Why religion should not vanish

[Silver]

What little good religion has done is no argument in its favor when compared to the atrocities it has committed and continues to commit.

[Mudhammam]

Not to mention, religion fosters a general credulity generation after generation that rears its sheepish head in areas not related to metaphysical abstract supermen.

[Vox]

1st point:
Bill Gates, regardless of upbringing, is an atheist. Kinda hard to give credit to god or the church there.

Did you not read the articles Galatic? Gate's has directly attributed his actions as being motivated by religion. If he belives in the fullness of a creed is another matter, but he's actually come out and said "I did this because of religion".

I think the Church does get some credit there. He's awarding the credit to it himself!

2nd point:
Professed atheists (atheist, no belief, nonreligious, pick your name) are 15-20% of the population according to recent studies. Atheist populations in prisons, less than 1%

I know of that study, and this isn't quite correct. Within those statistics Athiests did not just include those who did not profess faith, they also included those who were not aligned with any organized religion.

You know those people who say "I belive in God but I don't go to any church or temple"? Yeah, they were included as Atheists too.

Athiests only make up 2.01% of the wiorlds population, a tiny proportion as I said http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_atheism.

How is it possible to compare two percent to ninety eight percent of humanity who all believe in wildly different things?

3rd point:
Religion is less and less the "vehicle of choice" for teaching ethics because more and more people are seeing that so many religions are so anti-ethical.

Traditional forms of religion like Catholicism are in decline in the west but faith itself are not. Those who leave an organized religion often still profess to hold belief in a deity, an afterlife or the supernatural.

The New Age movement itself is still undergoing an impressive period of growth too, the outward form is changing but faith itself is still sat firmly in place.

4th point:
You pick one aberration, where the aggressor wasn't common, but likely to become an aggressor to a non-involved party, and use that? Really? History is replete with examples of one group of people not helping the other guy, even against someone who may become their enemy but try to find an example of a common aggressor not unifying people at least long enough to fight them off. The enemy of my enemy...

Ottoman Turkey in the days of it's formation was an enemy to all of it's neighbours, Rum (Sunni Islam), Byzantium (Greek Orthodoxy), Persia (Zoroastrianism); All who held very different creeds to one another yet still would not stand together to fend of a common aggressor who threatened them all and indeed did one by one obliterated each of them.

Non-Greek Orthodox Europe however did, and they all did it in the name of Roman Catholicism. The Orthodox and Cathar countries and principalities didn't hop in to help, the crusaders were all united by one thing, Catholicism.

Secular efforts would never have pushed back the Islamic forces from Granada in Spain, Castile, Aragon and those principalities were too busy infighting. What really got them going was when the fanatical Catholic Isabella came to power and, in the name of Catholicism forced them out.

Had she been a secularist, she would have had no appeal to draw in neighbouring territories. Certainly, she might have had help from Aragon (her husbands lands) but nobody else would have helped, the Papal States (central Italy) certainly wouldn't have pumped the cash in. Catholicism was what made the Italians and Portuguese take an interest.

By raw numbers, religion in general may be growing and I'm not sure I
even buy that. By percentage, it's dying. Even the "growth" is pathetically lukewarm, spiritual, "feel-good" bullshit growth. There are relatively few "devout" believers of any faith compared to even 30 years ago.

Define devout for me would you? What makes a devout beliver?

I'm sure you might consider a Christian who attends a service every Sunday to be devout to Christianity, but I would just as equally consider a Buddhist who practiced daily meditation to be equally devout.

What constitutes devout belief is entirely subjective. There certainly is fewer devout Christians, but there's considerably more Hare Krishna's dancing around the streets every Diwali.


I'm sure that will give them clean water and an education. [/quote]

People need more than food and water to live. They can exist certainly, but they don't "live" in the fullest sense. Religion provides them with a sense of purpose and a community.

I said it keeps the population dumb, not makes it.

Neither does science or philosophy really have much of an impact making people smarter. Or certainly they have the potential to be able to quote some findings by the leading scientists but people aren't actually getting more intelligent in this age, they're still just as entranced by popstars and glamour as they used to be by the Pope riding around Rome in his Sedan Throne.

Very good on capitalizing on those in poor circumstances and those with low intellect. Yes.

Not uniquely those with low intelligence either, certainly the fields of Physics are dominated by an overwhelming percentage of Athiests but as someone who studies humanities I'd say the vast majority of those involved in English, History or anything of that nature are Theists of some form.

They may not have the mathematical knowledge of an astrophysicist, but they're just as logical and skilled in other fields.

I don't know, I think the Nazi's did a pretty good job mobilizing a nation, they did that for the most part without religion. I wouldn't say religion is the only way of getting people to work towards a common goal, or necessarily the best way.

Without religion you say?


*Translation: "In God we Trust"

This to me presents itself as a clear example of the crusader mentality. We are of faith A, Faith B must be driven out.

Many of Hitler's speeches and indeed Mein Kamph itself is littered with appeals and proclamations of the glory of the Christian deity. http://www.nobeliefs.com/hitler.htm

Religion had a very big part in Hitlers manipulation of common sentiments.

Are you seriously suggesting that the conflict in Northern Ireland has nothing to do with religion. That it plays no part?

It really is minor, it's often depicted as such but it's really a race v race thing. Many members of the Neo-IRA and Nationalist groups see religion as a cultural thing, the emphasis is constantly on the alien nature of the others.

You don't see Orangemen screaming about the "Papists", you hear them yelling about the "Tegs"

Even still, it's pretty irrelevant. Not all conflicts are caused by religion. That's not the argument. The argument is that religion does cause many conflicts. Not necessarily all.

I think secular concerns cause just as many wars as religion does, religion is just quite often a convenient excuse. See the many invasions of Korea and China on behalf of Imperial Japan, The raids of Theodoric and Atilla or the subjugation of the Raja's in India by the British. Religion never came into that, they just wanted gold and other trinkets.

Yeah, you're damn right the ethics are alien. They're ethics based on religion.

I actually think it's the other way around, the religion is often framed by the ethics which developed before it. Just as Christianity was influenced by Hellenic Platonism, Islam was heavily influenced by Nestorian Christianity.

Or so the inventors of religion once thought. I need no such threat to behave in a civil and humane manner.

You might not ShaMan, but there are some humans who do. Just look at Chairman Mao.

I prefer to have all those things in reality for reasons entirely justified by reality. Let your stupid fairy tales die already. Leave your security blanket behind in childhood where it belongs.

We are working with the premise that all religions are false here, but still have some use.

Pickup, you may have the luxury of living in a First world country with a relativley high quality of life in comparison to the rest of the world but the vast majority of humanity does not. They strive on nonetheless because religion often provides them with the only hope that eventually they will be rewarded for their efforts and that things will get better. Without that, what else do beggars in Zimbabwe really have but faith. If Gods not there, why don't they just kill themselves right now? Faith is often the only thing preventing that, and also interestingly why suicide is actually far more common in predominately Atheistic societies like Japan.

Religion is often the only thing between them, and the edge.

I didn't ever say that this money that the Catholic church sucks in (in Ireland) would in total pay for education. That was my response to you saying that all the church asked in return for providing this was a "wink and a nod" or some such nonsense. It asks for a lot more. My point here was not the money. My point was that if there is a void like "our children need to be educated, and there is no more church to do it/pay for it, we'll find a way."

Sadly I have to disagree, I mean I'll use Ireland as an example again and refer to you. Irish men and women now are forced to admit that their children are being indoctrinated and educated by an institution that has a such a deep contempt towards human life and the rights of an individual that it thinks little or nothing about committing or covering up rape, physical abuse and a colourful history of other felonies.

Would you let your child be educated by pedophile protectors? I daresay you wouldn't, but the Irish people don't have a choice. There is not enough money going into state secular establishments for all children to secure a place there, neither can they all afford a private education. It really is the only option, the money is not going to come from anywhere else.

Are you really saying that if the church wasn't there to sweep under the rug a terrible atrocity that they themselves created, who would?

No, what I'm saying is that despite the atrocity there is no-one else presently capable of doing their job.

And, for the record, there are many organizations that are there to help people, all in spite of the church.

http://www.snapnetwork.org/

Admirable indeed, I myself would be more inclined to donate money to a secular charitable organization than a religious one but again religion is a far bigger motivator than any sense of secular morality. Thats why Religious organizations are the single biggest receivers of donations in the US, taking in 32% of all donations. http://www.charitynavigator.org/index.cf...ew&cpid=42. People are moved to support their fellow belivers.

And to your second point: if they had to, they would function without them. The trouble is, they don't have to. And part of the reason is that the church fosters that codependent relationship. To suggest that the church leave the business of educating our youth to educators would be to incite the wrath of the Church, and history has shown that to be a bloody venture.

The Church wouldn't be thrilled, but really...How is a nation like Mexico is supposed to cough up the cash to fund a national curriculum and school system when it can't even quite manage to keep civil order in check or the population fed?

The Church does have a vested interest in keeping it's grips on the fields of Healthcare and Education; these are traditionally the most fertile grounds for collecting new devotees but that is of no consequence to the secular goverment. It certainly could boot them out, but it would struggle to slide into it's place. It's all well and good to say "society can step in" but I don't see any evidence of it anywhere.

So your answer to bad people is blanket fear for the masses? Stamping people into submission is a good thing? You don't see the license that this gives the religious authority? My point is that the damage that this blanket fear does (Sharia law, stifling discovery, genocide, condoms) FAR outweighs the small number of people who truly would go around raping people and stealing things without the fear of a sky daddy.[/quote]

I never said it was good, i said it was highly efficient and to date the single most long lasting tool of governance. I don't think it is inherently good in itself, I think it has the potential to be malevolent, benevolent or entirely neutral depending on the agenda of whomever uses it.

What the religious law itself prescribes isn't really the topic in question, that can be rewritten (or rather, "reinterpreted") as the Episcopalians, Methodists and Lutherans have done to a very spectacular extent in permitting open homosexuality and female clergy. What I'm focusing on is that once that law is believed to hold the weight of a divine threat, the majority of people take it far more seriously than any secular law.

This is exactly my point. Morality is not in the slightest sense governed by religion. It is governed by society and culture, as is clearly evident by the constantly evolving ethical rubric that we see.

And as much as they might not be willing to admit it religion evolves alongside society and adapts to the new climate.

Morality is not always governed by religion unless one lives in a Theocracy but religion is more often than not for most of the worlds population the vehicle in which moral values are delivered to them. That to me testifies to their effectiveness. I daresay many of you wouldn't be able to quote from which work of Plato's Socrates is said to have spoken against homosexuality, but you could all quickly point to the "clobber" passages of the bible which say much the same thing.

It is also a system, as I said before, that is natural in society, without (and despite) religion.

It has the potential to be, and yet we don't see it very often even in highly Atheistic countries like Japan. Why is that?

And what if what is most constructive for society is to marginalize religion?

If religion is the tool of governance (which is what I am suggesting) it would be silly for a governing party or leader to dismantle one of their most easily used tools. Ayatollah Khomeni wasn't a master politician, but by utalising religion he managed to get whatever it was he wanted done.

Given the wealth that they extract from the laity, they'd goddamned well better hand some back. And quite frankly, their charity often comes with deadly repercussions, as in Africa, where the Catholic Church actively campaigned against condoms as they handed out their food.

They did, and while I think it is far too idealistic the Catholic Church also taught that condoms were not acceptable because the only way to avoid getting aids was abstinence. Even married Catholic couples are not always permitted to have sex all the time unless they are attempting to concieve, those who follow church teaching and practice Natural Family Planning as and when the Church allows them to put off having another child have large portions of the "cycle" where they cannot have sex.

They don't want people to start using condoms, they want Africans to have less sex and only with their partners. If everyone did that (unlikely I know) the transmission rates of STD's would nosedive.

The overwhelming majority of convicts in American prisons are religionists. They are overrepresented in terms of propportion, too, while atheists are underrepresented.

Theists make up 98% of the worlds population, and Professed Athiests make up a mere 2%. It is not possible to draw a parallel from those statistics unless we can form some sort of comparative ratio.

There is also the fact that Athiests on the whole come from more affluent families than Thiests, and poverty has been proven to be a considerable factor in committing crimes.

One would expect religionists to behave in a moral manner, then; but that is so clearly not the case that this point is rendered vapid.

It's Human nature, I know just as many Athiests who think nothing of pirating movies and shoplifting if they thought the odds of getting away with it were rather high.

The Thiests just have an extra deterrent.

The fact that this sort of power is invariably used to spread evil undermines your argument over the ability of faith to impart moral and ethical purity.

Do explain how the work of Mother Teresa was evil? I'd be eager to hear it. It can be used for good or bad.

I don't think he cottoned much to subjectivism, but so what? We each define our own lives and our own moralities. That some do it in the framework of religion doesn't mean that it cannot be done in its absence.

Very few individuals truly define their own moralities and lives, more often than not they adopt the traits and beliefs of family members. Tradition and a sense of connected purpose is quite a powerful urge.

What little good religion has done is no argument in its favor when compared to the atrocities it has committed and continues to commit.

Then by the same logic we must also automatically dismiss Athiesm because Chairman Mao and Stalin conducted a Holocaust promoting some of it's values.

Not to mention, religion fosters a general credulity generation after generation that rears its sheepish head in areas not related to metaphysical abstract supermen.

I'm not entirely sure what you're getting at here, are we talking about people taking Genesis literally or something? Even then it's only a minority of the religious who do that.

[Whateverist]

I honestly wasn't sure where to post this, but I suppose it counts as a philosophy of a sort.

Generally speaking "a philosophy" isn't philosophy.

[Ryantology]

1. Charity:

A lot of these donations involve spreading churches and the religion, and this is the primary point. Give them a Bible with their food. Get more heads to count. Why not just cut all the spiritual nonsense out and turn these churches into massive international charities? Will believers stop giving if they don't think God wants them to?

2. Crime prevention:

Compared to the level of devastation which results from religious exhortation, from terrorism to abortion clinic bombings to wars to somewhat less immediately violent activities such as institutional discrimination against unfavored groups of people (and there always seem to be so many!), it really doesn't end up as a net positive. The same person who won't rob a liquor store because he thinks God said not to is too likely to be the guy who shoots up a liquor store because he thinks God said to.

3. Ethics:

What use is a religion when the most important social rules are, as you said, universal? Removing those universally-recognized rules from any religion leaves you with nothing but a bunch of arbitrary rules designed to placate the sensibilities of those in charge of the religion. We don't need religion to tell us not to murder, and there is only harm in religion telling us things like gay sex is evil or that you'll go to hell forever if you don't love Jesus with all your heart.

4. Common cause:

If religion actually worked to create a common cause, we would only have one of them (and then there might be something resembling validity to claims of "one true religion"). All it has actually ever accomplished in real life is aggregating disparate elements only to the point where you have large, dangerous groups that view all others as competitors or threats.

[bennyboy]

All the things you mentioned as features of religion are in fact features of a strong sense of community. Therefore, I would say there's only one pragmatic benefit of religion: it provides a framework in which community is a central feature. So the question shouldn't be how we keep religion around. The question is how we divorce the sense of community that religion provides from the pseudo-spiritual baloney.

Before saying anything else, let me say that there is at least one other -ism which also does this: nationalism. A country in which all the members identify very strongly as members of a single social network (like nazi Germans) enjoys all the same social benefits that you were talking about. Single moms, for example, were called "brides of Hitler," and were given state support rather than being shamed.

I think given the massive immigration in America in particular, there are too many cultural differences among people to expect much social benefit from religion-- muslims, Christians and Jews, for example, aren't really going to provide for each other-- at least nothing more than simple material donations. Nationalism, on the other hand, could very likely bond all those various members into a unified entity. This has been known ever since Rome started extending citizenship to non-Romans in return for service in the legions.

Now, for many a rabid nationalism won't be seen as a good substitute for religion. You get the same mindless followers, and the same dangerous ignorance of opposing views. But at least nationalism still has a chance to work for America, one of the nations most in need of internal reconciliation and community.

[Mudhammam]

Then by the same logic we must also automatically dismiss Athiesm because Chairman Mao and Stalin conducted a Holocaust promoting some of it's values.

There's as much of a logical connection between the political ideology and social experiments conducted under the guise of nationalism and atheism than there is with Hitler, Hussein, and Assad all having mustaches. Does their a-leprechaunism also claim a share in their motivations to slaughter innocent civilians? Atheism is not a creed so connecting it to the actions of any group is disingenuous and asymmetrical to comparing the words of holy books that millions of adherents claim to follow, and linking their violent actions with the violent character of the god they claim complete devotion to.

Not to mention, religion fosters a general credulity generation after generation that rears its sheepish head in areas not related to metaphysical abstract supermen.

I'm not entirely sure what you're getting at here, are we talking about people taking Genesis literally or something? Even then it's only a minority of the religious who do that.

I'm talking about people who aren't taught to put ideas to the test of empirical evidence and scientific plausibility. Embracing religion means embracing a standard of evidence which renders our world almost comic book-like, where nothing is explained and much is misunderstood.

[Zidneya]

1. Charity

Atheists break fundraising record for Doctors Without Borders
Click here if you don't believe me.

2. Crime prevention

22 Ways religion promotes Crimes
Click here if you still don't believe me.

3. Ethics

To achieve the highest levels of moral development aka moral judgments this must be justified by rational moral reasons rather than appeal to the order of nature or of religious authority or revelation.
Lawrence Kohlberg
Click here if you still refuse to believe me.

If all religious doctrines promote ethics then why the
Dalai Lama says we need a 'global system of secular ethics'
Click here if you don't want to believe me.

4. Common cause:
The Crusades, The Islamic conquests, the Reconquista and the Third Reich are all examples of where faith (or a cult of personality) have gathered people of various types together to accomplish a goal that would have otherwise been impossible.

Seriously those are your examples?….. I'm gonna quote Ghandi here.

Nehru: Bapuji, the whole country is moving.
Mahatma Gandhi : Yes. but in what direction?

List of secularist organizations
Click here if yo have never heard of them.
Did the man got to the moon ain't an example of common cause? And what about the end of world wars one and two?
And all those events of common cause sponsored by religion that you mentioned tell me how did they ended? And let's not forget that the Reconquista more that a religious sponsored cause it was mostly supported by the revenge toward the Islamic conquests.

Charity, Crime prevention, ethics and common cause? Are those your examples of why religion should not vanish? Allow me to reply that with a quote:
"Name one moral action performed by a believer that could not have been done by a nonbeliever."
Christopher Hitchens

Napoleon, Alexander, Attila, Julius Caesar and Genghis kan they changed and forged our world. So please tell me were they manipulated by religion? or did they were the ones who manipulated religion?

[Elskidor]

Religion's cons outweigh the pros.

[GrandizerII]

Correlation is NOT causation, OP. Someone said "strong sense of community". I agree that may be one of the causal factors involved.