# 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:** 20
**Page:** 3
### Author:  [@mswas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mswas)
#### Post date: [August 5, 2009, 10:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/religion-has-never-bettered-the-world/505393/41 "2009-08-05T22:29:31Z")
> [@Cisco](#):
>
> Feeding people who live on land that cannot support them only creates more people who live on land that cannot support them. A net increase of suffering. If I really wanted to help out starving Africans (and I’d love to, but I don’t have the means), I’d move them somewhere else. Giving them food isn’t doing anyone any good.
Africa can support all the people on it many times over. It is social conditions that keep it from doing so.
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### Author:  [@Cisco](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cisco)
#### Post date: [August 5, 2009, 10:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/religion-has-never-bettered-the-world/505393/42 "2009-08-05T22:40:56Z")
> [@mswas](#):
>
> Africa can support all the people on it many times over. It is social conditions that keep it from doing so.
I didn’t say anything about _why_. It’s irrelevant. I guess to such a pedantic audience I should’ve said the more accurate but less PC, _feeding people who cannot support themselves does no one any good._
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### Author:  [@mswas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mswas)
#### Post date: [August 5, 2009, 10:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/religion-has-never-bettered-the-world/505393/43 "2009-08-05T22:47:20Z")
> [@Cisco](#):
>
> I didn’t say anything about _why_. It’s irrelevant. I guess to such a pedantic audience I should’ve said the more accurate but less PC, _feeding people who cannot support themselves does no one any good._
Unless the condition is temporary. What if there is a draught one year that leads to a famine? Should we just let people die before the rains the next spring?
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### Author:  [@Cisco](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cisco)
#### Post date: [August 5, 2009, 10:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/religion-has-never-bettered-the-world/505393/44 "2009-08-05T22:53:02Z")
> [@mswas](#):
>
> Unless the condition is temporary. What if there is a draught one year that leads to a famine? Should we just let people die before the rains the next spring?
How long have “Africans” been starving? My whole life, for sure. Live Aid happened when I was 4. 'Far as I know, they’re still starving. So I think your “temporary condition” stipulation is unrelated to the real world situation. But if that was the case (and I don’t think it is) then yes, of course I would support temporary relief from a freak occurrence. Now if there was a drought/famine cycle 4 out of every 5 years, that would be a different story . . .
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### Author:  [@BrandonR](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrandonR)
#### Post date: [August 6, 2009, 12:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/religion-has-never-bettered-the-world/505393/45 "2009-08-06T00:10:07Z")
> [@kidchameleon](#):
>
> Care to defend the Stormfront board?
I knew someone would bring this up. The message board itself isn’t causing the intolerance, it’s simply letting intolerant people communicate. Religion of itself causes a lot of people to be intolerant towards those with differing religious belief. It’s why virtually every religion lists idolizing another god a serious sin.
It’s the same with the anti-vaccination message boards. It’s just a means of expressing whatever message the participant already have.
But I find defending message boards is a lot more difficult than to see the downfalls of religion. 😃
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### Author:  [@Estilicon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Estilicon)
#### Post date: [August 6, 2009, 1:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/religion-has-never-bettered-the-world/505393/46 "2009-08-06T01:32:40Z")
> [@BrandonR](#):
>
> I knew someone would bring this up. The message board itself isn’t causing the intolerance, it’s simply letting intolerant people communicate. Religion of itself causes a lot of people to be intolerant towards those with differing religious belief. It’s why virtually every religion lists idolizing another god a serious sin.
It’s not fair. You say Inquisition and we say Stalin and then you say that the comparison is unfair because…
Back to Op.
I could defend religion in many multiple ways. For starters without Christianity western civilization wouldn’t exist.
I could also add that with all their faults our christian ancestors were infinitely more compassionate than our classical ones. Notions like just wars and its rules, that even the lowliest of men were brothers, etc..
But I will only say that without religion you wouldn’t have [this](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZThARSv69Rg&feature=related) (I always use it as an example).
I rest my case.
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### Author:  [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)
#### Post date: [August 6, 2009, 1:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/religion-has-never-bettered-the-world/505393/47 "2009-08-06T01:41:27Z")
> [@mswas](#):
>
> You’d have to be woefully ignorant of what services a church provides to think that a sports fanclub fills the same niche.
What, cause people to spend a chunk of their week for a vicarious emotional high at the idea that their team/god can defeat other teams/the devil?
I concede the point simply because to defend it would require me to ask you to define what “role” means in this context and it’s not sufficiently relevant. Church is a place people go to for social gatherings, sports bars are places people go to for social gatherings… close enough.
> [@](#):
>
> Yea, you really do not understand what I am saying at all do you? I’m not talking about what atheists ‘should’ do. So I won’t really give much commentary to this straw man hijack.
Well, then consider one blanket statement so I won’t bother repeating the point in future - atheism is not a religion. Atheists do not form churches of atheism where they discuss the belief system known as atheism. If churches don’t form in atheist communities, it because they are not needed.
> [@](#):
>
> Heh, do you even understand how Democracy works? If a lot of people are religious, and they vote as a bloc then they have power. You can’t get rid of the power without getting rid of the religion in a Democracy.
I do indeed understand how Democracy works. Do you understand how constitutional representational government works? I suggest you read up on it, since you’re living in one.
> [@](#):
>
> Which in this country would never have happened if of course a lot of religious folk didn’t agree it was a swell idea.
And I’m sure we’re all suitably grateful, but it’s of no relevance. Or if you insist, I thank religion for conceding power ~220 years ago in the nascent United States. Now it’s long past time to finish the process.
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### Author:  [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)
#### Post date: [August 6, 2009, 1:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/religion-has-never-bettered-the-world/505393/48 "2009-08-06T01:50:07Z")
> [@begbert2](#):
>
> As an adamantly anti-religious atheist, I’d say that’s an obviously false statement. “Never” means “not for any period of time”, which means that you only need to find one moment of time when religion bettered the world. Religion encourages a man to contribute to a charity. He does so when he otherwise wouldn’t. The world is bettered. Poof! Disproven.
>
> The only way to defend it is to play word games. “Oh, I meant bettering the _whole_ world, at once, total sum of all religious effects in aggregate, over a time span of at least a day” or some other thing which most people wouldn’t read into the original statement.
Meh, the concepts “religion”, “bettered” and even “the world” are all sufficiently gooey in their definitions that one can call the OP’s claim 100% true or 100% false if one likes. Personally, I figure even if religion _has_ bettered the world, we now have access to tools that are so obviously _better_ at bettering the world that we don’t particularly need religion any more.
You want to build a church to improve the lives of the villagers? Fine. I think you’re better off building an irrigation system, myself. Evidence suggests that’ll help the villagers live longer, eat better, and lower their infant mortality rate, while a church will just give them a place to waste half their Sundays.
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### Author:  [@Estilicon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Estilicon)
#### Post date: [August 6, 2009, 1:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/religion-has-never-bettered-the-world/505393/49 "2009-08-06T01:55:23Z")
> [@Bryan\_Ekers](#):
>
> You want to build a church to improve the lives of the villagers? Fine. I think you’re better off building an irrigation system, myself. Evidence suggests that’ll help the villagers live longer, eat better, and lower their infant mortality rate, while a church will just give them a place to waste half their Sundays.
Surely not half. My grandmother who is a devout catholic only spends, at most, an hour and a half.
The problem with your point is that the villagers can have both.
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### Author:  [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)
#### Post date: [August 6, 2009, 2:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/religion-has-never-bettered-the-world/505393/50 "2009-08-06T02:08:52Z")
> [@Estilicon](#):
>
> The problem with your point is that the villagers can have both.
But the problem for the villagers is they often _don’t_. Mother Theresa is typically held up as a paragon of Catholic virtue, but her actions in no way reduced the total level of misery in Calcutta. Quite the contrary, in fact. The Calcuttans would have been much better off if the donations had been spent building primary and trade schools to teach literacy and useful skills allowing at least some of them to eventually escape the grinding poverty.
In any case, the standards I like to use for judging how much “better” one society is over another, and I’m always open to suggestion, are fairly straightforward:
Life expectancy.
Literacy, especially female literacy.
Infant mortality rate.
Universal suffrage.
…and a small number of others, these being statistics that can be quantified with reasonable accuracy. Religion doesn’t fit in the list because it very specifically avoids anything quantifiable.
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### Author:  [@Notassmartasithought](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Notassmartasithought)
#### Post date: [August 6, 2009, 2:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/religion-has-never-bettered-the-world/505393/51 "2009-08-06T02:25:41Z")
You can ignore the Reformation, which allowed people to think for themselves, and thus the Enlightenment, and, and, and,
But I give you this:
[http://www.avh.org/english.html](http://www.avh.org/english.html)
Augustus Victoria Hospital is crucial, and can use anyone’s support.
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### Author:  [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)
#### Post date: [August 6, 2009, 2:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/religion-has-never-bettered-the-world/505393/52 "2009-08-06T02:32:34Z")
Perhaps I’m missing the point, but I thought the significance of the Reformation and Enlightenment is they represented times when religion lost a fair amount of power and influence and the world was subsequently better off.
As for the AVH, it isn’t curing people with prayer (as far as I know) but with medical science.
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### Author:  [@Sage\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sage_Rat)
#### Post date: [August 6, 2009, 3:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/religion-has-never-bettered-the-world/505393/53 "2009-08-06T03:27:51Z")
Unless anyone is arguing that there wouldn’t be hospitals or welfare programs or what-have-you in a atheist society, pointing out that there are such programs being run by religious groups is rather beside the point.
Charities really started up in the mid-19th century as the atomic family system started to break down. At the time, it was the church that stepped in to take care of people with no social net. If there had been no churches, there’s no reason to think that the local government, business, or some other secular organization wouldn’t have stepped in. Ultimately, people don’t let people die. But once one group steps in to deal with it, everyone else is happy enough to back off and let them do it. Our history is descended from that.
But, like I said earlier, even as it is, most of American charity today is handled by the government, which is a secular organization.
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### Author:  [@cosmosdan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cosmosdan)
#### Post date: [August 6, 2009, 3:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/religion-has-never-bettered-the-world/505393/54 "2009-08-06T03:51:16Z")
> [@Sage\_Rat](#):
>
> Unless anyone is arguing that there wouldn’t be hospitals or welfare programs or what-have-you in a atheist society, pointing out that there are such programs being run by religious groups is rather beside the point.
>
> Charities really started up in the mid-19th century as the atomic family system started to break down. At the time, it was the church that stepped in to take care of people with no social net. If there had been no churches, there’s no reason to think that the local government, business, or some other secular organization wouldn’t have stepped in. Ultimately, people don’t let people die. But once one group steps in to deal with it, everyone else is happy enough to back off and let them do it. Our history is descended from that.
>
> But, like I said earlier, even as it is, most of American charity today is handled by the government, which is a secular organization.
Obviously if every positive thing ever done by and through religion doesn’t really count {according to you} then your OP must be correct. Congratulations.
Please stop by my thread where I assume the opposite while ignoring evidence to the contrary. It’s sure to be interesting.
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### Author:  [@Sage\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sage_Rat)
#### Post date: [August 6, 2009, 3:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/religion-has-never-bettered-the-world/505393/55 "2009-08-06T03:59:49Z")
> [@cosmosdan](#):
>
> Obviously if every positive thing ever done by and through religion doesn’t really count {according to you} then your OP must be correct. Congratulations.
>
> Please stop by my thread where I assume the opposite while ignoring evidence to the contrary. It’s sure to be interesting.
Are you honestly saying that you believe my assessment is incorrect? Or are you just saying it to be nitpicky?
I can show, through history, that secular and philosophical groups were no better nor worse than religiously moral. Why shouldn’t I assume that this would hold in modern times?
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### Author:  [@mswas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mswas)
#### Post date: [August 6, 2009, 4:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/religion-has-never-bettered-the-world/505393/56 "2009-08-06T04:09:39Z")
> [@Cisco](#):
>
> How long have “Africans” been starving? My whole life, for sure. Live Aid happened when I was 4. 'Far as I know, they’re still starving. So I think your “temporary condition” stipulation is unrelated to the real world situation. But if that was the case (and I don’t think it is) then yes, of course I would support temporary relief from a freak occurrence. Now if there was a drought/famine cycle 4 out of every 5 years, that would be a different story . . .
Which Africans are starving? You do realize that it’s a massive continent right?
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### Author:  [@mswas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mswas)
#### Post date: [August 6, 2009, 4:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/religion-has-never-bettered-the-world/505393/57 "2009-08-06T04:13:12Z")
> [@Bryan\_Ekers](#):
>
> What, cause people to spend a chunk of their week for a vicarious emotional high at the idea that their team/god can defeat other teams/the devil?
Yes, this is a very childish view of churches and their function. I KNOW you can do better, and if you can’t then there really isn’t a point in arguing with you about it.
> [@](#):
>
> I concede the point simply because to defend it would require me to ask you to define what “role” means in this context and it’s not sufficiently relevant. Church is a place people go to for social gatherings, sports bars are places people go to for social gatherings… close enough.
Yeah, you really don’t get it.
> [@](#):
>
> Well, then consider one blanket statement so I won’t bother repeating the point in future - atheism is not a religion. Atheists do not form churches of atheism where they discuss the belief system known as atheism. If churches don’t form in atheist communities, it because they are not needed.
Yeah, this discussion is not about atheism, so the non-religious mantra that you just repeated to me for the thousandth time is as irrelevant as it is 99% of the other times it’s repeated.
> [@](#):
>
> I do indeed understand how Democracy works. Do you understand how constitutional representational government works? I suggest you read up on it, since you’re living in one.
Yes, I do. It doesn’t disenfranchise whole swaths of people. A voting bloc is a voting bloc is a voting bloc.
> [@](#):
>
> And I’m sure we’re all suitably grateful, but it’s of no relevance. Or if you insist, I thank religion for conceding power ~220 years ago in the nascent United States. Now it’s long past time to finish the process.
And if it weren’t religion it would be some other out-group that you would be complaining about trying to usurp power just like they complain about you and the constituency that you make up. Your silver-back gorilla mammalian dominance politics isn’t special, and it’s certainly not more enlightened, especially since you think church provides a service akin to a sports franchise.
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### Author:  [@Cisco](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cisco)
#### Post date: [August 6, 2009, 4:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/religion-has-never-bettered-the-world/505393/58 "2009-08-06T04:16:31Z")
> [@mswas](#):
>
> Which Africans are starving? You do realize that it’s a massive continent right?
You’re shitting me. Why do you think I put Africans in quotations? Did you forget that **you** are the one who brought up “starving Africans”?
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### Author:  [@mswas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mswas)
#### Post date: [August 6, 2009, 4:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/religion-has-never-bettered-the-world/505393/59 "2009-08-06T04:23:32Z")
> [@Cisco](#):
>
> You’re shitting me. Why do you think I put Africans in quotations? Did you forget that **you** are the one who brought up “starving Africans”?
Actually I brought it up as an example of ways that religion betters the world. Your view that we should just let them die is pretty cold. I understand the point of view but it’s pretty cold.
My point about the size of the continent is that the famine moves around. Ethiopia has it’s ups and downs since Live Aid. A big part of it was the rise of Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe. Zimbabwe was producing a lot of African food when they still had the white Rhodesian farmers there.
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### Author:  [@ITR\_champion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ITR_champion)
#### Post date: [August 6, 2009, 4:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/religion-has-never-bettered-the-world/505393/60 "2009-08-06T04:38:53Z")
> [@Sage\_Rat](#):
>
> Charities really started up in the mid-19th century as the atomic family system started to break down.
[Really?](http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Acts%206;&version=31;)[Are you sure about that?](http://www.christiancadre.org/member_contrib/cp_charity.html)
> [@](#):
>
> At the time, it was the church that stepped in to take care of people with no social net. If there had been no churches, there’s no reason to think that the local government, business, or some other secular organization wouldn’t have stepped in. Ultimately, people don’t let people die. But once one group steps in to deal with it, everyone else is happy enough to back off and let them do it. Our history is descended from that.
>
> But, like I said earlier, even as it is, most of American charity today is handled by the government, which is a secular organization.
Aside from your noveau take on the history of charity, there’s yet more incorrect in this assessment. For starters, plenty of people were happy to let people die. England was the world’s wealthiest country during the 19th century, yet many of the working poor did starve. Anyone who knows the history of the Corn Laws knows that the rich were quite all right with the poor starving to death as long as they themselves continued getting richer.
Another point: charity is not merely and yes or no question. There are plenty of instances where people wanted to do a good deed, but it failed. The American Welfare system would be one obvious example. A successful charity requires more than a vague desire; it requires people willing to pour in their heart and soul. So even if we accept that secular organizations “would have stepped in”, there’s no guarantee that they would have done a good job.
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