Tracie Harris from The Atheist Experience posted the following recently on Facebook:
Response to Viewer Mail: I agree religion does a range of harm from minimal to extreme. But any belief system that promotes the idea, and successfully convinces adherents, that it's good to believe things without adequate support, has done harm. It just escalates from there depending on what it asks them to accept. But it's that first harm that is the most dangerous, in my view, because that is the opening of the gate for any further harmful, unsubstantiated beliefs that then are inserted into the mind afterward.
The critical component to any given belief or belief system is not so much the what of the belief (although that's important too), but the why. If we could get people to see just how dangerous faith-based believing really is, much of the what of beliefs would work themselves out. Evolution, for example, wouldn't be nearly the "scandal" or "controversy" that many religionists make it out to be. The danger lies in the continued upholding of faith as a virtue. We may as well praise those who wear blindfolds while driving. If we could get people to understand the importance of knowledge, education, logic, reason, critical thinking and the scientific method, then many of our problems would find resolution. Ignorance, and worse, ignorance hidden beneath the illusion (or delusion) of knowledge, remains a constant threat to humankind.
Dead-Logic.com
