I'm glad you're not anti-science.
Religion and its structures cerainly improved the lives of some people, and killed lots of others. Crusades anyone?
You said 'belief' has a positive effect on people. Does that include the gay men who have been and still are being demonised and persecuted, or the christians in Saudi, or the women in any muslim country? The safest places to be are in the secular democracries of western Europe where the the level of religion is the lowest.
That's the point I was making: we don't have to believe in a god so we don't have to kill in his name. There are people who are sometimes vicious but we no longer accept that they can act in that fashion, and we punish them when they do, unlike in religious wars.
Religion and its structures cerainly improved the lives of some people, and killed lots of others. Crusades anyone?
You said 'belief' has a positive effect on people. Does that include the gay men who have been and still are being demonised and persecuted, or the christians in Saudi, or the women in any muslim country? The safest places to be are in the secular democracries of western Europe where the the level of religion is the lowest.
That's the point I was making: we don't have to believe in a god so we don't have to kill in his name. There are people who are sometimes vicious but we no longer accept that they can act in that fashion, and we punish them when they do, unlike in religious wars.
