Yesterday there were several good points brought up in a debate about the necessity of religion in the world. I’m going to quote 2 of the more interesting statements from that dispute.
Burmonster said…
Proof that people who do not believe in a higher being are more destructive and dangerous?
As a counter point I would like to point to Hitler, the Crusades, Muslim Extremists, Christian Extremists and the Inquisition just to start with.
When was the last time you heard of an atheist blowing up a bus station to teach people who believe in God a leason?
In response to that statement Derrick said…
My belief in Christianity is backed in my thinking it is the only true religion. All the others are faked and thus leads you to your weak uni-bomber and plane-taker-downers.
All because atheists don’t commit crimes (according to you), they also don’t do anything good for society. No atheists fund raisers for the homeless, no donations to needy mothers, no collections for the family whose home burned down or lost their home to foreclosure. Religion (Christian religion) teaches us this and also its importance to help one another. Not to say that without it, no one would aid anyone else, but it definitely increases the numbers of helpful adults.
Both of these comments hint at the deeper issue of religion’s overall impact on the world. Does something that can cause 2 intelligent gentlemen to make such sweeping statements have a positive, negative, or neutral impact on the planet?
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It’s bad. It creates a social rift. It’s that very split and disagreement about religion that caused those many wars.
While I do agree with BigAl, some religions do a lot for other people with things such as food drives and mission trips…well maybe not some missions because they are just solely trying to steal the minds of the undecided. But if there mission is more about helping the people other than conversion, kudos to them.
I think it has a net neutral impact. There are some people that take it waaaay to far by starting war and such.
Religion helps people get through their lives and in this day and age everybody needs some sort of inspiration.
Just dont hand me a pamphlet please…
I believe the net impact is negative. While I would agree that a positive impact can be made through individual contributions (and this can be down with or without religious backing), the body that we know as organized religion has been faulty from the beginning. I believe one would have to ignore the last 3000 years of human history to find a total positive in the action of religions institutions as a whole.
And as posted in the last conversation thread…
“So, other religions are “faked” because they choose the call the same God you believe in by a different name?
And I never stated that atheists do not commit crimes. I simply pointed to the obvious truth that people that profess to worship a “God” have historically proven to be more destructive and damaging to those around them.
And of course atheist (and agnostics) have never done anything good for society. Sigmund Freud, Nietzsche, Bertrand Russell, Ayn Rand, David Hume, Ivan Pavlov, Carl Sagan, Mark Twain, Warren Buffet, Bill Gates, Karl Popper, Francis Crick, Marie Curie, Charles Darwin, Albert Einstein, and Milton Friedman, just to name a few, have had little to no positive impact on the world we know today….
Please remember, Christians do not have a monopoly on the idea of good will and faith towards fellow man.”
SMASH!
There have been several wars, disagreements, etc, etc attributed to religion. When in actuality, it was merely tyrants and dictators blaming there wanna-be claim to fame on religion because religion is belief based on you can’t see the God you worship. And the weak minded fall prey to these tyrants. (Hitler, Stalin, Kim Jong – sorry Burmonster, I can’t name a lot of people like you)
Weak minded? I am sorry I would fall in line too if I was threatened with death. Things are good here in the US but remember we left Britain because of religious persecution, but every person in the world does not have that pleasure. Some dictators, like Castro, prevent people from leaving, take half the money that their relatives send them, tell you who you can worship and control the food supply.
It is easy for you to say, “You’re weak minded because…” all you know is freedom and cannot relate to being crushed under the shoe of a dictator and his army.
Would you say that the very Catholic Church, the head of which ordered the Crusades and lead to the deaths of hundreds of thousands if not millions of people, is a tyrannical organization? Or that they have a “wanna-be claim” to a faith?
Depends on the person. While some folks help feed the hungry for religious reasons, some blow sh*t up.
No, I don’t but I have several friends who have been under this “shoe” and left because they didn’t like it and chose not to waste their life away.
Unfortunately, the crusades were a mission of good. Because “tyrants” opposed them and killed them doesn’t make the Church a dictatorship.
Your government sends troops to their deaths everyday. Is your government a tyrannistic organization? I mean…some do ultimately believe that they are merely trying to take control of oil resources.
A none heretical autocratic form of government where the leader sets laws within a state boundary without restrictions of other factors within the state. Yup, doesn’t sound like the Catholic church at all.
And the Crusades were a mission of good? rofl Are you serious with that?
And remember, protecting interests of state != protecting interests of theology.
Weren’t the Catholic Crusades stirred by the Muslim attempts to take the Catholic “Holy” lands and Catholics fighting back? Honestly, my responses lean more toward 2010 since I’m here. Back in 1000, everyone fought because they all wanted land.
When did traveling 7000 miles to take someone else’s land for oil become interest of the state?
Do I detect a hint of Java in the building?
Um…that big SUV every soccer mom in America drives is when. Did you noticed that big oil by way of the auto industry is partially what drove the economy in the midwest for the last 100 years? Having oil = having jobs for midwesterners. The interest is to protect our assets and crazy dictators in the Middle East could put the whole world in a stranglehold for oil (these statements do not support the war, just an explanation).
Did you also know that the U.S. holds enough land to support the American consumption of oil? So we pump oil from Texas in moderation, but we want to use up and take control of the resources in the Middle East to drive up the demand for the oil and sell what we have here in the good ol U.S. of A.
http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/atlas_shrugs/2009/10/the-us-has-more-than-all-the-middle-east-put-together.html
Liberal.
Gypsy
If you believe that, I got a bridge to sell you!
C’mon buddy there was a snopes link on the page, didn’t even have to disprove it myself.
http://www.snopes.com/politics/gasoline/bakken.asp
Do some research before you post some bogus information from some random website.
Also…there’s not much oil in Texas in comparison to the middle east.
Think about it, don’t you think they would have turned on the pumps to get rich when oil was $140? Big oil doesn’t own plots in Texas, big oil operates mostly in natural gas in the continental states, oil offshore in the gulf and in Alaska.
How much is the bridge? It’s the unknown, unadministered, non policed internet.
So what you’re saying is that you believe snopes.com. FYI – a dude in a basement runs snopes.com. Tell you what; I’ll post the link on snopes. That way you’ll believe it.
Religion is a tool meant to add rules to the gods people create in order to help them understand things they have no rational explanations for. Authorities create the rules and they are passed down through the ages influenced by the personal beliefs of someone long dead. In the grand scheme of things, I think all the good religions do are completely negated by all the bad they do but this is just human stupidity at its finest.
Atheists don’t have it any easier because some of them do the same thing. Argue over whether to spread their atheism or not. Arguing over science and the like. I’m sure, if our world were governed in a completely secular way, there would have been a great war between the followers of Newton’s calculus vs Leibniz’.
Religion is an organized set of practices or rituals that groups of people complete under the guise of a Higher power. The members come together to make the rules that will govern the religion since they are all in agreement. Most religions will pull certain pieces of information from the bible that they happen to agree with and run with it. Religions are toxic because it falsely represents how God intended for us to live our lives. Then it alienates people from having a desire to develop a personal relationship with God or even wanting to live by God’s word. Religions ultimately give people a false sense of who they are and their level of importance which brings about wars and tyranny.