Richard Dawkins is an evolutionary biologist and the author of “The God Delusion” in which he stated: “God is unjust, a control freak, bloodthirsty, racist, homophobic, vindictive, genocidal, and more.”

He also said: religion is a force of evil on the BBC’s Sunday Morning Live; the afterlife does not exist; that we all are aware of our mortality and someday we all have to die, sooner or later, and that is the end of our journey. He further said that he has no belief in god or afterlife, and he will stick to this belief forever.

Salon wrote: Dawkins doesn’t just think that religion is false. He thinks that bringing a kid up Catholic is a form of child abuse. Sam Harris thinks that Islam is responsible for 9/11. And everyone endorses Steven Weinberg. Say it yet again: “Good people will do good things, and bad people will do bad things. But for good people to do bad things—that takes religion.” Don’t be scared of the bullies. Martin Luther scotched purgatory. Would that he had done the same for the rest of the false, frightening nonsense. No God is going to descend on you. “There probably is no god, so stop worrying and get on with your life.”

Well, let’s start off with the question of whether religion is morally pernicious. I will reverse the tables and ask whether a life without religion can be fulfilling, morally and in any other way.

Is Religion Evil?

You can certainly make a pretty good case for this. As a child in England, for a couple of years I went to Queen Mary’s Grammar School in a town in the British Midlands (Walsall). We were very proud of our school, for uniquely it was founded in 1554, during the short reign (1553–1558) of the queen of that name. This has filled me with a lifelong sneaking regard for Queen Mary. There is very good reason for me to keep my regard sneaking, for she worked hard to merit her sobriquet of Bloody Mary. Remember, Mary was the oldest child of King Henry VIII, his daughter by Catherine of Aragon. After Anne Boleyn (1501–1536), who gave birth to Elizabeth (1533–1603), finally with his third wife, Jane Seymour (1508–1537), Henry produced a male heir, the fiercely Protestant Edward VI (1537–1553). When Edward died while still a teenager, the Protestant faction at court put Lady Jane Grey (1537–1554) on the throne, but the people would have none of this, and within nine days the Catholic Mary was queen. Jane’s days were numbered, although whether her execution was because of her usurping the throne or because she was Protestant remains a nice point. No such nicety was needed for Thomas Cranmer (1489–1556), archbishop of Canterbury; Nicholas Ridley (1500–1555), bishop of London; and Hugh Latimer (1487–1555), bishop of Worcester. They went to the stake because of their Protestantism. As did another three hundred of Mary’s subjects. It makes for gruesome reading as one brave person after another—many of them very ordinary people: clerks, cobblers, hatters—died for their faith. What is striking is how many of those who went to their deaths were women.

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