(June 18, 2013 at 5:51 am)ideologue08 Wrote:(June 18, 2013 at 5:42 am)max-greece Wrote: Does rather beg the question - if religion does not offer any benefit to society - why have it?Bit of a loaded questionBut ok, you have to think about specifically what the stated purpose of religions are, what do they claim to achieve (bear in mind each religion has its won stated purpose, there's no blanket answer, except maybe for the abrahamic ones). And you also have to think about what you mean exactly by "benefit", because there are things that we think benefit us, but in the long term it might not be beneficial at all. Sub-prime mortgages is a case in point, alan greenspan thought he knew what he was doing, what was beneficial for america, turns out he was wrong and the whole country paid the price.
(June 18, 2013 at 5:51 am)Simsim Wrote: we don't attribute any kind of absolutism to them.I doRape for example, is wrong at an absolute level in my opinion, I don't scripture to tell me that.
Well we could discuss the sub-prime market and why it went wrong but we would probably not agree who the guilty parties are (I'm going for the lenders and their punitive penalty interest rates on the basis of one late payment) - but that's a whole other story.
As for religion I guess my real question is this:
If someone is religious (and for the sake of argument believes in the right religion) is it unreasonable for us to expect that person to be a more moral, law-abiding person than a non-believer or a believer in a wrong religion?
Further, if that is not the case - and I have seen no evidence of any religions followers being under-represented in prison - then isn't it reasonable to assume there are no right religions and that these carry no perceivable benefits?
