On a whole, has religion harmed or helped the world?

I ask this looking at the state of affairs in the world right now. My question is simple - do you think that religion has helped us as a whole or harmed us?

It seems that it leads to such a high amount of death and destruction, this process of trying to sway others to follow different belief systems. Could we do without religion?

[edit on 29-7-2008 by mf_luder]

reply to post by mf_luder

I honestly believe that if religion never existed, about 90 percent of wars throughout history would not have been started. The other 10 percent would be because of resources, land, etc.

As far as I know, most wars have been started over religious beliefs. I'm not saying the world would be completely absent of turmoil; humans will always find reasons for war it seems. Not ALL humans, though. Just the greedy, selfish, and evil that seem to rule over all.

I believe reigion has harmed humanity as a whole by further seperating people from the simple fact of how we are all alike. Think of all the wars and carnage started in the name of "god". Think of all the prejudice nowadays between muslims and christians, when people hate other people they've never met for no reason.

Also i think religion is just another form of mass mind control, playing off of peoples fears of death to get them to be subservient through life by promising etrernal bliss after death. I mean for every 1 good thing religion has done, it counters with 100 wrongs, never to be righted, never to be apoligized for, all done in the name of "god".

Religion has harmed the average man, but has been quite beneficial to the people that use it to control the masses. I mean religion, in general, seems to be bull# to me if you would just look at it rationally.

Religion, in my opinion, is not the true evil, but politics is in fact the true evil. Not government and all of that, but politics itself. The politics of a religion is what makes it evil, the politics of a government is what it makes it evil.

It is not the beliefs themselves ((as christianity today is nothing like it was meant to be, thank politics)) but the bastardization of those beliefs that are the cause of much evil.

reply to post by AgnosticX

Nicely put. Of course, the religious people have a hard time seeing from disbelievers' point of view; and therefore it's much harder to get the true reality of religion out to them. Most are stubborn believers as we are non-believers.



Freaky

Anything and everything is a Religion of what you believe in any type of limitation of your oneself.
Simple;
start believing in your oneself as a potential of omnipotent, omniscience and omnipresent power of mind.
Then you wont have to fear anything external to yourself.
Because religion is simply that agenda of the egoic mind that wants to put your God given right of unlimited creative potential in a box of limitedness and throw away the key.

religion has been a force for a better life and a cause of grief

so depending on which religion and which time frame the answer would be variable .

Some good points were brought up - I hadn't originally even considered the political side of the argument, but that is a valid point. Even the most 'holy' of religions are still plagued by politics in the way they are run, spread, practiced, etc. I find it amazing that we are facing so many different religions all telling the world at large to focus on one specific creator God, while at the same time bickering as to who is right about their views.

The wars that were started - the most horrific examples I can think of to parallel what the Muslims are doing today are: the crusades, the spanish inquisition, the Salem witch trials all done in the name of Christianity. Now, don't get me wrong - I'm not taking sides here, I'm just pointing out that while we are all disgusted at the methods the extremist Muslims are using these days, we have to remember that Christians went through their own bloody phases as well.

Yes indeed I am of the opinion that religion has definately harmed humanity and is still doing so, at what seems to be an accelerated pace.

I am not speaking of spirituality and I'm sure many religious people are spiritual.

I personally see no place for religion on this earth but ample growing space for the spiritual.

It would seem that religion is nothing more than a collection of dogmatic fear based limitaions on human free thinking, wrapped around a few gems of beneficial truths, Implicitly designed to control masses.


As a non religious person what I find most stupifiying about religious people is the amount of energy they put into denouncing other religions or denominations of their own faith.

Fortunately, despite the constant worldwide media attention given to religion it seems to be losing control.

Obviously the main religions that spring to mind are islam christianity and judaism, all historically having the same source.

Each claim to be a religion of peace love and harmony etc, but what do they actually produce ? Slaughter genocide infanticide persecution and on and on.

Yes many so called religious people will deny this or come up with some marvellous excuse for this human misery, but the facts speak for themselves we only have to take a (intelligent open minded ) look around us and history to see the damage religion causes.

What is amazing to me is that, here we have the most intelligent creature on the planet failing to observe that something someone else has told them may not be correct or true and after thousands of years of trial simply DOES NOT achieve what it is claimed it's set out to do.

Religion does NOT work, we have the evidence we are living and dying the evidence.

Thousands of years ago we learned very early on that a square wheel does NOT work, it did not achieve the result required, so the intelligent thing to do was dump it and make one that did, so we did.

Unfortunately, it seems that religious people are not intelligent as an intelligent person will allways accept the possibilty of being wrong or misinformed but religious people on the whole do not appear to be able to do this and will often go to great lengths to make facts fit and delude themeselves considerably.

Perhaps we should split the planet in half, one half for the non religious intelligent people and on the other half stick all the religious to fight it out and actually find out who has the real god on their side.

It would be a wonderful thing for my children to grow up to a world of tolerence and freedom of thought to live in a world without beliefs but full of ideas as ideas can be changed a lot easier than beliefs.

And I'm sure that if we all dumped religion and it's mythalogical beliefs for just one generation, the world would be a far more peaceful place.

And if we did that and there really was a god of peace, how could we possibly be condemned for living in such a way?

reply to post by moocowman


Awesome post, Moocowman - I had actually forgotten to mention Judaism in my original post. I think after a couple of decades shy of a century away from WWII, its okay to bring them into the picture - I'll have to go find the site that shows it, but there are places in Israel today where Israelis are wholesale slaughtering Palestinians and getting away with it. (Now, I'm not saying I think ALL of those Israelis responsbile were Jews, but the majority of the country is). Come on. It is very unfortunate to have to say it, but every Jewish person I have ever met has been very arrogant and self-centered. I've met some very nice Muslims - especially during my time in Iraq, but I digress, I'm not here to bash religions.

Good post man.

Religion plays an important part of everyday lives. It can connect on a local basis, yet once borders are crossed, it becomes the negative opposite as lack of understanding and awareness of other religions becomes ignorance.

However, when it is manipulated into the sphere of politics and military, it is used for such terrible nightmares. It is supposed to connect and bind people, yet it is perceived to divide us - why is this?

In answering your question, and given the above, religion has divided us more and thus is a divisive element of the greater schism.

However, with this, it is those in power positions which see to it that religion is a tool for war and contraband for action. The ability to harm is power and religion is one of the tools that is provided for such harm - unfortunately.

Interesting thread.

Breifne

I had a question for you - what did you mean by the greater Schism? You are absolutely right - religion is perceived to divide us - I think the similarities are abundant between many of our world religions, but the thing that kills me is the absolute divide between many of them. It is rare that I have heard of two different faiths worshipping together or anything like that. If there truly is one God, I wonder what He must think of all of the debate and strife caused by humans.

Religion in fact has been lead by the wrong hands for quite some time. If religion was practiced like it was supposed to then those wars shouldn't have happened. I honestly believe if religion never existed most of the wars would be fought for something else. I wouldn't say 90% would be abolished, more like 50-50. The soldiers were mislead into believing they were doing the work of the lord, but the true intentions of their leaders were land, gold and to have more people under control.

But to answer you question technically religion has harmed the world more.

reply to post by mf_luder


All the people who don't respect other people's religions have done most of the damage. And then there is all of us who have gone against t he bible and said, hey let us respect other people's religions and not harrass them and let em know that the bible says, if they don't believe in our God, then they will forever burn in the pits of hell!

reply to post by mf_luder


I'd say the tolerant people who have ignored bits of the rules just to keep the peace are definitely not the guys to blame, no matter what religion. The guys who have caused the problems are the ones who shove it up others faces that they will burn in the pits of hell. The real extreme people. That is who. All one really needs is to pray to his God and live by good principles that make sense to anyone. Not use religion to convey the simple rules that are sensible to anyone about why one should do good. Because it really isn't about hell or heaven. Its about saving each other because if you don't, then the planet is gonna got to flames and heat up and turn into a new sun , and the true test will have been, did you help your fellow man be better, did you teach him by your own deeds to lead ethical lives and be good to others and lead by example ? That will be the true test.

Religion in itself hasn't done harm to humanity, its what man has done to religion..

I was not raised in church,and my parents as far as I know have never been.
So, I was not programmed with the concept of a God, the bible or any particular
denominational belief.

But I believe in God and the bible, but that is my choice.
Lets take Christianity here with this scenario:

You have a man who is lost (spiritually and physically).
He is traveling down the road hoping to find someone who will help him find his way. Now, he comes upon a group of people in the road (who upon them is written their denomination). He stops and says can someone help me ? I am lost.

They all at the same time start telling him *their way*. The group starts to squabble over who is right and who is wrong. This confuses the man, so he continues down the same path, never finding his way and in the end, still lost.

This is the biggest reason that everyone says religion doesn't work....
Im right and your wrong!!!
Well, its an individual right to believe what you want. I believe what I believe because of my own understanding of scripture. I am only right to myself on my beliefs.

We have been given free will. Believe or disbelieve what you want. It is a shame that religion and Christianity has been so dissected and distorted and frowned upon only by those who don't want to give up the pleasures of a sinful life because SIN is addictive. It's like candy to the soul.

Originally posted by LiquidCrystalz
Religion in itself hasn't done harm to humanity, its what man has done to religion..

I was not raised in church,and my parents as far as I know have never been.
So, I was not programmed with the concept of a God, the bible or any particular
denominational belief.

But I believe in God and the bible, but that is my choice.
Lets take Christianity here with this scenario:

You have a man who is lost (spiritually and physically).
He is traveling down the road hoping to find someone who will help him find his way. Now, he comes upon a group of people in the road (who upon them is written their denomination). He stops and says can someone help me ? I am lost.

They all at the same time start telling him *their way*. The group starts to squabble over who is right and who is wrong. This confuses the man, so he continues down the same path, never finding his way and in the end, still lost.

This is the biggest reason that everyone says religion doesn't work....
Im right and your wrong!!!
Well, its an individual right to believe what you want. I believe what I believe because of my own understanding of scripture. I am only right to myself on my beliefs.

We have been given free will. Believe or disbelieve what you want. It is a shame that religion and Christianity has been so dissected and distorted and frowned upon only by those who don't want to give up the pleasures of a sinful life because SIN is addictive. It's like candy to the soul.

This is a very good way of putting it, thank you a lot for this post. I agree with the image of the lost man - I don't think from my own standpoint that I'm lost, but sometimes I find myself wondering if I will ever end up in some type of "purgatory" for not following any of the mainstream religions. I just try to be a good person and live the way I think I should. Is that too much to ask?

When you see all the hate around you - the extremist Muslims killing people all for some words in a book? A book? Come on now. Jesus. I see Jehovah's Witness going door to door trying to sell the idea of their version of God. Mormons - wow. Jewish people - once again - wow.

I think that the ideal type of life is one where you could be at peace with those around you in terms of freedom of beliefs. This is one of the reasons I'm glad I was born in a free society. Can you imagine if there were ever to be a time where we were forced to practice one religion - ? I would probably start a rebellion. lol.

religion is bad

you take away the worshipped idol you take away relgion

religion means you must devot your self to the idol instead of yourself

religions means we are less then the idol we are worshipping

god is great and we are sh*t

reply to post by LiquidCrystalz


"Religion in itself hasn't done harm to humanity, its what man has done to religion..

Man invented/created religions, many religious doctrines require harm to be done to other humans, the evidence shows that this has been the case. Therefore religions have caused harm to humanity QED

I was not raised in church,and my parents as far as I know have never been.
So, I was not programmed with the concept of a God, the bible or any particular
denominational belief.

You may not have been programmed/indoctrinated by your upringing, but by choosing to acccept what the bible tells you as true (which is your right) your are indeed programming yourself with beleifs of other men.Again this your choice and right and should be respected but only to the point where it impinges upon my life

But I believe in God and the bible, but that is my choice.
Lets take Christianity here with this scenario:

You have a man who is lost (spiritually and physically).
He is traveling down the road hoping to find someone who will help him find his way. Now, he comes upon a group of people in the road (who upon them is written their denomination). He stops and says can someone help me ? I am lost.

They all at the same time start telling him *their way*. The group starts to squabble over who is right and who is wrong. This confuses the man, so he continues down the same path, never finding his way and in the end, still lost.

This is the biggest reason that everyone says religion doesn't work....
Im right and your wrong!!!
Well, its an individual right to believe what you want. I believe what I believe because of my own understanding of scripture. I am only right to myself on my beliefs.

"If a man is lost in London and he wishes to go to New York, he does not ask a man who's never been to NY how to get there if he's intelligent. An intelligent man would find somone carrying the NY times and ask where he baught it, being aware that the other man may be lost and could have baught the newspaper in japan, the intelligent man would act with great caution because the problem he has is that he has very little evidence that NY is a real place he has yet to meet anyone who's actually been there.

Text.

We have been given free will. Believe or disbelieve what you want. It is a shame that religion and Christianity has been so dissected and distorted and frowned upon only by those who don't want to give up the pleasures of a sinful life because SIN is addictive. It's like candy to the soul. "


Being given free will is an assumption touted by the religious, I have the ability to think as I chose be it in a negative or positive manner therefore I have free will I was not given it I am a creature of free will, so long as I can act upon my thoughts without constraints. Should I for whatever reason chose to become a christian for example, I immediately remove my own free will. In order for me to comply with this religion I am required to act and think in a certain way, based upon christian writings. If for example I was gay christian doctrine calls this an abomination and the punishment is to be put to death. An intelligent person can see the obvious contradiction, this is not free will.

I would agree christianity has been dissected and disstorted, but only by the religious, mainly the christians themselves. The disstortions have come about because bible belieivers have had to accept the fact that their scripture is magnificently flawed and for them to operate in modern society which is comprised of mostly non religious free thinking people, they've had to dump some of their gods laws, like how to beat your slave, or kill anyone who works on a sunday etc.

Both muslim and bible law make it a requirement to put to death a non virgin bride, christians condemn why

Religion has caused too many problems for us on a whole. I am not going to bother with a history lesson because most of us are already very much aware of the many atrocities that have taken place in the name of "religion".

Ever since I was little I always felt like there was something wrong with it all, I just didn't have the understanding I did now. Church always made me feel uncomfortable, it was a battle for my parents to get me to participate. I am glad I stayed away and followed my own teachings and guidance.

Follow your own light

Love.