I believe the unproven and at the same time unfalsifiable, has been used as a justification for law, education, foreign and domestic policy since governance of any kind began.
I completely agree that it has. And I think it's a bunch of bull. My primary issue, however, is when personal opinion becomes justification for discrimination. We had personal opinion that black people were a lesser race, and thus discriminated against and grossly mistreated them. We also had personal opinion that the handicapped were a lesser class of citizen and we discriminated against them. However these were not based on religion, and as such society was able to change people's minds about these groups.
Now we have the religious folk telling us that we cannot have abortions, cannot perform stem cell and other scientific research. We have religious folks telling certain groups that they cannot be married, which is a LEGAL arrangement, simply because their sexual preference is at odds with certain religious dogmas. This is my problem with religion as a driving force in society.
If these opinions were not based on a doctrine which one is brainwashed into believing, and if these opinions were not forced upon billions of people world wide by religious leaders I would contend that such discrimination would be drastically lessened and we would be able to take further steps toward a truly tolerant and diverse society.
Now of course the analogy falls flat because there have been plenty of laws that we have "falsified". We no longer treat certain people as property, for example. We don't stone people to death in most countries because we consider that type of punishment to be incorrect.
And that is the point I'm arguing for. These laws were falsified because a more tolerant and understanding social morality won out over primitive and immoral beliefs. I don't think this would have been successful if these beliefs had been tied to a religious doctrine, and we even see these same immoral acts propagated today in religious circles.
We have religious groups which still stone people to death, who still engage in slavery, and who allow physical abuse of who they deem to be the 'lesser' members of society. While this is not a uniquely religious phenomenon, it is more prevalent within devout religious circles, and as a consequence it is vastly more difficult to remove from these circles.
Religious belief requires one to reject that which at odds with their dogma, and as such we must lead people away from that dogma before we can begin to help them move toward a more enlightened and tolerant way of living. This is a nearly insurmountable task, and why I am so adamant about keeping religious influence out of society and especially government.
But leaving that point aside, the clear necessity for the existence of certain being within the scope of religion cannot be denied. Politics can operate in an ontological vacuum - religion cannot.
Actually there are several religions who are also atheistic. Take, for example, Buddhism. The overwhelming majority of Buddhists have no governing deity and do not claim Buddha as a divine figure, simply as an enlightened man. Furthermore, I find it rather interesting that Buddhism is also widely regarded as one of the kindest and most moralistic religions. How odd that the most famous atheist religion is also considered a benchmark for social equality and human rights.
