# Religion has given us nothing **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [June 8, 2010, 11:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/religion-has-given-us-nothing/542474 "2010-06-08T23:39:30Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 9
**Author:** ![Meatros](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b4bc9f/32.png) [@Meatros](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Meatros)\ **Post date:** [June 10, 2010, 12:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/religion-has-given-us-nothing/542474/161 "2010-06-10T12:21:56Z")
> [@monavis](#): > > I think The Buddha came with that idea 500 years before Christianity. The Golden Rule! Confucius also came up with it as well, although I believe it was the Silver rule… Also, I don’t think it’s been successfully argued that “all humans are brothers and fundamentally equal” is actually a biblical position. You’d have to pick and choose and ignore verses to come up with that. ---
**Author:** ![JThunder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/e95f7d/32.png) [@JThunder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JThunder)\ **Post date:** [June 10, 2010, 12:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/religion-has-given-us-nothing/542474/162 "2010-06-10T12:22:00Z")
> [@Voyager](#): > > Do you deny that many kingdoms in Europe were Christianized not by individual conversions but by conversions ordered by the king - often with those holding the old religions subject to the death penalty? No, I don’t. Once again though, you’re shifting the goalposts. Nobody denies that the Roman Catholic Church enforced mass conversions on a large scale. The question is whether this describes the bulk of Christian growth. It does not. > [@](#): > > Well the RCC was one of only two Christian denominations at the time, and the Crusades were either initiated or supported by the Pope, not some random village preacher. And if you want some consistency in Christian history, you need only consider how my ancestors were persecuted by those loving Christians. Again, irrelevant. Nobody denies the atrocities that were committed by the Roman Catholic Church. The point remains that these were the actions of a SPECIFIC denomination, and they do not reflect Christianity as a whole. Certain people here know this, and yet they refuse to acknowledge this distinction. After all, it’s much easier to take potshots against religion in general, and Christianity in particular, when one does not have bother with nuances and attention to detail. ---
**Author:** ![monavis](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e0b2c6/32.png) [@monavis](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/monavis)\ **Post date:** [June 10, 2010, 12:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/religion-has-given-us-nothing/542474/163 "2010-06-10T12:57:44Z")
> [@Meatros](#): > > Confucius also came up with it as well, although I believe it was the Silver rule… > > Also, I don’t think it’s been successfully argued that “all humans are brothers and fundamentally equal” is actually a biblical position. You’d have to pick and choose and ignore verses to come up with that. In today’s society here in the USA where people take pride in saying “We are a Christian nation”, then try to use words that insinuate that Obama is not Christian, and by some of the emails I get, are surely not what one would consider a Christian thought! Our Prisons are filled with many so called Christians. Look to the examples some religious leaders are giving their people. Some are child molesters, some adulters, some even have murdered. It is not what their religions have taught but it didn’t seem to help them any. I know Good christians and many good Atheists. For some reason (in some cases guilt) Religion seems to have no affect on many people. So I doubt that religion is the basis for being civil. If humans were truly Civil we would not have to lock our doors, or need hand guns in our home. Apparently (in my way of thinking material possesions, land, money etc, are the religions of our society. People years ago did wrong things, the population was less,so perahps that is why there was less crime, but religion seems to have failed to make society a better place, and here in the USA in the past several years people seem more interested in pushing their religious beliefs into law, then practicing the faith they claim to believe! ---
**Author:** ![Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e99b99/32.png) [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diogenes_the_Cynic)\ **Post date:** [June 10, 2010, 1:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/religion-has-given-us-nothing/542474/164 "2010-06-10T13:15:58Z")
> [@Aji\_de\_Gallina](#): > > I won’t. > It’s simply that “I decide what’s wrong” runs contrary to his several decrees on moral issues. How so? ---
**Author:** ![Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e99b99/32.png) [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diogenes_the_Cynic)\ **Post date:** [June 10, 2010, 1:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/religion-has-given-us-nothing/542474/165 "2010-06-10T13:17:16Z")
> [@Aji\_de\_Gallina](#): > > I’ll remember to quote you on that every time you issue decrees on what’s right or wrong. Please do. I say the same thing every time. Morality is a personal aesthetic. ---
**Author:** ![XT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xt/32/456_2.png) [@XT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XT)\ **Post date:** [June 10, 2010, 2:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/religion-has-given-us-nothing/542474/166 "2010-06-10T14:37:16Z")
[QUOTE=Der Trihs] Wars of forced conversion and genocide and the wholesale destruction of cultures are your idea of how religion “unifies” people? [/QUOTE] In a way they do, but you are excluding not only the middle but the other end. Not all religious conversion has been done using genocide or wholesale destruction. Not even all CHRISTIAN religion (which is what I feel you are still talking about) was spread that way in all cases. > [@](#): > > What in the world would qualify as something dividing people then? People are naturally xenophobic and clannish. Without something to have in common with outside groups they will not band together into entities larger than a family hunter gatherer band (IMHO). Religion provides that unifying kernel around which larger groups could form. It also motivates peoples to band together to do larger things (monumental architecture) and acts as a repository for knowledge (the priest or shaman/druid class generally are that repository for a peoples history and knowledge). You are focused on only the bad aspects, and generally of the later, more modern and more wide spread religions, as if by pointing out that they did bad things that means that they didn’t do anything good. But even a cursory knowledge of archeology pretty much demonstrates that this wasn’t universally the case. Whether you think that on balance this was a positive or a negative (and I know you think it was a negative) is irrelevant to THIS OP, which is stating that religion has given us ‘nothing’. That is horseshit, and I know that YOU know more about this subject that your knee jerk reaction has been in this thread. I’m no big fan of religion, personally. I was raised a Catholic, and as I grew up I was bored by the seemingly endless religious classes as I was forced to go through the whole FHC and later Confirmation. Blah! Later, I was appalled by the horrific acts the church perpetrated against various peoples throughout it’s history. It sickened me. That said, though, anyone saying the church has done nothing positive is spouting bullshit (or is genuinely clueless about history, architecture, the arts and, well, just about everything else related to human society and culture). > [@](#): > > You aren’t showing how religion has unified people; you are simply trying to define “unify” so broadly that it’s meaningless. Well, no…you aren’t following what I’m saying. I don’t know whether it’s because I’m explaining myself poorly, or you are only hearing what you want to hear, or some combination of both. Simply put, I’m saying that religions unify people with a common belief system. That’s been true of ALL humans throughout history, at least as far as I know. The fact that there are examples of religions also converting by the sword, or destroying peoples really doesn’t bear on the broader question of religion as a unifying force, since in general both sides were unified by their individual religious beliefs. The indigenous peoples HAD religious beliefs that unified them long before the Spanish found them. > [@](#): > > You are also implying that mass murder is a good thing, since this is your idea of defending the supposed benefits of religion. No, you are asserting that mass murder, even if it wasn’t done by all religious at all times automatically nullifies any other effect religion had on humanity throughout time…which is ridiculous. It’s like saying ‘well, technology has killed billions of humans throughout history, therefore technology is evil and has done nothing for humanity, given us nothing and is worthless’. As I said before, religion has given us the good with the bad…which is a very human thing, since it stems from us, and is a reflection of our basic nature. Creator. Destroyer. Good. Evil. That IS what humanity is all about, and religion is just a tool that humanity has used throughout our history to do great things, and evil things. It’s like our technology…it’s been incredibly destructive. But it’s been just that little bit more creative to give us all that we have. -XT ---
**Author:** ![magellan01](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@magellan01](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/magellan01)\ **Post date:** [June 10, 2010, 2:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/religion-has-given-us-nothing/542474/167 "2010-06-10T14:48:20Z")
> [@Der\_Trihs](#): > > Religion doesn’t work. In what regard? What do you think it tries to do, but fails? ---
**Author:** ![magellan01](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@magellan01](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/magellan01)\ **Post date:** [June 10, 2010, 2:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/religion-has-given-us-nothing/542474/168 "2010-06-10T14:51:58Z")
> [@Der\_Trihs](#): > > And yes, the comparison of religion to Nazi Germany is fair; both because the evils of religion are even greater than those of Nazism, This is more than a bot much, even for you. Would you mind explaining your calculation here? ---
**Author:** ![cosmosdan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/a6a055/32.png) [@cosmosdan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cosmosdan)\ **Post date:** [June 10, 2010, 3:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/religion-has-given-us-nothing/542474/169 "2010-06-10T15:54:19Z")
It’s impossible to accurately assess the good of religion against the bad. We have no way of measuring it. We have no way of looking into all the religious people in history and trying to determine what influence religion had over their good acts or their evil ones. It’s an excercise in futility. To say religion has given us nothing is the same. ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [June 10, 2010, 4:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/religion-has-given-us-nothing/542474/170 "2010-06-10T16:24:05Z")
One way would be to compare a strongly religious society of a certain era to a strongly _non_-religious society of roughly the same era. Please, no references to China or the U.S.S.R. from The Usual Suspects-I think “worship of state” should count as religion in this case. ---
**Author:** ![XT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xt/32/456_2.png) [@XT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XT)\ **Post date:** [June 10, 2010, 4:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/religion-has-given-us-nothing/542474/171 "2010-06-10T16:27:04Z")
Could you give examples of strongly non-religious societies from history? I can’t honestly think of any. -XT ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [June 10, 2010, 4:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/religion-has-given-us-nothing/542474/172 "2010-06-10T16:37:32Z")
> [@JThunder](#): > > No, I don’t. Once again though, you’re shifting the goalposts. Nobody denies that the Roman Catholic Church enforced mass conversions on a large scale. The question is whether this describes the bulk of Christian growth. It does not. For the first few hundred years of its history, sure. After that, most conversions were mass conversions, as can be seen from how Christianity followed evangelical colonial powers - and how when Europe colonized states with an equivalent evangelical religion Christianity made little headway - see Indonesia, for instance. > [@](#): > > Again, irrelevant. Nobody denies the atrocities that were committed by the Roman Catholic Church. The point remains that these were the actions of a SPECIFIC denomination, and they do not reflect Christianity as a whole. > > Certain people here know this, and yet they refuse to acknowledge this distinction. After all, it’s much easier to take potshots against religion in general, and Christianity in particular, when one does not have bother with nuances and attention to detail. I’m quite unaware of any general thing we can say about Christianity as a whole these days. Not all sects even do aggressive missionary work any more. As I said, back in the time of the Crusades these good denominations didn’t even exist - hardly a Unitarian to be found. I do think a common thread of Christianity is that those who do not accept Jesus are sentenced to an eternity of torment, and thus either forcible conversion or at least pressure for conversion is in the best interest of the poor heathen. Sure some denominations, even back after the Reformation, didn’t buy into this, but you can make a better argument that they weren’t good Christians than you can make that those in favor of forced conversion are bad ones. Even back in the 19th century the Pope (I think he was a Pius) forcibly converted a Jewish kid, and now Pius is up for canonization. ---
**Author:** ![cosmosdan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/a6a055/32.png) [@cosmosdan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cosmosdan)\ **Post date:** [June 10, 2010, 5:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/religion-has-given-us-nothing/542474/173 "2010-06-10T17:29:12Z")
> [@Czarcasm](#): > > One way would be to compare a strongly religious society of a certain era to a strongly _non_-religious society of roughly the same era. Please, no references to China or the U.S.S.R. from The Usual Suspects-I think “worship of state” should count as religion in this case. Possibly, but my guess is you’d find that religious and non religous societies both go through periods of peace and prosperity or chaos and violence. Considering the history of mankind how many non religious societies will we find? Not only that how do we gauge all the other factors that affect a society and how they weigh against the religious factor in a societies success or failure? ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [June 10, 2010, 5:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/religion-has-given-us-nothing/542474/174 "2010-06-10T17:33:21Z")
> [@cosmosdan](#): > > Possibly, but my guess is you’d find that religious and non religous societies both go through periods of peace and prosperity or chaos and violence. > > Considering the history of mankind how many non religious societies will we find? Not only that how do we gauge all the other factors that affect a society and how they weigh against the religious factor in a societies success or failure? Than I guess we really can’t gauge the effect religion has had on society, for good or for bad. ---
**Author:** ![Unpronounceable](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/9de0a6/32.png) [@Unpronounceable](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Unpronounceable)\ **Post date:** [June 10, 2010, 5:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/religion-has-given-us-nothing/542474/175 "2010-06-10T17:45:24Z")
> [@Czarcasm](#): > > One way would be to compare a strongly religious society of a certain era to a strongly _non_-religious society of roughly the same era. Please, no references to China or the U.S.S.R. from The Usual Suspects-I think “worship of state” should count as religion in this case. Why, yes…the “atheism is best” argument _does_ seem to have more merit when No-True-Scotsman fallacies suddenly become valid on that side only. :dubious: ---
**Author:** ![Icerigger](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/icerigger/32/432_2.png) [@Icerigger](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Icerigger)\ **Post date:** [June 10, 2010, 5:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/religion-has-given-us-nothing/542474/176 "2010-06-10T17:47:13Z")
> [@Voyager](#): > > Even back in the 19th century the Pope (I think he was a Pius) forcibly converted a Jewish kid, and now Pius is up for canonization. He was baptised by a Catholic and that made him in the eyes of the church, Catholic. You could not then have a Catholic raised by Jews so he was taken from his parents and raised as one of the faithful. ---
**Author:** ![Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e99b99/32.png) [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diogenes_the_Cynic)\ **Post date:** [June 10, 2010, 5:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/religion-has-given-us-nothing/542474/177 "2010-06-10T17:48:04Z")
It’s not a scotsman if it’s true. State religions are still religions. ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [June 10, 2010, 5:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/religion-has-given-us-nothing/542474/178 "2010-06-10T17:48:20Z")
> [@Unpronounceable](#): > > Why, yes…the “atheism is best” argument _does_ seem to have more merit when No-True-Scotsman fallacies suddenly become valid on that side only. :dubious: This “atheism is best” argument-I can’t seem to find it anywhere in my post. Did you perhaps mean to quote someone else? ---
**Author:** ![Unpronounceable](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/9de0a6/32.png) [@Unpronounceable](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Unpronounceable)\ **Post date:** [June 10, 2010, 6:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/religion-has-given-us-nothing/542474/179 "2010-06-10T18:14:03Z")
> [@Czarcasm](#): > > This “atheism is best” argument-I can’t seem to find it anywhere in my post. Did you perhaps mean to quote someone else? Not really - I was pointing out the unfortunately common willingness to overlook fallacies from one side of the argument (whose proponents in this thread are notably **Dio** & **Der** ) - and referring to _that_ side of the argument as “atheism is best.” Your line was just an excellent example of someone who I wouldn’t expect to give that nonsense a pass. Which is why I thought it worth responding to. Frankly - if religious people are expected to defend idiots like the Westborough Baptists for their"religious" batshit-insanity, then why is it that atheists get a pass on self-identified atheists committing mass murder? (Or, better yet, getting to pass the blame to their opponents with the laughable “Communism _counts_ as a religion, even though they self-identify as athiests!”) ---
**Author:** ![Meatros](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b4bc9f/32.png) [@Meatros](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Meatros)\ **Post date:** [June 10, 2010, 6:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/religion-has-given-us-nothing/542474/180 "2010-06-10T18:22:02Z")
> [@Unpronounceable](#): > > Frankly - if religious people are expected to defend idiots like the Westborough Baptists for their"religious" batshit-insanity, then why is it that atheists get a pass on self-identified atheists committing mass murder? (Or, better yet, getting to pass the blame to their opponents with the laughable “Communism _counts_ as a religion, even though they self-identify as athiests!”) You realize that there is a substantial difference between these two groups, don’t you? The Westborough Baptists quote their religious texts. The atheists have no texts to quote. You cannot get ‘atheists hates gays’ from ‘god doesn’t exist’. It’s a non sequitur. You can get ‘god hates gays’ from a few passages in the bible. Hence the difference. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/religion-has-given-us-nothing/542474.md?page=8) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/religion-has-given-us-nothing/542474.md?page=10)