Why do young people reject god and religion?

The answer depends on the intellectual ability of the individual but the main reasons given are:

• Boring
• Nonsense
• Philosophy
• Natural disasters etc.
• Historical perspective
• Anti-scientific
• Hypocrisy
• Oppression
• World events

The teaching of Religious Education in schools by poorly trained staff using a badly thought out syllabus has obviously done a great job for the cause of atheism. It could be argued that we should be seeking to maintain the status quo rather than trying to reform the teaching about religion and belief in schools.

When a young person says "boring" it simply means that it has no immediate personal relevance to their lives. At secondary school young people have more interesting and exciting things to think about than a boring old repressive god and his boring old representatives on earth - especially given the hormones that are rushing through their bodies and religious preaching that seems to run directly counter to everything they are feeling and everything they want to do and enjoy. Religion is the kill-joy, religion is boring.

Nonsense

Many young people equate the idea of a god with the idea of a Santa Claus - a fairy story told to children and something one grows out of.

Philosophy

Some young people develop a well-honed sense of philosophical logic at a very young age - even if they may not call it "philosophical logic". They arrive at some simple logical conclusions:

• There is no point proposing anything you can't test.
• There is no point proposing anything more complicated than is necessary.
• If you propose a god without cause you might just as well propose a universe without cause.
• If you propose an everlasting god you might just as well propose an everlasting universe.
• We can see, touch, feel, hear, kick the universe but you can't do the same for a god.
• God is an unnecessary proposition - it explains nothing, generates more questions than answers and stultifies intellectual and analytical thought.

This may seem pretty heavy stuff and young people may not articulate it in this way - however, many of them get there very early indeed - the author of this page got there between the ages of six and eight.

A few relevant quotations:

• "Philosophy is questions that may never be answered. Religion is answers that may never be questioned."
• "If 50 million people believe a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing."
• "Religious belief is not democratic - you can't take a vote to prove that god exists."
• "If god wanted people to believe in him, why did he invent logic?"
• "The best defence against logic is ignorance."

They ask:

• Why does a good god allow disasters that kill millions of innocent people?
• Why did he allow the Asian Tsunami kill hundreds of thousands?
• Why did he inflict the hurricane on the god-fearing people of New Orleans?
• Why do people die agonising deaths of terrible diseases?
• Why does he not answer prayers?

What a terrible and evil thing it is for religions to say that "it is god's way" or "it is because mankind is sinful so the innocent must die with the guilty."

The god that "allows" these things is either a murdering, vicious sadist, sick-in-the-head monster treating people as play-things or simply does not exist at all.

Historical perspective

Through the teaching of history & RE, watching TV, watching films and reading books, young people build up a mental catalogue of what has been done in the name of god and religion and what continues to be done in the name of god and religion. The catalogue is enormous but some of the things young people quote are:

• The extreme violence in the Bible, Torah and Qur'an - Genesis and Deuteronomy for example.
• The systematic torture and murder of non-believers - by all religions.
• The persecution and burning of heretics and the killing of women as witches.
• Religious inspired wars - the crusades for example
• Priests leading soldiers in war.
• The fact that everyone has "god on their side" in all conflicts
• The everlasting conflicts between religions and between sects within a religion: Catholic v Protestant in Britain for example
• The genocides carried out during the expansion of empires - with religious inspiration and blessing - in South America and Africa for example
• The "ethnic cleansing" (for which read "religious cleansing") which has happened repeatedly throughout history and continues to this day (Bosnia and Kosovo for example.)

Religions have a long track record of being opposed to scientific investigation. For example:

• The Roman Catholic Church's persecution and trial of Galileo for daring to suggest that the sun did not go round the earth (something the Greeks knew 2,000 years earlier)
• The attacks on Darwin and evolution - a process which continues to this day amongst fundamentalists and literalists of all religions.
• The current opposition to stem-cell research which could save millions from terrible diseases
• The current opposition to the vaccine Gardasil, which could prevent cervical cancer. The vaccine has to be given before a girl becomes sexually active so the Roman Catholic Church sees it as "encouraging pre-marital sex" and religious fundamentalist describe it as "a tarts' charter".

Science, and the scientific method, exist because we do not understand everything - there would be no point to science if we had all the answers. Religion is the opposite to science and tries to provide simple answers to everything - "it is god's will", "god made it that way", "it is not up to us to question the ways of god."

"No one has the right to destroy another person's beliefs by demanding empirical evidence."

"Whatever we cannot easily understand we call God. This saves a lot of wear and tear on the brain tissues."

Hypocrisy

Young people can see for themselves that all religions are riddled with hypocrites - those who fail to practise what they preach or use their religion for personal gain.

• American TV evangelists live in luxurious homes, have fancy cars and yachts and maintain large personal bank-balances.
• The sexually perverted Roman Catholic Church has celibate priest who are far from celibate - as anyone in Ireland will tell you and as evidenced by the millions that the church continues to pay out as a result of the sexual and physical abuse of children and adult parishioners.
• The Roman Catholic Church has always supported those who oppress people rather than those who try to liberate them. One look at the Church's record in Nazi German, in Yugoslavia, in South America, and just about anywhere else, proves this.
• Religions lie to protect their own - they sweep the uncomfortable under the carpet rather than bringing wrong-doers to justice. In some cases, churches demand to "try their own" rather than handing over church members or priests to secular justice.
• Saudi Arabia is a dictatorship with the thousands of princelings of the Al Saud family lining their pockets while supporting the ultra-oppressive Wahabi sect of Islam. This does not stop those same princelings visiting the flesh pots of the west and indulging in prostitutes, drink and gambling - as any night club in London, New York, Las Vegas or Los Angeles will tell you.
• Religious leaders, representing the religions of "peace", preach about holy wars and killing in the name of their god.

Young people see what is done in the name of religion:

• women condemned to death by stoning because of adultery,
• men getting away with things that women are beaten for
• people having their hands chopped off as thieves,
• churches supporting the strong, rich and powerful rather than the weak and poor,
• politicians, prime minsters and presidents using religion to justify their actions and to whip up emotion and hatred,
• women being treated as second class citizens, being told what to wear, when to go out, what not to do and who to marry,
• homosexuals being hung in the streets in Iran,
• those who abandon or change their religion being condemned to death,
• anyone who challenges religion being condemned to death,
• embassies being burned, effigies being burned and flags being burned - simply because someone draw a cartoon of a prophet.

Young people are naturally rebellious (or should be!) and nothing annoys them more than being told what they should not do!

To them, religions are full of the negative - "thou shalt not .." rather than positively helping them to enjoy their lives in a responsible manner.

The conversations between religion (R) and young people (YP) are simple:

Pre-marital sex:

• R: "you must not engage in pre-marital sex"
• YP: "why not?"
• R: "because god says so."
• YP: "how do you know?"
• R: "because it is in the Bible/Qur'am/Torah/...."
• YP: "who says so?"
• R: "the priest, scholar, rabbi, holy man ...."
• YP: "well, if I can't have sex, is masturbation OK?"
• R: "no."
• YP: "why not?"
• R: "because it is in the Bible/Qur'am/Torah/...."
• .....

Contraception:

• R: "you must not use contraception."
• YP: "why not?"
• R: "because you will be preventing a new life."
• YP: "where does it say that?"
• R: "in the Bible"
• YP: "who says so?"
• R: "the priest."
• YP: "but the priest is celibate - what does he know about sex?"
• R: "because he is a holy man who has been called by god."
• YP: "how do you know?"
• R: because the church says so."
• YP: can we use contraceptives to prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS?"
• R: "no, because contraceptives encourage sex outside marriage."
• YP: "so is it better for millions to die of AIDS than to use contraceptives?"
• R: "yes, that is god's will."
• ...

All religions are oppressive and all religions discriminate - particularly on grounds of gender and sexuality.

Try telling a confident well-informed modern young woman that she is a second class citizen and that she does not have the same rights as men - as religions try to do.

Unlike their parents, most young people of the current generation have friends who are homosexuals - male or female. They do not have a problem with this. However, they do have a problem when they see religions getting away with overt discrimination based on gender and sexuality.

World events

Young people watch the TV news - some of them even read newspapers!

Never a day goes by without some act of violence between religions, between sects within a religion or between religious groups and those fighting the "war against terrorism". Young people are pretty quick at seeing through the whole idea of "the war against terrorism" in order to understand the true motives of those involved - on both sides.

Never a day goes by without some religious leader or "community representative", often self-appointed, telling people how they should run their lives, and what people should do or should not do, because it is the word of their god as expressed in their holy books.

What is done every day in the name of religion is the biggest turn-off for young people.