Thread: Does religion benefit society as a whole?

Do you think religion [regardless of if you believe in god] is a force that causes positive or negative change? I understand it can have cause either, but up until this point in human history, what effect do you think it has had overall? Basically, when the goods and bads of religion are averaged, what was it's net effect? Limit your answer to religions practiced within the last 2000 years if it makes it less broad. Sorry for saying the same question so many ways, just wanted it to be clear what I was asking.

Originally Posted by Mario92

The egyptians had religion. The greeks had religion. The romans had religion. The renaissance had religion - christianity to be exact. And the Age of Enlightenment had deism. Which is not atheism as some people think.

What happened in the dark ages is complicated. A great civilization was destroyed. The transfer of her vast information was lost. Ignorance followed suit. And diseases spread despair, hopelessness and apathy.

While it's very easy to blame christianity for the darkness of the dark ages. But we would be forgetting how different christianity was in the dark ages. All those jokes that christians worship an old man in the sky? That was given to us by the Reinassance.

In the dark ages, there was no imagery of God except Jesus. Because it was believed that no imagery could capture God because God was beyond such mental constructs. And there were great artists in the dark ages, but they were told to paint Jesus and other biblical figures stylized. Stylized because no one knew what Jesus looked like. They only wanted to capture an idea, and not to create a false idol to worship.

If this mentality never changed, the Christian God would have always remained beyond such mental constructs. And the idea that there's an old man in the sky looking down at you, might have never existed.



And......

We could ask the same question of scientific advancement - how well it has benefited humanity as a whole.





After all, only an insane creature creates a weapon to destroy herself.

Originally Posted by juroara

We could ask the same question of scientific advancement - how well it has benefited humanity as a whole.
After all, only an insane creature creates a weapon to destroy herself.

I suppose you aren't very fond of electricity or the light bulb, then. And GPS navigation is completely worthless. The internet is just a waste of time. Vaccines are only bunk and don't do a damn thing except give kids autism. Good god, wake up! Wastefulness is not the product of scientific advancements (the same field currently working on reducing waste problems); it is the product of human ignorance and laziness. All that junk could have been recycled or reused. How quickly you forget the oppression religion has wrought in the past. Remember Galileo? The church forced him into silence and put him under house arrest. They suppressed a brilliant mind. And they did it more than once. I don't care if religions are peaceful and mind their own fucking business, but when I watch TV and see thousands of people discriminating against gay people or innocent women seeking abortions in the name of god and jesus, I get pissed. When I see the Pope condemning condoms, I get a tad bit angry. Religion in our society today serves no purpose beyond comfort. If we were all to buy into the doctrine of the church, we would surely be marching backwards within the decade.

Originally Posted by Mario92

I suppose you aren't very fond of electricity or the light bulb, then. And GPS navigation is completely worthless. The internet is just a waste of time. Vaccines are only bunk and don't do a damn thing except give kids autism. Good god, wake up! Wastefulness is not the product of scientific advancements (the same field currently working on reducing waste problems); it is the product of human ignorance and laziness. All that junk could have been recycled or reused. How quickly you forget the oppression religion has wrought in the past. Remember Galileo? The church forced him into silence and put him under house arrest. They suppressed a brilliant mind. And they did it more than once. I don't care if religions are peaceful and mind their own fucking business, but when I watch TV and see thousands of people discriminating against gay people or innocent women seeking abortions in the name of god and jesus, I get pissed. When I see the Pope condemning condoms, I get a tad bit angry. Religion in our society today serves no purpose beyond comfort. If we were all to buy into the doctrine of the church, we would surely be marching backwards within the decade.

I agree with this. Scientific advancements don't create waste, people do. And it's ugly and horrible.

Originally Posted by juroara

And......

We could ask the same question of scientific advancement - how well it has benefited humanity as a whole.

My sister may not have had to remain quadriplegic this long if Christian ideals hadn't stalled medical advancements for spinal cord injury patients for EIGHT GOD DAMNED YEARS.

Originally Posted by Invader

My sister may not have had to remain quadriplegic this long if Christian ideals hadn't stalled medical advancements for spinal cord injury patients for EIGHT GOD DAMNED YEARS.

Stories like this are the ones that make me most angry at religion in general.

Originally Posted by Mario92

This picture depresses the hell out of me because it actually might be true...

But I suppose we wouldn't be gawking at our high-tech capabilities if we were born in that era.

Originally Posted by Mario92

OP, I am new to beliefs other than Christianity, could you or anyone explain what "the dark ages" part of this picture represents? Why is it a flat line? I am a bit confused.


Thank You

Certain aspects of religion provide benefits while others provide detriments. Some benefits I think are the feel-good feeling it provides (sometimes, if you're a "God is loving and he blessed me with this adorable puppy" type), a way for a community to get together, plus a huge amount of very nice art.

Spoiler for Jesus looks great here:

And, of course, meditation started off as religious, so I guess that's another benefit.

Some detriments are the inherent bigotry of being "God's Chosen People," people wasting their lives doing nothing but kneeling and whispering to nobody instead of curing cancer or something, and of course the religious folk treating their myths as facts and trying to lessen the importance of science. That last one bothers me the most.
I'd say it's a "mixed blessing." I'd prefer universal atheism, though. I think there would be a higher standard of living and less racism if that were the case. Plus, no crusades.

That's my biggest issue with religion. It may provide comfort to individuals, but it also leads to bigotry and warfare in tons of cases. And I hate how it's used to stop research and crush civil rights e.g. stem cell work, abortion, gay marriage.

Religion causes more evil than good. And i agree with mario.

But in all fairness, religion has set the ground rules for what is acceptable and what isn't in society. Some are of course better than others( I'm not bad mouthing any religion) but most have very basic rules of don't chea,t lie and steal. Don't kill anyone and so on.

That being said, thEy still have caused more deaths and pain and such just cause someone believes something different.

Originally Posted by OldSparta

But in all fairness, religion has set the ground rules for what is acceptable and what isn't in society. Some are of course better than others( I'm not bad mouthing any religion) but most have very basic rules of don't chea,t lie and steal. Don't kill anyone and so on.

Morals pre-date religion, so I disagree with these statements. Although I would agree that religious organizations have codified some morals.

Originally Posted by OldSparta

But in all fairness, religion has set the ground rules for what is acceptable and what isn't in society. Some are of course better than others( I'm not bad mouthing any religion) but most have very basic rules of don't chea,t lie and steal. Don't kill anyone and so on.

That being said, thEy still have caused more deaths and pain and such just cause someone believes something different.

Because, you know, humans couldn't have just gotten together on their own and agreed that it was a bad idea to kill and steal from each other.

Yeah I agree that there are good things and bad things. I'm not religious myself. It can help people to belong and feel like a part of something, but I think that people have abused it.

I watch films (I think it was King Arthur when I thought this) and every thing the romans done, they were like "this is gods will" and obviously they were just saying that to gain power.
I think religion has been used as a control method. It's also awful how there are fighting between religions.

If I had to choose one, I'd be Buddhist

Ok... that didn't quite come out the way I though it would, but religion has been around longer almost anything. But they were the ones that basically enforced in a way. Nothing scares people like burning in hell and being tortured for eternity.... or some bullshit like that.

Religion is like communism: Great idea on paper (for the comfort reasons and all that stuff), but mix in the human factor, and you've got the epic fail we see today.

Religion is history's most used reason for war.

Originally Posted by ninja9578

Religion is history's most used reason for war.

Should ancient romans fight over oil instead? Religion is ancient and a part of every culture the world has seen. Not to mention religion for many cultures in history and even today was also government. So of course it was going to be used as an EXCUSE for war.

The modern world on the other hand is less than 200 years old. There's no comparison! That's like a second in the scope of human history. We're in a strange time of transitions. We have nations that still live as they did 2000 years ago. And nations entirely dependent on satellites!!

What will future wars be faught over? I don't want to know. Because they'll be worse than any war in history.

Religion stifles free thought and natural curiosity and promotes ignorance as a virtue.

Originally Posted by Caprisun

Religion stifles free thought and natural curiosity and promotes ignorance as a virtue.

The only benefits are selfish ones. And art. Kind of.

Originally Posted by Caprisun

Religion stifles free thought and natural curiosity and promotes ignorance as a virtue.

Interesting.....Care to give a source? A Example? How about a personal experience? No. Nothing? Then this is all void and has no ground to stand on.

Originally Posted by MrBlonde

Interesting.....Care to give a source? A Example? How about a personal experience? No. Nothing? Then this is all void and has no ground to stand on.

"God did it, and that's all you need to know. Evolution is fake because we the church say so. Don't bother hunting for your own answers, cuz we're right."

Not stifling at all.

Originally Posted by Mario92

"God did it, and that's all you need to know. Evolution is fake because we the church say so. Don't bother hunting for your own answers, cuz we're right."

Not stifling at all.

Nice a stereotypical response. Got any more?