According to Shayne Looper of the GateHouse News Service, there are 5 signs that your religion may be bad. I am going to take it a bit further and say 5 signs that ALL religion is bad.
1 - It makes people servants of an ideology rather than of the common good or their fellow man. These are people that value the differences in their belief structure more than they value their friends, family or fellow man. Every religion suffers from this malady.
2 - Religion makes people unhappy. Religion promises joy and happiness BUT ONLY after ALL other preconditions are met.
3 - Religion is founded on excluding others. Religion in any form is an alienating force, it pushes non-believers away and believers together, alienating anyone with differing beliefs from the group. The leaders of religions spend a large amount of their time speaking almost happily of others failures and how wrong other groups are for believing in their own way.
4 - Religion uses the Us/Them rhetoric to justify classifying non-believers as "the enemy". A prime example is "the war on religion". There isn't a war on religion, just folks trying to not be force-fed some superstitious beliefs that we ALL know are garbage.
5 - Religion is compassionless. Religion is self-centered. It is all about finding self-fulfillment, rather than truth. Being right rather than being fair and gaining success instead of offering kindness. This leaves little to no room for compassion.
I am not sure exactly how people continue to stay in groups that encourage this behavior. As a parent I always tried to teach my son to be compassionate, caring and kind to others. This is WHY I didn't indoctrinate him with religion.
I find the superiority complex that many religious folks have offensive and abusive. My own nephew goes out of his way to tell all the 'non-member' (not LDS) cousins in the family how "It must suck to not be Mormon." His arrogance is appalling. I have brought it up to his parents to no avail. It's just sad. On a bright note, my son did kick his butt for it once, that was good times.
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