Reply #17: Bertrand Russell said it best I think

[pokerfan]

Religion is based, I think, primarily and mainly upon fear. It is partly the terror of the
unknown and partly, as I have said, the wish to feel that you have a kind of elder brother
who will stand by you in all your troubles and disputes. Fear is the basis of the whole
thing -- fear of the mysterious, fear of defeat, fear of death. Fear is the parent of cruelty,
and therefore it is no wonder if cruelty and religion have gone hand in hand. It is because
fear is at the basis of those two things. In this world we can now begin a little to
understand things, and a little to master them by help of science, which has forced its way
step by step against the Christian religion, against the churches, and against the
opposition of all the old precepts. Science can help us to get over this craven fear in
which mankind has lived for so many generations. Science can teach us, and I think our
own hearts can teach us, no longer to look around for imaginary supports, no longer to
invent allies in the sky, but rather to look to our own efforts here below to make this
world a better place to live in, instead of the sort of place that the churches in all these
centuries have made it.

We want to stand upon our own feet and look fair and square at the world -- its good
facts, its bad facts, its beauties, and its ugliness; see the world as it is and be not afraid of
it. Conquer the world by intelligence and not merely by being slavishly subdued by the
terror that comes from it. The whole conception of God is a conception derived from the
ancient Oriental despotisms. It is a conception quite unworthy of free men. When you
hear people in church debasing themselves and saying that the y are miserable sinners,
and all the rest of it, it seems contemptible and not worthy of self- respecting human
beings. We ought to stand up and look the world frankly in the face. We ought to make
the best we can of the world, and if it is not so good as we wish, after all it will still be
better than what these others have made of it in all these ages. A good world needs
knowledge, kindliness, and courage; it does not need a regretful hankering after the past
or a fettering of the free intelligence by the words uttered long ago by ignorant men. It
needs a fearless outlook and a free intelligence. It needs hope for the future, not looking
back all the time toward a past that is dead, which we trust will be far surpassed by the
future that our intelligence can create.