Richard Dawkins contends that
theistic religions devalue human compassion and morality. In his view, the
Bible contains many injunctions against following one's conscience over scripture and positive actions are supposed to originate not from compassion, but from the fear of punishment.
Children In the 19th century, philosopher
Arthur Schopenhauer argued that teaching some ideas to children at a young age could foster resistance to doubting those ideas later on. Some clerics of
Islam have permitted the
child marriage of older men to girls as young as 9 years of age.
Baptist pastor
Jerry Vines denounced
Mohammed as a pedophile for marrying and having had sex with a nine-year-old. For example, one organisation cites the case of a 10-year-old girl who was forced to marry and was raped in Yemen (
Nujood Ali), a 13-year-old Yemeni girl dying of internal bleeding three days after marriage and a 12-year-old girl dying in childbirth after marriage. Yemen currently does not have a
minimum age for marriage.
Latter Day Saint church founder
Joseph Smith married girls as young as 13 and 14 and other Latter Day Saints married girls as young as 10.
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints eliminated underaged marriages in the 19th century, but several
branches of Mormonism continue the practice.
Homosexuals Homosexuality is generally condemned in
Abrahamic religions where prohibition and execution of those who engage in male homosexual activity are found in the Old Testament of the Bible and in the Quran. Homosexuals are also condemned in the New Testament several times but without obligatory punishment. In the United States, conservative
Christian right groups such as the
Christian Legal Society and the
Alliance Defense Fund have filed numerous lawsuits against public universities, aimed at overturning policies that protect homosexuals from discrimination and
hate speech. These groups argue that such policies infringe their
right to freely exercise religion as guaranteed by the
Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment of the
United States Constitution. Most secularised Christian countries have legalised homosexual activity and several have legalised
same-sex marriage. However, not all historically Christian countries have done so such as
Russia and
Uganda which have introduced discriminatory laws ranging from anti-propaganda laws to corporal punishment. Homosexuality is still illegal in most
Muslim countries and several of these countries impose the
death penalty for homosexual behavior. In July 2005,
two Iranian men aged sixteen and eighteen were, supposedly, hanged for homosexuality, causing an international outcry. They were executed after being convicted by the court of having raped a 13-year-old boy. The case attracted international media attention. The British
lesbian, gay and bisexual group
OutRage! alleged that the teenagers were executed for consensual homosexual acts and not rape.
Racism frequently used the
burning cross to intimidate minorities. In line with other findings which suggest that religious humanitarianism is largely directed at in-group members, greater religious identification, greater extrinsic religiosity and greater religious
fundamentalism were associated with
racial prejudices. This fact is congruent with the fact that 50% of religious congregations in the US are
racially segregated, and only 12% of them have a degree of diversity. Some people have used religion as a justification for advocating
racism. The
Christian Identity movement has been associated with racism. However, it has been argued that these positions may be reflections of contemporary social views as well as reflections of what has been called
scientific racism.
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints had
excluded African Americans from the
priesthood from 1849 to 1978. Most
fundamentalist Mormon sects within the
Latter Day Saint movement rejected the Church's 1978 decision to allow
black men to hold the priesthood, and in accordance with this view they continue to deny black people's right to play an active role in the church because of their race. Due to these beliefs, in its Spring 2005 "Intelligence Report" the
Southern Poverty Law Center added the
Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints to its "
hate group" listing because of the church's teachings on race, which include strong condemnation of
interracial relationships.
Women The content of the
holy books of
Abrahamic religions contain severe restrictions on the rights of women ranging from prohibiting women from certain behaviour and activities to requiring women to submit to the will of their father and or husband. According to
Polly Toynbee, religion interferes with
bodily autonomy regardless of gender but fosters particularly negative attitudes towards women's bodies. Toynbee writes: "Women's bodies are always the issue - too unclean to be bishops, and dangerous enough to be covered up by Islam and
mikvahed by Judaism". It is argued that religious sexual discrimination leads to unequal relations in
marriage, creating norms which subordinate the wife to the husband. The word
בעל (
ba`al), Hebrew for "husband", used throughout the Bible, is synonymous with "owner" and "master". This mirrors the Abrahamic view of God as an omnipotent, perfect power, where this power is one of domination, which is persistently associated with the characteristics of ideal
masculinity.
Sheila Jeffreys argues: Religion gives authority to traditional, patriarchal beliefs about the essentially subordinate nature of women and their naturally separate roles, such as the need for women to be confined to the private world of the home and family, that women should be obedient to their husbands, that women's sexuality should be modest and under the control of their menfolk, and that women should not use contraception or abortion to limit their childbearing. The practice of such ancient beliefs interferes profoundly with women's abilities to exercise their human rights.
Islam Feminist Julie Bindel argues that religions encourage the domination of men over women and she also argues that Islam promotes the submission of women to their husbands by encouraging practices such as
child marriage. She wrote that religion "promotes inequality between men and women", that Islam's message for a woman includes that "she will be subservient to her husband and devote her life to pleasing him" and that "Islam's obsession with virginity and childbirth has led to gender segregation and early marriage.
Islamic laws have been criticized by human rights organizations for exposing women to mistreatment and violence, preventing women from reporting rape and contributing to the discrimination of women. The
United Nations say that Islam is used to justify unnecessary and harmful
female genital mutilation, when the purposes range from deprivation of sexual satisfaction to discourage
adultery, insuring virginity to their husbands, or generating appearance of virginity.
Maryam Namazie argues that in both civil and criminal matters (such as punishments which are imposed on them for improper veiling), women are victimized by
Sharia law; and she also argues that women have judicial hurdles that are either lenient or advantageous for men. According to
Phyllis Chesler, Islam is connected to
violence against women, especially in the form of honor killings. She rejects the argument which states that honor killings are not related to Islam and claims that while
fundamentalists of all religions impose restrictions upon women, in Islam, not only are these restrictions harsher, Islam also reacts more violently when these rules are broken.
Christianity , 1577 Christianity has been criticized for portraying women as sinful, untrustworthy, deceitful and desiring to seduce and incite men into sexual sin. Katharine M. Rogers argues that Christianity is misogynistic and that the "dread of female
seduction" can be found in St. Paul's epistles. K. K. Ruthven argues that the "legacy of Christian misogyny was consolidated by the so-called 'Fathers' of the Church, like
Tertullian, who thought a woman was not only 'the gateway of the devil' but also 'a temple built over a sewer'". Jack Holland argues the concept of the
fall of man is misogynistic as "a myth that blames woman for the ills and sufferings of mankind". In the
Middle Ages and the
early modern period, Christian religious figures were involved in
witch trials, which were generally held in order to punish assertive or independent women such as
midwives since
witchcraft was often not in evidence, or
activists.
Animals Historically,
Kosher slaughter has been criticized by non-Jews who have alleged that it is inhumane and unsanitary, in part as an
antisemitic canard which states that eating ritually slaughtered meat caused degeneration and in part out of an economic desire to remove Jews from the meat industry. In the 1920s, Polish critics of kosher slaughter claimed that the practice actually had no basis in Scripture. research which was conducted by
Temple Grandin and Joe M. Regenstein in 1994 concluded that—practiced correctly with proper restraint systems—kosher slaughter "probably results in minimal discomfort" because the cattle stand still and do not resist a comfortable head restraint device. They also note that behavioral reactions to the incision which is made during kosher slaughter are weaker than behavioral reactions to noises such as clanging or hissing, inversion or pressure, which are made during restraint. Those who practice and subscribe to
Jewish vegetarianism, both religiously and philosophically, disagree with this argument, they state that such a form of animal slaughter is not required while a number of them, including medieval scholars of Judaism such as
Joseph Albo and
Isaac Arama, regard vegetarianism as a moral
ideal, not just out of a concern for
animal welfare, but also out of concern for the slaughterer. Other forms of
ritual slaughter, such as
Islamic ritual slaughter, have also come under controversy. Writing for
PETA, Logan Scherer said that animals which are sacrificed according to Islamic law can not be stunned before they are killed. Muslims are only allowed to eat meat that has been prepared according to Sharia law and they say that the Islamic form of ritual slaughter is designed to reduce the amount of pain and distress that the animal suffers. According to the
Farm Animal Welfare Committee,
halal and kosher practices should be banned because when animals are not stunned before they are slaughtered, they suffer a needless amount of
pain for up to two minutes despite the fact that some
Muslims and
Jews argue that the loss of blood from the slash to the throat renders the animals unconscious relatively quickly. In 2018,
Temple Grandin stated that kosher slaughter, no matter how well it is done, is not instantaneous, whereas stunning properly with a captive bolt is instantaneous.
Response to criticism of morality Not all religions are hostile to homosexuality. Both
Reform Judaism and the
Unitarian Universalist Association have advocated for equal rights for gay and lesbian people since the 1970s.
Hinduism does not view homosexuality as an issue. Many Christians have made efforts toward establishing racial equality, contributing to the
civil rights movement.
The African American Review sees as important the role Christian
revivalism in the
black church played in the civil rights movement.
Martin Luther King Jr., an ordained
Baptist minister, was a leader of the American civil rights movement and president of the
Southern Christian Leadership Conference, a Christian civil rights organization. ==Corrupt purposes of leaders==