Most of the religious (and political) conflict in the world today involves three religious systems, Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. There is even conflict within these three systems involving different sects, for example Protestants vs. Catholics in Ireland or Shiites vs. Sunnis in the Middle East. These religions all trace their lineage to the prophet, Abraham, and as mechanics, engineers, and Mythbuster Adam Savage are wont to say, “There’s yer problem!”

I learned the story of Abraham when I was a child, and to this day I can’t imagine how he could be regarded as anything but a villain, let alone as a pillar of a major religion. His willingness to do away with his son for any reason is abhorrent. Whether his motive was cowardice (fearing God’s retribution) or avarice (hoping to receive favorable treatment from God), it doesn’t excuse his intention to kill his son. He clearly put his self above his relationship to his son.

The troubling thing about the story is not that one man showed such weakness but that there is belief in a supernatural being that deserves such action. I think of this as the Abrahamic fantasy (or fallacy, or misconception, or illusion, or delusion, or Abrahamism). The lesson I got out of the story of Abraham is that there are people who think that anything can be justified if done in the name of this being. Who knows when a person who subscribes to this belief might think it necessary or desirable to kill a child, burn a witch, or fly an airplane into a building?

Of course many good things are done in the interest of gaining favor with God. One person who comes to mind is Mother Teresa, who cared for poor people in India as part of her mission. She could have done more to fix the problem if she had been motivated by compassion, rather than the promise of a heavenly reward. I would regard her as a true saint if she had gone against Vatican orthodoxy and helped to teach the starving Indians about birth control and family planning instead of just caring for their abandoned children.

My family and I traveled to India in 1997 as part of a tour for adoptive families to visit their adopted children’s birthplaces. While we were in Calcutta, we visited the orphanage that Mother Teresa started. This was about three months after she died. The chapel in the basement was full of nuns praying for her soul, trying to insure that she would soon be granted sainthood. It was a really peaceful scene in contrast to the nursery upstairs where some overworked nursemaids were playing loud music in an attempt to drown out the sound of the screaming babies who were in desperate need of attention. Clearly for these nuns, Mother Teresa’s sainthood was deemed more important than the needs of the children.

So in order for the human race to evolve beyond its present childish state, people have to give up on the idea of pleasing a supreme being to be rewarded or avoid punishment. We have to develop our sense of compassion and love for one another, and motivate ourselves to act out of those feelings.