Another problem with religion is that it presents impracticable norms for practice. Nobody ever notices that religions have rarely produced a perfect person other than the founder of the religion. In whole popular history of Buddhism there is only one Buddha. Till the time of Buddha’s death even Ananda appears only as the most loyal servant of Buddha and not someone who attained the liberation. There is only one Christ and only one Krishna. In cases of incarnations like Krishna it is even doubtful whether one is supposed to follow the actions of Krishna. Religions claim to show the great path but rarely produce a multitude of great men. Can we say that all Muslims have followed what Mohammad said or all Sikhs have the same virtue as shown by the Gurus. To expect that religions can transform society is to have a bad faith. Most often religions make one define success in the same way as the society does and conform to some simple rules of religious life which do not interfere in secular ways.

The great harm that religion does is to protect outdated norms and resist applying rationality to life and social issues.