Human beings are, by nature, an inquisitive species. We like to figure out how things work and theorize how things we can’t hope to understand might work. Sometimes we’re right, most of the time we’re wrong. This is the nature of how humans learn about the world around us. As children we may believe that thunder is the sound of angels bowling, rain is the tears of God, and Fluffy the family cat isn’t dead, she’s just sleeping forever. We build our understanding of the world like a puzzle, placing pieces where they seem to fit and then placing more pieces around those we’ve placed before. Unlike most puzzles, the puzzle of human understanding is full of false pieces and place holders that will have no place in the finished picture; the puzzle pieces of Fluffy’s eternal slumber and bowling angels are eventually discarded and replaced with the understanding of death and thunder. There are some pieces though that take on a life of their own and refuse to be discarded. One such piece is religion.

When humans first pulled ourselves up out of the life and death struggle of the animal kingdom and began to question the world around us, the foundation of the puzzle began being built. At first, obviously, our knuckle dragging ancestors had very little understanding of what was going on. At what point the idea of a higher being came into the picture, we can never really know; but, we can assume that as man saw himself building things such as spears, shelter and clothing he began to question what built the rock he was sitting on, or the ground he stood on, or the animal he was eating. So the puzzle piece of deity was created. If man was capable of creating these small things, then some larger, more powerful man must have created the world and designed all the creatures. Suddenly, we end up where the children of our generation begin; rain must be the tears of the giant sky man. Thunder is the giant sky man throwing rocks around. Fire is hot because the sky man made it such. The giant sky man, or sky men, or sky man and earth woman or any combination thereof became the puzzle piece that created almost the entire picture of human understanding. Obviously, such an important being must be respected in much the same way the leader of a given tribe is respected; else you anger the giant sky man and incur his wrath. Here, the deity piece mutates into something new; religion.

Whereas the deity piece was simply a filler piece, religion was a new beast entirely. Now the mighty puzzle piece has rules and regulations and, worse, punishments. Fail to please the sky man and burn in Hell, or be banished to Niflheim, or be reborn as a cricket. Despite this, the earliest form of religion still had its uses as a unified form of rules to assist a society continuing in an orderly manner. Despite the fear and, sometimes, hatred that religion created, humanity was still progressing forward, marching into the future. Puzzle pieces were still being laid, our understanding of the world grew day by day until something frightening happened; man attempted to lay a new piece in a place that the deity piece was already occupying. No matter, thought the budding scientist, we had moved pieces in the past, we can move pieces now. Who knows what that same man thought with a noose tied around his neck, or a line of stone hurling villagers staring him in the face screaming “Blasphemy!” and “Heretic!”. Suddenly, our entire process of building the puzzle was now stunted by some people’s refusal to allow an old, filler piece to be moved.

Because of this single rogue piece, lines were drawn in theological sand and man began killing man over whose puzzle piece was more right than the other. Between all this fighting over the might of individual deities, a few men were still trying to build the puzzle. Some culture’s puzzles became more complete than others, brave men and women succeeding in moving the deity pieces to the far outskirts of their given puzzle. Others may have even regressed, true pieces being overwritten by new deity pieces. What started as a simple filler piece to help us try and figure out what was going on around us became the single greatest hindrance to the completion of the puzzle.

As our species begins to progress at speeds above and beyond anything that we ever could have imagined, the rogue piece has dug itself into our puzzle with barbed hooks that threaten to tear the puzzle, and maybe our species, apart. It is time for us, as a united force against religion and its evils, to finally get our puzzle back on the right track. Through intelligence, logic, and forward thinking it is time for this filler piece to be replaced, as was always its eventual fate. The greatest harm we could do is to bring more attention to the piece than need be, we must work to simply brush it aside so those once blinded by it can see the picture beneath.