Christians celebrate rape, torture, slavery and genocide.

[Kirbmarc]

I know a guy who used to get drunk every day and frequently abused his wife. He had a religious experience and is now sober for years and happily married. Seems like a formerly evil person who's now doing good to me.

I'd be very interested in knowing about this experience (because I find it highly unlikely), but it's better not to derail the thread too much. Would you mind to post more about this story (leaving out any sensitive details, of course) if I started a new thread about religion and morality?

Anyway, your example doesn't fully convince me. I'd say that what actually helped to become more empathic has much more to do with becoming sober than with having a religious experience. Of course the decision of becoming sober was inspired by this alleged religious experience, but I doubt that the effect would have been different if the same decision was inspired by something else.

The view I exposed in my previous post is of course a simplification of reality (as any philosophical view), but I think it still holds up when we're talking about societies in general.

People are rarely completely empathic or sociopathic (although most of us are more empathic than sociopathic). Specific individuals may develop more empathy during the course of their lives (or may overcome an addiction, thus improving control on their actions) and they might do it for religious reasons.

I highly doubt, however, that this is frequent enough to balance the harmful effects of religious morality towards minorities and non-believers in general. In layman's terms, I think that while it's possible that in some specific cases religion can help someone to improve their morality (or their self-control), overall it does more harm than good.