Does religion do more harm or good?

Inspired by a derail in the healthcare thread from my response to someone talking about the lengths self-professed Christians would go to in defending greed.

I think, regardless of what the bible says about greed (and it's not like the bible is all that lacking in contradictions either) the issue here is, what role might the presence of Christianity have had in promoting greed, or any other vice it supposedly condemns? I doubt the communist manifesto outlined specifically the very things Stalin did, but that doesn't stop people from blaming communism for Stalin's atrocities. Why should religious beliefs be treated differently?

People will talk of Christianity being misused... but to what extent can we distinguish the more genuine forms of it from the misuses of it, when it ultimately facilitated both? Even if you argue that the problem was not the religion as that it was being abused, it is still a flaw in the belief system that it could be so easily abused in the first place.

In turn, the real issue here, and it applies to other religions as well, shouldn't so much be whether or not the religion promotes or condemns something in theory, so much as whether it encourages or deters something in practice. Even if we never know WHY a particular religion encourages or deters something... we should never have to.

edited 12th Nov '10 7:59:08 PM by neoYTPism

There's no way to answer this question without first reverse engineering the human brain.

We'd probably be hundreds of years more scientifically advanced if it weren't for the information repression done by the Catholic Church that caused the Dark ages◊.

Yes, religion has done worse for humanity. And that's not even covering all the religious hate in the world inspired by the mere fact people believe in god differently.

Religion is just an expression of an emotional need, one can use it for good or for ill, it depends upon the person (or the community).

The religious impulse is a fundamental component of the personality of the vast majority of the human race. We can no more dispense with it than we can the appetite, or an appreciation of beauty. We better learn to channel it toward as much good as humanly possible.

edited 12th Nov '10 8:06:07 PM by DeMarquis

We'd probably be hundreds of years more scientifically advanced if it weren't for the information repression done by the Catholic Church that caused the Dark ages.

Lol, no. The fall of Rome caused the Dark Ages. The Catholic Church preserved knowledge that would otherwise have been lost.

Yet the Catholic church prolonged it for centuries by keeping Europe under its oppressive, corrupt, dogmatic thumb.

How much good would never have been done without religion?

The Cistine Chapel is nice, but paintings would have still have been made without the catholic church.

There are moral codes that are religious,and I'm not sure of one I agree with entirely, but there are values present in many religions that I share and greatly respect in other people.Still, value systems do exist in humans outside of religion. It's not clear that,without religion, people would be any less moral.

How much bad would never have been done without religion?

Sure religious terrorism is terrible. So is terrorism done by anarchiost.Would there be less terrorism with out religion? It would be favoring the hypothesis to say anything but no with out evidence. Same for religious wars.

So, who can say?

Well, I tend to say that religion does cause more harm then good, but I only do so by restricting the definition to "beliefs based on faith."

Which gets to the belief themselves, rather than all the crap around religion, which may stick around even when we take religion out of the picture. And then :

Belief with no evidence

Low Probability of Being True

predictions based on false belief

Actions based on false beliefs

low probability of leading to good outcomes.

edited 12th Nov '10 8:39:17 PM by Roman

^^ The Catholic Church also played a role in ENDING the Dark Ages by providing a culturally binding force between the most powerful countries in Europe. Then it abused that common cultural background to perpetrate wars of aggression against pagans and Muslims, and at other points used it ethically in the defense of Christendom from outside invaders.

Religion is a complex thing. You can't just lay out a blanket statement about how it's all good or all bad. It is a belief system. Referring back to the first post, I don't blame communism for the Soviet Union, I blame Lenin and Stalin — the people who blame communism are ill-informed ideologues who are themselves influenced by an opposing belief system, not unlike anti-religious ideologues who blame all the ills in western civilization on Christianity.

Christianity has a lot in its history to answer for, but so does nearly EVERY OTHER major belief system in history, whether religious, political, or philosophical. The issue is not religion itself, the issue is an inability some people have to think critically and challenge their beliefs, and that is by NO means a problem unique to religion.

Didn't start that way. But yes, it did become corrupt, mostly at the higher levels. The banning of scriptures not printed in Latin, for example, sucked. And what's with selling indulgences? Oh wait, we had cathedrals to build - got to fund those, somehow. The Protestant movement was a good thing, shame it didn't come about earlier - maybe the Crusades might not have happened if wiser heads had taken notice way back when, and who knows what sort of trouble today would simply not exist, right?

But to answer the OP's question, no. I don't think religion, in the sense you mean, is good or bad, it and of itself.

A set of scriptures, be it the Bible, the Torah or the Koran (or any combination of the three - or something else entirely), is just ink on a page. It takes the hearts and minds of men and women, galvanized on those words, to do anything - good or bad.

A Bible without a believer behind it is little more than a doorstop. A believer who tries to live a life of love and compassion (the kind of Christian that springs to my mind, usually - and the kind I try to be) will take those lifeless words on the page and try to do something good with them. Conversely, the straw-man bible-fearing lunatic you see portrayed in some movies and such (obviously they do exist, I've met some), will take a different look at those same words, and come up with some damming message against all sorts of things they consider evil.

And both will think they're doing God a service.

This goes for pretty much any belief system, any religion. Mankind is the problem, not the belief systems. And I'd even consider Atheists to be in that category - everyone seems to know the mocking atheist that spouts off angry hatespeech all the time about those crazy religious folks, but I know that there's a whole lot of quiet atheists that just say live and let live.

I'm fine with that. I'd love to have coffee with some of the Tropers here, even though our personal beliefs won't jive. We don't have to touch on beliefs - we have plenty of other things to talk about.

Now, here's hoping I don't see a bunch of spelling errors after I hit send.

But what if the church wasn't religious at all, but just an ancient EU?

They could have done the exact same thing. Can you really say that Christianity is the cause?

That's like saying what if ancient Rome had instead been the United States of America. Doesn't make sense. You can't just magically lift the parts you don't like out of history and leave everything else miraculously untouched. The Catholic Church grew large specifically BECAUSE it was a based upon an ideology. Any attempt to unify an otherwise diffuse collection of European cultures without such a system would have been a total failure, and the only reason there IS a European Union today is BECAUSE Europe has a common history and cultural heritage via centuries of religious unification prior to the Protestant Reformation. Without it, the concept of a unified Europe would be as alien and baseless as a unified Africa — though this is all glossing over the fact referring to Europe as "unified" is a gross oversimplification, but suitable enough for the purposes of this debate I think.

edited 12th Nov '10 9:02:13 PM by TheBadinator

Most early scientific advances were made by people trying to prove their religion was the right one. Sure they failed but if you look at human advancement there has certainly been a leg-up from religious motivation.

But there again, the question was whether it does cause more harm than good, not whether it did in the past.

Based on all the strife and violence which seems to thrive on it... I'd have to say a lot of violence comes from religion. And I don't believe that you need a religion to have a culturally-based moral code... in fact if you removed blind faith you'd probably have a better one based on reality.

Philosophies and individual belief I'm fine with. But when religion becomes institutionalised it seems to end up becoming repressive more often than is desirable. On the other hand, the action of individual religious orders in preserving knowledge has to be acknowledged. But equally, so do horrors like The Inquisition.

Most of the earliest cultural achievements were directly or indirectly caused by religion and people wanting to please their gods, so if religion was never "invented", we would have probably still be barbarians and savages. I'm agnostic/apathetic, but I respect religion and its positive influences, yet one still cannot deny many bad things that happened because of it.

edited 13th Nov '10 6:21:53 AM by MilosStefanovic

edited 23rd Nov '10 7:49:50 AM by Counterclock

But fiction does make a difference. Look at Uncle Toms Cabin and The Jungle, for example.

edited 23rd Nov '10 7:49:58 AM by Counterclock

Like "Freedom" or "Communism" of "Anti Colonial Sentiment" or "Anarchism" or "Class Based Resentment"

edited 13th Nov '10 8:21:33 AM by Roman

Despite how badly I usually speak of religion, I honestly don't think it's done that much bad. There have been people who have used religion to do horrible things, but the same could be said of almost any righteous cause. The problem with religion is that it makes it possible for the people who misuse it to control virtually every aspect of another person's life.

edited 13th Nov '10 8:43:57 AM by randomtropeloser

Religion is just a symptom of people not thinking right. While it is a flawed conclusion that disguises itself as a flawed premise, religion comes from applying flawed mental processes to reality. Correct those, and religion goes away effortlessly, like in Europe now. Though they still have ways to go before begin cured of bigotry.

I think its an inevitable part of the development of civilisations. People come up with religion in response to that which is unknowable.

Remember, when religions we usually think about were coming into being, we didn't even know about gravity. The only thing keeping us on the planet appeared to be the will of the Gods!

Though the lack of open-mindedness of some religious folk astounds me. How are you supposed to know that your WMG regarding the universe and its creator(s) is any more accurate than another WMG?

Its the fighting and strife I don't get. We don't go to war, restrict peoples rights and kill non-believers over fairy tales, why religion?

EDIT: Religion is often exploited to create an "Us versus Them" mentality. Thats what I don't trust about it. But the same can be said for nationalism and unthinking ideology in general.

edited 13th Nov '10 9:26:23 AM by GameChainsaw

^ Because it's not a WMG, it really happened! God really killed all those Egyptian firstborns, we swear!

edited 13th Nov '10 9:30:04 AM by RawPower

Well admittedly there is evidence the parting of the Red Sea really happened. I believe an enormous earthquake happened somewhere far off and the seismic waves ended up causing that part of the sea to roll back... resulting in the Israelites being able to scramble to safety.

...Judaism gained some followers that day.

religion comes from applying flawed mental processes to reality. Correct those, and religion goes away effortlessly, like in Europe now.

Even in Europe, religion hasn't gone away effortlessly.

Except Canaan was actually ruled by the egyptians at the time of Rameses. Sorry, no In Mysterious Ways for you.