Should We Eliminate Religion

Religion served an evolutionary purpose - it's partially responsible for what man is today and allowed us to transit from hunter gatherers to create societies.  (There are numerous books on the subject - Evolution of God, Before the Dawn, The Faith Instinct: are a few).  As such, it's ingrained - even atheists attack theists with religious fervor.  To eliminate religion is impossible for that reason, religion can't be eliminated, it can only be replaced with something that serves the same purpose.

What needs to be eliminated, therefore, is Fundamentalism (Christian, Buddhist, Islamic, etc.) which generally arises during periods of uncertainty and among people who feel themselves to be wronged or oppressed.  I have read the scriptures of every religion for which I can find an English translation: The Bible, The Qu'ran, the Dhammapada, the Upanishads, the Bhagavad Gita, Gnostic Gospels, Tibetan Book of the Dead, Tao te Ching, etc. more than once.  All these religious texts have some things in common but, while Liberals emphasize those things, Fundamentalists emphasize the differences.  Certainly, as a Liberal Christian, I see value in the things Jesus taught, but I recognize in the Qu'ran an attempt to reform what Muhammad saw as failures of Judaism & Christianity in practice - such as the failure of both religions, in spite of their scriptures, to provide for the poor.  And I see in the "Red-letter" verses that record Jesus' words echoes of the Dhammapada and Tao from centuries earlier.

How to defeat Fundamentalism then?  The most effective way is to use their own scriptures, for example, the Bible mentions feeding the poor in over a thousand verses, it mentions miscarriage or abortion in only one and yet Fundamentalists emphasize the one and ignore the thousands.  Interestingly though, both abortions and Fundamentalism are reduced when people have opportunity for jobs, housing, health care and adequate food. 

Having had the opportunity during my time in the military to travel in both the Middle East and Europe, I found most people to be similar.  We all want a mate, children, a way to provide for our families, a little extra so we can feel we're not just working to survive, and a hope of improving our station.  With these, we are usually content and less likely to embrace extremism.  Religion, of course, can provide hope and societal cohesion.  Whether religion serves a useful fiction, or, as believers believe, is true - in either case, it gives us hope and common ground with our neighbors.  Which isn't always a bad thing.