RE: Religion should be encouraged if it has positive effects on people.What do you think?
December 25, 2016 at 3:14 pm
(December 25, 2016 at 2:15 pm)BrianSoddingBoru4 Wrote: If all religion ever accomplished was to make believers into better people (and yes, 'better' is a question-begging term, I'm aware), I'd be all for it.
That was the point I was going to make when I read the OP. Religion often comes with negative baggage, and not everyone will agree to strip it away in order to keep the good. The guy who lives his life by "love thy neighbor" but also thinks gays should be put to death is supported by his sacred texts on both points. And if that seems too extreme, let's check in on the gay teenager who stays in the closet because he knows how his devout, godly parents will react when they find out.
If there's a religion that teaches people to be kind, generous and supportive of one another without any of the baggage then you're at step one. Step two would be to get people to stop believing in racist, genocidal, homophobic, angry and violent gods and convert to the religion that tries to make us better people in all respects.
"Well, evolution is a theory. It is also a fact. And facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts don't go away when scientists debate rival theories to explain them. Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's in this century, but apples didn't suspend themselves in midair, pending the outcome. And humans evolved from ape- like ancestors whether they did so by Darwin's proposed mechanism or by some other yet to be discovered."
-Stephen Jay Gould
-Stephen Jay Gould
