Well that’s good to know. 
(says the 5’10" believer) 
You raise a good point. Consider the grand history of orphanages, soup kitchens and homeless shelters. Many, if not most, of these are operated by religious organizations, especially Christian ones. In contrast, how many of these were established by groups such as American Atheists?
A large number of hospitals were established by Christian groups, and some of the most prominent universities in the USA (Harvard, Yale and Princeton, among others) were originally Christian institutions, or were established by Christians.
That sounds like a rather dogmatic statement to me. Are you truly declaring it to be true?
I think that’s a strawman argument. There are many religous people who believe simply because of “faith,” but by the same token, there are many atheists who do not investigate the facts or check their assumptions either. Consider, for example, how often we hear that “Christianity is responsible for more deaths in the world than any other worldview” or that “Miracles can’t be possible because science says they’re not possible.” Such statements betray a serious lack of information and proper reasoning as well.
In past threads, I’ve mentioned several people who became believers after investigating the facts – Simon Greenleaf, Sir William Ramsay and Frank Morison, for example. Some of those people came about reluctantly, after initially attempting to disprove Christianity. And I, for one, adopted theism for reasons of science and history. Hence, I think it’s careless to assume that theists don’t rely on logic, and that atheists are the ones who do.
—Consider the grand history of orphanages, soup kitchens and homeless shelters. Many, if not most, of these are operated by religious organizations, especially Christian ones. In contrast, how many of these were established by groups such as American Atheists?—
This is simply the wrong question to ask. Why would atheists AS ATHEISTS want to start charities in order to shill for atheism? Non-religious people simply start charities to help people: they don’t necessarily tie it to any overarching ideology that you can point to for bragging rights. By looking for charities to tie to atheism, you are making a patently false comparison of types.
Of course, you’re not alone: several groups HAVE started explicitly atheist chairty groups: something I think is downright stupid, but so it goes. That there are less in the US than Christian ones is to be expected: since there are less atheists in the US than Christians.
The fact that people gave their charities and institutions Christian overtones tells you no more than that: that they wished them to have Christian overtones.
If everyone was non-religious, I have little doubt that there would be any less charity in the world: it just wouldn’t have the same religious overtones.
—I think that’s a strawman argument. —
I agree. Fidelists aren’t any less rational than anyone else, for instance. Neither are pantheists. There is no necessary reason at all why religion has any implict connection to irrationality, regardless of whether some religious claims of some people are sometimes irrational.
—And I, for one, adopted theism for reasons of science and history.—
Of cuorse, this is being presumptuous in exactly the opposite direction. Who is to say that your reasons were GOOD science and history, as opposed to the huge quanties of psuedo-science about? That’s precisely the debate in such cases: and so not a question it pays to beg.
I’m not saying that they should. That is not, after all, the issue at hand. We are not debating whether atheism is more valid than theism, or whether atheists have valid reasons to do good works. Rather, we are discussing whether the world would be better off without religion.
Nuts. The rest of my reply got cut off mysteriously. Anyway, here’s the gist of it.
Apos, I think you’re straying considerably from the topic at hand. You say that we can’t validly compare the motives of theists and atheists in performing charitable acts. That may be true, but as I said, it’s straying considerably from the issue at hand. After all, we are talking specifically about whether the world would be better off without religion. Theists and religionists DO have differing motivations – nobody denies that – but that’s not the matter under consideration.
I think you’re also gravely mischaracterizing the motives of religiously motivated charitable acts. For example, you say,
That’s a rather poor caricature of Christian charities. Sometimes they are motivated in part by the desire to have Christian overtones, but not necessarily. In fact, MANY religions – Protestantism, Catholicism and Hinduism, for example – believe that prudently charitable acts are inherently good, even when done anonymously, and even without religious overtones. (Remember the parable of the Good Samaritan?)
And that’s one reason why I think you’re rather hasty in saying,
Quite simply, many religions contain inherent motivations for doing good works. These include, but are not limited to, the notion that we are ultimately accountable to a higher power. Without these motivations, charitable acts will doubtlessly continue, but there would be less motivation for doing so.
You also say,
Well first of all, we should note that your question merits a whole 'nother thread. Merely raising the question does nothing to refute the point which I raised. In fact, turnabout is fair play. If you insist on raising that point, one must also ask whether the atheists are using “GOOD science and history” – unless, of course, one would prefer to apply a double-standard.
Moreover, the objection is irrelevant to immediate topic at hand. Remember, I was responding to the specific claim that religious people rely on faith and “hunches,” and that non-religious people put their trust in logic. As I said, I think that’s a gross caricature of religious viewpoints, and it flies in the faces of centuries of religious philosophy. Moreover, even if you could show that the logic used by religious people is flawed – and as I said, that allegation merits a whole 'nother thread – the point would still remain that religion does NOT simply rely on faith and hunches.
If there had never been any religion then the world today would be almost unimaginable. Most or all of our cultural inheritance has been religiously influenced or directed, and the values to which many atheists or agnostics subscribe – respect for the individual, liberty, justice – were formed, influenced or handed down by religious thinkers. Similarly an enormous amount of scientific enquiry has been undertaken by scientists motivated by religious beliefs. I think all we can say is that, if there had never been any religious belief, the world today would be unimaginably different, certainly in terms of beliefs and values and quite possibly in terms of scientific and technological progress. Would it be “better”? Quite possibly. Would it be “worse”? Quite possibly. One of the ironies here is that we can only answer this question by reference to our own values, which are heavily influenced by religion.
How the world would change if all religious belief were to be abandoned now is a different question. The answer depends, I suppose, on what belief system or spiritual or ethical values replaced religion. A not excessively implausible scenario is one in which the whole world becomes secularised along the lines that much of Western society has already become secularised (i.e. without a major change in fundamental values). Would this reduce extremism, intolerance, hatred, bigotry?
Well, not necessarily. Hitler and Stalin have demonstrated that modern Western society is entirely capable of producing the most profound evil without any religious basis or endorsement whatsoever. I don’t see that further secularisation in non-Western societies necessarily reduces the prospects of this happening again.
Minor quibble: I can’t accept that there have not been many atheist suicide bombers. AFAIK World War II kamikaze pilots practiced emperor-veneration, but didn’t worship any god in the Western sense. Their religious beliefs were probably closer to what we would think of as extreme nationalism or extreme patriotism (or extreme xenophobia) than to western religion.
Incidentally, this topic is discussed during the first hour of the 6/11/02 radio broadcast recorded here.
- (Italic emphasis mine --DG)
I don’t know about Stalin, who actively suppressed religion in the wide area under his domination, but Hitler was not only a self-professed Catholic, but invoked God and Christianity in writing and speeches both in his efforts to gain power, and throughout his horrific domination of Germany.
Actually, while the Japanese deified their emperor, they also had many gods. Worship doesn’t have to be “in the Western sense” to qualify as religious motivation, or are polytheists and atheists synonymous in your lexicon? The word kamikaze means divine wind, after the kami, or gods, in which they believed. Calling these suicide bombers atheists is simply incorrect.
Actually, I find that this question has been authoritatively addressed here: http://www.straightdope.com/mailbag/mhitlerchristian.html
The conclusion seems to be that Hitler made inconsistent statements on this subject (as on so many others); publicly he mostly professed Christianity, privately he often excoriated it and expressed a desire to destroy it, and he never explicitly claimed to be an atheist. On balance there’s little evidence that he was an atheist, but as he was privately hostile to the religion which he publicly professed, there’s little credible evidence that he had any religious belief either.
I’m happy to be corrected on this one. But what you say does raise a pertinent question which you may be able to answer. It seems to me that whether suicide bombers are atheists or theists not is relevant to this discussion only if the bomber’s theistic belief is in some way related to his actions. Western religions mostly associate a belief in a particular concept of God with a moral obligation to behave in the way which God, as so conceived, desires. Most of those who argue that religion is the cause of so much evil are coming from this frame of reference. But of course belief in a particular God or gods does not have to be associated with any particular code of moral behaviour mandated by the God or gods. Which brings me to my question: in Japanese traditional religion, does a belief in the Japanese pantheon necessarily require the acceptance of a moral code which would (inter alia) justify a suicide bombing? In other words, does the Japanese kamikaze bomber’s theism explain the fact that his is a kamikaze bomber?
It’s using the most elementary form of logic reasoning, and if you get completely different answers, to say, a particular question such as maybe asking what you must do to get to heaven; then, it’s really a simple process to realize that at best, only one can be correct. Perhaps you can tell me how a Muslim, a Christian, Hindu, Buddhist and Jew each are all correct and construct it into a deductive argument. Can you get a more than one correct answer to 2+3 too?
John
Probably not, if you mean does his theism itself somehow tell him to be a bomber. It seems likely to me that Tojo (who was really in charge in Japan at the time) may have exploited his soldiers’ belief that they would be one with the kami in much the same way Hamas exploits some Muslims’ belief that they will immediately join Allah by performing certain acts. I doubt that there is anything in either belief system that mandates suicide bombing or anything like it as a key to some future glory. But I don’t know.
Quite the contrary. I think it requires a huge leap of logic. There’s a vast difference between saying “There would be an advantage to having no religion” and saying “The world would be better of without religion.” In fact, since various posters have shown that there are advantages to religion, I don’t think we can say that your conclusion necessarily follows.
Well, since I don’t claim that they’re all correct, I don’t think your challenge is relevant. Besides which, I don’t think that point supports your assertion. The fact that some beliefs are mutually exclusive does not automatically mean that there’s no room for dogmatism – and even if it did, this still wouldn’t mean that the world would be better off without religion.
The very statement that “the world would be better of without dogmatism” is itself dogmatic and unproven. It may seem intuitive to some, but it’s not a conclusion that’s necessaril warranted.
A little harsh ianzin. I’m an atheist but I don’t think religion = stupidity, automatically.
There is a lot of stupidity that can be blamed on organized religion, but belief in and of itself is part of human nature and isn’t necessarily a bad thing.
I think the world would be a much better place without evangelical proselytizers and zealots. I think the world would be an immensely better place if the catholic church would give up the whole anti-abortion, anti-birth control ideology. I think the world would be a much better place if there was no 700 club.
I can’t remember if it was the SDMB or Fark where someone said “Hey Islamic extremists, no one ever said they were female virgins…”
Aarg. I thought my OP made it clear that religion in general, rather than specific belief in any god or combination of gods, was what would vanish. And, if I remember my Lit classes, didn’t the average kamakaze pilot belive in an afterlife?
JThunder, my quotes that you use from me, are a bit haphazard on where you’re placing them, so I‘ll do a brief re-cap, although this makes it rather sloppy. If you go back to your original post to me it was:
JZ- It would not only be a better place, it would make it a more honest world if religious dogma wasn’t proclaimed as truth.
JThunder- That sounds like a rather dogmatic statement to me. Are you truly declaring it to be true?
I responded:
JZ–It’s using the most elementary form of logic reasoning, and if you get completely different answers, to say, a particular question such as maybe asking what you must do to get to heaven; then, it’s really a simple process to realize that at best, only one can be correct. Perhaps you can tell me how a Muslim, a Christian, Hindu, Buddhist and Jew each are all correct and construct it into a deductive argument. Can you get more than one correct answer to 2+3 too?
I’ll comment on this further latter on in my post, but do you think it is a good thing to promote any holy books of religion as truth? how about absolute truth? Most preachers dogmatically tell you this. And is it good to follow somebody like this? If you like you can tell me many/some of the virtues of this since we are weighing the pros and cons of religion and whether or not the world would be better place with or without it. With your last post it’s too convoluted to make sense out of it the way you scattered my quotes. You start out with these two quotes from you and me:
JThunder- That sounds like a rather dogmatic statement to me. Are you truly declaring it to be true?
JZ–It’s using the most elementary form of logic reasoning
You again took this one sentence from me here, and wrote the next piece. It belonged with my other text:
Quite the contrary. I think it requires a huge leap of logic. There’s a vast difference between saying “There would be an advantage to having no religion” and saying “The world would be better of without religion.” In fact, since various posters have shown that there are advantages to religion, I don’t think we can say that your conclusion necessarily follows.
It’s non-sequitur because you are not consistently placing my text in context with what I wrote earlier. You eventually get back to this again:
JZ-- Perhaps you can tell me how a Muslim, a Christian, Hindu, Buddhist and Jew each are all correct and construct it into a deductive argument. Can you get more than one correct answer to 2+3 too?
JThunder–**Well, since I don’t claim that they’re all correct, I don’t think your challenge is relevant. Besides which, I don’t think that point supports your assertion. The fact that some beliefs are mutually exclusive does not automatically mean that there’s no room for dogmatism – and even if it did, this still wouldn’t mean that the world would be better off without religion. **
Well it certainly doesn’t mean the world is better off either, nor have you been equal in demonstrating this. Is it virtuous to believe, e.g., the Lord supposedly stopping the sun so Joshua could spend more time killing the enemy; Lot sleeping with his two daughters; JC came from a virgin; believing that Elijah was taken up to heaven in a flaming whirlwind; believing all of the mass atrocities that the bible says was often committed, approved or ordered by this fiend that many call God? Just exactly what are the morals to these stories and what positive influence does this kind of dogma have on religious folk?
You say it’s not relevant to my assertion, that if five different religions give you five completely different answers to a particular question, that at best only one could be right since you don‘t claim they are all correct. It is relevant when you realize the stories couldn’t all be true. And it’s relevant when it is put with my original statements saying that it would make it a more honest world if religious dogma wasn’t proclaimed as truth. It wouldn’t be relevant to someone who didn’t care if it was true or not, just so long as it made them feel good, I suppose. Surely honesty is important to you. And while all five spokesman for each religion may be sincere in what they are saying, it doesn’t do a hell of a lot of good for any of them to dogmatically proclaim that their version is absolute truth, when it’s easy to see none of them come close to giving the same answer to questions that are asked. It was also relevant to the OP in which it reads: Assume that people didn’t have religion receptors in their brains. Or if you prefer, that there were no holy books, and your gods of choice butted out after Creation. Would the world be a better place? Well, I prefer that there were no holy books, and do think the world would have been a better place without it too. It’s just conjecture on my part, as it is on yours. Reading history, and seeing just what good religion has done for the world or even listening to the news in this day and age, I would be hard pressed to make a positive case for religion; the cons outweigh the pros. People should be capable of doing good to one another just for the sake of doing good. That shouldn’t be too hard for anyone to fathom. Many know how good they feel when they feel like they have done something really good, and they didn’t do it for any selfish reasons, or for any expectations of rewards. If they need some reward of heaven or punishment of hell for their deeds; then, they are selfish cowards who haven‘t found the courage to just live life and get on with it.
John
Actually, one could argue that that’s what most wars are fought over anyway. It’s just that Religion is used as a rallying force (“God compells you to go kill (insert name of enemy here)” probably would get more people to go do it then " We don’t like these guys, go kill them".