While we're on the topic of things I hate

(which really seems to be the recurring theme in these parts)

I read this particular quote about religion in Under the Banner of Heaven by Jon Krakauer on the subway this morning. I plan to post more about it later because it's enriched my life immensely over the last week.

Anyway, more to the point:

One is often told that it is a very wrong thing to attack religion, because religion makes men virtuous. So I am told; I have not noticed it . . ..

You find as you look around the world that every single bit of progress in humane feeling, every improvement in the criminal law, every step toward the diminution of war, every step toward better treatment of the colored races, or every mitigation of slavery, every moral progress that there has been in the world, has been consistently opposed by the organized churches of the world . . . .

My own view of religion is that of Lucretius. I regard it as a disease born of fear and as a source of untold misery to the human race . . .."

- Bertrand Russell

I couldn't have said it better myself.