I wouldn’t say I’m precisely an anti-theist, but I do feel
some solidarity with them on a lot of issues. I believe that most people would
be better off without religion, provided they had the intelligence and
intellectual commitment to see that religion really isn’t necessary for things
like providing a moral foundation or giving your life meaning. But there are a
lot of people who simply wouldn’t get to that point if they weren’t religious.
So in some ways, I guess I feel like religion almost functions as a kind of
“easy mode” for providing answers to those difficult, haunting questions of existence.
And, to that extent, I can’t really begrudge people that.
But in society as a whole, it doesn’t just stop there. I
recently read through the 2016 Republican Party platform, and it’s loaded with
appeals to the value of faith, advocating “faith-based programs,” and pushing
for policies that seem to only have religious reasoning behind them. In other
parts of the world, fundamentalist Muslims are committing persistent acts of
terror and mass murder, because they believe their religion gives them the right
to rule the world.
