I've spent considerable time examining my own religious beliefs, studying history, and reflecting on experiences from two military deployments. I've reached the tentative conclusion that religion has been a net negative influence on human civilization.
I'm open to changing that conclusion.
First, I believe most people are fundamentally decent. I believe humanity generally benefits when people are educated, encouraged to think independently, and empowered to work toward collective goals.
I also recognize that religion has inspired tremendous good. Hospitals, universities, charitable organizations, magnificent art, community support, and countless individual acts of kindness.
But has that good outweighed the harm?
Consider the Crusades, religious persecution, forced conversions, sectarian violence, and the divine right of kings.
For centuries, rulers justified their authority by claiming God had placed them on the throne. Their decisions weren't merely political judgments; they supposedly carried divine endorsement.
And as Monty Python and the Holy Grail so eloquently reminds us:
"Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government."
It's funny because it's absurd. But is a monarch claiming God personally selected his bloodline to rule really that different from Arthur claiming legitimacy because some watery tart handed him a sword?
The underlying question is serious: Why should one person's claim of supernatural authority give them the right to govern everyone else?
And what happens to a society when questioning its ruler can also be characterized as questioning God?
Now consider an alternative history.
Imagine Europe developing broadly representative governments during the Middle Ages. Not modern democracies magically appearing overnight, but societies gradually distributing political authority among their citizens rather than concentrating it in hereditary monarchies and religious institutions.
Imagine education and literacy becoming widespread priorities because an informed population was considered an asset rather than a threat to established power.
Imagine scientific discoveries being judged primarily on evidence, rather than whether they conflicted with an authority's interpretation of scripture.
Imagine communities cooperating to build infrastructure, improve medicine, expand agriculture, and solve problems that affected ordinary people.
How much further might humanity have advanced?
Scientific progress builds upon earlier discoveries. An advancement made a century sooner might enable another advancement decades earlier. Over hundreds of years, those differences could become enormous.
Instead, much of human history has involved competing rulers, religious authorities, and institutions insisting that their particular interpretation of divine will justified their control over everyone else.
And when a watery tart—or her considerably more influential religious equivalent—becomes the foundation of political legitimacy, meaningful accountability becomes difficult.
Now, before someone points out Stalin, Mao, or Pol Pot: yes, secular dictators have committed horrific atrocities.
But that doesn't invalidate my argument.
Those men didn't replace authoritarianism with collaboration. They replaced one form of unquestionable authority with another. Their ideologies became doctrines that ordinary people weren't permitted to challenge.
The problem isn't exclusively religion. It's the concentration of power in individuals or institutions claiming possession of an absolute truth that places them beyond criticism.
Religion, however, has historically provided an exceptionally powerful mechanism for making that claim.
I saw something related to this during my military service. I encountered people whose religious convictions were radically different from my own. Some were involved in terrible things, yet they were still recognizably human beings. People with beliefs, fears, loyalties, and the capacity for ordinary human interaction.
Those experiences reinforced something I continue to believe: most people aren't inherently evil. But people can become convinced that terrible actions are righteous, particularly when they believe they're carrying out God's will.
I don't believe eliminating religion would eliminate warfare, greed, cruelty, or political ambition.
Humanity would still have plenty to fight about.
But would there have been fewer wars? Less persecution? Fewer people killed for believing the wrong thing? Less resistance to independent thought? More collaboration across cultures?
And perhaps most importantly, how much human potential was never realized because political and religious authorities had a vested interest in preserving their own power?
I understand that this is an impossible historical experiment. We can't rewind civilization and run it again without religion.
And we can't simply count every hospital built in religion's name against every person killed in religion's name. We also have to consider whether those benefits and harms would have occurred anyway, through other institutions and motivations.
Nevertheless, I think the question is worth asking.
If we could weigh the total good religion has contributed to humanity against the total harm it has caused or enabled, would the balance be positive or negative?
My conclusion, at least for now, is net negative.
I'm interested in thoughtful historical arguments that challenge that conclusion. Particularly examples where religion produced benefits that likely wouldn't have emerged otherwise.
Because ultimately, I believe humanity advances most effectively when people are educated, empowered to question authority, and encouraged to cooperate toward common goals.
Not when some self-appointed representative of God insists he knows what's best for everyone.
And certainly not because some moistened bint lobbed a scimitar at somebody.
So, religion: net positive or net negative for humanity? And why?