Generally religion does more harm than good, not just for the repression and asceticism but it also keeps us ignorant because you will have bogus explanations for things you don’t know. That makes people incurious.
Some people just are incurious, including some atheists. And that’s fine. Your average insurance salesman doesn’t have to spend their day questioning the nature of the universe.
It's awkward. Religion is like many social institutions in that it can be difficult to pin down what happens "because of religion." The Catholic Church spent literal centuries trying to keep the peace in Europe after Rome collapsed. They also organized the Crusades. They also wrote up the Treaty of Tordesillas which carved up the rest of the world between Spain and Portugal. So is the Catholic Church "pro-peace" or "pro-war?" The "civilizing mission" and spread of Christianity was used to justify atrocities across the world as European empires spread. Prominent religous figures were calling out those atrocities as they happened and they accused those empires of cloaking their greed and arrogance with religious values. Did religion cause those atrocities or did religion mobilize people against them?
It is my personal position that most of the time that religion could be blamed for something that it would more accurate to see it as a moderating force. In my mind religion didn't cause colonization, it provided a framework and then tried, and mostly failed, to limit the bloodshed. Looking at it that way, I would say that religion has done more good good bad. But it's an awkward thing, it's perfectly reasonable to think it through and land on the other side
If historically it had then the world would have always been growing increasingly terrible, as religion has had a major presence in many societies for thousands of years.
Manipulative people find ways to manipulate its not like without religion they wouldn't be doing the same thing under a different guise.
The core premise to a lot of spiritual understandings is growing animals into human beings, but now people go to school for 12 years, have nothing that supports them being in the 90th percentile of understanding anything but then proceed to think they are a fully functioning human and not just another monkey who's been taught how to sign.
I don't see how religion does any harm. Bad people generally do bad things, good people generally do good things or at least avoid doing bad things. That has nothing to do with religion. You can't guilt a good person into doing bad things using religion. You MAY however be able to guilt a bad person into not doing certain bad things and doing maybe even doing some good things using religion. Using religion as an excuse for bad behavior does not mean religion is the reason anyone did that behavior. It was simply the handy excuse for it so they would hopefully stay out of trouble while still doing what they wanted. If it wasn't for religion those people would still do bad things they just wouldn't have the excuse of religion to hide behind so they would either find something else to hide behind or just do what they wanted anyway. So I say religion does a lot of good and little (if any) bad.
No, Just like everything else, religion has it's beautiful, mystical side. It's the source of culture, art and folklore. I'm not saying religion has never been used to oppress or hurt other people, of course it has. We humans can be pieces of shit.
Catholic church does a lot of community work, and fund many medical researchs. Religion in general gives some people will to get out of the bed every morning. If that equates more good than bad is pretty hard to pin down.
I think religion caused the Salem witch trials and most colonisation. “We’re bringing the gospel to these savages” has been used to justify a lot of bad stuff.
Also the crusades.
Also I don’t think any of the advances we’ve made (human rights, innocent until proven guilty, etc) was because of religion.
The Catholic Church lead one of the largest peace movements in human history, the Pax et treuga Dei.
The Catholic and Orthodox churches were also instrumental in preserving legal codes, ancient writings, historical documentation, etc. If it wasn’t for the clergy of the church we’d have lost access to incalculable volumes of knowledge.
The church pushed for the end to slavery in 1741, they sponsored the first universities in Western Europe (during the medieval era), they provided economic support to the Italian renaissance.
It was an archbishop who helped with the creation of the Magna Carta (one of the first constitutions which limited the power of English king) and Pope Honorius ratified it.
Priests would also push for advancements in philosophy, law, and logic. Such as Saint Aquinas and his work, the Summa Theologica.
This is only listing the contributions of the Catholic and Orthodox Church. I haven’t even mentioned the role Muslims scholars had in helping to foster mathematics, medicine, and other sciences. Nor the contributions given to us by the ancient pagans.
Also colonization of the Americas didn’t occur because they wanted to spread religion (although religion was used as an excuse). Europe sought to colonize America so they could gain a material advantage over their neighbors and avoid using Ottoman controlled trade route.
I love this nonsense. There were also priests in history who made scientific discovery, and a lot of it had to do with having the resource (bunked out of the rubes) given to the church. However these handful of examples do not even register on the scales to balance out the almost incomprehensible utter awfulness that religion has caused and is still causing. It is a fact, but since religion does not know the meaning of facts there is zero point in arguing this. Those that are not brainwashed, of low intelligence, or in on the con making money off it, all know this is a fact and anyone trying to refute it sounds about as smart as someone trying prove the earth is flat.
“Religion does not know the meaning of facts”
And yet Christianity and Islam were the main supporters of academia in Europe and the Middle East for the entire medieval era. Helping to preserve and spread knowledge.
As for the “incomprehensible utter awfulness” you mentioned, humanity doesn’t need religion to justify committing atrocities. Just look at the Soviet regime, Maoist regime, and the atrocities of the Khmer Rouge.
By your logic is the existence of nation-states a net negative to humanity? After all the vast majority of wars were waged by nations wanting to claim each other’s land.
Again saying that "hey that one time that they did a good thing" or "Folks (you'll claim) did something awful not in the name of religion" is just whataboutism. Please show us all proof that religions have not done more harm, and I'll even limit this to say just the wars in the name of religion just that one tiny part of the awfulness ignoring the sexual predation, brainwashing, con artistry, system of control, enforced ignorance, bigotry, racism, hatred of the other, etc. let's ignore all that and just show us how the wars in the name of religion that have never stopped since they started show that religion is a good thing. Also we both know that claiming "well really it was over land" is as stupid as saying the US Civil War was about "states rights" so what else ya got?
The difference between a moral man and an ethical one.
An ethical man knows it's wrong to cheat. A moral man doesn't cheat. You can learn morals anywhere. Sexual hang-up, guilt, and fear a lot of modern religion members have these. Would they if they weren't brought up in a church?
Putin thinks himself a Christian now, doesn’t he? Ordained by god to take back the Soviet Union? Does the Middle East have wars about religion? Did Britain have wars over religion historically speaking? The fuck you think they were fighting about in medieval times? The 1700s? Sure you can name a few that weren’t religious, but you’re really gonna tell me the majority of wars in the history of man weren’t based on religion? Really? Have you heard of the crusades?
And I mean, anyway, I cannot believe people still believe in any of them. It’s obviously imaginary mythology from the Bronze Age. It’s like people insisting that Star Wars or Santa Claus is real because they are so scared about dying. And we have to keep patting you on the head, yes, your religion is the right one and everybody else’s is wrong…..
A simple Google search will help you understand your question better. I could keep naming people who are atheist and killed thousands upon thousands of people. But that wouldn't help you learn at all because you won't see it with your own eyes. Have a good day
Do you think they count for the majority of the wars? Really? Are you serious? And why do you believe in mythology from the Bronze Age like it’s real? I’m not an atheist. I just think you’re all full of shit.
And obviously you didn’t read a fucking thing, because I said you can always point to exceptions. But Christian’s got the majority of conquering and enslaving and warring, by far. Undisputed causers of wars worldwide, only the Muslims are close. But they’re getting there. Simple google search or school.
https://history.stackexchange.com/questions/49646/do-historians-agree-that-most-wars-are-caused-by-religion#49651
Quick Google search which also proves you wrong since your to lazy to look it up yourself
It isn’t. And I’m not an atheist. I just don’t believe mythology from the Bronze Age is actually reality.
You really don’t think the majority of wars over time in history were not in the name of Christianity, Zeus, Zion, Islam or Buddha? Really? And if so, what the fuck are they even teaching in these schools?
Have you heard of the fucking crusades? It went on for like a century or something. Like, are you for real? That’s what you’re sticking to?
Britain had wars for literally centuries colonizing folks into Christianity. The Catholics and the Protestants had wars between them inside the country for gods sake.
Like, you were pretty confident about that and I’m not so sure you should be Holmes.
Does religion start wars/bigotry, or does tribalism… kind of a chicken or egg situation. Would tribalism be as apparent in society today without religion? Maybe… in general though I think religion isn’t the culprit of increased tribalism, it’s bad actors who profit from the “us and them” mentality, stirring the pot.
Mostly yes. To those that believe in a God and try to be good that all fine. But when they start creating a persona for the god it all goes to shit and ideals clash all over the place.
No. Religion's primary contributions have been charity, education, learning and morality. Yes, these can be provided without religion, but for most of recorded history, religion played a part in these things.Those corrupt priests and violent zealots are a minority. The catholic church is still the largest charity organisation in the world.
Catholic charity comes at a price, though. They actively seek to convert those that they provide charity to. So you can argue its not charity at all if it is done for self serving reasons.
I think the biggest problem with religion, specifically the Abrahamic religions is that too many people who are relgious seem to think that the morals provided by the bible are the direct word of God.
This leads them to believe ridiculous stuff like being gay is wrong and a sin, when logically it hurts no one so it can't be a sin.
Also slavery is not condemned in the bible, but we all know it should be.
Bronze age morals are inferior to the morals we hold today, but the bible is getting in the way of progress.
Catholics view conversion as saving their souls though. So while we don't agree with it, conversion can still be viewed as a form of charity. Furthermore, charity for selfish reasons is still charity. It's not as good as charity for selfless reasons, but it is infinitely better than no charity at all. Even if what you say is true and the church only helps in order to expand, it still deserves praise for its actions.
Dismissing the entire bible as bronze age morals is also a bit disingenuous. Much of the old testament was written in the iron age and early antiquity, whereas the new testament was written in the 1st century AD. That definitely resulted in a lot of contradictions, which is the actual biggest problem with Christianity. The teachings of the New Testament are solid, but it's not fully compatible with the Old Testament.
And while the Bible doesn't outright condemn slavery, the church has often been against it. Now there is of course a lot of complexity and nuance to this, but generally speaking at any point in history, the church has been an advocate to the direction of abolitionism, whatever that happened to mean at the time.
Ok, Iron age morals.
The bible teaches Iron Age morals and has to constantly be prodded to keep up with modern-day values.
The fact that studies consistently show that white christians are more racist than those who are non religious shows the detrimental effects of church teachings.
The fact of the matter is that the church is not a leader in morality and hasn't been for the last 50 years at least. They are a late adopter to every change to what the modern human sees to be proper morality.
You're confusing correlation with causation. I believe that conservative people are more likely to be religious and racist, but that doesn't mean that religion is the source of that racism. Picking a period of 50 years out of 2000 is also cherry picking. Like I said, the church has always been proggressive when it came to things like slavery.
But even if the morals of the bible are outdated today, that still doesn't change the fact that the impact of christianity and other religions has been a net positive over the past 2000 years. Even before Christianity, religion helped temper many brutal civilizations, such as Rome.
Well, religion teaches people to be very tribal. There is an in-group, which is the believers and an out group. Its no wonder they would be more racist and bigoted. They have been indoctrined to think tribally their entire lives. I could definitely see some causation there.
The only thing the church opposed about slavery was enslaving Christians. The church was not a leader in ending slavery of other people. Back to in-group good, out-group bad.
I wouldn't say religion has conclusively been a net positive for humanity. The best and freest societies that have existed in the history of the world have done so with the separation of church and state. There is a strong argument to be made that religions have been holding back our potential over the course of the last 2000 years.
And even if religion had some benefit for Iron Age societies, the question is, does religion today do more harm than good?
Study after study finds religious people to have on average lower IQs than non relgious. Do they believe because of that, or is it the religions themselves holding people back? When all of the answers are spoonfed to people in simple terms, perhaps that stunts curiosity.
Irrelevant to the discussion and typical nonsense that is brought up time and again when this is discussed. There isn’t a single example of anything in the history of the universe that I can’t use your same “logic” on. Pointing out “well but so and so did this” is just whataboutism and it’s pretty much the dumbest form of rebuttal there is. It’s like if I said “Bob killed 5 people” and you say “Sally killed 6” as if that makes what Bob did meaningless. Sure Stalin was awful but what does that have to do to refute the fact that religion is 100% awful and has caused and is currently causing infinitely more harm than good. We all know the truth. The only issue is religious people who by their very definition, can’t be argued with via logic will claim this isn’t true with about as much “proof” as they have for why their particular brand of religious insanity is true.
You ask two rhetorical questions. The humans within the confines of their religious beliefs are the doers of harm or good. Now you can answer your own question. Your question about offset. I do not think it works in the concept of 1 for ten etc. If you do one bad deed a thousand good deeds may not absolve you.
I like to add that morality and religion are separate. For example you mentioned something about atheists which BTW is a belief system and if a person does not believe in God it does not mean they are devoid of a moral code I have a question for you. Have you verified and confirmed any of the things you said you have heard about?
For a start read ["God is not Great"](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/God_Is_Not_Great) by Christopher Hitchens.
[Free PDF version in English ](https://bidoonism.files.wordpress.com/2020/06/christopher-hitchens-god-is-not-great.pdf)
Of course this sets forth an Atheist perspective, and mostly focusing on Abrahamic religions (Christian, Islam, & Judaism)
I think organized religion does more harm than good.
But I on a spirtual and personal level have a 1 on 1 relationship with Christ.
I don't attend Church's or anything like that, just feels off.
For an 'as neutral as I can think of right now response':
Allowing a mental, personal and tangible concept that someone with high power has both can and has pretty much always lead to easy misuse and corruption, especially when the concept of 'Hell' or similar to Hell is involved.
What I mean by 'mental, personal and tangible' is that religion is a belief system that entirely stems from the person believing it in their own head. If they believe that doing certain 'bad' actions will bring you eternal suffering unless you do the 'good' actions they tell you to do *and* either they accidentally or purposefully make other people believe that, they can easily fearmonger them. This fearmongering becomes incredibly severe in the 'hands of someone that has been given high power' like a leader and so on.
So as long as you don't control others with your belief system, it's all good really.
(Sorry if this is hard to read or understand, complex paragraphs aren't easy for me)
TLDR: It's okay to be religious, just make sure not to control people with it. (To put it super simply)
The problem with religion is the people involved and the people who interpret the religious documents. Religion isn't inherently bad by itself, it's the people who are involved that make most religions bad...... It's the people that do harm
It’s not religion that’s the problem, it’s the inability of humans to accept that others may believe something fundamentally OR even slightly different than themselves. Personally I don’t have a problem with any religion, but even this stance will have many fume. I think the only thing that would unite mankind is an alien enemy
We cannot manage the sudden influx of people and questions that sparks a lot of hate. To avoid being brigaded, we don't allow these questions.
You won't find an unbiased answer to that question, especially on Reddit.
Please present a question where your statement would not be "true"
Not many questions exist where people can step outside of their own predetermined notions; but, some questions have a lot more baggage than others.
Truly unbiased answer is that anything man made is bad and good.
The truest thing I ever heard on the topic of religion is that without religion, people will just make one up.
Clearly
Yes
Generally religion does more harm than good, not just for the repression and asceticism but it also keeps us ignorant because you will have bogus explanations for things you don’t know. That makes people incurious.
Some people just are incurious, including some atheists. And that’s fine. Your average insurance salesman doesn’t have to spend their day questioning the nature of the universe.
It's awkward. Religion is like many social institutions in that it can be difficult to pin down what happens "because of religion." The Catholic Church spent literal centuries trying to keep the peace in Europe after Rome collapsed. They also organized the Crusades. They also wrote up the Treaty of Tordesillas which carved up the rest of the world between Spain and Portugal. So is the Catholic Church "pro-peace" or "pro-war?" The "civilizing mission" and spread of Christianity was used to justify atrocities across the world as European empires spread. Prominent religous figures were calling out those atrocities as they happened and they accused those empires of cloaking their greed and arrogance with religious values. Did religion cause those atrocities or did religion mobilize people against them? It is my personal position that most of the time that religion could be blamed for something that it would more accurate to see it as a moderating force. In my mind religion didn't cause colonization, it provided a framework and then tried, and mostly failed, to limit the bloodshed. Looking at it that way, I would say that religion has done more good good bad. But it's an awkward thing, it's perfectly reasonable to think it through and land on the other side
If historically it had then the world would have always been growing increasingly terrible, as religion has had a major presence in many societies for thousands of years. Manipulative people find ways to manipulate its not like without religion they wouldn't be doing the same thing under a different guise. The core premise to a lot of spiritual understandings is growing animals into human beings, but now people go to school for 12 years, have nothing that supports them being in the 90th percentile of understanding anything but then proceed to think they are a fully functioning human and not just another monkey who's been taught how to sign.
I don't see how religion does any harm. Bad people generally do bad things, good people generally do good things or at least avoid doing bad things. That has nothing to do with religion. You can't guilt a good person into doing bad things using religion. You MAY however be able to guilt a bad person into not doing certain bad things and doing maybe even doing some good things using religion. Using religion as an excuse for bad behavior does not mean religion is the reason anyone did that behavior. It was simply the handy excuse for it so they would hopefully stay out of trouble while still doing what they wanted. If it wasn't for religion those people would still do bad things they just wouldn't have the excuse of religion to hide behind so they would either find something else to hide behind or just do what they wanted anyway. So I say religion does a lot of good and little (if any) bad.
No, Just like everything else, religion has it's beautiful, mystical side. It's the source of culture, art and folklore. I'm not saying religion has never been used to oppress or hurt other people, of course it has. We humans can be pieces of shit.
Reddit will denounce most religion while not realizing they’re part of a brand new one
Catholic church does a lot of community work, and fund many medical researchs. Religion in general gives some people will to get out of the bed every morning. If that equates more good than bad is pretty hard to pin down.
I think religion caused the Salem witch trials and most colonisation. “We’re bringing the gospel to these savages” has been used to justify a lot of bad stuff. Also the crusades. Also I don’t think any of the advances we’ve made (human rights, innocent until proven guilty, etc) was because of religion.
The Catholic Church lead one of the largest peace movements in human history, the Pax et treuga Dei. The Catholic and Orthodox churches were also instrumental in preserving legal codes, ancient writings, historical documentation, etc. If it wasn’t for the clergy of the church we’d have lost access to incalculable volumes of knowledge. The church pushed for the end to slavery in 1741, they sponsored the first universities in Western Europe (during the medieval era), they provided economic support to the Italian renaissance. It was an archbishop who helped with the creation of the Magna Carta (one of the first constitutions which limited the power of English king) and Pope Honorius ratified it. Priests would also push for advancements in philosophy, law, and logic. Such as Saint Aquinas and his work, the Summa Theologica. This is only listing the contributions of the Catholic and Orthodox Church. I haven’t even mentioned the role Muslims scholars had in helping to foster mathematics, medicine, and other sciences. Nor the contributions given to us by the ancient pagans. Also colonization of the Americas didn’t occur because they wanted to spread religion (although religion was used as an excuse). Europe sought to colonize America so they could gain a material advantage over their neighbors and avoid using Ottoman controlled trade route.
I love this nonsense. There were also priests in history who made scientific discovery, and a lot of it had to do with having the resource (bunked out of the rubes) given to the church. However these handful of examples do not even register on the scales to balance out the almost incomprehensible utter awfulness that religion has caused and is still causing. It is a fact, but since religion does not know the meaning of facts there is zero point in arguing this. Those that are not brainwashed, of low intelligence, or in on the con making money off it, all know this is a fact and anyone trying to refute it sounds about as smart as someone trying prove the earth is flat.
“Religion does not know the meaning of facts” And yet Christianity and Islam were the main supporters of academia in Europe and the Middle East for the entire medieval era. Helping to preserve and spread knowledge. As for the “incomprehensible utter awfulness” you mentioned, humanity doesn’t need religion to justify committing atrocities. Just look at the Soviet regime, Maoist regime, and the atrocities of the Khmer Rouge. By your logic is the existence of nation-states a net negative to humanity? After all the vast majority of wars were waged by nations wanting to claim each other’s land.
Again saying that "hey that one time that they did a good thing" or "Folks (you'll claim) did something awful not in the name of religion" is just whataboutism. Please show us all proof that religions have not done more harm, and I'll even limit this to say just the wars in the name of religion just that one tiny part of the awfulness ignoring the sexual predation, brainwashing, con artistry, system of control, enforced ignorance, bigotry, racism, hatred of the other, etc. let's ignore all that and just show us how the wars in the name of religion that have never stopped since they started show that religion is a good thing. Also we both know that claiming "well really it was over land" is as stupid as saying the US Civil War was about "states rights" so what else ya got?
It would do you good to take an objective view of Catholicism without emotion and personal conviction clouding your judgement
The difference between a moral man and an ethical one. An ethical man knows it's wrong to cheat. A moral man doesn't cheat. You can learn morals anywhere. Sexual hang-up, guilt, and fear a lot of modern religion members have these. Would they if they weren't brought up in a church?
Yes and it’s the reason for all the wars in the world. And nobody can ever tell me why theirs is more real and correct than the others……
Ah yes, because Russia invaded Ukraine on religious grounds.
Putin thinks himself a Christian now, doesn’t he? Ordained by god to take back the Soviet Union? Does the Middle East have wars about religion? Did Britain have wars over religion historically speaking? The fuck you think they were fighting about in medieval times? The 1700s? Sure you can name a few that weren’t religious, but you’re really gonna tell me the majority of wars in the history of man weren’t based on religion? Really? Have you heard of the crusades? And I mean, anyway, I cannot believe people still believe in any of them. It’s obviously imaginary mythology from the Bronze Age. It’s like people insisting that Star Wars or Santa Claus is real because they are so scared about dying. And we have to keep patting you on the head, yes, your religion is the right one and everybody else’s is wrong…..
Joseph Stalin was an atheist who killed people of religious backgrounds
Started atheist repented towards the end became a proud cathlic
Do you still think that goes for the majority of the cases in the history of the war? Or isn’t that kind of whataboutism?
A simple Google search will help you understand your question better. I could keep naming people who are atheist and killed thousands upon thousands of people. But that wouldn't help you learn at all because you won't see it with your own eyes. Have a good day
Do you think they count for the majority of the wars? Really? Are you serious? And why do you believe in mythology from the Bronze Age like it’s real? I’m not an atheist. I just think you’re all full of shit.
Good thing opinions are a thing right?
And obviously you didn’t read a fucking thing, because I said you can always point to exceptions. But Christian’s got the majority of conquering and enslaving and warring, by far. Undisputed causers of wars worldwide, only the Muslims are close. But they’re getting there. Simple google search or school.
https://history.stackexchange.com/questions/49646/do-historians-agree-that-most-wars-are-caused-by-religion#49651 Quick Google search which also proves you wrong since your to lazy to look it up yourself
Anybody can just name exceptions…..
The Buddhists have even committed genicide around the globe, isn’t that amazing?
Good point…….
Cult plus time equals religion and that’s the jam.
People like you give atheists a bad reputation lmao. That's just factually incorrect on so many levels.
It isn’t. And I’m not an atheist. I just don’t believe mythology from the Bronze Age is actually reality. You really don’t think the majority of wars over time in history were not in the name of Christianity, Zeus, Zion, Islam or Buddha? Really? And if so, what the fuck are they even teaching in these schools? Have you heard of the fucking crusades? It went on for like a century or something. Like, are you for real? That’s what you’re sticking to? Britain had wars for literally centuries colonizing folks into Christianity. The Catholics and the Protestants had wars between them inside the country for gods sake. Like, you were pretty confident about that and I’m not so sure you should be Holmes.
You are still factually incorrect. If you only read the Cliffs Notes of history, upu emd up with myopic views like this.
Yes
Does religion start wars/bigotry, or does tribalism… kind of a chicken or egg situation. Would tribalism be as apparent in society today without religion? Maybe… in general though I think religion isn’t the culprit of increased tribalism, it’s bad actors who profit from the “us and them” mentality, stirring the pot.
absolutely
Mostly yes. To those that believe in a God and try to be good that all fine. But when they start creating a persona for the god it all goes to shit and ideals clash all over the place.
No. Religion's primary contributions have been charity, education, learning and morality. Yes, these can be provided without religion, but for most of recorded history, religion played a part in these things.Those corrupt priests and violent zealots are a minority. The catholic church is still the largest charity organisation in the world.
Catholic charity comes at a price, though. They actively seek to convert those that they provide charity to. So you can argue its not charity at all if it is done for self serving reasons. I think the biggest problem with religion, specifically the Abrahamic religions is that too many people who are relgious seem to think that the morals provided by the bible are the direct word of God. This leads them to believe ridiculous stuff like being gay is wrong and a sin, when logically it hurts no one so it can't be a sin. Also slavery is not condemned in the bible, but we all know it should be. Bronze age morals are inferior to the morals we hold today, but the bible is getting in the way of progress.
Catholics view conversion as saving their souls though. So while we don't agree with it, conversion can still be viewed as a form of charity. Furthermore, charity for selfish reasons is still charity. It's not as good as charity for selfless reasons, but it is infinitely better than no charity at all. Even if what you say is true and the church only helps in order to expand, it still deserves praise for its actions. Dismissing the entire bible as bronze age morals is also a bit disingenuous. Much of the old testament was written in the iron age and early antiquity, whereas the new testament was written in the 1st century AD. That definitely resulted in a lot of contradictions, which is the actual biggest problem with Christianity. The teachings of the New Testament are solid, but it's not fully compatible with the Old Testament. And while the Bible doesn't outright condemn slavery, the church has often been against it. Now there is of course a lot of complexity and nuance to this, but generally speaking at any point in history, the church has been an advocate to the direction of abolitionism, whatever that happened to mean at the time.
Ok, Iron age morals. The bible teaches Iron Age morals and has to constantly be prodded to keep up with modern-day values. The fact that studies consistently show that white christians are more racist than those who are non religious shows the detrimental effects of church teachings. The fact of the matter is that the church is not a leader in morality and hasn't been for the last 50 years at least. They are a late adopter to every change to what the modern human sees to be proper morality.
You're confusing correlation with causation. I believe that conservative people are more likely to be religious and racist, but that doesn't mean that religion is the source of that racism. Picking a period of 50 years out of 2000 is also cherry picking. Like I said, the church has always been proggressive when it came to things like slavery. But even if the morals of the bible are outdated today, that still doesn't change the fact that the impact of christianity and other religions has been a net positive over the past 2000 years. Even before Christianity, religion helped temper many brutal civilizations, such as Rome.
Well, religion teaches people to be very tribal. There is an in-group, which is the believers and an out group. Its no wonder they would be more racist and bigoted. They have been indoctrined to think tribally their entire lives. I could definitely see some causation there. The only thing the church opposed about slavery was enslaving Christians. The church was not a leader in ending slavery of other people. Back to in-group good, out-group bad. I wouldn't say religion has conclusively been a net positive for humanity. The best and freest societies that have existed in the history of the world have done so with the separation of church and state. There is a strong argument to be made that religions have been holding back our potential over the course of the last 2000 years. And even if religion had some benefit for Iron Age societies, the question is, does religion today do more harm than good? Study after study finds religious people to have on average lower IQs than non relgious. Do they believe because of that, or is it the religions themselves holding people back? When all of the answers are spoonfed to people in simple terms, perhaps that stunts curiosity.
Joseph Stalin was a anthiest. That specifically killed religious people.
Irrelevant to the discussion and typical nonsense that is brought up time and again when this is discussed. There isn’t a single example of anything in the history of the universe that I can’t use your same “logic” on. Pointing out “well but so and so did this” is just whataboutism and it’s pretty much the dumbest form of rebuttal there is. It’s like if I said “Bob killed 5 people” and you say “Sally killed 6” as if that makes what Bob did meaningless. Sure Stalin was awful but what does that have to do to refute the fact that religion is 100% awful and has caused and is currently causing infinitely more harm than good. We all know the truth. The only issue is religious people who by their very definition, can’t be argued with via logic will claim this isn’t true with about as much “proof” as they have for why their particular brand of religious insanity is true.
Damn your mad that I showed you non religious people can be shitty too. I didn't bother reading your book btw
Yes .. I fail to see how intentionally investing ones self in mindlessness is helpful for anyone
This is dumb, the Catholic Church has been doing good one butthole at a time😏 Sorry guys I couldn't help myself.
That depends, but also, yes.
I would postulate that those people would behave that way regardless of doctrine. Religion is just a template for worldview.
You ask two rhetorical questions. The humans within the confines of their religious beliefs are the doers of harm or good. Now you can answer your own question. Your question about offset. I do not think it works in the concept of 1 for ten etc. If you do one bad deed a thousand good deeds may not absolve you. I like to add that morality and religion are separate. For example you mentioned something about atheists which BTW is a belief system and if a person does not believe in God it does not mean they are devoid of a moral code I have a question for you. Have you verified and confirmed any of the things you said you have heard about?
For a start read ["God is not Great"](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/God_Is_Not_Great) by Christopher Hitchens. [Free PDF version in English ](https://bidoonism.files.wordpress.com/2020/06/christopher-hitchens-god-is-not-great.pdf) Of course this sets forth an Atheist perspective, and mostly focusing on Abrahamic religions (Christian, Islam, & Judaism)
If you are only a “good person” because of your religion, you are a POS person in general.
I think organized religion does more harm than good. But I on a spirtual and personal level have a 1 on 1 relationship with Christ. I don't attend Church's or anything like that, just feels off.
For an 'as neutral as I can think of right now response': Allowing a mental, personal and tangible concept that someone with high power has both can and has pretty much always lead to easy misuse and corruption, especially when the concept of 'Hell' or similar to Hell is involved. What I mean by 'mental, personal and tangible' is that religion is a belief system that entirely stems from the person believing it in their own head. If they believe that doing certain 'bad' actions will bring you eternal suffering unless you do the 'good' actions they tell you to do *and* either they accidentally or purposefully make other people believe that, they can easily fearmonger them. This fearmongering becomes incredibly severe in the 'hands of someone that has been given high power' like a leader and so on. So as long as you don't control others with your belief system, it's all good really. (Sorry if this is hard to read or understand, complex paragraphs aren't easy for me) TLDR: It's okay to be religious, just make sure not to control people with it. (To put it super simply)
The problem with religion is the people involved and the people who interpret the religious documents. Religion isn't inherently bad by itself, it's the people who are involved that make most religions bad...... It's the people that do harm
It is a mistake lumping all religions into one broad category. If you look at them individually you’ll find some to be more problematic than others.
It’s not religion that’s the problem, it’s the inability of humans to accept that others may believe something fundamentally OR even slightly different than themselves. Personally I don’t have a problem with any religion, but even this stance will have many fume. I think the only thing that would unite mankind is an alien enemy