The existence of a Religious Trauma Syndrome (RTS) is often denied by true believers and others who support religious beliefs and think that religious faith is good for humanity.
But the RTS is, indeed, for real. Many tears have been shed because of that sort of traumas.
So, please, read Valerie Tarico’s take on this important topic very carefully.
Also read Marlene Winell’s take (in three parts) on that same subject on the Ex-Christian blog:
Part 1 = http://new.exchristian.net/2011/06/religious-trauma-syndrome-its-time-to.html .
Part 2 = http://new.exchristian.net/2011/07/understanding-religious-trauma-syndrome.html .
Part 3 = http://new.exchristian.net/2011/11/trauma-from-leaving-religion.html
It’s not going to extremes calling religion a poisonous method that obstructs and complicates people’s endeavours to find a high quality of life. It also hinders you from becoming a really “free” thinker, one who is allowed to study any books s/he likes.
Many philosophers, politicians and scientists have expressed their gloomy ideas of religion and its future.
For example, Karl Marx said: “Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people”.
Frederick II once said: “Religion is the idol of the mob; it adores everything it does not understand”.
Napoleon Bonaparte said: “Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich”.
Friedrich Nietzsche said. “In Christianity neither morality nor religion come into contact with reality at any point”.
He also said: “The Christian resolution to find the world ugly and bad has made the world ugly and bad”.
Albert Einstein (who didn’t believe in any personal God of the Abrahamic kind) said. Science without religion is lame, [but] religion without science is [also] blind.
At the same time he also said: “The religion of the future will be a cosmic religion. It should transcend personal God and avoid dogma and theology. Covering both the natural and the spiritual, it should be based on a religious sense arising from the experience of all things natural and spiritual as a meaningful unity”.If Albert Einstein had been alive today, I think he would have stated: Things about religion seemingly have to become worse before they at last can be transformed to a non-poisonous life philosophy. There is still a very long way to go for today’s religions all around the world.
BTW, talking of promoting science and reason, have a look at this blog post: https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/about-thinking/201510/what-can-we-learn-ben-carsons-brain .
From that blog post we learn that, unfortunately,neither intelligence nor (high) education is able to promote ‘good thinking’.
And finally, my own take on this:
Religious cults are nowadays mostly confined to having to rely on ‘God of the Gaps’ arguments. The primary goal for today’s cult leaders has become to try to convince their ignorant and incredulous followers that science is, always, wrong, meaning that it’s, also always, better to believe in what holy scriptures like the Bible and Koran say is the truth. That strategy is also known as intellectual dishonesty.
At age sixteen I began what would be a four year struggle with bulimia. When the symptoms started, I turned in desperation to adults who knew more than I did about how to stop shameful behavior—my Bible study leader and a visiting youth minister. “If you ask anything in faith, believing,” they said. “It will be done.” I knew they were quoting the Word of God. We prayed together, and I went home confident that God had heard my prayers.
But my horrible compulsions didn’t go away. By the fall of my sophomore year in college, I was desperate and depressed enough that I made a suicide attempt. The problem wasn’t just the bulimia. I was convinced by then that I was a complete spiritual failure. My college counseling department had offered to get me real help (which they later did). But to my mind, at that point, such help…
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Mass Delusions a.k.a. Magical & Religious Woo-Bullshit Thinking 