Author's Perspective and Comments
In my opinion and several others, religion prevents people from thinking freely. How can you? It teaches you how the universe and everything in it was formed with such certainty and it even has laws within it to prevent anybody from questioning it. Should you do what any intelligent person does and question or doubt it unless you see proof, it warns you that you will burn in a lake of fire for eternity (at least that is the depiction in Abrahamic religions, in others, the punishments vary vastly). Here we see it's first dystopian attribute: unquestioningly believe what people tell you, on fear of suffering.
The existence of religion has impeded the growth of scientific knowledge for centuries. Galileo was almost beheaded for proving Copernicus's theory of a Heliocentric solar system and refuting the then-accepted Geocentric theory. How can this be considered a good thing? It seems to me that when people had little scientific knowledge, they could not effectively explain the universe and their purpose in it. To remedy this, they had to create stories to help them understand it and provide them with comfort. If you study the Egyptian God Horus (the son of Osiris), you will notice just how shockingly similar he is to Jesus Christ. It's almost obvious that Christ's life was based on his.
The second dystopian attribute: the inability to increase your knowledge and understanding on fear of death.
When I was a young Christian boy, I was told that the purpose of religion was to instill a 'perfect' set of morals in people and to bring the people of the world together, as one. As a child, I did not question this. However, as I started looking at religion more objectively, I realized that it did neither of these. Christianity recognizes that homosexuality is a moral sin. Mormonism states that a black man may only enter the gates of Heaven as a slave (which is rather contradictory, how is that heaven for him exactly?). Richard Dawkins, in his book, puts it aptly: "The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully" (The God Delusion 31). If the morals in the Bible are what are considered to be perfect morals, I would rather take my chances and not follow them.
The existence of religion has impeded the growth of scientific knowledge for centuries. Galileo was almost beheaded for proving Copernicus's theory of a Heliocentric solar system and refuting the then-accepted Geocentric theory. How can this be considered a good thing? It seems to me that when people had little scientific knowledge, they could not effectively explain the universe and their purpose in it. To remedy this, they had to create stories to help them understand it and provide them with comfort. If you study the Egyptian God Horus (the son of Osiris), you will notice just how shockingly similar he is to Jesus Christ. It's almost obvious that Christ's life was based on his.
The second dystopian attribute: the inability to increase your knowledge and understanding on fear of death.
When I was a young Christian boy, I was told that the purpose of religion was to instill a 'perfect' set of morals in people and to bring the people of the world together, as one. As a child, I did not question this. However, as I started looking at religion more objectively, I realized that it did neither of these. Christianity recognizes that homosexuality is a moral sin. Mormonism states that a black man may only enter the gates of Heaven as a slave (which is rather contradictory, how is that heaven for him exactly?). Richard Dawkins, in his book, puts it aptly: "The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully" (The God Delusion 31). If the morals in the Bible are what are considered to be perfect morals, I would rather take my chances and not follow them.
When I was young, I did not know any homosexuals personally and I did not understand them. I thought that there was something really wrong with them and that they were evil. All that changed when I actually met a man who identified himself as being gay. He was, and still is, an extremely kind and generous person (the exact opposite of my ignorant prejudice) and he told me that sexual orientation wasn't a choice you could make. He was born that way and couldn't change it. He is now one of my closest friends. As for bringing the people of the world closer together, that is the last thing religion does. People love telling others that their Holy Book is right and that the other person is wrong. Even within religions, there are several sects and groups dividing them.
The third dystopian attribute: being told what is right and wrong by ignorant people.
The usual response I hear when people find out that I'm an Atheist is that I have no morals and that I should repent at once. There is a quote I heard, but I cannot find who said it: "Morality is doing what you think is right, regardless of what someone tells you. Religion is doing what someone tells you, regardless of whether it is right". Atheism is not some sort of 'Satanism in disguise' idea as people seem to portray it. It teaches humility through scientific evidence. We are on the side of doubt. We do not know the answers to the universe, we do not know why we are here, etc., but we admit it and are getting closer to solving those questions through science. There are many arguments that religious people put up that try to find loop holes in our logic. I am constantly pointed to people like Kent Hovind for instance, who believes that there is no proof whatsoever for the Big Bang Theory or for Evolution. Apparently the fact that our universe is constantly expanding (therefore meaning that at one point in time the universe was extremely small) and that we have been able to picture the 'afterglow' of cosmic microwave background radiation from the Big Bang, has no meaning to him. He claims to have a great knowledge of science, yet he makes mistakes like not knowing electromagnetism is one of the four fundamental forces. He is definitely not what I would consider to be a credible source of knowledge.
Few people make the claim that Atheism is just as bad as religion. In there eyes, Atheists looks at religion in the same way that religious people look at other religions. I do not agree with this statement because I think that Atheists look for evidence before they accept a theory. Any proposed theory has to be able to withstand criticism before it can be accepted. It is exactly the same when a new scientific theory is proposed.
People need to observe the evidence and make their own decisions. A world of religion is not a pleasant one at all, far from the utopian impressions people seem to have of it. After all, science flies you to the moon. Religion flies you into buildings.
