I found that many of the facts on your list were not facts at all, and were simply subjective inferences, or deliberately misleading correlations.
- Religion is the main cause of pain and suffering all over the world.
This is not a fact, it is a statement, and in the absence of supporting evidence it must be assumed that it is simply your subjective opinion. Since you are making the statement, the burden of proof is not on me to disprove this, it is on you to prove it. I don’t think that your website can realistically make claims of factual authority, so you’ll need to establish these facts elsewhere.
- Religion is a business that gets money by brainwashing people.
Same problem as above. However, this time you’re also making a blanket statement.
- Fear and guilt are powerful methods of brainwashing.
This may be true, but here you are obliquely inferring that religion (blanket term) uses fear and guilt to brainwash people without providing any sort of corroborating evidence. Unless you want to spell out your inference, this is not a fact about religion.
- Many inmates on death row are Christians.
The subtext of this fact is glaringly obvious, but again you have failed to show any sort of meaningful correlation. This is like taking a bunch of people who were caught speeding and asking them if they eat toast. If you conclude that eating toast makes you speed, you are making a mental leap between two things without demonstrating a causal relationship.
- Most religious people mean well and want to do good. But unfortunately they don't follow the golden rule.
This inference is meaningless without any sort of examples, and in the absence of supporting evidence, it is not a fact. I can think of many people who are religious and do follow the golden rule. Clearly my experience has been different from yours, but neither one of our experiences can be called a fact unless it is explained that it is our personal experience.
- Many countries that have strong religious beliefs tend to be less safe places to live.
Again, you are suggesting a correlation, but failing to show a causal relationship. You have also failed to show that the two phenomena even correlate on an apparent level.
- People would be much better off believing in themselves rather than man made religion.
This is not a fact, it is a speculation.
- Heaven and Hell are already here on Earth.
This is extremely oblique, and can not be considered a fact in the absence of clarification.
I think it would be a good idea for you to review the definition of “fact”. I’d also suggest researching what are called “logical fallacies”, because many of your facts were text-book examples of logical fallacy.
Here are some facts about religion:
1) The interval of time for the life-cycle of the universe in Hindu Cosmology, which was conceived of literally thousands of years ago, is in keeping with the estimates of modern cosmologists.
Carl Sagan says: "The main reason that we oriented this episode of Cosmos towards India is because of that wonderful aspect of Hindu cosmology which first of all gives a time-scale for the Earth and the universe -- a time-scale which is consonant with that of modern scientific cosmology. We know that the Earth is about 4.6 billion years old, and the cosmos, or at least its present incarnation, is something like 10 or 20 billion years old. The Hindu tradition has a day and night of Brahma in this range, somewhere in the region of 8.4 billion years."
"As far as I know. It is the only ancient religious tradition on the Earth which talks about the right time-scale. We want to get across the concept of the right time-scale, and to show that it is not unnatural. In the West, people have the sense that what is natural is for the universe to be a few thousand years old, and that billions is indwelling, and no one can understand it. The Hindu concept is very clear. Here is a great world culture which has always talked about billions of years."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindu_cosmology
2) The Avatars of Vishnu appear in the same chronological order as the corresponding animals would have evolved on this planet. This is because evolution is not a foreign concept in Hinduism, in fact, it is implied in the theories of reincarnation.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avatar#Avatars_of_Vishnu
3) Buddhists monks are able to willfully control their body temperatures with meditation.
“An attempt to study the physiological effects of Tummo (meditation) has been made by Benson and colleagues (Benson et al., 1982; Cromie, 2002) who studied Indo-Tibetan Yogis in the Himalayas and in India in the 1980s. In the first experiment, in Upper Dharamsala (India), Benson et al. (1982) found that these subjects exhibited the capacity to increase the temperature of their fingers and toes by as much as 8.3°C. In the most recent experiment, which was conducted in Normandy (France), two monks from the Buddhist tradition wore sensors that recorded changes in heat production and metabolism (Cromie, 2002).”
Thank you for your comments. We will let the people decide.