I thought this looked like an interesting topic, so I thought I might just chime in my own two cents on the original question:
So, why do some people have such a profound hate for religion? I really don't understand it. It helps out culture in many ways, and hurts little. Let's take a look.
The big pros of it are that it instills morals and goodwill and provides mental security/piece of mind, and what exactly are the cons? I often hear the argument that "It's holding us back!" which isn't true at all. I'm a Christian and I'd love to know what is smaller than a Quark and I'd love to colonize on far away planets. That doesn't mean we should stop looking for the secret behind out creation either, we'll never know for sure until we look. Another argument is that it promotes hostility towards other religions, which is a misguided myth. In Christianity, God and Jesus would look at "sinners" (followers of the a different faith or gays) with forgiveness and ideally their followers should too. So faiths have no trouble coexisting in this religion based society.
So tell me, why?
In my opinion, the major 'con' to basing society on religion is that people become too invested in it to the point where they become oblivious to the rights of other people to think differently.
I think it's important to distinguish between "culture" and "society" here as well since religion will always we a part of the former, but does not necessarily need to be a part of the latter. Yes there is some overlap between the two, but when your society is comprised of various groups of people who have sometimes fundamentally different religious views, the need to keep the two separate becomes apparent. I don't think having a Judeo-Christian/Muslim/Buddhist/Hindu/etc nation simply because the majority of the population are members of that religion is right since it essentially ignores the perspective of people who think differently in favor of that majority.
There's a reason why the revolutions of the Enlightenment were based on the idea of the separation of Church and State - religion is based on belief, not empirical fact, so any society that uses religion as its exemplar for law and governance is placing the doctrine and agenda of that religion above reason.
I think that religion certainly has its place within our culture as it
can have benefits for the individual. But like all institutions, organized religions seek power, and power in numbers. They do this by essentially polarizing their followers against people of other faiths and with non-normative lifestyles, and each faith claims to have the market cornered on being the 'correct' one. If religious institutions truly had the good of humanity at heart they would simply adopt a 'live and let live' mentality toward other faiths and let people decide for themselves, but instead their fierce competition has only led to hatred, xenophobia, and even wars.
Faith in a particular religion is much more of an emotional choice than a rational one as well, which is why discussions of religion can become very heated - in calling into question a person's faith you're not just rebutting a point they've made, you're actually calling into question their most fundamental beliefs, shaking their entire world view from its very roots. While I understand this gut reaction, I think that we need to start moving past that, agree to disagree about certain things, and accept one another as being different without passing judgment. And that's what this comes down to: judgment. Religion clouds our judgment when it comes to other faiths because rule number one of every religion is "This is the correct religion." The natural extension of this rule is that every other religion is wrong, which is why religion sparks so much conflict - we essentially tell each other that our entire view on life, the universe, and everything is plain wrong.
I think Chris Rock summarized it best in
Dogma: You can change an idea, but it's a lot trickier to change a belief. This is why societies based on religions walk a dangerous path - they are intrinsically motivated by a system of beliefs that resonates to the very core of what is "being." The big trouble starts when there are more than one religious nations with very different views - conflict is almost inevitable because the foundational beliefs on which those respective nations are built are mutually exclusive. The more logical (and peaceful) alternative is to have societies that are based on ideas. This is the separation of Church and State - the separation of emotion from reason. Ideas can generally be contested without offending people too much - they disagree certainly, but all other things being equal most of the time the most reasonable course of action wins out. With religions at the helm, the debate can never just be point for point as individual religions often have mutually exclusive beliefs.
