It began as a good idea. An honorable one. An idea worth celebrating. Religion. It sounds like a spectacular idea – gather those of a like-minded belief system into a community to celebrate their faith. Religion will be used to preach tolerance and love and respect and instill a sense of pride, of inclusiveness, of belief. It will help us to deal with the worst aspects of life and to celebrate the best. It will make us strong within are own selves and supportive of our family, friends and basically everyone else.

So what the hell went wrong?

Religion is nowhere near what it has set out to be. It’s not about love, respect and faith. It’s about hatred, discrimination and intolerance. It causes more problems than it solves, advocates the willful disrespect of others and basically has made a fundamentalist shambles of the world.

I’m not talking about one religion, but all – Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Mormonism, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Religions are by and large egotistical, selfish, greedy and self-centered. And what’s worse, they disguise their deficits in the sheep’s clothing of kindness and goodwill. As long as you’re blindly following the dogma of the Church then you will never see the troubles that it causes.

The biggest tragedies of human history have been the direct result of religious fervor. The Salem Witch trials. The Crusafes. The holocaust. Sept. 11. They are the results of fundamentalism and the hatred of one belief by another. These all result from one religion attacking another.

Most religions preach that they are the only true religion, and that all other beliefs are nothing more than empty idolatry. There is no room for acceptance of other belief systems; you are either right or wrong. They make great strides in controlling their constituents, brandishing the followers with rules that tell them the correct way to live. If you don’t follow the iron-clad guidelines, then you are wrong and you aren’t beneath contempt.

Look at the controversy surrounding the attempts by gays to have marriage benefits in Massachusetts. Look at the uproar that Catholics caused after the state legislature decreed that a ban on gay marriage was illegal. It’s a manifestation of hatred and discrimination inherent in the Catholic Church (a church I must confess that I am technically part of, though it shames me to say so.) The disgusting level of homophobia rampant in the Catholic religion turns homosexuals into second-class citizens, and preaches intolerance for those who happen to fall in love with those of the same sex. And this a religion that says love thy neighbor?

Who are we to think that our set of beliefs is more important than another person’s? Who are we to say that the Catholic, Jewish or Mormon religions are the ultimate religion to practice? How do we know that when we die and get to even that we won’t find that the Hindus, Buddhists, Pagans, or any other were right all along. Maybe there’s nothing up there. Or maybe we’ll run into Zeus and discover that the Greek stories we consider myths were actually the truth.

All I am saying is that religion is in the eye of the believer. Who’s to say that in 1,000 years our own religions will be anything more than folklore, studied by anthropologists picking through the bones of the past. We don’t even know if God really exists.

And the Bible, Koran and every other holy book? Stories written down after generations of oral tradition. Not exactly the most trustworthy source of material (anyone out there play the game Telephone? Then you’ll know what I mean.)

But still we have millions upon millions of people who assume that they are right. And what does it cause? Racism. Sexism. Homophobia. Anti-Semitism. Conflict. Hatred. If there was no religion there would not be any abuse of woman in Islamic countries. If there was no Christianity there would be no murder of Matthew Shephard, for his lifestyle would not come under a moral signifier. Religion began with the best of intentions, but even the best of intentions are wrought with the worst of disappointments. Though I believe abolishing religion worldwide would help to hinder much of the hatred in the world and bring about some semblance of peace, I also believe that people should be able to believe what they want. So I just leave by wishing that people realize that beliefs are individual to each person and not worth the hate that stems from the conflicts of religion.

Johnny Donaldson is a Collegian columnist.