Religions saw their apparition almost since the very beginning of humanity, with the birth of the Homo sapiens specie about 100,000 years ago. All over the world where hominids eventually gave way to human beings, the new specie, which had a more evolved brain, began to ponder over the origin of things.

Our ancestors had by far the most developed brain that any specie had ever possessed on this planet, but it was still an extremely primitive, brutish and incoherent cerebral mass. In their ignorance and total incapacity to comprehend complex phenomena, the men and women of the Paleolithic period gave simple responses to their questions.

Since they could not even think for a second of the intricate scientific explanations that elucidated the numerous events that surrounded their life, they got into the habit of remitting everything to God. Whenever they came across an abundance of food, they thought it was God who had placed it there. When they would not find any and would starve, it was also God who had so wished it. If it rained, it was the Almighty and if it did not and they died of thirst, it was also Him. Since God was perfect, they could not question His decisions.

With such an approach, they had a satisfactory answer for everything and their limited curiosity became satisfied. Unfortunately, that led to nothing.

With such a vision of the world, there is nothing that humans can do to alter the course of events, so the inevitable result is passivity, and that is what our ancestors did. That is precisely the reason why it took so long for humanity to break loose from the shackles of poverty.

By now in the twenty-first century, we know that passivity is the worse attitude that an individual or society can adopt, because the entire progress of humanity is due to science and technology, and those two require a huge amount of effort, perseverance, and hard work.

The religions that prevailed in every corner of the world during the Paleolithic period, which went from 100,000 years ago to the end of the last Ice Age 10,000 years ago, are now forgotten. Those of the Neolithic period, which came after the Paleolithic, have also been lost in the unrecorded darkness of antiquity. We will never get to know the names of those Gods, least to say more detailed information about their ceremonies, because none of those people had yet invented writing. The scant information we get, will come exclusively from the findings of anthropologists.

However, there are numerous things that can be inferred from what anthropologists have uncovered. What is certain is that the first religions were terribly incompetent for explaining things and despite the huge amount of time that has elapsed since then, those of the present are just as inept. More important still is that those of the past conspired massively against progress and those of the present do it just as much. For both, there is nothing needing an explanation. For them, everything that needs to be known is magically revealed by the Almighty to the chosen ones or found in some holy book. Since nothing needs and explanation, there is thus nothing needing changed.

Such a vision has a terribly deleterious effect on society because it hinders science. At present, we incessantly hear the Vatican and other Christian organizations arguing against stem cell research and other technologies. They vigorously oppose genetic engineering, which offers the best hope to millions of disease sufferers. Genetic engineering is a new field and it has attracted much controversy, even among unreligous groups. However, religions have a track record of always opposing all forms discoveries, all types of technologies, and all kinds of inventions. It is within their nature to conspire against progress.

Christianity is the religion with the largest following in the world but it is not the one with the most animosity towards science. Islam is just as brutish and radical in its condemnation of wisdom, and Hinduism and Buddhism are not much better. All religions of the world have systemically opposed science, for science ends up by debunking the ludicrous explanations that they offer.

Since science and technology are the only providers of welfare to humanity, it is beyond any doubt that religion has been the worst enemy of society.