Does religion corrupt morality?

[downbeatplumb]

People can believe strongly without knowing the details of what their religion actually says, they only listen to the edited highlights dished out in the place they worship. It's the one who take it home and study it and then find out they shouldn't do this and they should oppress that are the problem. It's not about strength of belief as much as is its about depth of knowledge and acceptance of that knowledge of what the texts actually say.

Your position is interesting in that you seem to think that being more reasonable about religion leads to worse results.

The thing is, the edited highlights often get people to be worse.  For example, the edited highlights in church often get people to have an overzealous hatred of gays.  As Vorlon13 likes to say, Jesus condemned divorce in three gospels, but Jesus never mentioned homosexuality at all.  But one does not usually get a sense of that just from highlights in church.  Additionally, many people end up rejecting their religion because they take it seriously and examine it.  Those who don't think about it are far less likely to notice the absurdities and contradictions.  So I think you are mistaken about the people who do not bother to study their religion.

Well I don't know about the US, but over this side of the pond in the Church of England the emphasis is on the happy clappy "lets all be friends" passages of the bible and by passes all the stuff that doesn't conform to that view. Intolerance is in the bible and of course if that's what your pastor, preacher, vicar wants to expose you to then that's what they will do. Over here, overwhelmingly, they don't. Some people study the bible, find out how shit it is and leave. But a lot of people read the bible (other religious texts are available) and go "I need to double down on the hatred". The sad part is everyone is right. If you want to get peace and light from the text you can, if you want to get hatred and oppression thats in there too. Ambguity and conflicting messages seems to the mainstay for lasting religions.