Has religion been a net good or bad thing for humanity?

[prleone]

[QUOTE=Algher]
My congregation welcomes homosexuals, and there are multiple couples in attendance every Sunday. I am sorry you have a congregation of bigots - perhaps you should choose a new Church?

My church also does not tell me to be against anything that I am unaware of (or perhaps I misunderstand you).

My religion is not at war with anyone. There is a faction of Islam that appears to be against my culture, but they are not at war with my religion to my knowledge. Perhaps I missed the memo about the Jihad against Progressive Presbyterians?
[/QUOTE]

There you go… “Progressive Presbyterians.”
Why can’t you be a progressive person instead?
A progressive individual? You like being clustered together
with others who you think are like you. They are not.
Share the same religious moniker, must share the same beliefs, right?

Your congregation absolutely does not welcome any homosexuals.
Ask your congregation individually. Don’t think when they nod in agreement
at someone on the altar that they are even close to agreeing.

You believe in God, the nation of Islam does not.
War is ever present until we all stop looking for the ultimate santa claus.

[Algher]

[QUOTE=prleone]
There you go… “Progressive Presbyterians.”
Why can’t you be a progressive person instead?
A progressive individual? You like being clustered together
with others who you think are like you. They are not.
Share the same religious moniker, must share the same beliefs, right?

Your congregation absolutely does not welcome any homosexuals.
Ask your congregation individually. Don’t think when they nod in agreement
at someone on the altar that they are even close to agreeing.

You believe in God, the nation of Islam does not.
War is ever present until we all stop looking for the ultimate santa claus.
[/QUOTE]

I am a progressive person - the two are not contra-indicative.

I DO like being with others of a similar mindset, I admit. You want me to spend my evenings at home alone?

My congregation DOES welcome homosexuals. Period. You can see it in our actions, and how we welcome open homosexuals. We have voted on this as a congregation, we have hired homosexuals, and we have open homosexual members in the Church who also serve as Deacons and Elders (two positions that are elected by the Congregetion). I don’t know how much more welcoming we could be.

The Nation of Islam is a US organization. The Islam of the Middle East believes in the God of Abraham, but misses out on Christ. I really don’t know where you are going with that somment.

Man has no need of religion to start wars (see, again, Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot for examples).

Santa brought me a watch this year.

[Der_Trihs]

[QUOTE=fessie]
Blaming religion for human behavior is like blaming computers for human behavior. You’re crediting the form for the content.
[/QUOTE]
By that logic, fascism isn’t bad, Communism isn’t bad, racism isn’t bad, sexism isn’t bad, and so on. An evil or crazy belief or belief system is just that; evil or stupid.

And would you say the same thing for all the good things that people attribute to religion ? People who make your “Give humans all the responsibility” claim tend to develop ideologically convenient amnesia when it comes to giving religion credit for good things done in it’s name. When people do something bad in the name of religion, it’s because humans are corrupt monsters ( even if the only reason they do that awful thing is because of religion ); when people do something good in the name of religion, it’s because religion makes people do good things.

[Tamerlane]

[QUOTE=Sage Rat]

There was some minor changes back and forth to be certain, but human rights, justice, and equality were pretty much unchanged from Egyptian days right on to 18th Century.
[/quote]

This is a slight exaggeration. Just to take one example…

the wrongs of slavery and indebted servitude,

The rise of the Christian church has generally been given credit for the demise of large-scale agricultural slavery in the Late Roman state.

In the last 2-300 years there’s been more advances in human rights than in the 10,000 years before that.

But I might agree with this.

Just nitpicking, because the nit was there.

[cosmosdan]

[QUOTE=Mijin]
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.
[/QUOTE]

My first sentence acknowledged this.

In the other thread several posters and one in particular assumed it was pretty obvious that religion was a net negative. I maintained that it wasn’t obvious at all and we have no accurate way of measuring.

I’d point out that we don’t have to know or judge anything about what might have happened without religion to answer the OP. The question has nothing to do with that. Even if we would have progressed more without religion , religion can still be a net positive.

There are too many details and subjective points to really know, but in general, I think given the vast percentage of the population that belong to a religion I think it’s reasonable to see it a a net positive. How could we have progressed as much as we have if the vast majority was a net negative.

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 think history has shown how the truth asserts itself. An individual can deny the truth can deny it for a lifetime. A group can slow it’s progress for generations. Eventually the truth will overtake those who resist as it becomes more widely known.

[fessie]

[QUOTE=Der Trihs]
By that logic, fascism isn’t bad, Communism isn’t bad, racism isn’t bad, sexism isn’t bad, and so on. An evil or crazy belief or belief system is just that; evil or stupid.

And would you say the same thing for all the good things that people attribute to religion ? People who make your “Give humans all the responsibility” claim tend to develop ideologically convenient amnesia when it comes to giving religion credit for good things done in it’s name. When people do something bad in the name of religion, it’s because humans are corrupt monsters ( even if the only reason they do that awful thing is because of religion ); when people do something good in the name of religion, it’s because religion makes people do good things.
[/QUOTE]

Show me someplace on this planet where a belief system is in charge.
It isn’t.
Anywhere.
Nowhere on this planet is a belief system running things.

It’s people who are in charge.

You realize you’re making the God argument, albeit without God. It’s ALL us.

Some belief systems may work better with some cultures and economies. Just like you can create documents in Word or Excel. And some systems tend towards corruption and tragic results, because that’s how people are, too.

[What_Exit]

[QUOTE=fessie]
Show me someplace on this planet where a belief system is in charge.
It isn’t.
Anywhere.
Nowhere on this planet is a belief system running things.

It’s people who are in charge.

You realize you’re making the God argument, albeit without God. It’s ALL us.

Some belief systems may work better with some cultures and economies. Just like you can create documents in Word or Excel. And some systems tend towards corruption and tragic results, because that’s how people are, too.
[/QUOTE]

This is not a post that makes much sense to me. You are separating the people that run a religion from the belief system of the religion? Without the people, what is a religion then?

I see little harm that liberal religions cause and I recognize much good they do. But very many churches is the past did a lot of harm and some today still are.

The larger the religion, the more prone it seems to be to corruption, like any other human institution.

[Gozu]

[QUOTE=Elendil’s Heir]
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 etc.

Please, I don’t want this to turn into a religion-bashing thread, or a debate on the merits of atheism. Thanks.
[/QUOTE]

I’ve said before that I believe religion has created more life than it has destroyed and has been fundamental to the rise of civilization. In a nutshell, shared/state religions allowed humanity to rise from tribe dynamics to state dynamics. This in turn led to greater specialization, productivity and wealth.

[Flyhalf]

[QUOTE=Algher]
With all of this said - I spend some time as a volunteer on the Gulf Coast after Katrina. In the town where I was there were over 200 volunteers from religious organizations lending a hand. There was an additional 20 from the “serve America” government folks. That was it. There were ZERO secular organizations represented there helping out. My lunches were served by the local African American Baptist Church. My tent was from the Presbyterians. I worked on the houses of locals (black and white). That goes in the plus column.

[/QUOTE]

While there may have been zero secular organizations helping in your area, certainly you realize that there were secular organizations helping in other areas or maybe even in your area when you were not there. Right?

[cosmosdan]

[QUOTE=Sage Rat]
I don’t see how you can say that. cosmosdan similarly said that, “humanity has slowly steadily progressed in areas of human rights, justice and equality.”

There was some minor changes back and forth to be certain, but human rights, justice, and equality were pretty much unchanged from Egyptian days right on to 18th Century.

Meritocracy, the worth of the individual despite class, the fundamental goal of government being to help the general populace, were the big ideas that were invented then in a wave of Deism and Humanism, and led to other ideas like the equality of women, the wrongs of slavery and indebted servitude, sexual equality (for homosexuals and others), the right to own property for all, the right for all to be able to vote, the need for an educated populace, the anti-war movement, etc. Sure there might have been individual cultures which had one or two of these throughout history, but that was always on the whim of that little group and had no lasting wordly effect. Either way, how many of those cultures got their ideas from a deity, and how many got their ideas from a human thinker?
[/QUOTE]

The question is not about whether God exists. We can assume every idea came from a human thinker. The question is whether that thinker was associated with religion or not. That being said, teachings about equality and justice have been around for a few thousand years being taught in a religious context.

I haven’t done a study on human progress in history so I can’t make an informed commentary on moral and social advances in distant history. I see someone already corrected you. Based on previous discussions I found this

The Islamic Golden Age, also sometimes known as the Islamic Renaissance, is traditionally dated from the 8th century to the 13th century, though some have extended it to the 15th or 16thcenturies. During this period, engineers, scholars and traders in the Islamic world contributed to the arts, agriculture, economics, industry, law, literature, navigation, philosophy, sciences, and technology, both by preserving and building upon earlier traditions and by adding inventions and innovations of their own.

and

Many medieval Muslim thinkers pursued humanistic, rational and scientific discourses in their search for knowledge, meaning and values. A wide range of Islamic writings on love poetry, history and philosophical theology show that medieval Islamic thought was open to the humanistic ideas of individualism, occasional secularism, skepticism and liberalism.

So it seems your concept of “virtually unchanged” has some doubt.

In the last 2-300 years there’s been more advances in human rights than in the 10,000 years before that. And that’s based on the work of a bunch of Deist Humanists who finally popularised all the ideas that God somehow never deigned tell us, which actually work to prevent human suffering and advance human knowledge and ability.

I’m not sure I’d separate Deists from religion completely or the idea that their philosophies didn’t evolve from the ancient teachings I already mentioned.
Just who would this group of deist humanists be?

[fessie]

[QUOTE=What Exit?]
This is not a post that makes much sense to me. You are separating the people that run a religion from the belief system of the religion? Without the people, what is a religion then?
[/QUOTE]

No, I’m saying that religions are a human institution. They’re just as flawed as the people who populate them.

[Der_Trihs]

[QUOTE=fessie]
Show me someplace on this planet where a belief system is in charge.
[/quote]
Everywhere there is religion. Religion consumes people, turns them into puppets. Some other beliefs as well, but religion is the worst.

Beliefs aren’t passive things; they are active patterns of activity in the brain, always influencing the judgment of their human host. Religious beliefs are excellent at subverting people, often to the point that the belief runs them. It is the psychological equivalent of a virus, subverting the people it infects in order to make them it’s tools. The more religious someone is, the more they are just a puppet.

[QUOTE=fessie]
It’s people who are in charge.
[/quote]
No, it’s things as much as people that run the world. Economies, governments, corporations, belief systems.

And if religion isn’t at fault, then why do people do stupid or evil things in it’s name that have no other cause ? Why would ( to use a historical example ) someone kidnap a Jew to raise him as a Catholic, without religion as a motive ? It didn’t serve anyone’s self interest; there wasn’t any profit - except for the religion which was driving and controlling those people.

[QUOTE=fessie]
And some systems tend towards corruption and tragic results, because that’s how people are, too.
[/QUOTE]
And some are fundamentally evil, or crazy. I notice you completely ignored my point that you’re “blame it on people” position would exonerate Communism, racism, sexism, etc just as much as it does religion.

[XT]

[QUOTE=Der Trihs]
Everywhere there is religion. Religion consumes people, turns them into puppets. Some other beliefs as well, but religion is the worst.
[/QUOTE]

To paraphrase Yoda it also ‘surrounds us and binds us’…and has for literally tens of thousands of years. I don’t think we’d BE humans if not for those early religions, as I think this is what bound those early societies together, making humans more than just a small family group but instead clans and tribes…and eventually settlements, city states, kingdoms and nations. It acted as the central force holding those early peoples together and giving them something in common, a belief system, rituals, laws and codes of conduct.

[QUOTE=Der Trihs]
Beliefs aren’t passive things; they are active patterns of activity in the brain, always influencing the judgment of their human host. Religious beliefs are excellent at subverting people, often to the point that the belief runs them. It is the psychological equivalent of a virus, subverting the people it infects in order to make them it’s tools. The more religious someone is, the more they are just a puppet.
[/QUOTE]

Well, that’s one way to look at it…and a rather cynical way to do so. Another way is to look at the positive sides, where religion united a people, gave them comfort when things went wrong in their world, gave them explanations for the unexplainable (at the time), gave them hope, passed on knowledge from generation to generation. It gave man a place in the universe that he could understand, and it gave solace and comfort to peoples when tragedy struck. Those are all important things, especially to early man. Sure, to us today it’s more like a placebo, with a similar effect…but to our early ancestors it may have been the difference between life and death.

[QUOTE=Der Trihs]
And if religion isn’t at fault, then why do people do stupid or evil things in it’s name that have no other cause ?
[/QUOTE]

Because they are human beings. People do stupid and evil things to each other…whether in the name of religion or because one side follows the shoe while the other follows the gourde. Or for a host of silly reasons. We have in us both the abilities to do great and noble things, to sacrifice ourselves for those we love…and the seeds of destruction, the ability to do evil things and to exploit and murder and rape, to subjugate and enslave. It’s in us all…even you Der…to do these things. Religion is simply one path it can take to allow us to express it. In the end it’s not the religions, per se, who are at fault…but the people behind those religions. Think in terms of a gun. A gun is just a tool. In the right hands it can be a useful too, even a necessary tool. In the wrong hands it’s a deadly weapon that can be used for evil purposes. The gun is the same…it’s all in how and by who it’s used.

[QUOTE=Der Trihs]
Why would ( to use a historical example ) someone kidnap a Jew to raise him as a Catholic, without religion as a motive ?
[/QUOTE]

If you were a take action kind of guy and you knew your neighbors were beating their little girl, and you decided to kidnap her and raiser her in an environment where there was love and light…what would your motive be? Well, one could argue that the same motive could be use for your example as well.

I don’t say this unkindly, but to wrap your head around this you have to be able to emphasize with someone who has absolute faith in their religion and their god. Such a person may very well do it for the exact same reason you may rescue that little girl from her vicious parents…to save the child and give that child a better life. If a Catholic believes, then he KNOWS (wrongly) that a Jewish child (as well as the Jewish parents) are doomed to eternal damnation. The plight of that poor, doomed (in their eyes) child may compel them to take the child away and raise that child in The True Faith™, to save the child’s soul.

[QUOTE=Der Trihs]
And some are fundamentally evil, or crazy. I notice you completely ignored my point that you’re “blame it on people” position would exonerate Communism, racism, sexism, etc just as much as it does religion.
[/QUOTE]

Well, ultimately people ARE to blame for their own actions. Certainly there are crazy and fundamentally evil folks out there…and throughout history there have been a goodly number of them that were theists. Of course, as history has also shown us, there have been a number of fundamentally (and very) evil and/or crazy folks who were not theists to…and who did a hell of a lot of damage to their worlds.

It’s really the people who use those institutions who orient the religion, city, nation, gun, etc in one direction or another…and who ultimately decide how that system will be used. For good or for evil.
Myself, I think as our culture and politics have progressed and our religions have gone from simple ancestor worship or perhaps nature worship to something more advanced the balance between religion being good or bad for humanity (and for individual humans) has come more into conflict. I would definitely say that there was a time for several hundred years in Europe and in the Middle East where religion over all was a bad thing for humanity as a whole.

But, at least in the west, the very vicious nature of the religious conflicts served a good purpose in the end (this is an oversimplification as there were a lot of factors involved obviously)…that of starting the process of breaking humans out of those fixed and all pervasive religions. Religions and religious leaders were no longer the law, were no longer the supreme power in the land. Oh, they still had some power…but it was limited, it was controlled.

I don’t think we’ll ever get to the point where we have no religion on earth. I’m an agnostic and I’m unsure I would even want all religions to be gone on earth, to have no believers still hanging about and doing whatever it is they do. It would be boring for one thing…diversity is a good thing IMHO. What I’d like to see is the slow decline of the power of the existing churches as they continue their decent back to merely being religious institutions preaching to and helping a willing flock. I’d like to see the more virulent religions seriously constrained and eventually tamed.
To get back to the OP…no matter how much evil and harm you can lay at the feet of religion, you are really laying most of that on the humans who perverted their religion and used it as a tool (like that gun) to do evil with it. Even if you are inclined to lay all the blame on religion I think a good case can be made that humans and human society wouldn’t have evolved into what we are today without religion, that religion forged us and gave us the tools to spread throughout the world. By doing this I again have to come down on the side that religion has been a net good thing for HUMANITY as a whole.

-XT

[Der_Trihs]

[QUOTE=xtisme]
To paraphrase Yoda it also ‘surrounds us and binds us’…and has for literally tens of thousands of years. I don’t think we’d BE humans if not for those early religions, as I think this is what bound those early societies together, making humans more than just a small family group but instead clans and tribes…and eventually settlements, city states, kingdoms and nations. It acted as the central force holding those early peoples together and giving them something in common, a belief system, rituals, laws and codes of conduct.
[/QUOTE]
In my opinion, yes religion has shaped us. It’s shaped us into a twisted, irrational, miserable and self destructive species. It’s turned us into something that loves suffering and hates happiness, into something that hates reality and loves madness. It’s turned us into our own worst enemy. Religion feeds on hatred, irrationality, ignorance and despair, and works to increase what it feeds on.

And religion isn’t about uniting people; it’s about dividing people. It creates divisions where none would exist without it.

[QUOTE=xtisme]
Another way is to look at the positive sides, where religion united a people, gave them comfort when things went wrong in their world, gave them explanations for the unexplainable (at the time), gave them hope, passed on knowledge from generation to generation. It gave man a place in the universe that he could understand, and it gave solace and comfort to peoples when tragedy struck. Those are all important things, especially to early man. Sure, to us today it’s more like a placebo, with a similar effect…but to our early ancestors it may have been the difference between life and death.
[/quote]
Mostly death. And teaching people to be wrong is NOT a benefit. Without religion we would have almost certainly advanced far faster than we did, both socially and technologically, because we would have been paying attention to reality and not our own delusions.

[QUOTE=xtisme]
Because they are human beings. People do stupid and evil things to each other…whether in the name of religion or because one side follows the shoe while the other follows the gourde. Or for a host of silly reasons.
[/quote]
And the worst and silliest of all is religion. AGAIN, this is an example of what I was complaining about earlier; the refusal to admit that religion is at blame for anything, while giving it the credit for anything good even remotely involved with it. You go on and on about how unifying and comforting it is, about the good it does - but it’s just unthinkable that it take the blame for the evil commited in it’s name. Of course religion looks good if you only give it credit for the good things done in it’s name; by the same standards, I could claim that the Nazis were good because they had an enlightened forestry policy.

[QUOTE=xtisme]
In the end it’s not the religions, per se, who are at fault…but the people behind those religions. Think in terms of a gun. A gun is just a tool. In the right hands it can be a useful too, even a necessary tool. In the wrong hands it’s a deadly weapon that can be used for evil purposes. The gun is the same…it’s all in how and by who it’s used.
[/quote]
Guns don’t give orders and proclaim a way of viewing the world; religion does. Religion uses people more that they use it.

[QUOTE=xtisme]
If you were a take action kind of guy and you knew your neighbors were beating their little girl, and you decided to kidnap her and raiser her in an environment where there was love and light…what would your motive be? Well, one could argue that the same motive could be use for your example as well.

I don’t say this unkindly, but to wrap your head around this you have to be able to emphasize with someone who has absolute faith in their religion and their god. Such a person may very well do it for the exact same reason you may rescue that little girl from her vicious parents…to save the child and give that child a better life. If a Catholic believes, then he KNOWS (wrongly) that a Jewish child (as well as the Jewish parents) are doomed to eternal damnation. The plight of that poor, doomed (in their eyes) child may compel them to take the child away and raise that child in The True Faith™, to save the child’s soul.
[/quote]
In other words, THEY WERE MOTIVATED BY RELIGION, just as I said. No religion, no kidnapping.

[QUOTE=xtisme]
But, at least in the west, the very vicious nature of the religious conflicts served a good purpose in the end (this is an oversimplification as there were a lot of factors involved obviously)…that of starting the process of breaking humans out of those fixed and all pervasive religions. Religions and religious leaders were no longer the law, were no longer the supreme power in the land. Oh, they still had some power…but it was limited, it was controlled.
[/quote]
It was weakened, not controlled. Society, after millennia of enslavement to the corruption and madness of religion could advance because it’s grip was weaker.

[QUOTE=xtisme]
I don’t think we’ll ever get to the point where we have no religion on earth.
[/quote]
I do. Either we will eliminate it, or destroy ourselves in it’s name. Either way it won’t be around any more.

That, or it will drag us back into a Dark Age; it’s natural home.

[QUOTE=xtisme]
To get back to the OP…no matter how much evil and harm you can lay at the feet of religion, you are really laying most of that on the humans who perverted their religion and used it as a tool (like that gun) to do evil with it.
[/quote]
Actually, it’s the people who try to do good with it that are perverting it. And generally not doing well, because they are trying to use an evil tool, a tool with what amounts to a malignant will of it’s own, to do good work.

[Mojo_Pin]

[QUOTE=xtisme]
It would be boring for one thing…diversity is a good thing IMHO
[/QUOTE]
This is ridiculous logic. Diversity for the sake of diversity has no intrinsic value and pretending it does is something that’s been bugging me since I first started hearing the word used in its PC meaning. Religion does not exist for your entertainment, it exists to control and subvert.

Religion is not the origin of morality, art, philosophy, education, social structure, or any other human good like some people claim. Would Michelangelo have lost his artistic skill and eye had there been no Sistine Chapel for him to paint? Would it have been impossible for him to find a different source of inspiration and subject matter? Are religious people on the whole any more or less moral in daily life than any other group? What long would science have been delayed if the church had prevailed over Galileo Galilee? What are creationists doing to American public schools right now?

Everything good in humanity can continue to exist (indeed, may positively thrive) without religion, but the day religion dies, evil will no longer have a powerful platform from which to spread ideology.

[cosmosdan]

[QUOTE=Mojo Pin]
This is ridiculous logic. Diversity for the sake of diversity has no intrinsic value and pretending it does is something that’s been bugging me since I first started hearing the word used in its PC meaning. Religion does not exist for your entertainment, it exists to control and subvert.

Religion is not the origin of morality, art, philosophy, education, social structure, or any other human good like some people claim. Would Michelangelo have lost his artistic skill and eye had there been no Sistine Chapel for him to paint? Would it have been impossible for him to find a different source of inspiration and subject matter? Are religious people on the whole any more or less moral in daily life than any other group? What long would science have been delayed if the church had prevailed over Galileo Galilee? What are creationists doing to American public schools right now?

Everything good in humanity can continue to exist (indeed, may positively thrive) without religion, but the day religion dies, evil will no longer have a powerful platform from which to spread ideology.
[/QUOTE]

Religion is much more nuanced and multi faceted than just controlling and subverting although I recognize that component in some forms. As someone already correctly pointed out, you can’t make a claim that all the good things would still thrive without religion without also recognizing that all the bad things would too, and have. You’re speaking of the nature of humanity with all it’s pluses and minuses. Greed, the lust for power and control, racial and tribal discrimination, exist inside and outside of religion.

I see that governments have been a platform for evil as well. Perhaps we should get rid of all forms of government so that evil will have one less platform.

The nature of good and evil springs from within us as humans. Religion has reflected both of those things as humanity struggles to grow. Since before Christ religion and religious teachings have been urging mankind to resolve their differences and live as one human family. Several thousand years later we have made some progress with plenty of work left to do. Religion has been part of our successes and our failures. What I see happening in the next few generations is a rise in less dogmatic, more tolerant forms of religion.

[lekatt]

[QUOTE=Mojo Pin]
This is ridiculous logic. Diversity for the sake of diversity has no intrinsic value and pretending it does is something that’s been bugging me since I first started hearing the word used in its PC meaning. Religion does not exist for your entertainment, it exists to control and subvert.

Religion is not the origin of morality, art, philosophy, education, social structure, or any other human good like some people claim. Would Michelangelo have lost his artistic skill and eye had there been no Sistine Chapel for him to paint? Would it have been impossible for him to find a different source of inspiration and subject matter? Are religious people on the whole any more or less moral in daily life than any other group? What long would science have been delayed if the church had prevailed over Galileo Galilee? What are creationists doing to American public schools right now?

Everything good in humanity can continue to exist (indeed, may positively thrive) without religion, but the day religion dies, evil will no longer have a powerful platform from which to spread ideology.
[/QUOTE]

I don’t agree with any of your post. Religion was not created to control and subvert, but to inspire, and teach love. Religion has been found in every culture in the world, at least some form of it. Michelangelo would not have lost his skills there would have been no incentive for him to develop them. Yes, despite the hypocrites, religious people are more in tune with moral issues. Everything good could continue to exist. but without a venue I doubt it would be as good. Mankind as a whole has always looked for a higher power for inspiration and guidance. We don’t seem to be able to get alone without a “higher authority.” The common good, and mankind will continue to look forever. There is nothing to replace the “odd man out” in a controversy, and that man has become God. But the most compelling argument is, “if we didn’t need religion it would not have come about.” Mankind builds those things it needs to progress and religion is one of them.

[cosmosdan]

[QUOTE=lekatt]
I don’t agree with any of your post. Religion was not created to control and subvert, but to inspire, and teach love. Religion has been found in every culture in the world, at least some form of it. Michelangelo would not have lost his skills there would have been no incentive for him to develop them. Yes, despite the hypocrites, religious people are more in tune with moral issues. Everything good could continue to exist. but without a venue I doubt it would be as good. Mankind as a whole has always looked for a higher power for inspiration and guidance. We don’t seem to be able to get alone without a “higher authority.” The common good, and mankind will continue to look forever. There is nothing to replace the “odd man out” in a controversy, and that man has become God. But the most compelling argument is, “if we didn’t need religion it would not have come about.” Mankind builds those things it needs to progress and religion is one of them.
[/QUOTE]

bolding mine;

That’s an interesting argument. Several people here have suggested that religion has served it’s purpose and should fade away. I see it changing and becoming less dogmatic as we focus more on it’s principle teachings rather than it’s form.

You’d have to admit, that religion has been repeatedly used to control and subvert. Reading the OT is seems obvious that priests used religion to control the tribal members. Sometimes good and sometimes bad it was used to add structure and discipline to a societal group.

[Der_Trihs]

[QUOTE=cosmosdan]
As someone already correctly pointed out, you can’t make a claim that all the good things would still thrive without religion without also recognizing that all the bad things would too, and have.
[/quote]
Of course you can. Religion produces evil and stupidity that would not exist without it. It encourages and excuses the evil and stupidity that would exist without it, making them worse. And it produces no good that could not be accomplished without it.

[QUOTE=cosmosdan]
I see that governments have been a platform for evil as well. Perhaps we should get rid of all forms of government so that evil will have one less platform.
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Government is necessary, and does far more good than harm. There are societies that do quite well with religion reduced to trivia; societies where government is that weak are called “failed states” and are hellholes. Governments are far superior to religions, both morally and practically.

[QUOTE=cosmosdan]
What I see happening in the next few generations is a rise in less dogmatic, more tolerant forms of religion.
[/QUOTE]
And as always happens, they will fade into irrelevancy, or resurge into their more vital, dogmatic and intolerant forms. Religion by nature and necessity is dogmatic; hostile to all but itself. It cannot survive for long in a tolerant form, since reality itself is hostile to it, because it’s simply wrong.

[fessie]

[QUOTE=Der Trihs]
And if religion isn’t at fault, then why do people do stupid or evil things in it’s name that have no other cause ?
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Because PEOPLE are stupid and evil. And noble and loving.
WE are ALL of these things.
We commit these acts as members of groups (religious, political, ethnic) because that is how we are.
People commit atrocious (and beautiful) acts as individuals, too.

If it wasn’t “us” doing it, then religion really WOULD be an outside force imposed by (God?) (the IPU?), in which case you couldn’t blame us. But I know you don’t believe in God, neither does most of the Dope. So take responsibility for the second half of your thesis and admit that if there IS no God, then it’s ALL us.

[QUOTE=Der Trihs]
No, it’s things as much as people that run the world. Economies, governments, corporations, belief systems.
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“Things” do not run the world. Not until and unless the scenario from Terminator 2 comes to pass and computers learn to bypass us entirely. Even then, we’ll have to acknowledge that they’re OUR creation, they’re OF us, we gave them certain capacities.