What If We Taught Students That Religion is Absurd?
The religiosity of America fascinates me. I am intrigued by the idea of millions of people in an advanced nation believing that they have a “relationship” with an imaginary friend and believing that this imaginary friend is answering their prayers.
In the United States, something like 76% of the population believes in God, and seventy percent of the population identifies as Christian.
Three-quarters of the U.S. population believes that the Bible was at least inspired by God, and 28% (more than 89 million people) believe the stories in it are literally true.
Why would anyone today believe that the Christian god is real or that the story of Noah’s ark is true? My goal here is to advocate that we, as a society, start an active campaign to make religion irrelevant to human civilization. In the same way that there have been active campaigns to eliminate diseases like smallpox and polio, we should start a similar campaign against religion.
The tool I propose for religion’s elimination is across-the-board education in critical thinking. But first, let’s step back for a moment and ask, How do we find ourselves in this position as a species? There are many interesting things that human beings do.
Music, math, tools, cooking, science, engineering, art, and language all come to mind. But religion ranks up there as perhaps the most interesting.
Religion stands out because it is so irrational and bizarre. Billions of people on this planet believe in their various imaginary beings so firmly that disagreements about religion often escalate to violence and warfare.
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