Religion Bashing Updates

I found this thought provoking extract from a book by someone called Robert Winston on The Guardian. The book is about the God-question and tries to answer it using Darwin's theory. What caught my eye was this quote by Dawkins (by the way, who can discuss evolution and religion without invoking his name) explaining the evolutionary costs of religious belief:

Religious behaviour in bipedal apes occupies large quantities of time. It devours huge resources. A medieval cathedral consumed hundreds of man-centuries in its building. Sacred music and devotional paintings largely monopolised medieval and Renaissance talent. Thousands, perhaps millions, of people have died, often accepting torture first, for loyalty to one religion against a scarcely distinguishable alternative. Devout people have died for their gods, killed for them, fasted for them, endured whipping, undertaken a lifetime of celibacy, and sworn themselves to asocial silence for the sake of religion.

Religion does appear to be a misadaptation of monstrous proportions if we take all facts into account, but in the hunter-gatherer societies, where most of our innate instincts developed, religious belief did offer a lot of comparative advantages -- like a sense of community and togetherness, illusion of control over things which are obviously beyond human control (like weather or untimely death) through rituals etc. The article explains these and other reasons of the adaptation of religious belief pretty well. What it doesn't do is to evaluate the worth of this adaptation in the context of modern life. Which is what should be main focus of any such writing.

In any case read the whole thing.

And if you haven't yet read it, don't miss this classic essay by Dawkins where he explains why religion is a "virus of the mind". And since we are on the topic of viruses why not expand the argument to deadlier proportions. Yeah, faith is a virus comparable to smallpox, and even AIDS!

Previous religion bashing posts:1,2,3,4,5 and most interestingly this.

I hope some infections get cured after reading all this!