On the plus side, you’ve got education, beautiful art and music, the preservation of crucial knowledge at key points in history (as with the Irish monks during the Dark Ages), faith comforting the afflicted, and the motivation of billions to live better lives and to care for those less fortunate.
On the negative side, you’ve got religiously-motivated wars, persecutions, the Inquisition, forced conversions, etc.
Please, I don’t want this to turn into a religion-bashing thread, or a debate on the merits of atheism. Thanks.
On the improvement-of-behavior scale, religion comes out a net zero.
Perhaps it has some real value in giving people a sense of hope or meaning even where there really is none. See the George R.R. Martin SF story, “The Way of Cross and Dragon”.
I agree with this. Though I am not religious myself at all, I struggle with situations where there really is no comfort in earthly sources (like the death of a baby, an innocent child being killed by a stray bullet while playing, etc.). I can understand why religion would comfort and help someone facing one of those situations, and that comfort is something that science/logic/etc. seems hard-pressed to provide in those extreme cases.
Hard to say. Everything we recognize as moral behavior has its roots in religion, but not all religion results in moral behavior.
Religion tends to remind us that we are not, in fact, the ultimate life form or the center of the universe. That’s gotta be a good thing.
The OP mentions the Inquisition. Fun fact: The Spanish Inquisition answered to the Spanish crown, not the Church. It was quite the bone of contention between the two institutions.
I’m sure people will be shocked, shocked that I consider it a net minus. By far. It’s simply done so much harm, and continues to do so much harm that no amount of good could make up for the evil that it’s done.
Or, to take your points from the less candy coated view, the deliberate indoctrination of children with insane beliefs while they are too young to defend themselves; the co-option of art into advertising for religious delusions; the destruction of knowledge ( and a lot of the knowledge that was preserved, was preserved from people who wouldn’t have tried to destroy it without religion, so it’s a wash ); telling the sick and disadvantaged lies that keep them from actually solving their problems; and the excuses to commit endless evils and the motivations to commit ones that they wouldn’t have without religion.
Honestly, you probably should’ve posted this in IMHO as a poll then. How can people discuss the good or bad of religion without discussing it’s merits, or those of atheism ? Especially, how can one explain why one thinks religion belongs in the category of “bad for humanity” without “bashing” it ?
Without discussing the merits of both sides, all you can you have is a poll, and that’s all.
Religion can only have a purpose if it is true. If it is not true, then it is just a naturally occurring phenomenon and it can have no purpose―just like fingernails, gravity, bees, humans, and the Sun have no purpose.
There is no criterion on which this question can be objectively answered.
That’s actually untrue - religion could and did serve a purpose as a paradigm, providing a framework through which philosophical and early scientific knowledge is pursued. Since Newton though, and at an ever-increasing pace, we’ve built up enough of a self-sustaining, self-correcting scientific paradigm to replace religion, and it’s time for religion to be gradually selected out for extinction, as any replaced species.
I’m in no way saying religion was ever true, only that it was for a time useful. Something far more useful has since come along.
Just because something has a function does not mean that it has a purpose. There can only be purpose if there is a final end. There are no final ends in a natural universe. Things just develop. They are not working towards an end.
Well, be that as it may, religion should be replaced by science just as species that cannot adapt (or cannot adapt easily) get replaced by species that can, when the environment changes.
If you want to claim there’s no actual point to this process… well, fine, whatever.
Modern, atheist nations have education, art, music, usually better preservation of knowledge, good ol’ person to person comforting, and good ol’ humanistic motivation to care for others. You can’t say that without religion that we wouldn’t have had those things.
My primary beef in regards to Christianity is the suppression of interest based loans, and the negative view towards merchants and wealth. In such a society, it’s difficult to have the motivation and capital to try and make things that improve the world.
And while the church kept its own people literate, those people had nothing to do that was time conscious, really. It’s not like they’d get fired for poor performance. There was no motive to adopt woodblock printing, since setting the monks to laboriously re-inscribing everything was a good time waster. And of course, they generally discouraged the general populace from being able to read. And what “reading” there was, was limited to scripture, so those who could recite Latin couldn’t necessarily compose nor understand it, and anything they could write would only make sense to others who knew Latin.
In the East, Confucianism was similarly of the opinion that being a yeoman farmer was the proper way of being and frowned on merchants. It did encourage meritocracy, but this was largely ignored by the emperors, who rather cherry picked the bits of Confucius that kept them safe and strong.
I can’t say much about Hinduism, which would be the other big historic religion.
Ultimately, modern prosperity and a livelihood where everyone can read and write, and we can order pizza off of the internet came to us due to The Scientific Method, John Adams, and Thomas Paine. Jesus Christ said some things that sound all nice and friendly, but so did Karl Marx.
I agree with those who say there’s no accurate way of measuring but in a thread some months back I posited this.
Since the world has been overwhelmingly religious since recorded history, and humanity has slowly steadily progressed in areas of human rights, justice and equality, I’d say religion, with it’s mix of plus and minus has been a net plus.
I don’t see religion fading anytime soon but I do see a generation by generation step away from unnecessary mythology old doctrine and dogma, and traditional beliefs that branches of science has dispelled. The truth has a way of asserting itself over time even though we tend to resist it.
There are lots of areas about humanity that science has only begun to approach. The nature of our consciousness and emotions and how morality and social interaction are affected by that part of ourselves. As long as those things have such a profound effect on humanity I predict religion will be one vehicle for exploring them.
Then there’s the whole question of life after death. Religion survives in part because of our fear of death and the need to find purpose and meaning. I doubt science can ever address that issue but perhaps. Still, as we become more knowledgeable about our consciousness and emotions the fear of death may fade as well.
I think you’re getting too hung up on the semantics of ‘purpose’ here. It could simply be the case that the phenomenon has been useful to our species until now, but is asserted to be no longer useful.
The term ‘served its purpose’ is an idiom meaning just that - that something was useful, but now isn’t - it doesn’t necessarily argue for some transcendent purpose, only an immediate, pragmatic notion of utility.
You haven’t given any reason why these two correlated events have a cause effect relationship.
It’s true that most nations have progressed in human rights, and it’s also true that most nations have a religious history. That’s not enough information though to say that without that religious history human rights would’ve progressed more slowly or not at all.
If only that were true.
The set of human knowledge has certainly increased in size and robustness but through conscious effort – the truth doesn’t assert itself. If you don’t want to see the truth, you can simply ignore it, indefinitely.
I disagree. Everything we recognize as moral behavior has its roots in the evolution of our species. Take a pack of African wild dogs for example. They are known to care for their elders (bring them food from the hunt, cuddle with them, etc) even when they are no longer of any utility to the pack or even in a hierarchical position of power. One might call this a form of love or as they call it in Korea, hyo, a specific form of child-to-parent duty and gratefulness. Was there a canine Mohamed or Jesus who taught them that behavior?
This is not at all true. Given that moral sentiments can be observed in non-human primates, it’s almost certain that human morality existed long before religion or even language.
This may be true of some religious beliefs, but it’s the exact opposite for others. Most religions have a myth about how the people who hold that myth are special, chosen, or created specifically by the Creator for some great purpose. When you look at the scientific ideas that most threatened the idea of man being the ultimate form of life (Copernican astronomy, Darwin and evolution, etc.) you’ll find that the primary forces opposing these ideas were expressly religious in nature.
Can you really separate “religion” from “humanity”? Unless you believe in God (or space aliens), where did religion originate if it’s not an inherent aspect of being human?
If we weren’t expressing our highest (and, simultaneously, most vile) qualities via religion, we’d simply do so by other means. Politics, sports, Sex in the City.
Personally, I’m not a huge fan of organized religions, I think they combine God (which is real, albeit indefinable) with a specific definition and agenda. The religion is only as good as the agenda behind it and the people carrying it out. Because, again, it’s defined by the human beings who create it.
OTOH, faith IS an essential quality. I don’t think a person can make choices today that will impact tomorrow (choices concerning, say, raising a small child) without faith. Because absolute certainty of outcome based on empirical knowledge is an even bigger illusion than faith in its various forms.
The sun WILL rise, and we WILL die, but there’s not a lot else that we know with absolute certainty regarding being a human being. You may be able to describe the physical world in excruciating detail via hard science, but that doesn’t give you much to work with concerning the human condition. Not unless you limit the parameters of humanity far more than religion does.
Most religions began from the teachings of a Spiritual Master, and those teachings were very similar in nature. To love one another, to help and serve one another, and to honor God. It is true that some misused and abused the religions, but basically we learned from religions to become more trustful and hopeful. So religions have been a big plus to mankind despite all the turmoil they went through. The world today is a better world, less fighting, less slaves, less dictators, and more democratic countries than ever before. We still have a long way to go, and religion will change, is changing right now into a more pragmatic event. Doctrine and dogma is being dropped for a return to the core beliefs given by the Great Masters. I forgot to mention the huge amount of charity work done by religions today, it alone is a big plus to the world.
Now, will religion ever be replaced by science, not a chance, religion has much more to offer, it will be around forever.
Interesting that references to this have popped up on the boards quite a bit lately. It’s one of my favorite Martin short stories. Well worth reading (and beware - there are spoilers in the Wiki summary).
Sage Rat, of course I didn’t mean to suggest that only religion can motivate people to do all the good things mentioned in the OP. But throughout human history, it has been one of, if not the, primary motivators.
Religion is a tool to make people sheep. Docile and compliant. Telling that the higher-ups almost never actually practice what they preach. It always has been a power game, and the masses go along with it because it offers them something more than their lumpen life.
We’re way past needing it anymore, if we ever did, but we cling to it nonetheless. Man has always made art, loved, preserved knowledge, had morality. He does that even without religion. That’s essential human nature, not Religion. To argue that the one is because of the other is a fallacy, IMO.
I think Religion’s held us back, and been a tool used by those who would enslave us. BAd, in other words.