I was thinking about religion again yesterday. As atheists we usually just accept a given religion as simply a different way to view the world: everyone has a right to think or believe what they like, no matter how flawed we may find it. Yet when we frame religion as being a form of social control which uses a set of myths as a source of authority, and which is used to dictate to people what they should think and how they should behave, then religion becomes something which should be overtly opposed and combatted. In America especially, Christianity has become a political force used to dominate people: the threat of God or Hell is used by self-proclaimed preachers to force others to submit to their views. Such views are often very intolerant and right wing. That’s why I feel we should now be more active in opposing religion: it can no longer simply be accepted as just another aspect of social diversity, but needs to be openly challenged and spoken against.

At the end of the day, no matter how friendly or fatherly a priest may try to appear, say, he is using a set of myths and dogmas to assume almost the same authority as an elected politician. He cannot allow such dogmas to be questioned or challenged, but through them he grants himself the right to give others weekly lectures on how to live their lives and what attitudes to adopt. This has been going on for centuries. If these preachers were using any other set of myths to be so dominant and controlling, no doubt they would just be ignored or regarded as mentally ill; but because christianity has been part of our culture for so long, their assumed authority goes unchallenged. Priests, cardinals or bishops are even often asked onto political programs on TV to talk alongside politicians and scientists and given the same type of esteem, even though they did nothing to earn it.

Isn’t it time that we, as a society, put an end to this? In any modern community, authority is either earned democratically in the case of politicians, or through years of study and training in the case of doctors and teachers. Yet religious preachers assume a similar degree of social authority simply by invoking a set of myths, most of which have been shown, academically, to be nonsense. That’s why I have begun to view religion as oppressive and as something to be spoken out against. Those who defend it and say religion shouldn’t be criticised simply do so to preserve it’s – and thus their – authority. As I wrote here, street preachers should be asked to move on and keep their doctrines to their selves, as I particularly object to the way they force their dogma onto others. In other words, we should be active in our opposition. Religion holds too much cultural authority when it should be seen as the manifestly oppressive form of social control it so obviously is.