Religion and reality

I've been reading Sam Harris's book Letter to a Christian Nation. I read it a few years ago but decided to pick it up again. It's funny how different things jump out at you when you're in a different place in your life. When I read the paragraph below it screamed adoption at me.

"One of the most pernicious effects of religion is that it tends to divorce morality from the reality of human and animal suffering. Religion allows people to imagine that their concerns are moral when they are not - that is, when they have nothing to do with suffering or its alleviation. Indeed, religion allows people to imagine that their concerns are moral when they are highly immoral - that is, when pressing these concerns inflicts unnecessary and appalling suffering on innocent human beings."

The zeal of the religious to stop abortion may make them appear to be coming from a morally superior place - in the eyes of other religious people anyway. For many the morally correct stance is not to allow contraception. Then add to the list the abstinence only education for teens who are dealing with raging hormones and there you have the mix that creates the perfect environment for the religious to press their concerns and push the adoption agenda. Talk about inflicting unnecessary and appalling suffering on innocents! The unwavering faith in what the religious authority has to say allows people to simply wear blinders when it comes to the results of following those dictates. Why else would the BSE be allowed to be continued for so long? How could people who are normally loving and compassionate people, be duped into believing that sending girls away and forcing them to live without their children is the best solution for an unplanned pregnancy? So many people claimed that family is everything yet could send their pregnant daughters to go live among strangers to deal with such a traumatic experience on their own. That is truly a divorce from reality. The sad thing is these attitudes still continue today which is why adoption in it's hideous form still continues today.

"You believe that your religious concerns about sex, in all their tiresome immensity, have something to do with morality. And yet, your efforts to constrain the sexual behavior of consenting adults - and even to discourage your own sons and daughters from having premarital sex - are almost never geared toward the relief of human suffering. In fact, relieving suffering seems to rank rather low on your list of priorities. Your principal concern appears to be that the creator of the universe will take offense at something people do while naked. This prudery of yours contributes daily to the surplus of human misery."

This is the shame that created so much pain for so many millions. This belief, combined with the idea that only a married couple - defined as one man and one woman - is capable of raising healthy children, continues to cause pain for many more adults and children. This is another huge divorce from reality. Sadly many women are still raised in these beliefs and think they're doing the right thing when they hand over their babies for others to raise. It's only after the fact, and sometimes decades after the fact, that they wake up from the delusion of  "adoption is wonderful". In the meantime their children are living with the day to day reality of being an adoptee. The trickle down consequences of adoption continues for generations and it all stems from the belief that sex without a certificate of marriage is bad.

If the religious were really pro-life they would welcome new life regardless of the marital status of the mother. If they were really pro-life they would do all in their power to keep sacred the bond between a mother and her child. If they were really pro-life they would make sure that a new child is taken care of within their own natural family. If they were really pro-life they would do all in their power to prevent the suffering of living human beings, not just blastocysts. The suffering caused by adoption is immense yet the blinders are still on thanks to the immense power of religion to turn something natural and beautiful into something dirty and shameful. Equally as shameful is the adoption industry that uses people's beliefs in these ideas against them in order to acquire babies to sell and line their pockets with the cash.