# Religious Reasons for Evil **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [November 19, 2007, 9:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/religious-reasons-for-evil/427021 "2007-11-19T09:26:37Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![9thFloor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/9/b487fb/32.png) [@9thFloor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/9thFloor)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2007, 9:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/religious-reasons-for-evil/427021/1 "2007-11-19T09:26:37Z")
Assertion: There are some good acts (i.e. saving a life) that could conceivably be done for religious reasons or for secular reasons, but there are some bad acts (human sacrifice) that could only be conceivably done for religious reasons. There are a finite number of conceivable reasons for killing someone so removing religous reasons would result in one less reason for people being killed. Secularly motivated reasons for killing would remain unchanged. While there are no religious reasons for saving lives that couldn’t just as well be motivated with secular appeals to consience, there are religious reasons for killing lives that could not otherwise be motivated by secular appeals to conscience. One example is Abraham who was prepared to kill his son Isaac because god told him to do so. Were it not for Abraham’s religious belief, he would not have been prepared to kill his son and there is no conceivable secular reason that he would have had him up there on an altar with a knife about to plunge into him at that place at that time in those circumstances except for religion. All other secular reasons for wanting to kill his son on some other occassion for some other reason would remain unchanged. Religion provided that motivation without which he would have had no other reason to prepare to kill his son. Thoughts? ---
**Author:** ![Menocchio](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/9de053/32.png) [@Menocchio](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Menocchio)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2007, 11:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/religious-reasons-for-evil/427021/2 "2007-11-19T11:46:11Z")
Sacrifices could be performed for non-religious reasons. That is, the sacrificer would not be trying to please a deity per se, but cause a specific effect in the material world. This is magic, which is something that’s between religion and technology but is wholly neither. Science rejects magic, of course, and most modern religions don’t really have much practical magic left in them. But that’s beside the point, really. You’ve made a compelling argument against religions that don’t reject human sacrifice. I’m sure the board’s Aztecs and those posting from Summerisle will be devastated, but I suggest that we wait for them to respond before we field any more comments from anyone from a faith (or non-faith based philosophy) that doesn’t have human sacrifice. ---
**Author:** ![9thFloor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/9/b487fb/32.png) [@9thFloor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/9thFloor)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2007, 12:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/religious-reasons-for-evil/427021/3 "2007-11-19T12:41:08Z")
[QUOTE=Menocchio] Sacrifices could be performed for non-religious reasons. That is, the sacrificer would not be trying to please a deity per se, but cause a specific effect in the material world. This is magic, which is something that’s between religion and technology but is wholly neither. Science rejects magic, of course, and most modern religions don’t really have much practical magic left in them. But that’s beside the point, really. You’ve made a compelling argument against religions that don’t reject human sacrifice. I’m sure the board’s Aztecs and those posting from Summerisle will be devastated, but I suggest that we wait for them to respond before we field any more comments from anyone from a faith (or non-faith based philosophy) that doesn’t have human sacrifice. [/QUOTE] 😛 A simple, modern one would be telling a child ‘you’re going to hell’ for misbehaving. That’s a simple traumatizing (bad) act that requires religion. A more pertinent contemporary example are jihadists that feel it is their religious duty to kill infidels for afterworld benefits. ---
**Author:** ![kanicbird](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/5f8ce5/32.png) [@kanicbird](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kanicbird)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2007, 1:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/religious-reasons-for-evil/427021/4 "2007-11-19T13:15:22Z")
Abortion can be viewed as secular human sacrifice. Politics is filled with murders for political advancement, and wars have been started over secular reasons. People are sometimes killed if there is not enough food for the remaining people to survive on (like on a ship). Children have been left to die, just born babies are thrown in dumpsters. ---
**Author:** ![9thFloor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/9/b487fb/32.png) [@9thFloor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/9thFloor)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2007, 1:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/religious-reasons-for-evil/427021/5 "2007-11-19T13:45:57Z")
[QUOTE=kanicbird] Abortion can be viewed as secular human sacrifice. Politics is filled with murders for political advancement, and wars have been started over secular reasons. People are sometimes killed if there is not enough food for the remaining people to survive on (like on a ship). Children have been left to die, just born babies are thrown in dumpsters. [/QUOTE] Yes, that’s true. Perhaps you’ve misunderstood my point. I specifically stated that secular reasons for evil exist and will continue with or without religion. I don’t claim that evil is ONLY possible with religion. I’m claiming there are SOME specific evils that seem to be possible ONLY with religion. The secular evils will continue unchanged in addition to the religiously motivated ones. If the religiously motivated ones were removed, that’s one less reason for evil. ---
**Author:** ![Mijin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mijin/32/9369_2.png) [@Mijin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mijin)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2007, 1:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/religious-reasons-for-evil/427021/6 "2007-11-19T13:52:18Z")
What’s that famous quote again? “Bad people do bad things, and good people do good things, but to get good people to do bad things you need religion?” Anyway, the trouble here, is that to someone who believes in a moralising religion, they will often claim\* that their religion defines what is moral to them. So how could you say an animal sacrifice is immoral? If their God desired it, then it’s moral. - I say “claim” because I don’t believe this is ever true in practice, but anyway it’s not relevant to the point I’m making here. ---
**Author:** ![cosmosdan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/a6a055/32.png) [@cosmosdan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cosmosdan)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2007, 1:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/religious-reasons-for-evil/427021/7 "2007-11-19T13:59:54Z")
Since David Berkowitz said his neighbors dog told him to kill people I propose that we get rid of dogs to remove one reason for evil acts. maybe neighbors with dogs or just neighbors in general. ---
**Author:** ![Thudlow\_Boink](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thudlow_boink/32/320_2.png) [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2007, 2:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/religious-reasons-for-evil/427021/8 "2007-11-19T14:05:34Z")
[QUOTE=9thFloor] There are a finite number of conceivable reasons for killing someone so removing religous reasons would result in one less reason for people being killed. [/QUOTE] I’m not at all sure I agree with this premise. > [@](#): > > While there are no religious reasons for saving lives that couldn’t just as well be motivated with secular appeals to consience To a religious person, “secular appeals to conscience” is a contradiction in terms. Don’t get me wrong: I’m not saying nonreligious people don’t have consciences. But religious peoples’ consciences, their notions of what’s right and wrong and why, are formed and informed by thier religion. Go out and ask why killing people is wrong, and you’re going to get a lot of religiously-based answers (e.g. people are precious because they are made in the image of God; they are endowed by their Creator with the right to life; etc.) > [@](#): > > One example is Abraham who was prepared to kill his son Isaac because god told him to do so. Were it not for Abraham’s religious belief, he would not have been prepared to kill his son and there is no conceivable secular reason that he would have had him up there on an altar with a knife about to plunge into him at that place at that time in those circumstances except for religion. Bad example. If you take the story at face value (and if you don’t, why not dismiss it completely), Abraham was prepared to kill his son, not because of his religious belief, but because **God told him to**. Well, yeah, you could say he did it because of his beliefs, in the same sense that, if your doctor told you you had to have an operation and you believed him, we could say you were having the operation because of your beliefs. Even if religion does motivate people to do bad things, human nature being what it is, you would be much more successful trying to replace bad religion with good religion than trying to get people to give up religion completely. ---
**Author:** ![kanicbird](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/5f8ce5/32.png) [@kanicbird](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kanicbird)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2007, 2:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/religious-reasons-for-evil/427021/9 "2007-11-19T14:32:59Z")
[QUOTE=Thudlow Boink] Bad example. If you take the story at face value (and if you don’t, why not dismiss it completely), Abraham was prepared to kill his son, not because of his religious belief, but because God told him to. [/QUOTE] I also think this is a bad example, and confusing 2 different issues, man made rules and regulations called religion compared to interaction with the supernatural. There is a lot of what you state in the name of man made religious rules, teachings and the like. ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2007, 2:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/religious-reasons-for-evil/427021/10 "2007-11-19T14:43:27Z")
I think I agree with your logic. What I’m missing is your conclusion. Some bad things are only possible with religion, therefore \_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_ ? Whatever you use to fill the blank, can it not also be applied to things like: Some bad things are only possible with _electricity_, therefore \_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_ (I’m not trying to argue that religion is as useful as electricity, BTW, just trying to find out your conclusion) ---
**Author:** ![WhyNot](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/c77e96/32.png) [@WhyNot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WhyNot)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2007, 2:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/religious-reasons-for-evil/427021/11 "2007-11-19T14:51:32Z")
There are a lot of “good things” that were/are done by churches and not secular groups. Not because a secular group couldn’t do them, but because they don’t/won’t. Things like vaccination programs, educating women in third world countries, food pantries and soup kitchens. It takes a certain level of infrastructure, dedication and the ability to wheedle money out of people to arrange these kinds of things, and established churches have much of that in place already. Yes, in modern times, there are some secular groups starting to move in on this territory, and I think that’s great. But disband all the churches tomorrow, and you’re going to have a lot more hungry ignorant people dying of pertussis next week. As for the human sacrifice thing, you’re really a few hundred years late, aren’t you? Who’s still doing human sacrifice? There’s a better argument to be made about jihadists and holy wars, but my answer there is to illuminate and eliminate only those people who do that sort of thing - and currently, there isn’t an entire religion doing that, only select individuals. If 90% of Muslims can practice their faith without flying airplanes into buildings and stoning rape victims, then it’s obviously not a flaw in the faith but in those people who choose to do that. Take away their religion, and they’ll continue to do those things, in the name of “secular conscience” if not Allah. ---
**Author:** ![dangermom](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e274bd/32.png) [@dangermom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dangermom)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2007, 5:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/religious-reasons-for-evil/427021/12 "2007-11-19T17:08:32Z")
Well, this is just meandering, but I think that some of this has to do with potential. A powerful idea, just like a powerful force, can be used for good or evil depending on what the human being involved wants to do. Religion is a powerful idea with huge potential for good or evil, like, say, atomic energy. With atomic technology, you can destroy a city or give it power, cause cancer or destroy a tumor. Likewise, each person has potential for good or evil in varying amounts–a powerful or intelligent person can effect much more in either direction than a weak person can. Since people are frequently pretty rotten, and often tend to use power for bad purposes, naturally they use powerful ideas like religion for evil. At the same time, my personal opinion is that religion has toned down a lot of bad in the world and helped many people be better than they otherwise would be. As we know, some people have used religion for incredible good too. But I don’t think you can prove any of that one way or the other. Take religion away, and most people with good or evil purposes would simply find another powerful idea to use. If there was no religion in history, I don’t think there’s any way to tell what the net effect would be, though I suspect it would be a bad one. A lot of good movements have had their roots in religion– **WhyNot** just listed some. No one in the entire history of the world seems to have thought that slavery was bad until some Christians realized that God was probably against it. ---
**Author:** ![Menocchio](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/9de053/32.png) [@Menocchio](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Menocchio)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2007, 11:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/religious-reasons-for-evil/427021/13 "2007-11-19T23:29:33Z")
[QUOTE=9thFloor] 😛 A simple, modern one would be telling a child ‘you’re going to hell’ for misbehaving. That’s a simple traumatizing (bad) act that requires religion. A more pertinent contemporary example are jihadists that feel it is their religious duty to kill infidels for afterworld benefits. [/QUOTE] For the first go watch “A Christmas Story”, shouldn’t be hard to find given the season, and see the secular equivalent. Parents will warn their children of the consequences of their actions. Sometimes the warnings will be hyperbolic or otherwise unreasonable. Sometimes they’ll be traumatic for the child. No religion necessary. For the second, people kill each other all the time for worldly benefits, so religion doesn’t really stand out here. You’re making a pretty big error lumping all religions together. An American atheist probably has more in common regarding culture and ethical behavior with an extremely religious American than he does with an atheist from Japan. ---
**Author:** ![begbert2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/begbert2/32/3357_2.png) [@begbert2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/begbert2)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2007, 11:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/religious-reasons-for-evil/427021/14 "2007-11-19T23:56:07Z")
I’ve occasionally wondered if the reason why there are few/no notable non-religious secular aid organizations was because all the religious ones got there first. ---
**Author:** ![WhyNot](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/c77e96/32.png) [@WhyNot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WhyNot)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2007, 1:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/religious-reasons-for-evil/427021/15 "2007-11-20T01:01:19Z")
[QUOTE=begbert2] I’ve occasionally wondered if the reason why there are few/no notable non-religious secular aid organizations was because all the religious ones got there first. [/QUOTE] I’ve wondered that too, but I don’t think so. Do you really think they’ve glutted the market? There are still starving and abused people all over the place that would welcome help. No, I think the problem is much more simple, and sad: secular people don’t give as much. The churches have a captive audience of people who are, for whatever reason, more likely to donate to such causes. [I think this is a fascinating article on the comparative rates of donation - time and money - for the religious and the secular.](http://www.hoover.org/publications/policyreview/3447051.html) “The data show that if two people — one religious and the other secular — are identical in every other way, the secular person is 23 percentage points less likely to give than the religious person and 26 points less likely to volunteer.” ---
**Author:** ![begbert2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/begbert2/32/3357_2.png) [@begbert2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/begbert2)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2007, 1:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/religious-reasons-for-evil/427021/16 "2007-11-20T01:53:14Z")
[QUOTE=WhyNot] I’ve wondered that too, but I don’t think so. Do you really think they’ve glutted the market? There are still starving and abused people all over the place that would welcome help. No, I think the problem is much more simple, and sad: secular people don’t give as much. The churches have a captive audience of people who are, for whatever reason, more likely to donate to such causes. [I think this is a fascinating article on the comparative rates of donation - time and money - for the religious and the secular.](http://www.hoover.org/publications/policyreview/3447051.html) “The data show that if two people — one religious and the other secular — are identical in every other way, the secular person is 23 percentage points less likely to give than the religious person and 26 points less likely to volunteer.” [/QUOTE] I think that the perception is that it’s easier and more effective to support the existing religious organizations that to try and start a secular one from scratch, so nobody starts secular charitable organizations in competition with religious ones. And I _strongly_ suspect that the tendency to give by religious people is mostly based in the fact that they regularly go to organizations that “pass the plate”. That is, that it has everything to do with opportunity and peer pressure and essentially nothing to do with religion or religious morals. Which brings up the question of whether, in the absence of religions, people would tend to gather at secular groupings that might grow to include such “plate passing”. At the moment I don’t know of any such secular organizations (not that that means anything; I don’t get out much), so providing such meetings might be an actual example of something good that religion provides, thus satisfying the OP. (However I will _not_ concede that point to anyone who generalizes “threats of eternal, infinite torture” with “threats of brief, relative torture” into the same thing, since if we’re generalizing the hell out everything, then any school that collected cans counts as such a secular charitable grouping.) ---
**Author:** ![Menocchio](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/9de053/32.png) [@Menocchio](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Menocchio)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2007, 3:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/religious-reasons-for-evil/427021/17 "2007-11-20T03:16:07Z")
[QUOTE=begbert2] Which brings up the question of whether, in the absence of religions, people would tend to gather at secular groupings that might grow to include such “plate passing”. [/QUOTE] It’s impossible to tell. Religion happened and there’s no way of knowing what the world would be like if religion never happened. But I think such “secular churches” would appear in the absence of regular churches. They’d do charity and community service, moral instruction, mutual support of the congregation, and everything else that religion does except the actual worship. I think we may start seeing that as religion declines in the West, and the vacuum left in the community where the church once was becomes more apparent. Hell, the Unitarians are pretty much there already. ---
**Author:** ![fluiddruid](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/c2a13f/32.png) [@fluiddruid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/fluiddruid)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2007, 4:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/religious-reasons-for-evil/427021/18 "2007-11-20T04:28:45Z")
It is very likely that human sacrifices were not done wholly for religious reasons. The chosen victims were often criminals or captured prisoners of war. I’m sure political opponents were possibilities as well. After all, human sacrifices occurred overwhelmingly in cultures where punishments were extremely limited and imprisonment was impossible. When you have the major options of enslavement, corporal punishment, removing limbs, and execution, putting people to death comes up a lot more often. Besides, what is a human sacrifice? If people kill a prisoner in a religious ritual, is that human sacrifice? Where do you draw the line between ritually-approved executions and sacrifices, then? If all ritually-approved executions are sacrifices, the Romans definitely practiced human sacrifice and a strong argument could be made for many modern cultures practicing human sacrifice. Lastly, sacrifice is by definition done to a god or other power, or for mystical reasons. Killings that aren’t done for that reason aren’t called sacrifices, so it’s something of a meaningless distinction. After all, if I kill someone because I think a god will grant me wealth, that’s a sacrifice; if I kill someone because I think their insurance company will give me wealth, it’s not. Yet, it’s the same act with the same motivation. ---
**Author:** ![WhyNot](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/c77e96/32.png) [@WhyNot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WhyNot)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2007, 11:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/religious-reasons-for-evil/427021/19 "2007-11-20T11:13:57Z")
[QUOTE=begbert2] I think that the perception is that it’s easier and more effective to support the existing religious organizations that to try and start a secular one from scratch, so nobody starts secular charitable organizations in competition with religious ones. [/quote] I do agree with this. I’ve been involved in several (secular) not-for-profit efforts, and damn that’s hard work! I’d far rather work within an existing system than write one more 501c3 application. > [@](#): > > And I _strongly_ suspect that the tendency to give by religious people is mostly based in the fact that they regularly go to organizations that “pass the plate”. That is, that it has everything to do with opportunity and peer pressure and essentially nothing to do with religion or religious morals. You’d think, wouldn’t you? But not so fast; also quoted from the article linked previously: > [@](#): > > Some people might object to my conflation here of religious and nonreligious charity. One might argue, for example, that religious charity is more likely to take place for non-altruistic reasons than is nonreligious giving and volunteering: Religious people might give because of social pressure, for personal gain (such as stashing away rewards in Heaven), or to finance the services that they themselves consume, such as sacramental activities. Therefore, disparities in charity might disappear when we only consider explicitly nonreligious giving and volunteering. The sccbs data do not support this hypothesis, however: Religious people are more generous than secular people with nonreligious causes as well as with religious ones. While 68 percent of the total population gives (and 51 percent volunteers) to nonreligious causes each year, religious people are 10 points more likely to give to these causes than secularists (71 percent to 61 percent) and 21 points more likely to volunteer (60 percent to 39 percent). For example, religious people are 7 points more likely than secularists to volunteer for neighborhood and civic groups, 20 points more likely to volunteer to help the poor or elderly, and 26 points more likely to volunteer for school or youth programs. It seems fair to say that religion engenders charity in general — including nonreligious charity. I don’t necessarily agree with his final sentence there, however. I don’t think he’s shown whether religion engenders charity or whether charitable people are drawn to religion. But it does seem like there’s a correlation between “religious people” and “charitable giving”. But this is sort of veering off-topic… ---
**Author:** ![sreeja](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e274bd/32.png) [@sreeja](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sreeja)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2007, 11:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/religious-reasons-for-evil/427021/20 "2007-11-20T11:19:10Z")
Yes religions have some bad things .They are to be avoided. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/religious-reasons-for-evil/427021.md?page=2)