Christians celebrate rape, torture, slavery and genocide.

[John V]

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?

From what follows I don't see the point.

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.

Maybe. This is what I was talking about in my response to Ryantology. We can't even quantify the effect of religion in this one case, let alone quantify everything since the inception of Christianity. I personally don't argue that Christianity has been a net good for that reason.

People are rarely completely empathic or sociopathic (although most of us are more empathic than sociopathic).

Not necessarily. What if we employ seemingly empathic deeds for selfish motives? This seems very common to me, and I believe is backed up by research (observing what people do if they think no one's watching vs. if someone's standing there). And again, it's impossible to quantify. Poor Gooders thinks the world's pretty evil. Maybe he's right.

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 hrlp someone to improve their morality (or their self-control), overall it does more harm than good.

Yes, I know you think that. I'm not sure I don't agree with you. It's not necessarily an un-Biblical position. But we just can't quantify it.