Funny you should pick nukes as your second example. Religion’s a lot like splitting the atom: it can be used for really, really good purposes and really, really bad purposes. A lot of significant advances in geometry and other mathematic disciplines came about because muslims needed to be sure they were facing Mecca from wherever they were on the globe.
It isn’t religon that’s the problem, it’s people. Most of the horrors of the past century were not perpetrated in the name of religion; indeed, they were perpetrated by regimes that either didn’t care about or actively discouraged religious practices. When those bent on attaining power and using that power for evil don’t have religion as a means to attain their ends, they simply find another mechanism and go forth from there.
ALL wars, with no exceptions? At least some of the Crusades come to mind as exceptions. However, I think you have a good point, particularly WRT greed.
I don’t think standing upright is something that was conceived of by man. Or it happened mostly without any foresight. I’ll vote for weapon making and weapon use. Metal working is good, but there were also many deaths caused by non-metal weapons.
Many examples here of phenomena that have both positive and negative consequences. I offer for consideration that perhaps the value of such intangibles might be more accurately gauged by considering their absence. In the case of fire, steel, nuclear physics and so forth, it is within the realm of imagination to presume where we would be today without such technologies. What of religion? Regardless of the existence of a deity, if we as a species never thought to consider the possibility, and if religion was never created as a result, would we be fundamentally in a better or worse position? I think better, but we’ll see where this discussion leads.
That’s really hard to quantify; I suppose hospitals and charities would have got started some other way, but then again, probably so would wars and persecution.
you hear this argument quite a bit, that somehow miraciously there would be no troubles in the world if religion had never existed. Religion can be very broadly defined, there are so many ‘religions’ these days, and we as humans follow them. so what is there within us that makes us want to beleive or follow a certain path or way of life? and is it even possible to even onsider that religion wouldnt exist and what would we be like if it never did? better off? i doubt it. someone else pointed to the fact that human nature is what is dangerous, not the actual beleifs one may hold. For example why is there fighting in Northern ireland? its certainly not beause they each want to convert the other but other political reasons that stem back in history. why is there conflict with the Israelis and the Arabs, again it’s land, it’s not about religion per se, religion just happens to be there, and beause each follow a different religious ideology people use that as an excuse to hate the other, when in reality the conflict is not about religion and never has been.
and if religion is the problem then how come some of us can live a decently peaeful moderate life, free of hatered and still have some sort of belief system?
religion isnt the only tool to rally up support for war and the like, other ideologies, such as communism or Nazism have the same effect, would they be classed a religion? i dont think so.
Organized religion is just a social construct. It evolves out of a society and if one society clashes with another over “religious” means it isn’t because of religion per se. And it’s wrong to look at it that way. It’s better to say it’s a clash of culture, because religion and culture are pretty much intertwined in a way that cannot be meaningfully separated.
So maybe “culture” or even “societies” are the worst things human beings have ever created.
But no, I think that societies while they lead to invariable conflits with other societies and internal persecution they are still a much more positive than negative force.
As it is you’d be hard pressed to find a war between two states that has ever occurred due to religion.
And while the crusades don’t fall under the category of state-state conflicts even they had an economic incentive. Religion was the opiate that was fed to many of the common men who had to fight the crusades but a lot of the root cause was just nobles wanting to do some looting and pillaging and gain power and prestige back home.
Religion - while it obviously can be dangerous itself - is also often one of the most effective obstacles against modernity’s tendency to dehumanize the individual. Many of the most effective movements against oppression have been religious in origin (abolition, the civil rights movement, liberation theology, the progressive movements of the turn of the last century). And as irritated as I get by the various Christian sects’ war on stem cell research and reproductive rights, I have to grudgingly admit that this is just a consequence on their insistence (particularly the Catholic Church’s) that all life is sacred - a stand which I’m very glad someone is committed to.
I’d argue that religion derives from the same abstract thought processes that also bring us art, philosphy, science, and other higher reasoning. Any species capable of abstract thought will eventually develop and cultivate religion, for at least a portion of its history. You cannot have abstract reasoning without religion evolving at some point.
And most of the religious conflicts of world history had secular concerns (ethnic strife, basic greed, political and social power struggkles) contributing to them, if not outright causing them. For example, the Crusades where also an attempt to squash expansion of the Islamic empire into Byzantine lands, a land grab taking control of lands key to trade with the east, and an excuse to send off the warring factions of Europe off to somewhere else so Europe could have peace, for once.
All of the Crusades were fought over power and money. The greatest reason for the Crusades was the fact that Muslims had taken a great deal of land away from the Christians. You can call that religion if you want, but in fact it translates out as power and money.
Here’s a tip. Please obtain a copy of The Guiness Book of World Records. Next, look up “Mass Murderers.” Would you care to guess who are at the top of those lists? (Hint: Not a single one of those people were religious.)
“What Pope Urban II had in mind when he preached the First Crusade was, I think, a variety of quite practical things. He hoped for the reunion of Christendom, which at that time was divided between the Latin Church and the Greek Church. He hoped also to recapture Jerusalem, which had been under Muslim rule for many centuries. And it was also a matter of giving the largely unemployed and over-aggressive nobility of France something to do, get them out of Europe and stop them devastating the … lands. All these factors played a part in his mind. Whether he himself had any particular beliefs about the imminence of the End, that’s really doubtful. But that is what was read into his speech by many uninformed people. … He undoubtedly wanted the knights to go on this great military expedition. He had not foreseen that they would be followed by a mass of upstart peasantry. That, however, is what happened. And it was the peasantry which wreaked the great destructions, the murder of the Jews all down the Rhine and the savage assaults on Muslims by those who got to Jerusalem.”
