700 years ago a monk needed parchment for his brand new prayer book, so he decided he wanted to make his own and began to take a very peculiar Greek book of a shelf. He then continued to scrape the ink off the pages, the pages would eventually be written over with his religious text; the book was recovered in 1908 by Johan Ludwig Heiberg, and he discovered that the notes the monk had scraped off were no more than ancient calculous. Calculous devised by no other than the mighty Archimedes. Archimedes was a well known ancient master of mathematics, and his work would have launched humanity's mathematical knowledge ahead by centuries. This is but one event take from the online news source Science News article ‘A Prayer For Archimedes’ by Julie Rehmeyer. Every kid who has had a middle school science class remembers Bill Nye the Science guy. Bill Nye said in a video he posted on YouTube, "when you have a portion of the population that doesn't believe in science, it holds everyone back." From the Dark Ages of the Crusades, to modern day extremism. Religion has been known to setback society in many forms. Problems that have not only set back our technological advancement, but are evolution as a society. To truly understand how far down the roots of Religious barbarism goes one must first understand the distant past of mankind

It’s the year 1096, the world that you know of is simple and is basically a small region of Medieval England. You hear that the brother of your King is leading a holy crusade against the ‘heretics’ that have defiled the holy city of Jerusalem. As a common peasant you stand and fight for your believes and join the crusades! You shell out every coin in your purse paying for armor, food, and a weaponry for the holy war. After months of traveling to join up with your fellow crusaders in France, you are enlightened to see the holy pope giving his blessing to you and your fellow marauders! This isn’t just some hypothetical event. These ‘Holy Crusades’ were church sponsored massacres of other civilizations. Some were failures others were wildly successful slaughterings of ancient cultures. There were several crusades that occurred in the medieval era; one crushed the ancient Byzantine empire due to the crusaders sacking cities as they departed the region. The Byzantine empire was grand and at it’s prime in the time, but couldn't stand up to the might of religious extremism. This is one of the many examples of what the crusades had brought upon the native populations as taken from Fordham University. Religion on paper is meant to teach what governments cannot, morals. Yet when people examine what religion actually does it’s basically teaching people that their morals are the best morals, and if no one agrees them they must be crucified or hung. The Crusades are but one example of how religion damages humanity as a whole: the Mayans sacrificed humans in the name of their several gods, the ancient Egyptians worked thousands of men to their death building pyramids for their ‘god’ kings, or the Or religion decides to treat ‘heretics’ with the idea of genocide or cleansing. Religion has long been known to be more of a problem causer than a question solver. During the 6 crusades several civilizations were crushed and humanity set back hundreds of years. That’s not even the end of Religions misdeeds. In the middle ages there were witch burnings eventually building up to the more modern day Salem Witch Trials. In an article written by the Minneapolis Morning Tribune in 1923 stated that twenty people were sent to their deaths in the name of religious purity. Be it the Crusades or the Witch Trials religion has been killing innocent people who could have brought humanity forward by Those examples are ancient and bear now magnitude to the modern individual.

Today everyone all over the world has felt the aftermath of religion. Religion in nations like Afghanistan effects the people on a daily basis, when common crimes carry with them huge religious punishments. “In 2004 the Spanish premier Jose Maria Aznar was voted out of power in a direct response terror….” As quoted from the Jerusalem Post in their article The War Against Islamic Extremism dated from October of 2006. Prior to the terror threat Aznar was popular with the public, but the attack proved one thing. Terror could move people to remove people from power. Today's terrorist attacks are tied to religious extremism in an attempt to slay infidels. Splinter terrorist organizations practice the inhuman act of decapitation trying to stomp out any other religions that dare oppose their ways. It’s the same as the ‘holy’ crusaders; they THOUGHT they were doing something holy, but in the burning lights of the historic interrogation room their efforts boiled down to hate and mauradism. Modern day extremism hits everywhere: from the Kenyan mall attack by the al-Qaeda terrorist group, to attacks in China and other nations. Terrorism is current extremism, and all terrorism does is try and tear down our structured form of society in the name of a holy figure.

Though the monk may have thought what he was doing was right in his god’s eyes, he was actually doing something much more devious, setting back society. Be it ancient examples of religious misdeeds or modern day extremism, religion is on a crash course for turning people into an intolerant science hating society. Middle Schoolers favourite scientist said it as it is. Religion teaches people virtuous qualities, yet it brings out the worse in people. It turns people into extremists that go on to hate everything that their book doesn't say to be true. Religion is a great tool! But I don’t want to be decapitated for not believing the world is 10,000 years old.