Good Use for religion?

[goombah111]

prevents depressive suicide. sometimes.

its all about positive thinking, and if you need to use your imagination then so be it.

people will see what they want to see and do what they want to do.

and that includes churches corrupting people generation after generation.

[abaris]

and that includes churches corrupting people generation after generation.

Actually it depends on the church. There are about 40.000 christian denominations alone. Not to speak of other believes that also break down into numerous different lines.

Here in western Europe we mainy deal with mainstream catholics or protestants. I wouldn't say they are still corrupting their followers. In fact I would go as far as saying that they are one of the more positive forces where I am living, since they make a stand against the newly arising nationalism, xenophobia and borderline fascism. We had a pretty good demonstration of 250.000 once where atheists political groups and churches took the streets to protest these issues. So, leaving church had nothing to do with their orientation since even for my liberal social view I could have found allies within the church. Quite a lot actually. It had everything to do with no longer believing.

I wouldn't extent the same courtesy to other denominations. Mainly of the Evangelical branch. There are groups actively working towards shoving their believes into legislation or at the very least on unsuspecting bystanders.

[Minimalist]

I don't think fear of Hell is an effective deterrent against committing crimes, seeing as how the vast majority of prisoners in this country are Christians

That's because the fools have a built in escape clause.  All you have to do is say "I'm sorry pappy jesus" and all is right again.

They really are an astonishing collection of fuckheads.