The root of the word "religion" is usually traced to the Latin religare (re: back, and ligare: to bind), so that the term is associated with "being bound".

We call it religion because it has nothing to do with reality.

Religion is: first and foremost, a system for controlling people.

< b>Religion is: is a mental virus that not only undermines truth, but reality itself

Religion is: the fatal disease that belongs to the problem set, not the solution set.

Religion is: like a blind man looking in a black room for a black cat that isn't there, and finding it.

Religion is: an insult to human dignity.

Religion is: the best run protection racket ever!

Religion is: selling a solution that doesn't work for a problem that doesn't exist.

Religion is:a system of overrated (and overpriced) fire insurance for the soul

Religion is: is a way to drive a wedge between groups of people who are not different in any outwardly visible way.

Religion is: the motherlode of bad ideas.

Religion is: being divorced from current operational reality.

Religion is: a dangerous mental virus and mental illness.

Religion is: the glorification of voluntary ignorance.

Religion is: giving people hope in a world torn by religion.

Religion is: and always has been in the business of selling you an invisible product.

Religion is: not noticing that the invisible and the non-existent look very much alike.

Religion is: the art of sugar coating a turd and selling it to you as a doughnut.

Religion is: is a secret contest to see who can say the craziest, most ignorant or outrageous thing.

Religion is: for people who are too busy to think for themselves.

Religion is: regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful.

Religion is: an ever receding pocket of scientific ignorance.

Religion is: supporting child sacrifice. God sacrificed his own son.

Religion is: selling an invisible product that can’t be tested until after you’re dead.

Religion is: treating an imaginary disease (sin) with an imaginary cure (redemption).

Religion is: the perfect con.

Religion is: having virgin priests rape small boys and girls.

Religion is: how stupidity became a virtue.

Religion is: about the barbarism of circumcision and the mutiliation of children's genetalia.

Religion is: willful ignorance, promoted as a virtue.

Religion is: like circumcision. If you wait until someone is 21 to tell them about it, they probably won't be interested.

Religion is: making a virtue of not having to think for yourself.

Religion is: about making false promises and exagerated claims

Religion is: is ignorance on steroids.

Religion is: being a suckass lackey living in perpetual fear.... of an imaginary creature.

Religion is: (in America a least), cornered and bleeding like a rabid raccoon.
It's on it's last leg but it's also more dangerous because of it.

Religion is: mass psychosis.

Religion is: a clinical psychotic reaction.

Religion is: mob mentality at its worst.

Religion is: the insanity of humanity.

Religion is: like history class without any facts.

Religion is: the purposeful suspension of critical thinking.

Religion is: the arrogance of its certitude

Religion is: giving people without any answers all the answers

Religion is: people watching The Flintstones as though it was a documentary

Religion is: about superstition and the supernatural.

Religion is: about cultivating ignorance.

Religion is: a set of bad ideas that drive bad behaviour.

Religion is: a triumph of ignorance over intelligence

Religion is: what keeps the poor from murdering the rich.

Religion is: the propagation of idiocy.

Religion is: organized fraud.

Religion is: detrimental to the progress of society.

Religion is: a force that must die in order that mankind can live.

Religion is: where brains are tenderly washed, disinfected and made usable again.

Religion is: what the clergy peddles to feed themselves.

Religion is: what keeps the poor from murdering the rich.

Religion is: believing when common sense tells you not to.

Religion is: is what allows perfectly sane people to believe by the billions what only lunatics could believe on their own.


Stupid design by the Christian God gives us: headaches, backaches, toothaches, strains, scrapes, breaks, cuts, scars, acne, rashes, infections, burns, bites, lice, shingles, psoriasis, bruises, gangrene, fungal disease, PMS, fatigue, hunger, molds, colds, flues, pneumonia, Ebola, measles, mumps, chickenpox, whooping cough, asthma, fevers. yeast, appendicitis, tonsillitis, parasites, sepsis, Lyme disease, meningitis, rabies, yellow fever, tetanus, malaria, smallpox, food poisoning, viruses, cancers, AIDS, gonorrhea, syphilis, herpes, hepatitis, genetic defects, stillbirth, autism, epilepsy, blindness, deafness, paralysis, insomnia, hypertension, heart disease, stroke, aneurysms, deep vein thrombosis, diabetes, hemophilia, kidney disease, liver disease, anemia, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, tuberculosis, arthritis, Parkinson’s disease, osteoporosis, fibromyalgia, lupus, gout, mental illness, Alzheimer’s, senility, MS, cystic fibrosis, ALS, accidents, fires, floods, blizzards, tsunamis, mudslides, avalanches, droughts, earthquakes, typhoons, tornadoes, hurricanes, meteors, and volcanoes.


Religion as a Disease

Religion is a transmissible mental illness of an unusual nature - one transmitted by memes. In this way, it is a mental virus.

Signs and Symptoms

Religion comes in many strains, but all are characterized by a crippling suppression of critical thinking skills. In most people, religion is not severe, and only suppresses critical thinking abilities in a way that protects the "memetic lesion" (usually located in the right parietal lobe). However, more virulent strains exist that cause the sufferer to lose all signs of rational thought, or even become violent and murderous. This is evolutionarily advantageous to the belief because it allows the virus to spread by eliminating competing variants through destroying or converting their hosts.

Transmission

Religion evolved with many different transmission methods. Most chronic carriers transmit it passively to their children. However, in a certain percentage of carriers (the chance is influenced by which strain you are infected with) the disease affects their behavior in a manner that increases the efficiency of transmission. This is similar to such diseases as toxoplasmosis (caused by Toxoplasma gondii), which changes the behavior of rats in order to continue the parasite's life cycle in cat's intestines, and certain fungal infections of ants.

Additionally, in a unique adaptation, it can actually induce some hosts to create complicated fomites in the form of religious texts that can implant the meme in anyone who reads it. These can last for a few days, such as simple pamphlets, to thousands of years, such as in the case of stone carvings. Disturbingly, these fomites can serve as templates to create new, nearly identical fomites.

It is a disease that takes over the mind, and prevents critical thinking. It brainwashs the believer into a submissive and reluctant behavior. It makes the individual think that outside information is false, regardless of facts and evidence. It makes the individual feel superior to others because of the religious righteousness that has been woven into their core. It provides the individual with a false sense of hope and trust from the like-minded. The disease feeds on the children to prevent starvation, so that the next generation can be indoctrinated to start the same process over and over...and unfortunately there is no cure unless you stop the process before it begins.

Mental viruses will mutate as to fit their environment, and evolve to spread as much as possible. Epidemiology

Certain strains of religion are common in certain areas, while almost nonexistent in others. As such, we will consider each major subgroup separately.

Judasim

Judaism is endemic to the Middle East. Its belief system is rather similar to its main descendant, Christianity (see below) in its stance on women, LGBT people, and doctrine, as well as most virulence traits (see below). Its main influence has been the creation of two descendants - Christianity and Islam.

Christianity

Christianity is an extremely common form of religion. Most holders in certain areas tend to show localized thought lesions, and many die without experiencing many ill effects. However, the American South, parts of Africa, and most infamously in a part of Rome (where a dangerous strain known as Catholicism, which seems to be correlated with increased rates of child molestation in its hosts) virulent forms of the disease cause massive damage and irrational behavior in the hosts in almost all activities and thoughts.

Islam

Islam is an epidemic in the Middle East and parts of India. Islam currently mimics a state Christianity went through in its evolution, where it was more virulent and dangerous to its host - a risky strategy for any disease which requires its host to survive, and although fomite production by the infected is a nontrivial factor in allowing the disease to survive without a human host, populations that survive an infection as deadly as that tend to build up resistance. Violence towards LGBT people, women, and those infected by other strains/the noninfected is grossly exaggerated in those infected by this strain. Patient zero was most likely a man called Mohammed, who most likely suffered temporal lobe seizures as evidenced by his "visions" and perceived conversations with a figment of his imagination. I will write more, including virulence factors, prevention and treatment if this gets support.


Sadly it's not about having answers. We have answers for so many things we couldn't have dreamed of knowing in the past. The age of the earth, the scale of our universe, what causes the tides, the structure of our planet, the chemical make up of our sun. We now understand weather isn't prepetrated by the whims of an angry god nor are eclipses omens of our future.

And yet with all this knowledge many choose to ignore, they recant all we have learned in favour of stories that were simply made up to bring us ease and peace of mind. They do not care about truth of reality, and sadly they no longer care about peace of mind either. They whole heartily rejected the very world before their eyes for one far more grotesque and cruel.

The reason they accept this fantasy is simple. Religion has been carefully crafted and selected for over generations to be an optimal meme. It surplants curiosity and instills fear. Religion is a parasite of the mind that latchs on to our young and refuses to let other ideas coexist or propagate. They have not choosen religion for truth, and sadly have not done so for peace of mind either. They have choosen it entirely because of fear.


"Violent, irrational, intolerant, allied to racism and tribalism and bigotry, invested in ignorance and hostile to free inquiry, contemptuous of women and coercive toward children: organized religion ought to have a great deal on its conscience."
Christopher Hitchens, God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything

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