If I were the devil … I’d create religion

If I were the devil, I'd create religion. Several religions, actually - not just one.

There's no better tool than religion to cause division and conflict, and to get people to turn away human principles and critical thinking.

Everyone is born with an awareness of human principles, which include things like honesty, fairness, equality, equity, justice, compassion, forgiveness, courage, human dignity, service, excellence, potential, growth, patience, nurturance, encouragement, respect, vision, accountability, initiative, altruism, charity, etc

Principles predate any religion. They are shared by all cultures throughout the world and throughout all of human history. They are the common thread that binds humanity together. So if I were the devil, I would do all I could to draw people's focus away from them.

To the extent people could keep their focus on human principles while exercising critical thinking, reason, and logic, then they could live in relative peace, and society as a whole would ensure that everyone was fed, housed, clothed, loved, and otherwise cared for, and they could achieve this in a manner that would not upset the balance with the rest of the creatures and elements on earth.

To the extent that people are drawn away from principles and critical thinking, an imbalance begins, not only among people but with the rest of the creatures and elements on earth. The result is that a smaller, and smaller number of people accumulate more than what they need, while countless others go without adequate amounts of food, clothing, housing, medical care, etc. - and they otherwise suffer.

The best way to encourage people to abandon human principles would be to get them to adopt something else as their primary focus (their center). Something that would outwardly seem to be even more virtuous than human principles, but ultimately would be much more destructive.

Religion would be perfect because it would give people something that appeared to originate from a higher power than humans. The higher power would be perceived as both good and all powerful, so that people wouldn't question it.

Offering a carrot in the form of a heavenly afterlife or enlightenment, and a stick in the form of eternity in hell are powerful motivating factors.

One of my crowning achievements would be the creation of Christianity. I would influence people to create Christianity and compile the bible, and convince others to believe that both were inspired and sanctioned by God.

It wouldn't be effective to create something whose teachings and practices are 100% bad. People wouldn't be fooled by that. It would be too obvious. All religions have to have a veneer of 'goodness' and the sense that a higher power is being honored and served.

There are enough moral and principled elements in the bible and Christianity overall to get people to buy into the idea that they are inspired by a holy power. Christianity's teachings embody some human principles, but not all. By associating them with a higher power, many people often believe that Christianity's teachings are a replacement for principles - which they are definitely not - because some teachings and beliefs are extremely unprincipled.

This is how the real damage gets done, because mixed in with the positive messaging are bad or unprincipled elements embedded in both the bible and Christianity overall. The bible is ambiguous, difficult to understand and oftentimes just plain nonsensical, with multiple versions, translation errors, contradictions, inaccuracies about the actual physical world, and to put it simply - - the inclusion of all sorts of bad things done by God or supported by God or Jesus.

The result is perpetual arguments over what bible verses actually mean or whether events described actually ever happened, so that even within the Christian religion there is significant division and infighting.

The good aspects of Christianity definitely do draw in a significant number of decent, sincere people who strive to lead principled lives. Most have enough inborn integrity and common sense to disregard Christianity's immoral or unprincipled aspects. The good practitioners help maintain a facade of respectability and inherent goodness.

The false perception of inherent goodness does incredible harm. It can induce well meaning people to accept or ignore Christianity's unprincipled beliefs and teachings, and it makes the bible vulnerable to misinterpretations and malicious, bad-faith manipulations.

In a way, Christianity is similar to a money laundering operation. It has positive teachings and sincere, decent, well meaning practitioners that give it a positive image and serve as its 'front'. But it also has harmful, unprincipled beliefs and teachings and many, many less than sincere members who are deeply lacking in integrity. The sins of its bad actors get laundered through the church's godly image and they come out appearing to be righteous - making the Christian church, in many respects, a sin laundering operation.

The false veneer of holiness and inherent goodness makes Christianity a safe space for humanity's worst to use as cover for their unprincipled behavior. It's a bit like sleight of hand and misdirection by a magician. People will focus on their association with Christianity, which is perceived as good, and they will not notice the bad actions.

This makes Christianity a perfect tool for people to use for material enrichment, self-promotion, social advancement, manipulation, and power, while at the same time causing harm significant to others. The sad thing is that it is often society's most vulnerable that are preyed upon. Christian leaders, churches, and institutions are some of the worst offenders. Leaders and institutions that have amassed significant wealth are not serving or doing the work of God.

There is also harm done by everyday people who don't use it in any grand scheme to hurt others, but they mistakenly see being a Christian as a replacement for integrity. When a person’s character is measured by membership in a religion, instead of whether a person is honest and has strong moral principles, then honesty and moral principles often get disregarded. That is incredibly harmful.

Many may end up adopting some of Christianity's bigoted or misogynistic beliefs. When people identify themselves more as Christians than as humans, they can get the perception that non-christians are villains or somehow lesser even when non-christians clearly act with higher levels of integrity.

The immoral / unprincipled teachings and beliefs; the bad actors who use Christianity to spread fear and hate and take advantage of the vulnerable; the misinterpretations; the manipulations; the politician or neighbor who quotes the bible on facebook to show how pious they are; the leaders and followers who use it as a tool to gain power, etc. - - are just as much a part of Christianity as the good practitioners. In fact, they are a product of it.

There's no governing board of Christianity that identifies who the good members are and who the bad members are. Religious leaders who preach fear and hate are given the same status as those who preach love and compassion. In fact, it is often the higher authorities of Christian institutions who are the worst offenders. Too many Christians are hesitant to criticize members of their own religion, possibly due to Christianity's belief of how people can get to heaven.

Christianity's path to an afterlife may be its main attraction, but it is also probably the worst, most immoral and destructive thing about it. It is very ungodly. It is something you would expect from the devil, not God or Jesus.

In a nutshell, Christianity's path to eternity in the Kingdom of God requires that people believe that Jesus is the son of God. Not believing can get a person sent to hell (or at least getting condemned by God) according to many Christians.

This requirement is not only incredibly divisive and immoral, but it also encourages an abandonment of logic, reason, critical thinking, and human principles in order to believe it - exactly what the devil would want.

I don't think that most Christians have given enough thought to how horrible this is.

Making 'belief in Jesus' a requirement deepens the division between Christians and the rest of the world, since the belief that Jesus is the son of God is unique to Christianity.

According to most Christians, someone will not go to heaven if they don’t believe that Jesus is the son of God - no matter how well they live their lives. This creates a false moral imperative for Christians to spread their religion to 'save' the non-believers, which often does not work out too well for the non-believers.

By making the path to heaven not dependent on how a person lives their life, it takes the focus off of living in alignment with human principles.

Christians will try to dance around this by saying that leading a good life is still emphasized in their teachings, but at the end of the day, a person can live a life filled with bad acts that hurt others, and on their deathbed, if they accept that Jesus is the son of God and they say they are sorry for their sins, they will get into heaven. The worst can go to heaven, and the best can go to hell.

From a marketing standpoint, this is pure genius. Are you a bad person? That's ok - you can still live a life of debauchery and get heaven as your reward. Are you a good person? That's great, but you're still going to go to hell if you don't believe in our guy and give to our church. It sounds more like something that a bunch of religious hustlers and grifters would think up - not God. No wonder Christianity became so popular.

If you look at it from a rational standpoint, applying moral principles, it is a red flag signalling that Christianity is not derived from a higher power that is inherently good.

There is nothing wrong with not believing that Jesus is the son of God, and it is completely unreasonable for God to expect that from people. It's not something that a good, loving God would do.

God gave people free will. Why would God do that and then penalize people when they use that free will wisely to make reasonable, good-faith decisions? It certainly is not unreasonable, unprincipled, or morally wrong to not believe that Jesus was the son of God, or to not follow Christianity at all.

At the time that Jesus is purported to have lived, people were scattered all over the world. However, according to Christianity, God and Jesus only revealed themselves to a relatively small number of people, and these supposed interactions were only documented by people [not by God or Jesus] decades or even centuries after the events they describe were to have taken place. The initial written accounts were imperfectly translated into different languages multiple times by different groups of people over the centuries, resulting in multiple versions of the bible.

Why would people in other parts of the world believe? Why would people who lived two thousand years later believe? Even someone who lived at the time of Jesus, and met him, followed him around, listened to his teachings, and even witnessed miracles shouldn't be blamed for not believing Jesus was the son of God.

If Jesus appeared before me right now, told me he was the son of God, and performed a few miracles, I still wouldn't believe. I would assume that he was actually Satan or some other dark character trying to trick me - which would be more reasonable to assume.

Christianity is a religion where some of the best, brightest, kindest, most decent people that humanity has ever known have been theoretically been condemned by God. People like: Mark Twain, George Gershwin, Aaron Copeland, Johannes Brahms, Albert Einstein, and Carl Sagan. That is not something that a loving god would do.

Belief in Jesus as the son of God is literally impossible to do for many people who are being honest and principled and engaging in critical thinking. Someone can't just lie and say they believe in something. If god is all knowing, they wouldn't be fooled.

Even if I could somehow believe in Jesus, and he told me that I had a place in his 'kingdom of god' for all eternity, I wouldn't go. I wouldn't want anything to do with anyone who would condemn good, decent human beings. Christianity's kingdom of heaven is probably more like hell.

Another way of looking at it: someone walking up to you and promising you eternity in paradise if you only believe in and commit yourself to them (basically giving them your soul) definitely sounds more like something the devil would do, as opposed to God or the son of God.

Christianity's path to an afterlife is a perfect example of how its false veneer of inherent goodness can make immoral behavior seem to be virtuous.

I don't actually believe in the devil. All religions are most certainly man-made. However, if we had to choose a supernatural explanation for Christianity’s inspiration, then the devil or some other dark, malevolent force is the most likely author - not God.

A supreme being that was good and all powerful would not create multiple religions, nor would they create one religion and allow other false religions to be created. If they wanted their presence to be known and their will to be done, they wouldn't have revealed themselves to such a small number of relatively primitive people over a brief period of time, and then do a horrendous job of documenting it all. They wouldn't create or inspire any religion that could be so easily manipulated by bad actors.

Religion will never unite humanity or serve as a common source of moral guidance. It will always be a source of division, conflict, oppression, exploitation, and abuse. It invariably serves to not only lead people away from human principles, but to also lead them away from any actual higher power if it does exist.

Good, well-meaning religious practitioners should at least make efforts to mitigate the harm their religion does. Here are some ways:

Recognize the fallibility of your religion.

Don't hold forth Christianity or any other religion as being inherently good or moral or principled. They're not. There is nothing special or virtuous about being a Christian. Belief in Christianity is nothing more than a guess. It's not a better guess than any other religion or not believing in religion or god at all.

Recognize and openly criticize the bad actors of your religion and the harm that your religion does. Do this regularly.

Don't use religion to gauge someone’s integrity. Be held accountable to the same standards as everyone else - human principles applied in good-faith. Don't use religion to sanctify your own or someone else's immoral behavior.

Be a human first, and a Christian or a member of any other religion second.

Make alignment with human principles, and the exercise of reason, logic and critical thinking your top priority. Make it more important than practicing your religion. It will actually help you be a better practitioner of your religion and a better servant of God, as well as being a better member of humanity.