Is religion evil?

[Nancy Allen``]

I am tolerant of people's religions, even if I choose not to follow them. From what I have seen however it seems that atheists are the ones who are intolerant of those who choose to follow it.

[Emperor Devon]

I am tolerant of people's religions

 

After implying unitelligence, misery and arrogance?

 

From what I have seen however it seems that atheists are the ones who are intolerant of those who choose to follow it.

 

I have seen minimal amounts of rudeness from the atheists at this thread.

[SkinWalker]

They must also be some of the most misrible unhopeful people in the world as they have nothing to look to, no faith to follow or any source to lift themselves up when times are bad.

 

Do you concede that this is a non-sequitur? It simply doesn't follow that to be content and hopeful (or whatever opposite we assign to "miserable") one must embrace religion. Nor does it follow that a lack of faith implies that bad times make it possible for those without religion to "lift themselves up." My family and I have done well through some hard times. I had a house destroyed by fire; my wife's father died when she was a teen; etc. We've recovered from each of these and other hardships quite well, and without reliance on any "faith" or religious mumbo-jumbo.

 

Seriously. Do you concede the fallacy of your argument here? If not, please support it with some sort of evidence, because this is not only a non-sequitur, but an argument from personal incredulity.

[Nancy Allen``]

I concede that perhaps my comments were a little harsh. I was thinking about the '**** God and **** all those who follow him' comments that were made in the other threads, as well as atheists falling into the trap people who follow religion do and attacking those who do not follow their belief rather than accept that people believe and follow something they don't.

[toms]

I don't consider myself an athiest.. merely non-religious. But i don't attack religion.. i merely attack any stupid actions or comments I see, whether perpetrated by religious people or not. It just seems to me that a lot of stupid comments get attributed to religion.

 

There are two questions in this thread:

1 - Is religion evil? - I'd answer that it isn't good or evil.

2 - "Religion does more harm than good"? - I'd say this is undeniably the case.

[Kurgan]

2 - "Religion does more harm than good"? - I'd say this is undeniably the case.

 

How do you quantify this?

[toms]

Indubitably

 

To quantify:

 

There are 1000s of cases of wars, masacres, atrocities, conflicts, torture, executions, stonings, genocides, spreading fatal diseases, terrorist acts, intollerance and other harm caused by, or committed in the name of religion.

 

There are 1000s of cases of religious people comitting charitable acts, however the scale of these acts is almost always much smaller than the scale of the attrocities mentioned above.

 

I'd say it takes a heck of a lot of bake sales for the homeless to make up for a single war, let alone all the death caused by religion.

 

If you add up the number of people killed by religion, and then add up the number of people helped (in some small way) then I think you'd find a clear balance in favour of the Harm side.

[Kurgan]

Ah, but you are talking about the entire history of the human race here, aren't you? Because I don't think we know of a time when we didn't have religion... (barring those 20th century communist states).

[toms]

I am indeed. And not just current religions.

From the 1000s of slaves killed by the egyptians, to the wars between the various pre-bible religions, to the child sacrifices of the Moabites.. through to the 100,000 witches burnt, the 9million killed in the crusades, the 50,000 Hugonauts massacred by french catholics on st bartholomew's day, all the other protestant vs catholic wars in england, france (2-4million in total), spain, ireland, etc.. , all those killed in the first islamic civil war and all the sunni vs shia violence since, the 2000-4000 killed in palestine, to the 3,000 killed on 9/11, the blacks and gays killed by the KKK and other religious folk, to the poor 15 year old girl executed in iran for promiscuity.

 

(and that doesn't even include god wiping out the entire population of soddom, or infact the whole population of the earth with a flood. )

 

I'd put the death toll due to religion in the billions. I'm not sure any amount of charity or "making people feel happy" can make up for that much harm.

[Nancy Allen``]

Like everything else in the world it's not religion that is evil, it's how you use it. As something for people to build a few hopes around it's a very good thing. To justify war however is an example of it being used for evil. The same with guns: every farmer has to have a gun to put sick animals out of their misery. Police officers are armed to defend against dangerous criminals. For the same weapon to be used by criminals is an evil act. Clone Troopers, they were used for both purposes. Words, to communicate and to bring hope is certainly a good thing. To use words to, for example, incite racial or religious hatred is an act of evil, and you can go on and on and on.

[toms]

Like everything else in the world it's not religion that is evil, it's how you use it.

 

that is the first question, which most of us seem to agree on. however I still maintain that for the second question (the one in the poll) the only possible answer can be that religion HAS done more harm than good. It doesn'y matter whether it was INTENTIONAL harm, or OFFICIAL RELIGIOUS MAINSTREAM harm.. its harm nonetheless.

 

You could probably also argue that guns have done more harm than good.. though obviously that doesn't make the GUNS evil either.

[Dagobahn Eagle]

OT:

The same with guns: every farmer has to have a gun to put sick animals out of their misery.

Don't a lot of farmers use a combination of pain-killer injections and some lethal injection? That's how veterinarians do it - they first inject a drug that makes the animal fall asleep, and then a second one that kills it.

[Nancy Allen``]

Yeah, that might be true in some cases. To be able to get a vet to be able to do that, either by calling one out or taking the animal in that would be possible. For a horse with collique (sp?) or a sick cow however, a rifle or shotty would probably

be used. There's a story a couple of years back when an animal jumped through a window and cut itself terribly. The police who attended the scene put it out of it's misery and put it down.

[Kurgan]

I am indeed. And not just current religions.

From the 1000s of slaves killed by the egyptians, to the wars between the various pre-bible religions, to the child sacrifices of the Moabites.. through to the 100,000 witches burnt, the 9million killed in the crusades, the 50,000 Hugonauts massacred by french catholics on st bartholomew's day, all the other protestant vs catholic wars in england, france (2-4million in total), spain, ireland, etc.. , all those killed in the first islamic civil war and all the sunni vs shia violence since, the 2000-4000 killed in palestine, to the 3,000 killed on 9/11, the blacks and gays killed by the KKK and other religious folk, to the poor 15 year old girl executed in iran for promiscuity.

 

 

(and that doesn't even include god wiping out the entire population of soddom, or infact the whole population of the earth with a flood. )

 

 

I'd put the death toll due to religion in the billions. I'm not sure any amount of charity or "making people feel happy" can make up for that much harm.

 

I wouldn't include "acts of God" because if that's the case you could count every person who ever died (according to the belief held by more than a few that God controls everything), only people killed due directly to religion (the number you gave came up to under 14 million).

 

If you just count people killed by "religious folk" that could include everything (you'd just leave out the millions killed by the Communists, as pretty much everyone else on the planet is religious in some sense, with atheists being a minority everywhere else). You'd really only need to include examples where the killing was motivated by their religion (or the religion of the person being killed made them a target for the killing, though in that case, I suppose you could go that angle as well, but that might be problematic as it would be akin to blaming the existence of races for racially motivated violence).

 

The Catholics killed by the KKK I would include, but the non-whites? I thought they killed them due to racism, not religion? Gays you could probably make a case for though. Correct me if I'm wrong there...

 

I will admit that deaths are tangible things. How do you measure a person's life being improved or given positive meaning (or saved)?

[AJL]

Religions unite peoples into big groups and turn them against other big groups in

huge destructive wars. And religions and their promises of after life help peoples

to disregard the devastating consequence their actions may have in this world

as insignificant...

[Kurgan]

Religions unite peoples into big groups and turn them against other big groups in

huge destructive wars. And religions and their promises of after life help peoples

to disregard the devastating consequence their actions may have in this world

as insignificant...

 

This is very true. However religions also divide people, leading to conflict. There are also many other things that can unite or divide people: political affiliation, race, class, gender, age, career, ethnicity, sexual orientation, common interests, language, culture. I don't know of religion ever averting a war (how would we know?) but there have been many religious people and religions who have opposed wars.

 

The promise of an afterlife does indeed cause some people to disregard their actions in this world, but for others it has caused them to take stock of their actions here, because they feel that what they do now echoes in eternity. Just as, for some, the lack of belief in an afterlife, creates a "devil may care" attitude, while for others, it causes them to value life all the more.

[toms]

I'm going for "the killing was motivated by their religion".

 

Those I mentioned total 14 million. But there are hundreds of other examples of religious wars and inter-sectarian violence. It seems that as long as man has believed in a god there have killings in his name. There are probably hundreds or even thousands of pre-christian tribes that had religiously motivated wars.

 

And do you count those wars that are started by people who believe themselves to have the divine right to rule? I didn't, as that would include practically every war in dark ages and medievil europe, and a heck of a lot of wars in china.

It is also difficult to know whether to include violence that exists between groups that originally split on religious grounds.. but are more tribal now. There are a lot of cases of tribes with long standing violence. Its hard to say now that the violence is religiously motivated.. but alot of the root causes were originally religious.

 

Other examples i might have included are: English Civil war. Mayan Sacrifices. Sectarian violence in india. Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka, Up to 30,000 in Kashmir (combined religious, tribal and international conflict), War in yugoslavia (christian serbs vs bosnian muslims), Chechnya (muslim?), Sudan civil war (muslim vs christian) and so on. All of which have a major religious companent.

 

Its true that religion isn't the only cause of wars or intollerance, or hatred in the world. But it IS one of the major ones.

 

That is a heck of a lot of tangible HARM.

 

There is very little tangible GOOD.

 

There are a number of works of charity, but they are often on a reasonably small scale, and tend to be either aimed at members of their own religion, or to come with strings attached for those that aren't a part of their religion. That is about it. Plus a lot of that aid is going to help people who's misery was cause by religious conflict in the first place.

 

I guess you could argue that there is intangible good in religion when it inspires people or makes them feel better. But this can't really be measured. People can find happiness in all forms of things.. and i'm sure there are a lot of unhappy religious people out there too. Infact, as far as intagibles go.. maybe ther are just as many intangible HARMS as benefits?

 

“In general, higher rates of belief in and worship of a creator correlate with higher rates of homicide, juvenile and early adult mortality, STD infection rates, teen pregnancy and abortion in the prosperous democracies.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-1798944,00.html

[Windu Chi]

I'm going for "the killing was motivated by their religion".

 

Those I mentioned total 14 million. But there are hundreds of other examples of religious wars and inter-sectarian violence. It seems that as long as man has believed in a god there have killings in his name. There are probably hundreds or even thousands of pre-christian tribes that had religiously motivated wars.

 

And do you count those wars that are started by people who believe themselves to have the divine right to rule? I didn't, as that would include practically every war in dark ages and medievil europe, and a heck of a lot of wars in china.

It is also difficult to know whether to include violence that exists between groups that originally split on religious grounds.. but are more tribal now. There are a lot of cases of tribes with long standing violence. Its hard to say now that the violence is religiously motivated.. but alot of the root causes were originally religious.

 

Other examples i might have included are: English Civil war. Mayan Sacrifices. Sectarian violence in india. Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka, Up to 30,000 in Kashmir (combined religious, tribal and international conflict), War in yugoslavia (christian serbs vs bosnian muslims), Chechnya (muslim?), Sudan civil war (muslim vs christian) and so on. All of which have a major religious companent.

 

Its true that religion isn't the only cause of wars or intollerance, or hatred in the world. But it IS one of the major ones.

 

That is a heck of a lot of tangible HARM.

 

There is very little tangible GOOD.

 

There are a number of works of charity, but they are often on a reasonably small scale, and tend to be either aimed at members of their own religion, or to come with strings attached for those that aren't a part of their religion. That is about it. Plus a lot of that aid is going to help people who's misery was cause by religious conflict in the first place.

 

I guess you could argue that there is intangible good in religion when it inspires people or makes them feel better. But this can't really be measured. People can find happiness in all forms of things.. and i'm sure there are a lot of unhappy religious people out there too. Infact, as far as intagibles go.. maybe ther are just as many intangible HARMS as benefits?

 

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-1798944,00.html

 

This more damning evidence that religion is a trouble maker in human society.

[Nancy Allen``]

Danny Donovon is a comic book writer for Marval and recounted his ordeal on September 11 in the 9-11 Emergency Relief graphic book. I think the following quote sums up the use of religion nicely.

 

"This isn't the first time I've witnessed such acts. I lived in England for three years before returning to the country of my origin. There would be times when you couldn't turn on Sky News without seeing a terrorist act. IRA, Palestine, ect. To be honest it all blended together sometimes. Hatred is hatred whatever political or religious spin you put on it."

[Kurgan]

And do you count those wars that are started by people who believe themselves to have the divine right to rule? I didn't, as that would include practically every war in dark ages and medievil europe, and a heck of a lot of wars in china.

 

Which is why I asked, because if you include violence committed by people purporting to be religious, you could include everything, literally.

 

Its true that religion isn't the only cause of wars or intollerance, or hatred in the world. But it IS one of the major ones.

 

I agree, actually. I only disagree with the implied notion that the (impossible) elimination of "religion" would elimate those evils, or even significantly reduce them.

 

That is a heck of a lot of tangible HARM.

 

There is very little tangible GOOD.

 

There are a number of works of charity, but they are often on a reasonably small scale, and tend to be either aimed at members of their own religion, or to come with strings attached for those that aren't a part of their religion. That is about it. Plus a lot of that aid is going to help people who's misery was cause by religious conflict in the first place.

 

I guess you could argue that there is intangible good in religion when it inspires people or makes them feel better. But this can't really be measured. People can find happiness in all forms of things.. and i'm sure there are a lot of unhappy religious people out there too. Infact, as far as intagibles go.. maybe ther are just as many intangible HARMS as benefits?

 

Ah, but what about social reform movements motivated and fueled by religious faith (whether you agree with the goals of those movements or not of course, at least you can probably think of some)? Scholarship or research motivated by religious feeling (I'm not talking about pseudo-science mind you, but actual research)? Religious art and literature? There could be many tangible benefits, not merely intangible such as the difficult or impossible to measure "happiness level" or acts of sectarian charity.

 

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-1798944,00.html

 

We should keep in mind however that correlation does not equal causation (despite repeated suggestions of this in the article). Polling data is only so good, after all (popular atheist libertarians Penn & Teller even comment on what a racket the "numbers game" can be when making a point... though if the point of that article was to show that you can use the stats to "prove" religion is a force for evil in the world, then it succeeded). It also doesn't take into account people who consider themselves members of a faith (nominally) and yet do not obey its teachings (which means their faith is useless, for all intents and purposes), or for people who "got religion" to escape from their problems (after the abortion, the murder, the divorce, the drug addiction, or whatever), not that all such people would be sincere of course, or that all such people would succeed, but again, yeah, it's hard to say.

 

Body counts aren't the only way to measure the evilness (or lack thereof) of a thing. Somebody wrote a book (in response to the "Black Book of Communism" with it's 100 million death toll estimate) proclaiming the evilness of Capitalism based on the number of deaths associated with it (I haven't read that book, but I have skimmed the other title).

 

Fascinating discussion. These are actually the kinds of things we regularly touch on in my own experience in academia, however, unfortunately I don't have the kind of time I'd like to simply debate about them (in fact at this moment I should be studying, but I felt like posting, so hopefully I contributed something, however small).

[MasterRoss08]

windu6Corrupt because look at the Bush

administration for example, they have ban Stem Cell research because of that damn religion called Christianity so alot of people will become death's rewards from horriable diseases and genetics aflictions.

Sigh heres a better explanation on y Bush is against stem cell research! For starters Bush is against Embryonic stem cell research. There are other research on some other stem cells most notiably adult stem cells. Bush is against Embryonic stem cell research because he believes that it crosses a Moral Boundry that we as humans should respect. (Morally not as in his moral but as morals of human Society.)( we could start a discussion on that if any1 wants to go furhter with that.)

 

windu6 With that said, we will be probably traveling the galaxy now today if it was't for religion influences back then in the past. So the world will be better off with out it.

 

Why is Religion evil if we are not supposedly traveling the galaxy by now? Why is religion to blame for this?

 

it not just the oil companies that are at fault here all or mostly most of what you can call the rich of the world use money,power etc to run the govermentsetc. but lets leave that for another discussion. Is religion evil hmm I tend to think not.well what i beleive in but thats not the question here.

It all depends on what you Believe is good and evil. Like you can say this religion is more to good to youand this one is more to what you think is evil to you. It all in what do you believe in.

[MasterRoss08]

Sigh people tend to think people that are preaching there religion as they are forcing there believes on people which they are not doing at all. They are just living there believes out. You can follow there believe if you want its all in what you wanna do not what they say and you automatically gotta follow. I tend to think religion does more good then evil. yaya wars,killings by some people here that think was caused because there religion said so. It about choice to us. We can do this or that etc. Wars,killings and a whole bunch of stuff is continually reported in the news,newspapers,internet etc. Why does the bad stuff always get reported and nothing good of what people do. People do alot of good things from what they believe in. Why does bad things get rated higher than doing good? Ya taking a life is a tragic thing.(wars,murders etc) But what about the good. I would think alot of good things people do should overdo all the bad things that go on in this world. Where would we be if there was no Love on this earth?

[toms]

Which is why I asked, because if you include violence committed by people purporting to be religious, you could include everything, literally.

 

Indeed. I've tried to limit myself to just deaths where they actually NAMED the religion as their motivation. I guess I wouldn't count a guy saying that he had a divine right to rule as a evil caused by religion. However a lot of wars are due to people supporting or opposing people's divine rights to rule because of their sect. Such as in england where there were a lot of wars and uprisings attempting to replace Protestant queens with catholics, and visa versa. I would say that WAS an evil caused by religion.

 

I agree, actually. I only disagree with the implied notion that the (impossible) elimination of "religion" would elimate those evils, or even significantly reduce them.

 

True. Even if we woke up tomorrow and all religion had disappeared then there would still be wars and conflict. Partly because the initial religious differences have now become deep seated traditional tribal enemies.

And a lot of wars had nothing to do with religion (WW1, WW2, Stalin's uprising in russia, etc..). They were mostly about people's personal agendas and desire for power. Though its interesting to note that the movements people like hitler and stalin inspired and led worked very much like religions.

 

I do think that the magical elimination of all religions would, on blanace, do some good.. but i suspect something else would rise up to fill it's space.

 

Ah, but what about social reform movements motivated and fueled by religious faith (whether you agree with the goals of those movements or not of course, at least you can probably think of some)? Scholarship or research motivated by religious feeling (I'm not talking about pseudo-science mind you, but actual research)? Religious art and literature? There could be many tangible benefits, not merely intangible such as the difficult or impossible to measure "happiness level" or acts of sectarian charity.

 

No denying it, religions have done some good. One could maybe argue that religion had a big effect on early technology and writing.

However for every good effect there is a bad one. Eg: religion might have caused the widespread use of latin.. but then the church tried to keep it to itself and use it to control the people.

 

And religion has been responsible for the supression of a lot of social reform movements, science and art.

 

Darwin was hounded and scared to release his paper on evolution. He is still condemned by some. Wasn't galileo hounded and imprissoned for suggesting the sun might go around the earth? Lots of early scientists were imprisoned or silenced for questioning basic religious beliefs. The early church tred to ban writing and printing to preserve their power.

 

the evolution of medicine and science basically STOPPED in christian europe for several hundred years.. if not went backwards.. because of religious laws. It was only in muslim countries that they made significant medical and scientific advances, and where modern day medicine was born.

 

And social reform movements, such as the suffragete movenment campaigning for rights and votes for women, were often trying to overthrow the very rules that religions had imposed on them.

 

or for people who "got religion" to escape from their problems (after the abortion, the murder, the divorce, the drug addiction, or whatever), not that all such people would be sincere of course, or that all such people would succeed, but again, yeah, it's hard to say.

 

Yeah. I wasn't hugely convinced by that article either. But it does at least show that religion doesn't have a measurably positive influence on societies.

 

It does seem to be true that people who are in hardship (war, depression, poverty, fear, opression) do tend to turn to religion more often.. so it might be the opposite effect to what the author implies. I'm not sure i remember a lot of cases where those poor people were tangibly helped by turning to religion though..

 

Body counts aren't the only way to measure the evilness (or lack thereof) of a thing. Somebody wrote a book (in response to the "Black Book of Communism" with it's 100 million death toll estimate) proclaiming the evilness of Capitalism based on the number of deaths associated with it (I haven't read that book, but I have skimmed the other title).

 

I might be interested in readng that. Capitalism is basically the ultimate extension of "survival of the fittest", so i'd imagine it has been resposible for a lot of deaths. Comunism was just more direct.

And while bodycounts aren't the only way.. they are about the only measurable way when it comes to something as vaired and immesurable as religion.

[Kurgan]

What does Bush's senseless denial of Global Warming have to do with the religion known as Christianity?

 

 

And if religion were magically eliminated, yes, the "bad" effects of religion would disappear, but then so would the good. So saying that once religion goes we'll have peace on earth is a naive fallacy.

 

 

And while bodycounts aren't the only way.. they are about the only measurable way when it comes to something as vaired and immesurable as religion.

 

Using the same logic we can consider all sorts of things "evil" that we normally don't think of as evil, because they've resulted in thousands, even millions of deaths. Not just guns and cigarrettes and alcohol mind you. Automobiles for example. And before you say "well not when they're used properly" I could say the same of religion.

[MasterRoss08]

Bravoly said Kurgan. I agree with that totally. If there was no religion on this earth I can pretty much guess this world would be in turmoil than in peace. Unless you wanna think peace is this world no longer existed . I dont know that religion has bad effects depending on which religion though it all to the person though what they decide is what they do regardless if they were supposedly told to.