rdfs:comment
| - Religious criticism has a long history, going back as far as the first century BCE in Rome with Titus Lucretius Carus's De Rerum Natura, and continuing to the present day with the advent of new atheism, represented by such authors as Sam Harris, Daniel Dennett, Richard Dawkins, and Christopher Hitchens.
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abstract
| - Religious criticism has a long history, going back as far as the first century BCE in Rome with Titus Lucretius Carus's De Rerum Natura, and continuing to the present day with the advent of new atheism, represented by such authors as Sam Harris, Daniel Dennett, Richard Dawkins, and Christopher Hitchens. Critics consider religion to be outdated, to be harmful to the individual (e.g. brainwashing of children, faith healing, circumcision), to be harmful to society (e.g. holy wars, terrorism, wasteful distribution of resources), to impede the progress of science, and to encourage immoral acts (e.g. blood sacrifice, discrimination against homosexuals and women). Some critics of religion, including Dennett, Harris, and Hitchens, assert that theist religions and their holy books are not divinely inspired, but instead are fabrications of non-divine human individuals, created to fulfill social, biological, and political needs. Dawkins balances the benefits of religious beliefs (mental solace, community-building, promotion of virtuous behavior) against the drawbacks.
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