[QUINNSCOMMENTARY]

Recently, the legislature in Iran voted a law making apostasy subject to the death penalty. In Afghanistan proselytizing is illegal and this week a 34 year old female aid worker was gunned down by the Taliban who said she was spreading her religion. In India, Hindus are telling Christians to leave their villages or their homes will be burned and they will be killed, Muslims in the Saudi Arabia teach hatred of Jews in school books, so much for the farce of being tolerant..

All this got me to thinking; does religion do more harm than good? Certainly many people find comfort and peace in their religious beliefs, and many good things come from religion, but on the other hand religion can be traced as the root cause for many wars, torture, intolerance and any number of things that one would associate with being counter to goodness, peace and love.

Religion started with the quest to deal with the unknown, like death, the weather, hardships, etc. it then developed into hundreds, if not thousands of variations each believing their view to be the correct one for all mankind. How is that possible?

How can religion be both good and evil? I submit it is the involvement of human beings that distort and pervert any religion and that the unfortunate truth is that organized religion is a tool in the hands of man, sometimes very beneficial but often just the opposite when it suites those in power. If that is true, then whatever religion one embraces is irrelevant as long as it does not seek dominance over other beliefs.

Over the history of man has religion done more harm than good? How is it possible for their to be one “right” religion when there are so many religions and our personal religion is more often than not, a happenstance of our birth?