Religion has become so distorted in today’s society that no one trusts it. And with good reason. When all the news pertaining to religion is about pastors copulating with altar boys, the church condemning contraceptives and thus possibly causing the spread of AIDS and the religion-motivated fighting within Israel, it is hard to look at religion and believe it is a good thing. In fact, many have been turned off from religion forever because of the extremists they hear about on a daily basis.

Religion was never meant to be a destructive force. There are undoubtedly a few passages in the holy books of any major religion that one might purposefully misconstrue into support for military movements against other religions; however, these are few and mostly are much more easily interpreted as pertaining to a completely different subject altogether. I can guarantee that the word “love” is mentioned in the Bible and Quran hundreds of times more than the words “hate,” “fight” and “war” combined. War under the pretense of religion is a false justification. We must realize this and realize also that those who commit warlike acts are extremists no matter what religion they claim.

Moreover, those who claim that contraceptives are the spawn of Satan are not only fools but also the reason few respect religion today. Christianity is based upon the Bible, and the Bible never mentions contraceptives or abortion. The ban against them is merely strict interpretation of the Bible by “erudite” church officials (my personal opinion is that since these officials have consecrated themselves to the church and a celibate lifestyle, they wish to make sex as problematic as possible for others). The Bible says nothing against condoms; the closest it comes to doing so is telling people to not murder (using a condom is like murdering a child before a child is conceived before a child knows that he or she is alive before a child is even close to being conceived, obviously). One might also believe that the command to “be fruitful and multiply” forbids condom use as well, but this interpretation is just as valid as saying it means to eat fruits until you are full and do arithmetic. Either way, any clear-thinking, unbiased person will have trouble digesting the support for this Catholic edict, and one can even see at the churches of self-respecting priests the usual lack of conviction in the preachers’ eyes as they emotionlessly mumble the church’s position on the subject.

However, the most terrible thing upon religion’s shoulders that is no fault of the institution itself is the hypocrisy with which some “good religious people” lead their daily lives. Just because church (along with most other religiously-mandated gatherings) is only one day a week doesn’t mean that the other six should be filled with hate and sin. This involves not only the obviously horrible — the pastor who copulates with the altar boy — but also the people who go about their daily rituals with a smile on their face and hate in their heart. I highly doubt that Jesus or Mohammed or any other prophet chatted with somebody and then called him or her a bitch the moment he was out of earshot. Religion is not a thing that comes once a week, but one that affects every single action every single day.

In the end, religion in itself is a great thing, but humans have warped it into a terrible atrocity that is rightfully despised. If you are not religious, please keep a more open mind the next time you consider any single religion as a whole, and if you are religious, clean up your act because no one has it all together. This request may be easier said than done, but it is a starting point. The world was not created in a single day.

—Phil Ingram is a junior in the College of Arts and Science. He can be reached at philip.d.ingram@vanderbilt.edu.