Before I begin, I do not believe that all religious people are bad people and, in fact, can even be good people. This is an overview of some of the negative aspects of religion.
I recently attended a rather religious marriage ceremony. No alcohol. Had to wait for the prayer before eating. Honestly, I almost made a mess of everything by eating too early. Honestly, I wanted to do it intentionally to prove that it makes no difference to these brainwashed people. The food will be the same whether they prayed or not. The food got there because other people put the food there, not God, and yeah, you can argue that everyone is here because of God. You know, you can argue that with the same fundamental backing as to saying that the planet will be destroyed tomorrow by a meteor. Technically even less since we all know meteors exist. Yet, there's still not one single shred of evidence that Jesus Christ even existed, so there is that.
Now, let's get to the topic. Psychological traumas created by religion. The concept is simple – sacrifice yourself, your pleasures, your desires, and your baser natural wants for the promise of an eternal spot in a promised land with not a single inkling of proof it exists. If I came up to you today and tried to sell you on something like this, I'd be labeled a fraud. I'd be labeled a cheat. I may even be beaten to death. Yet, more people believe in this promised land than who don't.
And the problem starts the first time you enter a church for a service. The first thing you're taught is to never trust yourself. This figment of imagination you are supposed to talk to when you're otherwise alone is supposed to guide your every choice, only it is programmed into you from the church that this voice is to go against everything you naturally want.
Let's take the basic relationship, for instance. A man and a woman. Religion starts by telling the man that he is dominant, he is the one with the power. He is the one who makes choices. Religion also tells women that they are strictly there to please the man, to be his support system. He is supposed to be in control, she follows. It automatically sets up this dynamic of power which can NEVER be healthy.
It can teach a woman she can't speak up for herself. It can teach a woman that she isn't supposed to enjoy things that her man does – don't enjoy sex because the reason you're doing it is to please your husband. Don't enjoy having alone time if your husband wants you to be with him. Don't enjoy friends because that takes you away from your wifely duties. Sure, these can sound a bit extreme, but are they really? I think that even you, dear reader, were to examine your life closely enough would realize that some of these things have impacted you, as well.
And then there is the psychological traumas the man must face if he doesn't live up to the impossibly high standards of being better than the woman in all roles of importance. Of course they are impossible to maintain – a woman is just as equal as the man, they just both have different skill sets and should be appreciated equally for what they have to offer in said relationship. That can never happen if the man and woman are brainwashed into believing that the man is the important aspect of the relationship.
And what happens when faced with this feeling that you aren't living up to the level of importance you should be? You act out. Even if it isn't acknowledged, trying to live up to such standards can easily cause misplaced anger. It can lead to cheating due to searching for the reinforcement of importance. It can lead to verbal, mental, and even physical abuse to compensate for one's feeling of not living up to their role as deemed by the church.
And then there are the impacts that the women must face by being told they are less important. Imagine being an incredibly intelligent, incredibly capable woman in today's society. A society in which you have freedoms – albeit, society still deems you less valuable than a man – to move your way up to important positions at work. You have the capability of creating your own business and driving it to success. Hell, you can even drive! Imagine being an equal to a man, and imagine being treated as such. Now imagine how the real world works. Imagine all the jokes you've heard about how a woman's place is in the kitchen. Imagine how all the scripture tells you that you are to support your husband. How it is your job to be there for him no matter what he does – cheat, abuse you, or stops giving you attention altogether.
And there it is. If you're being told these things then it is being ingrained into your belief structure that you are less important than the man you chose to be with – or, more realistically, pursued you enough to make you feel like he was the one. You didn't get to know him before you made that decision because he was too busy trying to convince you to be with you, hiding his bad qualities and over embellishing his good qualities to impress you. Before you knew it, you were married to someone you didn't even know. Now, if you follow God, you must spend the rest of your life with this person who could end up having such psychological damage from believing his role is so much more important than yours that he is okay with the notion that giving you two black eyes is equivalent to telling you to do something three times.
Now let's take a step back here because it is easy to say that this is all based around societal norms and not necessarily religion, right? Sure, except the thing you'd be neglecting is that our societal norms at this point are based around religion – at least in the United States of America. We can't even have a president that doesn't claim some branch of Christianity. Religion became so prominent in the 1950's that the phrase “In God We Trust” was added to paper money. Meanwhile, we can look at the retaliation from societal norms, along with big leaps in rejecting the religiosity they were raised in, in the 1960's and see, very prominently, that women took giant leaps to gain equality. It is clear that in every culture where religions are dominant, women are treated as less than the man.
And if you are one of those people who find themselves in a church on Sundays then perhaps you should really pay attention to what is being said to you. Does it make you feel like the person next to you truly is your equal? Does it truly make you feel like you're valued as you are today regardless of what your desires may be and regardless of what you feel is right? Or does it make you feel like you're being herded into a belief structure that conforms to how someone else feels the world should be? The feeling of connection to other humans is something that every one of us feel an innate desire to feel, but feeling that way by being told you're more or less valued than another person cannot be a healthy means of doing so. And if you believe your religion doesn't believe one sex is more or less important than the other, you need to read that religion's book more thoroughly. It is there, you just think you're ignoring it.
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