# Religion has Never Bettered the World
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/religion-has-never-bettered-the-world/505393
**Category:** Great Debates
**Created:** [August 5, 2009, 5:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/religion-has-never-bettered-the-world/505393 "2009-08-05T05:25:57Z")
**Posts on this page:** 11
**Page:** 10
### Author:  [@monavis](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/monavis)
#### Post date: [August 13, 2009, 11:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/religion-has-never-bettered-the-world/505393/181 "2009-08-13T11:27:36Z")
> [@mswas](#):
>
> You really know practically 0 about Agrarian economics huh? People in agrarian societies have more children because they expect many of them to die and so they are playing the odds, and also big families are less likely to starve than small ones because they can farm more and better.
There was a story about a man in Bali who after teaching the people how to use birth control to limit their families they began to prosper. He showed them that with less mouths to feed their children could be healthier and would need less people to farm the small plot of land they had to till.
To have a child you are pretty sure is going to die of starvation is a cruel way to raise a family. Have them and let them starve? You make the case for birth control even a more necessity!
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### Author:  [@monavis](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/monavis)
#### Post date: [August 13, 2009, 11:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/religion-has-never-bettered-the-world/505393/182 "2009-08-13T11:39:29Z")
> [@mswas](#):
>
> Agree with everything you said, but what happens around here is that all Christians get lumped together when there is no basis to believe that Jesus would have supported to the Crusades based on what he said. That was all the Catholic church, and it is generally ignored that there was a secular reason that was more important than the religious one. They basically saw that the feudal lords were going to kill people no matter what, so they decided it would be better to kill the Muslims than to tear apart Christendom killing one another.
>
> Well the argument that atheism wasn’t a big part of the violence committed by communists is just silly. I agree other atheists shouldn’t be held responsible for the actions of communists, but to argue that atheism wasn’t a big part of Stalinism/Leninism is to miss the point.
>
> Religion is more important in developing identity than it is in getting people to act out against a perceived foe. It’s not so relevant what your religion is, it’s relevant that you are at war with the neighboring tribe. The religion just tells you who is on which side. If it weren’t Muslims and Christians fighting over Iberia in the 8th century it would’ve been someone else just as it was Gaul’s vs Romans or Romans vs Carthaginians in that neck of the woods before it was Christians and Muslims.
If Christians really followed what the writer is said to have quoted Jesus as saying, they would be good to their enemies, to love them, Jesus is quoted as saying by doing such you heap coals of fire on their heads. I do not see that today nor has it been in the past.
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### Author:  [@cosmosdan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cosmosdan)
#### Post date: [August 13, 2009, 12:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/religion-has-never-bettered-the-world/505393/183 "2009-08-13T12:17:22Z")
> [@Calculon](#):
>
> I think I need to make my question a little clearer. What I am asking is a question of moral epistimology, or how we know what morals are. What you have answered is the question of moral history, or how we have tended to define our morals in the past.
>
> Just to be clear I don’t think that atheists have no moral code that they try and live by. I think everyone has that. Nor am I saying that atheists codes of morality are necessarily wrong. That is not the issue. The issue is how can we know that our moral sense is objectively true. In other words how do we know that we think to be good is actually good, and what we believe to be evil is evil.
>
> It is important because if we are going to make moral judgments (that is to say that one is more or less moral than another) then for that judgment to have any objective meaning we have to be sure our basis of morality is in fact objective. Otherwise all we have is differing opinions, none of which is any more valid than the other.
>
> So in the context of the thread, if we want to claim that a worldview is evil, we need an objective basis for morality to make that statement. Without that basis then any moral judgment between beliefs is ultimately meaningless.
>
> Calculon.
There is no objective way to “know” if we are morally correct. We feel we are morally correct according to our own conscience and the standards of our society. On some issues we will agree. On many and in the details we may not. That’s part of the ongoing process of building and maintaining our society.
It seems obvious that in general religion and religious beliefs have permeated our moral code to some degree and even atheists are affected. Still , many tend to reject a morality based on the dictates of some religious authority figure and writings in some ancient tome to claim the freedom of their own inner thoughts and feelings. You’ll note that even the religious don’t agree in the details of what’s moral.
So there’s the conundrum. We cannot have an objective basis for morality and yet we must form some consensus through which we reject certain world views and accpet or tolerate others. That’s part of the ongoing process. I think an idea enters the public forum and may exist for generations within the consciousness of people before it becomes part of our moral fabric and widely accepted by a society. Look at human rights issues. Traditions and the fear of the upheaval caused by change seem to have a tenacity that we struggled with.
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### Author:  [@cosmosdan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cosmosdan)
#### Post date: [August 13, 2009, 12:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/religion-has-never-bettered-the-world/505393/184 "2009-08-13T12:29:41Z")
> [@Calculon](#):
>
> All that being said though, in my opinion the effects of religion are mixed. I think certainly some religions have had serious negative impacts on the societies that harbour them. However I think the influence of Christianity in Western history has largely been a positive force for good. And while it is just my opinion I think that the bombastic sort of statements that religion has never resulted in anything good is pretty clearly over the top and indefensible.
>
> Calculon.
I agree. It’s humanity plain and simple. Religion and all it’s guises are simply people who tend to be a mix of good and bad. I think the thread title is ludicrous and discussions about a world better off without religion is meaningless speculation.
Humanity has been overwhelmingly religious since written history and before. Still mankind has continued to push forward and make improvements. To think that some of those improvements weren’t done by religious folks is just stupid. To argue that they didn’t do it because of religion or they would have or could have done it anyway is more useless speculation.
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### Author:  [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)
#### Post date: [August 13, 2009, 12:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/religion-has-never-bettered-the-world/505393/185 "2009-08-13T12:44:46Z")
> [@monavis](#):
>
> There was a story about a man in Bali who after teaching the people how to use birth control to limit their families they began to prosper. He showed them that with less mouths to feed their children could be healthier and would need less people to farm the small plot of land they had to till.
Who was he and when did this happen?
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### Author:  [@Calculon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Calculon)
#### Post date: [August 13, 2009, 2:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/religion-has-never-bettered-the-world/505393/186 "2009-08-13T14:23:37Z")
> [@monavis](#):
>
> The first Christians were communists and they were not atheists so to link Atheists with communisim is not factual.
Since communism is much more than just the statement “wouldn’t it be great if we shared stuff”, then no they weren’t.
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### Author:  [@dinoboy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dinoboy)
#### Post date: [August 13, 2009, 3:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/religion-has-never-bettered-the-world/505393/187 "2009-08-13T15:29:21Z")
> [@Calculon](#):
>
> Since communism is much more than just the statement “wouldn’t it be great if we shared stuff”, then no they weren’t.
Hmm, few seem to agree with you.
Under [First International Organisations in Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communism)
> [@](#):
>
> The first Marxist international organisation was the Communist League. It was founded originally as the League of the Just by German workers in Paris in 1836. This was initially a utopian socialist and **Christian communist** grouping devoted to the ideas of Gracchus Babeuf.
(bold mine)
from [Politics Defined:](http://www.politicsdefined.com/content/communism.htm)
> [@](#):
>
> In 1534 John of Leyden turned the city of Munster into a commune called “New Jerusalem” in expectation of the Second Coming and introduced polygamy (going partway towards Plato’s ideal) before the city was taken by a Catholic army, leading to a massacre.
John and his followers were communists _and_ Christians ([Anabaptist](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anabaptist))
Now you might argue that these folks were a bit extreme, not True Scotsmen, or whatever, but the same could be said of other famous communists.
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### Author:  [@Revenant\_Threshold](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Revenant_Threshold)
#### Post date: [August 14, 2009, 3:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/religion-has-never-bettered-the-world/505393/188 "2009-08-14T03:01:19Z")
> [@mswas](#):
>
> I snipped the rest because we are in agreement as far as I can tell, but this gives me something to disagree with.
>
> Why wouldn’t the common soldiery give much of a fig for trade routes? You don’t think they cared about material prosperity and the glory it brought to them and their people? Do you think that the glory of bringing wealth back to their lands in Europe was irrelevant to them? Maybe they didn’t think of it as trade routes, but in more base and vulgar terms as the material goods that are brought by right of the conquest of wealthy trade routes.
Because if you’re going to somewhere to kill people and likely be killed yourself, the possibility of new trade routes for those on whatever level above you probably aren’t going to excite you all that much. For the most part, you wouldn’t even be able to quantify exactly what benefit there would be, and likely you wouldn’t see how you got that benefit, assuming you did get that benefit yourself.
> [@](#):
>
> Or there would be the same amount of fighting only it would be pointed in different directions. Gauls vs Picts instead of Christians vs Muslims. We’d be arguing about some other overarching ideology that united whatever Empire, and maybe we would’ve colonized different parts of the world, or whatever.
Quite possibly. I’m not arguing that this couldn’t be the case. Rather, i’m arguing that it isn’t reasonable to say that removing religion and philosophy would lead to a guaranteed no change in warfare. We can guess there might be, but that doesn’t mean there couldn’t be. And it would remove some of the reasons for war - perhaps that might only lead to more effort being put in on some of the other reasons, but again, perhaps it might not.
> [@](#):
>
> What is unique about Christianity is how uniquely its detractors ignore this factor. Buddhism may say something similar but no one is blaming Buddhism for being the greatest scourage mankind has ever known.
I would tend to ascribe this to there not really being as many Buddhist-led scourges - or, at least, not as many popularly-known Buddhist-led scourges.
Out of interest, though, what would you say is behind this unique level of criticism?
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### Author:  [@monavis](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/monavis)
#### Post date: [August 14, 2009, 3:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/religion-has-never-bettered-the-world/505393/189 "2009-08-14T15:21:10Z")
> [@tomndebb](#):
>
> Who was he and when did this happen?
I do not remember his name and I think it was about 10 years ago and the story was on the PBS channel.
If I can locate it I will let you know.
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### Author:  [@Malthus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malthus)
#### Post date: [August 14, 2009, 3:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/religion-has-never-bettered-the-world/505393/190 "2009-08-14T15:38:07Z")
I haven’t read this rather lengthy thread, but my two cents on the topic is that “religion” has been throughout human history the mechanism through which humans have arranged their social relationships, philosophical and moral musings, legal codes, and inquiries into the origins of things. It is positively absurd to state that “religion has never bettered the world”, unless what one means by that is that “human civilization has never bettered the world” - the two are so intimately intertwined that they cannot be disentangled.
The fact that we, in the 21st century, do not particularly require mythology for any of these matters (and that the mythology may in some cases be positively hampering in some of them such as scientific enquiry) isn’t an excuse to dismiss the entirety of human social evolution.
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### Author:  [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)
#### Post date: [August 14, 2009, 6:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/religion-has-never-bettered-the-world/505393/191 "2009-08-14T18:08:03Z")
> [@Revenant\_Threshold](#):
>
> [QUOTE=mswas]
> What is unique about Christianity is how uniquely its detractors ignore this factor. Buddhism may say something similar but no one is blaming Buddhism for being the greatest scourage mankind has ever known.
I would tend to ascribe this to there not really being as many Buddhist-led scourges - or, at least, not as many popularly-known Buddhist-led scourges.
[/QUOTE]
I’d say that it’s in part because we are discussing this on an English speaking, mainly American message board. The people here don’t hear nearly as much about the evils of Buddhism largely for the same reason you don’t hear about the evils of Shinto; it’s just not much of a factor in most people’s lives or even something they hear of very often. Also, there are other factors besides it’s disdain for the real world that make Christianity worse than most other religions. Buddhism just isn’t ideologically as amenable to encouraging crusades and conversion by force as Christianity is, or to claiming it’s own perfection, or as prone to view everything but itself as part of a conspiracy against itself.
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