both, there were thousands of different religions in this world. Thousands of those religions, the followers of those religions and their cultures have been destroyed. We are left now with a few monolithic religions in which one in particular has far too many adherents trying to expand the religion through the use of violence and terror.

Freedom of religion includes freedom to reject religion and to deny the claims of any religion that it speaks for God, or that it is the true word of God.

Read any religions holy books, which many insist is the direct word of God, and in it one will find flaws, inconsistencies, and the complete lack of awareness of cultures and people that exist outside of a defined geographical area. Why is middle east history or the history of any area more important than the history of the people that lived in the Amazon, the Congo, or in many other places of the world?

All of the faiths that originated in the middle east were completely unaware of the existence of other peoples in the world living in the Amazon, the Congo, and in many other places. They were unaware, despite claims of being the religion for the whole world, because they are instead parochial religions that happened to have spread across the world, often by force, coercion and violence.

Religious coercion, force, bigotry and violence continues to this day. Far too many people are afraid to admit it or to stand up against it out of fear or out of fear of offending someone.

Too often, elevating a clergy class of people to god like status has opened the door to abuse, sexual and otherwise. Clergy should be humble and kind. They should not be given undue power and prestige, where evil people are protected and can get away with pedophilia and other crimes. No religion should protect pedophiles or be a sanctuary for pedophiles.

No religion should be a sanctuary for hate filled psychopaths.

We live in a day and age in which humanity is threatened with extinction not only by our nuclear weapons and their proliferation, but also by the enormous environmental harm that we have caused. Our oceans are filled with plastics, harmful pesticides and other chemicals, heavy metals, fecal matter and more. Our rain forests are burning and disappearing before our eyes. Our coral reefs are facing a mass extinction. Millions of species face extinction. The biodiversity that keeps intact the thread of life is disappearing.

In spite of all these challenges that threaten our very existence as a species, millions, even billions of people are being indoctrinated to mindlessly follow religion, and far too often, to resort to violence in order to spread religion, or to silence its critics.

Religion will not save humanity. Religion will hasten our extinction if we keep pandering to its alleged sanctity and refuse to criticize and open our eyes to its destructiveness when it promotes hatred, intolerance, bigotry, criminality, terror and violence.

When religion uplifts, helps people to be kinder,  more compassionate, it is a force of good. When religion helps people to be narrow minded, hate filled bigots believing they speak on behalf of God, then it is a harmful, destructive force.

Humanity must make a choice. What is more important? Protecting religion from criticism, or protecting our environment and ourselves? We need to stop the blind acceptance of having more children indoctrinated to be mindless slaves to religion, where they no longer think for themselves, and in which they can easily be turned into human missiles programmed to kill.