Christianity Harms Society. Why I Mock Christians

[Esquilax]

I see this a lot. You have completely disregarded every charitable act that the Church does (most likely because it does not get the same amount of news time). Maybe you can name me an atheist organization that has organized homeless shelters and hospitals across the nation, along with the world. The stance you take is a stance of convenience.

My contention is that the church, in that instance, is merely an apparatus that facilitates natural human charity, that would still exist without the church, while taking a large part of the credit for it. Sure, this apparatus is larger than any atheist one, but then, what would you expect from an organization that's had hundreds of years of undeserved cultural supremacy?

But the charity? That's not dependent on the church.

As for the harm that the Church does, is has to be understood that the Church does not promote harm. It promotes people becoming more humble, truthful, courageous. If I met an atheist who was greedy, selfish liar, could I assume that you were a greedy, selfish liar?

I posted a thread today about the millions of dollars in hush money that the church paid in order to keep the victims of sexual abuse by priests silent: I would say that prioritizing the church's reputation above the vilifying of pedophiles counts as promoting harm... not to mention, it's hardly "humble, truthful of courageous."

I could keep going, but I think I've made my point.

The claim that the video makes is that religion, or believing in fairy tales, is the root of almost everything wrong with this country.
Religion created and promotes unchecked capitalism? No.

I'll remember that next time I see a picture of the golden papal throne.

Religion tells politicians to lie and carry out wars? No.

Actually, yes on the latter case: god justified wars rage throughout the bible, and there's plenty of orders within that book to go to war against... pretty much everyone who doesn't agree with you exactly. Have you read it?

This is a scapegoat tactic that comes from disgust aimed at a particular group of people, like Nazism going after the Jews or the KKK going after blacks. Everything is "their" fault. It has nothing to do with individuals making decisions based on their own self-involved interests.

Everything comes down to individuals in the end, because organizations can't make actions without people. This is just dishonest deflection; the real point of contention is twofold: were those bad actions justified or motivated by the religion involved, and more broadly, should the people claiming to be speaking for the all knowing creator of the universe be conducting themselves in this manner? It's a credibility issue, but you seem to be arguing that, because the church itself didn't rise up out of the ground and perform these actions, therefore it has no culpability.

I will admit that there have been people that twist religion around to justify their dirty ends, but this happens with anything that is looked to as an authority. Science has been twisted around to prove that global warming is false and fossil fuels are the best option. Look at the medical industry - science gets twisted around there to make a buck on medicine people don't actually need that is actually BAD for them! Is this the fault of science? Should I demonize science for creating an industry that causes such harm as leaky anuses? NO.

The difference here is that science also does real, demonstrable good that couldn't have been accomplished without the scientific establishment, while the church does nothing as a tradeoff for the harm that comes out of it. As I said earlier.

But since you seem so sure, then answer me this: can you name one demonstrably real, positive effect of religion, that requires religion and could not be obtained through secular means?