Religion: Good or Bad?

     Earlier this week we learned about women's history with the herstory projects. During the presentation on Sojourner Truth, someone noticed that in her speech, Sojourner Truth used religion to justify equal rights for women when she said: "Whar did your Christ come from? From God and a woman! Man had nothin' to do wid him." I found this particularly interesting because I notice how people always use religion to justify things, which is my main problem with religion.
     In this case Sojourner Truth used religion to justify a worthy cause. But that is too often not the case. Religion, when practiced in its truest and purest form, is the best thing ever created in this world. It brings people together, encourages people to be the best they can be, and gives people hope and faith, which is absolutely necessary to live a happy, or at least not totally depressed life. However, so many people have manipulated their religion into something it's not, and have used it to justify the killing and persecution of others. Religion is at the heart of many conflicts and wars, and if it is not the direct cause of conflict, it is the reason power hungry leaders give. Take the entire history of Jerusalem, for example. There have been religious wars over Jerusalem for thousands of years, with millions of people dying in God's name, and more dying every day for the same plot of promised land as they have been for centuries.
     The struggle over Jerusalem was the first religious conflict that came to mind. But there are so many more. But not only wars are sparked by religion, but people too often use religion to justify something or persecute a group of people. In Sojourner Truth's case, she used religion to justify something good, but like I said, I feel like people often use religion to justify bad things. First and foremost, earlier this year we discussed how religion was used to justify slavery, and we all know how that ended. But in more recent times, people have used the Bible to "prove" that being gay or lesbian is unnatural, and that's why gay marriage should be illegal. People have also used the Bible to "prove" that abortion is wrong. It seems like you can use the Bible to justify anything and everything, but that doesn't make it right. We have let one book that is thousands of years old guide us though the centuries, even as the times have dramatically changed in so many ways. Don't get me wrong, I'm not against religion. As I said before, religion could be the greatest thing ever to be created. It just saddens me that it has been used, and still is used, to kill and persecute so many people. Sometimes I wonder if religion does more bad than good for the world. Does the good outweigh the bad?