When all the arguments as to the truth and value of religion have been made, there is one last refuge for its proponents. It is the one area in which religion claims its most valuable contribution, that of ‘comforter’. In the realm of personal faith, it claims that people find satisfaction and solace, answers to questions of ‘being’ and ‘purpose’. Sadly, this is an illusion built upon fantasy. Fantasy has its place in childhood, but if relied on in adulthood it brings disappointment and desolation. For every distressed person who accepts the temporary comfort of superstition, others are plunged into despair when their faith proves false and where their faith creates barriers between individuals and families. It is a tribute to the resilience of human beings that so many surmount these religion-inflicted problems.

The comfort given by the priest is real enough, but is no better or worse than the comfort given by any one-to-one comfort in times of need. No doubt, a Catholic priest can comfort a member of another faith, or an atheist. A sympathetic comforter who has no religious affiliation can be as effective as a priest, and has the added advantage that they do not reserve their services to those of their particular sectarian group or faith. The structuring of sources of comfort is as divisive as any other service organised along sectarian lines. It includes some and excludes others.

The only requirement for comfort in times of need is a fellow human being with understanding and time to spend listening and attending to the needs of others.

On a personal level, religion offers believers the ‘one true happiness’ and this claim shapes their attitude to all forms of human happiness. It approves the type of ‘happiness’ derived from spiritual experiences, and words such as divine, heavenly and magical have been insinuated into the language to reinforce this. Pleasure that detracts from work or more worthy activities it classifies as indulgence, and other pleasures are denounced as sinful. But it keeps its followers striving to enjoy the exclusive ecstasy of complete devotion to its icons, myths and legends, promising eternal joy if only they continue to believe. Compared with the happiness brought by religion, earthly, physical pleasures are relegated to a poor second-class status! Religious ecstasy is like every other form of ecstasy, be it the sublime experience of music, natural phenomena, beauty, relationships of friendship or love, or anything else that brings human beings intense pleasure. It is even more like other forms of ecstatic experience such as drug-induced ecstasy and can often have unpleasant side effects, addiction or depression on withdrawal, and disappointment when it does not come up to expectations. It can affect people’s relationships with others, society, family and friends, this is most extreme in the case of cults that insist on breaking family ties if they are not believers. If relationships are limited to other believers, if and when belief is lost, severe social and psychological effects can cause great distress and isolation. For others, it keeps them dependent for fear of social isolation if they leave the close and cosy circle of the faithful. Even for membership of mainstream Churches, where family and friends are all believers, when social life revolves round the Church and its activities, losing belief, or worse, seeing through the whole paraphernalia, can be traumatic if there is no other circle of social support that does not rely on religious belief.

Another serious effect of the religious attitude to happiness is its attitude to drugs. Their punitive censure of all mood-enhancing drugs leads to irrational policies towards those drugs. While some are undoubtedly problematic because they are highly addictive, it would be more productive to work on ways of understanding and preventing the addiction. It would be more humanitarian to find what is so bad about people’s lives that they resort to this form of escape. Other recreational drugs need to be classified accordingly and honestly, because if there is no differentiation, people will ignore the whole classification system and be resistant to information from people who are patently not honest about them. Prescribed mood enhancing drugs are affected by the ingrained blanket condemnation of ‘drug taking’. We are in the early days of psychotropic drugs to treat mental disorders and illness, and there will be teething troubles, especially given the commercial pressures from the pharmaceutical industry. But if stigma and irrational fear, engendered by outdated attitudes, make people afraid of taking medication against reasonable medical advice, any progress towards rational programmes of treatment will be held back.

The experience of pleasure is a function of the brain, produced by various stimuli. Most people realise that the ease with which people experience happiness is to a considerable extent dependent upon their personality, and most accept that everyday, worldly pleasures are often transient. Any promise that acceptance of particular set of beliefs, and compliance with regular rituals and behaviours, will lead to a permanent state of happiness, is likely to lead to disappointment. People deny their own humanity when they believe that the only reason they experience deep emotional experience is the dehumanising influence of a supernatural being. They do indeed experience ecstasy that is stimulated by the reinforcement of indoctrinated beliefs but it is nothing to do with truth or reality.

It is said that people without religion do not experience the ‘divine’ emotional responses that await the religious. Yet it is absurd for the religions to claim that the human ability to be amazed, delighted, awed and enthralled by the beauties of nature, art, literature and music is greater if allied to religious belief. Religionists may ascribe it to their belief in god, but that does not make it true. It is merely a way of describing feelings that are common to all people.

That atheists and other non-believers are unable to appreciate happiness as well at those who believe in god is one of the most irritating attacks on them by the religious, because they know how ridiculous and untrue it is.

Other problems caused by the distorted ideas of religion with regard to happiness are found throughout the whole spectrum of sexual activity and gender.

In the field of personal and sexual morality religious ideas have caused untold human misery. The still rife emphasis by the Churches in marriage between one man and one woman being the only satisfactory or moral family form not only for the raising of children, but on couples without children. Homosexuality and adultery have been outlawed and homosexuals and those cohabiting or having sexual relationships outside marriage have been persecuted since pre-Christian Roman and Greek civilisations. Christianity, Judaism, and Islam all outlawed adultery and homosexuality, and still do. Throughout the world wherever these religions are strong, those who offend these beliefs are cast out and in the worst cases, in Muslim countries that have Shari'a Law, they are persecuted, and can be arrested and sentenced to death.

Lesbianism has never been a crime in Britain although attempts have been made to outlaw it. Lesbians do, however, experience discrimination and ridicule even if they have been spared prosecution.

Even today in supposedly enlightened countries such as Britain and the United States, the law and social policy discriminates against unmarried people, gay men, and lesbian women. Churches and religious individuals are currently opposed allowing schools to teach that homosexual lifestyles are acceptable for those for whom they are appropriate.

Homosexuals cannot marry and have the civil advantages conferred on married couples. The Anglican Church applied for, and was granted, dispensation from European Human rights legislation preventing discrimination in employment. This means they can refuse to employ people not of their religion. This applies, not, as you might expect, to clergy, but to those working in other capacities, in which religious belief is not relevant. So teachers, caretakers, or others whose personal living arrangements or sexuality have no bearing upon their ability to do their job, can be refused employment by the Church. Given the fact that about a third of schools are Church schools, and the Church is such a large employer, there is a considerable sector of employment in which religious discrimination is accepted.

The law has been an increasing problem for the religions for at least a century now, and towards the end of the 20th century it was causing a considerable crisis of conscience especially among Roman Catholics. Catholics are deserting in huge numbers because of the doctrinal absurdity of their Church’s refusal to allow their followers the option of controlling their own fertility — limiting their families by using modern methods to protect themselves from unwanted pregnancy and STDs. The Catholic Church refused to sanction birth control in the face of massive population increase in the Third World, and refused to accept the use of condoms despite the catastrophic AIDS pandemic. It steadfastly refused to contemplate the option of terminating unwanted pregnancies in the face of demands by women not to have unwanted children, and the overwhelming evidence that safe, early abortion would save thousands of women’s lives and prevent accidental sterility caused by tubal infection. Their dogmatic and implacable refusal to accept homosexuality made it impossible for them to promote safe homosexual sex, just as it prevents them from promoting health and safety in other areas in which it has doctrines that deny the rights of people to choose their own recreations and lifestyles, such as sex outside marriage, and drug taking, because it considers them sinful.

This staunch refusal by the Catholic Church to bend to the needs of the population and allow freedom of choice in such matters as abortion, contraception and divorce, not only to their own members, but the rest of the population, was one cause of the persistent schism between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland.

This staunch refusal by the Catholic Church to bend to the needs of the population and allow freedom of choice, not only to their own members, but the rest of the population, was one of the things that prompted the six counties of Northern Ireland to refuse to become part of the Irish Free State (1921-22), later the Republic of Ireland. The Protestant and non-religious people in Northern Ireland (there were always some, though they were never acknowledged) were understandably adamant that that Catholic Theocracy would not rule them with its strictures on their personal lives.

Religious opposition to divorce is another area in which people’s lives are affected. As with their other social policies, they even affect the lives of those who do not agree with them. People can still become locked into unhappy marriages and they are prevented from moving on to happier, more fulfilling lives; and where new families have been established, the couples cannot re-marry. There is enough distress when families break down, without stigma and animosity caused by religion.

These religion-inspired problems are not confined to the Christian and Jewish religions. Islam is, if anything, worse where it is strongest. In Muslim countries where Sharia Law is instituted, the death penalty for blasphemy, and the horrific punishments of mutilation and stoning for infidelity, are amongst the worst aspects of religious activity still prevalent today. Homosexuality is punished by imprisonment in Egypt, hands are cut off for theft in Muslim countries, and women are killed or horribly disfigured by acid attack for adultery in countries that maintain religious patriarchy.

So much human misery has been caused by the twin Gorgons of virginity, abstinence and prudery on the one hand, and promiscuity, exploitation and prostitution on the other, that it is time to expose some of the roots of more of our religious attitudes to the harsh light of criticism.

Celibacy is an interesting example that illustrates the malign and distorting influence religion has had on human sexuality.

It is a rare event for anyone to come out and support celibacy as a life choice.

Regardless of one’s individual views on abstaining from sex by choice, it is a valid and acceptable state in which to live. An article in ‘The Freethinker’ entitled ‘Better Dead than Defiled’ highlighted the dangers of the traditional religious and current commercial elevation of sex as the most important thing in life. Advertisers, media, and business use sex to sell anything and everything, from soap to cars. The emphasis on, and all-pervading use of sexual imagery, which is out of all proportion to its real place in many people’s lives (far more people than are willing to admit it), and the emphasis that is given to it, lead to a distorted notion of its value even above life itself, especially women’s lives, and causes cruelty and violence of the most extreme kind.

One of the results of this obsession has been to make celibacy at once abnormal, a sign of failure, a punishment, and even a perversion. While much has been said and written about all forms of sexuality, homosexuality, transexuality, impotence and frigidity, celibacy as a choice remains largely undiscussed. It is associated in the public mind with ‘oddness’, sexual repression, sexual assault, child abuse and Catholic nuns and priests!

While enforced celibacy may well distort a person’s sexual development, and lead to sexual problems; if it is a freely chosen lifestyle it is likely to be an enhancement for those people who choose it. While sexual activity may, for some, have a very high priority throughout their adult lives, and for most at some stages of life; for many its real priority is somewhat lower down in the scheme of things. When did you last hear a bloke say, "When I get home I’m tired, I just want a meal a good book and a good night’s sleep?" The more usual image most men seem to prefer is the youthful "up for it any time", as often and for as long as possible and even with as many people as possible.

It is the combined and competing forces of religion and commerce that fuel this distorted image.

Although at first this may appear contradictory, a strong contributory factor has been the religious, especially the Roman Catholic religion’s, attitudes to sex and procreation and the guilt and shame that it has engendered about sexual activity and the human body. Their attitudes to sex are themselves contradictory, at once sinful if indulged in for pleasure, acceptable for the expression of love but only within marriage, but really desirable only for the procreation of children.

The very notion of a religion run by celibate men and women, priests, monks and nuns (Brides of Christ), who call themselves mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters, dedicated to the worship of a virgin mother, her son, and his heavenly father, gives a clue to their distorted notions about sex. That their enforced celibacy is supposedly the highest sacrifice and yet the purest form of life, is odd to say the least, and explains much of the prudery of religious people on this topic.

More than that, the revelations about the extent of paedophilia among RC priests in Ireland and the US, only now being uncovered after decades of abuse, illustrates one aspect of the perverted attitudes to sex, of the religions, and in this case the Roman Catholic religion in particular.

Attitudes to contraception, abortion; sex for procreation but not for pleasure, persecution of homosexuals, and the cruelty and abuse inflicted by priests and nuns, on children in their care, and unmarried mothers in the Industrial schools and Magdalen Laundries in Ireland even into the 1960s; and the punitive attitudes to prostitutes, but not their clients — are all part of the same perverted pattern and the social problems they cause, on divorce, contraception and abortion.

The Church’s sexual symbolism and doctrines have had a profound effect in shaping our cultural attitudes and customs. In fact the more they preach against what they call sin, the more young people in particular, are likely to react with ‘equal and opposite’ behaviour, now that there is less susceptibility to guilt caused by belief in that all-knowing, all-seeing god, and fear of divine retribution. So once again religion distorts life at a personal and social level, creating confusion and problems where there could and should be choice for individuals and couples to decide for themselves how best to order their personal lives, for their own and the greater good! This confusion over contradictory messages leads to an inability on the part of many people to discuss the subject in a rational way, and impedes the free flow of ideas and information about it, which in turn hampers the widest understanding of all the emotional, physical, and psychological and health aspects. This is mirrored in the way the drug debate has been hampered by religious attitudes to pleasure and happiness being something that can only be achieved through religion and ‘spirituality’, earthly pleasures being only a poor substitute, and sexual pleasure being only one of these second rate pleasures.

As is often the case, during the process of breaking away from all the gobbledegook of superstition, for some people the confusion and internal conflict leaves a vacuum, which may encourage the taking up of ‘equal and opposite’ reactions, which can be equally harmful if taken on with the same zeal; jettisoning values, ethics, morals and mores that have been learnt but devoid of rationale.

Like every other aspect of human psychology and physiology, people vary in their need for and desire for sexual activity. The problem now is that it has become almost impossible for anyone to ‘admit’ that sex is not all that it’s cracked up to be and that they can ‘take it or leave it’, and that for some, many even, their lives are full enough with better things. This is the new heresy.

Compulsory sex is as bad as a prohibition on sex, and it is time we got away from both extremes, in both the pulpit and the press. The days should be long gone when women have to fake orgasms, or succumb to unwanted sex for fear of being called ‘frigid’; while men are expected to make up or exaggerate their sexual prowess or number of conquests!

When every relationship is judged on the sexual attractiveness of the partners, people are from a very early age driven to a distorted view of the importance of arance, already important enough at puberty. Excesses lead to today’s obsessive and widespread consumerism, design labels, alcohol to enhance an attractive view of oneself, despair for those who feel unattractive, acceptance of underage sex, anorexia and so on and so forth.

From childhood, through adolescence and adulthood, the concentration on sexual activity and attractiveness as the be-all and end-all of human life blights lives, and at the other end of the spectrum is a major part of the ageism of modern western society. Once one’s sexual attractiveness declines, one’s value is seen to decline to zero, and women are the first and most deeply affected by this devaluation of them as people; people with characteristics and attributes separate from their use as sexual partners.

The place of women in society is a sphere of human life in which religion has perhaps wreaked the deepest and most damaging havoc.

Family

The religious idea of family at the centre of human existence, with the man as dominant at its head, a woman inferior as carer, child bearer, domestic worker and pleasure provider, while made tolerable and even happy by many, has in modern times become a prison, so severely does it constrain the personal relationships within it.

While they claim to stand for god’s purpose in giving a stable and loving relationship in which to rear children, the actuality of religious marriage has for many had the effect of enslaving women and children in each other’s exclusive company, and turning men into meal tickets who see little of their children. By the very nature of childbearing it is necessary to construct a framework within which all the members of a family can satisfy their needs. In previous generations the extended family dictated by the needs of pre-industrial production gave support to its members. The industrial revolution made women and children into dependants. The nuclear family has limited the ways in which men and women can come together to form families that are able to support each other through their various stages of life, now that life expectancy is so much greater than in the past. Yet the message of the Church cannot adapt to these changes. It cannot accept different forms of family, because it cannot accept the validity of marriage between homosexual people or other couples or groups living together outside of marriage, and even refuses to sanction the adoption of children in need of the individual care they can get from such families.

The attitudes to family honour engendered by some religions e.g. Christian sects, Muslims and Jews, generate misery and dysfunction caused by religious beliefs that lead to the casting out of family members. The most serious manifestation of this is that there are whole cultures in Muslim countries and cultural groups in this country today in which a woman is considered better dead than defiled. Fathers and brothers will pursue and kill daughters or sisters for disobeying or being forced to disobey their cultural rules.

Fathers, brothers — even mothers — will override all human compassion and family love to punish a woman who wants to marry outside their faith or against their wishes. Marital or sexual ‘crimes’ such as adultery can lead to women being beaten, imprisoned, and maimed, or cast out from their families, or even killed in extreme cases. There are even occasional reports of wives being killed on the death of their husbands, a practice called Suttee that was common in India in the past.

Forced marriage, still prevalent today, is an abuse of women, and unbelievable as part of civilised society, yet it still goes on and is apparently sanctioned by the religions of the Indian subcontinent.

The reluctance to seriously examine the roots of these attitudes in order not to upset religious believers, and the unwillingness to criticise aspects of culture, however harmful, for fear of being called racist by upholders of these cultural-religious values, has, until modern times, prevented discussion in the wider media. As usual politicians are unwilling or unable to address these issues if they rely on voters of a particular religious persuasion.

That a woman’s worth depends on whether she is a virgin or a mother, or has sex inside or outside of marriage, or is called a ‘spinster’ a ‘slut’ or a ‘whore’, or has ten children or is childless, is still evident in many ways. Women are expected, even encouraged, to feel guilty, sullied, dirty and worthless when they have been raped. Victims are often said to be ‘inviting rape’ if they wear ‘provocative’ dress. Just as women in Muslim countries are required to wear the all-enveloping Burka in order not to inflame men’s passions should they have to look at a woman in the street!

Attitudes to rape and raped women have been coloured by the doctrines of the ‘great’ monotheistic, male-dominated religions, the worst current examples being in some Muslim countries where a raped woman can be arrested and sentenced to being stoned to death for sex outside marriage because she dared to accuse her attacker of raping her, while the rapist was not punished!

Traditional religious ideas of chastity, virginity and the worth of women as subservient to men and their fertility and sexuality, are still reflected in, and dictate, current attitudes towards women,

Male Domination and The Place of Women

It is noticeable that family structure and the place of women in the family and in society, as promoted by the religions, is the same as that defined by the religions for themselves and their structures. This is hardly surprising given that all the ‘great religions’ were started my men, have male ‘fountainheads’ and prophets, are run by male priests, and function in the interests of men. The different expectations of men and women, the stereotypes of women as temptresses, whores or virgins, go to the very root of religion. The sage, loving father, shepherd protecting his sheep are a long way from the reality of men experienced by many women.

Homosexuality, celibacy, the enjoyment of sex, celebration of the human body, are all aspects of human experience in which religion has produced distortion, guilt and fear where there should have been free responsible pleasure and openness. Even today our laws reflect this religious domination, in the way men and women are treated differently under the law when it comes to prostitution: women are harassed, debased, subject to pimps and law enforcement, while the men who enjoy their services are not censured in any way.

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