(January 5, 2018 at 2:56 am)Wololo Wrote:

(January 2, 2018 at 7:05 pm)BrianSoddingBoru4 Wrote: Can you point to ANY religion that has crippled society?

Boru

Greek polytheism did. Imagine how far out to the stars we'd be if they hadn't strangled the first scientific rvolution at birth in c 500BCE. And given your ethnicity I'm surprised your not looking at our shared island to see what damage religion has done, and continues to do, both sides of the border.

Also I'd have a hard time saying that Islam hadn't crippled some societies today. Taliban anyone?

(January 2, 2018 at 5:50 pm)Nihilist Virus Wrote: I originally considered having two qualifying categories to quantify which religion is worse than another: which religion is more obviously false, and which religion is more harmful.  But then I quickly foresaw everyone here saying that they're all equally moronic and obviously false; also, harm is quantifiable.  By "harm" I refer to a combination of harm to the self, to society, and to technological progress.

Another thing I'd like to say is that some would consider, say, Mormonism to be part of Christianity, while others (mostly Christians) resist this.  I will consider them as separate because I think that Mormonism is a particularly harmful version of Christianity.  Conversely, Buddhism is a spin-off religion but is far less harmful than its parent religion or perhaps any other religion on earth.

So you can include as many religions as you like.  No need to make it a top 5, or top 10, or to include all.  I'm just interested in seeing everyone's general opinion.

Here's my list:

1. Islam (by far)

2. Catholicism

3. Mormonism (probably would be #1 if spread worldwide)

4. Hinduism

5. Quakers (Quakerism?)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_re...opulations

A simple census answers your question.. Christianity 2:1 over islam

Did you misinterpret the OP, Drich? Or were you making a point about populations and how bad religions are. If religions are all "equally bad" then I suppose that a higher population would make it worse.

(January 2, 2018 at 7:49 pm)Anomalocaris Wrote: I tend to rank religion by how much they hamper human progress in general.

Religions that may be vicious but also seem to be lacking in the ability to gain in scale don’t hamper human progress very much.

Religions that tend to hold sway only in areas that are backward and primitive is less dangerous to general state of human progress than religions which are likely to gain political power where institutions of human progress are concentrated and thus can apply their malevolent influence more directly upon engines of human progress.

So I have to say Christianity ranks far and away as the worst and most dangerous, even if it at the moment doesn’t seem to be quite as vicious as Islam.

The sad fact is that Islam can't really throttle progress in those areas where it holds sway precisely because it has already retarded progress in those areas decisively.

Also -- and this is not related to the above post I quoted from Anomalocaris -- I disagree with the notion that Buddhism is a benign religion. Look at what has happened in Myanmar the last few months, where the Buddhist majority has executed an ethnic cleansing against the Rohingya. There are other examples of severe religious violence involving Buddhists. Like many other religions, they may espouse benign precepts, but the difference between words and deeds exists.

(January 4, 2018 at 11:54 pm)CapnAwesome Wrote:

(January 4, 2018 at 11:35 pm)Wyrd of Gawd Wrote: All of these religions except #4, #10, and #11 are Asian in origin.

1. Islam
2. Xtianity (all sects)
3. Judaism
4. Scientology
5. Hinduism
6. Buddhism
7. Taoism
8. Confucianism
9. Jainism
10. Pastafarianism
11. Dudeism

Good thing I said eastern and not Asian, eh.

Eastern and Asian are synonyms for everything East of the Mediterranean Sea coast.

(January 5, 2018 at 8:35 pm)Wyrd of Gawd Wrote:

(January 4, 2018 at 11:54 pm)CapnAwesome Wrote: Good thing I said eastern and not Asian, eh.

Eastern and Asian are synonyms for everything East of the Mediterranean Sea coast.

Uhhh, no. That's why we have the term "middle east"

When someone says eastern (at least in the U.S.) they pretty much always mean East Asia. Otherwise you'd specify the middle East. Nobody says "the far East."

I'm not sure where you are from though, might be different there.