Atheismix

[FaithAffirmed]

You say Faith is good for helping people with addiction. It is not. I fucking hate the AA program. If you want to see how much I hate it, I've written extensively about it here: http://candycolouredfrown.blogspot.com/2...igion.html

You seem to be missing the point others are making. Good people do good things. Bad people do bad things, but it takes religion to make good people do bad things.

To take a saying from Christopher Hitchens, name something good that people do that can't possibly be done by secular means? You can't name any, no one can. Hitchens is still waiting for an answer to that challenge. Now name something bad people have done in the name of religion. You can think of many.

Having taken an extensive course on the psychology of addictive and compulsive behavior I happen to know that spirituality is a key factor in resilience against addictions. In fact there is a list of factors you can take a look at.

Souce: adapted from Smith, Carolyn; Lizotte, Alan J; Thornberry, Terence P.; and Krohn, Marvin D. (1995). Resilient youth: Identifying factors that prevent high-risk youth from engaging in delinquency and drug use. Current Perspective on Aging and the Life Cycle, 4, 217-247

I'm certainly not missing the point, in fact you seem to miss the point that Kyu made that even I misread.

to me it comes down to what Dawkins says, something like, "good people do good things, bad people do bad things, but it takes a religion to make good people do bad things"! Personally I think it should be widened to ideology and acknowledge that religion can make bad people do good things but it still scares the hell outta me

Even Kyu recognizes that Faith can make bad people do good things which is not necessarily my entire point. Faith is a MOTIVATING tool which pushes people to do things. Heres where I can tie it in to your clever Christopher Hitchens quote. He offers a challenge with an obvious answer but a naive outlook. Yes, anything done for religion can be done in a secular way. But the naivety of the question is that even though it CAN be done in a secular way, it wouldn't have been done without Faith as a motivator.