Religion: The greatest strength or greatest weakness of humanity? | INFJ Forum

Religion: The greatest strength or greatest weakness of humanity?

jimtaylor

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May 19, 2010
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First of all this is not meant to be a degradation of religion but instead an intellectual discourse to discuss the purpose of religion and the validity to the existence or nonexistence of god/gods. Please keep this as open as possible to discuss civilly this topic that has been affecting humanity since before history. I will try to remain as neutral and bias free as I go forward and I encourage others to interject and discuss further ideas. Also be warned, this is a working piece and there is no way I could finish it in one night so I apologize if my ideas are not fully explored in this initial post.

Now before diving into this argument, a definition for religion has to be established as well as the opposite. I feel that people often correlate religion with only believing in god or some other deity but I believe that religion can be expanded to include other strict adherences to ideas or thoughts. For example an atheist could be considered religious by some degree. An atheist who attacks others for not believing as they do and essentially adhering to a belief in all things opposite of god is as fanatical as any religious zealot. They claim logic and rational as their calling but it could be thought illogical and irrational to refuse the impact of religion and god; good or bad. It would be illogical and irrational to not consider all possibilities, including the possibility that religion is humanities greatest asset just as it would be illogical for a religious person to ignore the faults within their own beliefs. So I believe that this definition of religion is perhaps the most accurate as it does not just include those that believe in a god but all whom strictly follow an idea despite the evidence against it.

The opposite of religion would then need to be completely bias free and neutral, looking only at things how they are and accepting all possibilities until proven false. Obviously, it is very improbable to spend life living in such a way and the possible mental and social consequences of doing so could be dire. For the sake of the argument though this has to be the definition of being non-religious. Following this definition it can be argued that only a few or maybe even none, non-religious people have existed. This is not surprising as we look at the history of humanity. There are a few extremes that really stand out and a majority of history books focus on this and ignore the majority middle ground just from the simple fact that it is boring. This perpetuates a bias though of the world existing in one extreme to another and there being no middle ground. This is obviously is not true and perhaps most of the world functions in some gray area with a few outspoken extremist overshadowing the majority.

For us to move forward we have to ignore this and look at humanity and every religion as a whole and not as separate entities. Based just of a simple definition, there is no difference between a Catholic or a Muslim or a Buddhist and from a broad perspective there truly is no difference in the general level of faith. We are not evaluating ones level of faith by willingness to sacrifice themselves, so as we go forward please step beyond that and look at faith or religion as equal, no matter the extremes. It is more logical to consider the middle ground and not the extremes that would cause the evaluation to be skewed. Of course it is important to consider these extremes by the sheer fact of how they can impact the world but what I am trying to evaluate is the simple idea of religion and not the fanatical version which has been contorted and distorted to a degree that it can be almost as debilitating as any mental deficiency.

So let us begin by first evaluating the idea or belief in a deity or deities. Atheists and skeptics far and wide argue that god is blight upon humanity that limits our physical and mental possibilities. They have valid evidence to such ideas because of the countless deaths caused by the belief in god and many religions encourage the idea of human superiority that leads to massive destruction of the earth. These arguments are valid and show part of what makes religion irrational but these arguments fail to acknowledge some counter arguments. Looking at the idea that we are part of nature and all that we think and construct is part of nature, including god and religion it puts a question to these ideas of religion being a fault. This makes it as real as any manmade construct like language, mathematics, science, etc
 
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Religion served a purpose. It united tribes. It brought humans together under a common brotherhood.

It no longer serves that purpose. Religion often divides more than it unites.

Religion also comes with an individual cost. A man gives up his ability to determine what is right and wrong for himself based on his own reason and empathy when he chooses religion. In religion he chooses to allow the dogma to do his thinking for him, to control his world view, and to ultimately take over his life.
 
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Why not both?

I would think if religion didn't exist in the first place, the world would be a very different place compared to what it had been in the past, and what it is now. Because something exists, we know the good and the bad. So is religion.

It shows our best and worst capacities as human beings.
 
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Religion served a purpose. It united tribes. It brought humans together under a common brotherhood.

It no longer serves that purpose. Religion often divides more than it unites.

Religion also comes with an individual cost. A man gives up his ability to determine what is right and wrong for himself based on his own reason and empathy when he chooses religion. In religion he chooses to allow the dogma to do his thinking for him, to control his world view, and to ultimately take over his life.

He's right you know Religion serves to divide people more then it does to unite people in fact it's pretty much the worst right after

Race
skin color
class
nationality
education
diet
what I had for dinner
and all the other things I can't think of
 
He's right you know Religion serves to divide people more then it does to unite people in fact it's pretty much the worst right after

Race
skin color
class
nationality
education
diet
what I had for dinner
and all the other things I can't think of

We like our social hierarchies don't we?
 
He's right you know Religion serves to divide people more then it does to unite people in fact it's pretty much the worst right after

Race
skin color
class
nationality
education
diet
what I had for dinner
and all the other things I can't think of

Again, please keep it civil. There is no reason to respond with sarcasm to his comment because he did make some good points and you helped prove them true by feeling the need to come to the defense of religion. He did not even attack a specific religion and you came to its defense as a whole. This shows how religion can unite people to divide them.

First, start by looking at this in a micro scale. People from different cultural backgrounds can date, people from different races can date, fat and thin people can date but one of the most difficult things to overcome in a relationship is the difference of religion. This can be attributed to many reasons but one of the largest is the concept of most of the world
 
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Whether or not religion benefits humanity is really up to humans. It's a yes and no answer.

Many use religion for their own gain. Some blindly obey the tenets of their religion without a healthy questioning; when tradition overrides common sense and basic human morality, there is a problem.
Yes, religion can serve a purpose in division. Take the popes of the Catholic Church during the crusades. Awful men who used it for monetary gain and violence. The actions of us, wrongfully masquerading in the name of God, divided us with Jews and Muslims. Our own actions with religion brought the division upon us. The actual religions of these people, as far as I have studied, would never condone such hideous evil.
Some strive to use it to help others. Mother Teresa is a good example. Although we could argue people like her are rare, they are apparent on the smallest occasions of life. You could meet one in the grocery store or on the street. I've met them almost everywhere. I want to be one of these.

Actual religion is an intrinsically beautiful thing. We are the ones who have corrupted it. We are the ones who have further used it for good.
 
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Scientific research shows how religion affects health

Scientific research basically shows that people who attend church and have the feeling of being part of something better
basically live longer. They also tend to live healthier lifestyles than average person. And they are less affected by outside
influences that can cause stress in alot of other people.

And as a Christian i do see that many of those things are true and they have affected my life grately.
 
Some strive to use it to help others.

Do people really need religion to help other people? Would anything that Mother Teressa did be any less helpful had she been an atheist? How does religion help a humanitarian be a better humanitarian?
 
Scientific research shows how religion affects health

Scientific research basically shows that people who attend church and have the feeling of being part of something better
basically live longer. They also tend to live healthier lifestyles than average person. And they are less affected by outside
influences that can cause stress in alot of other people.

And as a Christian i do see that many of those things are true and they have affected my life grately.

"Religion is child abuse. Children are terrorized by threats of punishment, such as eternal damnation in a fiery hell, shamed about normal, healthy sexual function, trained to disrespect science and reason, and indoctrinated into a particular religious faith, thus depriving the child of the opportunity to make their own free inquiry later, when they are mature."

-Richard Dawkins. "Childhood, abuse and the escape from religion". The God Delusion.

Religion leads to Holy Wars and Religious Terrorism. Religion leads to suppression of scientific progress, literature, and art. It has been used to oppress people by race, gender, sexual orientation, etc. It strips a man of his conscience and demands that good deeds come from fear of eternal punishment not from compassion.

It is a continual detriment to society.

Not saying it doesn't have some personal benefits. It wouldn't survive if it didn't have some.
 
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"Religion is child abuse. Children are terrorized by threats of punishment, such as eternal damnation in a fiery hell, shamed about normal, healthy sexual function, trained to disrespect science and reason, and indoctrinated into a particular religious faith, thus depriving the child of the opportunity to make their own free inquiry later, when they are mature."

-Richard Dawkins. "Childhood, abuse and the escape from religion". The God Delusion.

Religion leads to Holy Wars and Religious Terrorism. Religion leads to suppression of scientific progress, literature, and art. It has been used to oppress people by race, gender, sexual orientation, etc. It strips a man of his conscience and demands that good deeds come from fear of eternal punishment not from compassion.

It is a continual detriment to society.

Not saying it doesn't have some personal benefits. It wouldn't survive if it didn't have some.

I am not saying that so-called "Christians" have not been responsible for many bad things that happened in the past. Then again the Holy Wars and really, even the Religious Terrorism goes against the teachings of the Bible and Quran respectivly. What happens there is that the person in a place of power (the pope for example) is sending out the crusades to accumulate wealth for himself and the Catholic church. Thus coveting neighbours posessions, murdering, stealing, also, they actually practise idol worship there because the money and the land was the main attraction, not spreading the word of God. So really, the stuff the Catholic church did in the middle ages goes pretty much agains anything the Bible teaches and is really not an accurate representation of Christian faith and living a Christian life. Really, the institution of Catholic church is borken. Also, the Catholic chruch claims that the pope is God on Earth. What again goes agains the Bible.

My faith is based upon the Bible. The Bible witch says that everyone are equal, that tells you to do good things unto other people. The one that istructs me to seek knowledge http://www.openbible.info/topics/knowledge .

I also grew up in a Christian family and attended church. And when i got 13 i stopped it. Went about my business, started drinking and doing stupid things. When i got older and a bit wiser i stopped, and i started to go to church again. And i got baptized last year. So inqured when i matured and made an informed decision. And like many other Christians i do question my faith daily. That is the only way i can grow as a Christian and a person.

Nah, religion doesnt strip away your conciense. It enchances it. Also, i do not to good things because i am afraid that something bad will happent to me if i dont. I do good deeds because a) i want to help other people b) it is beneficial to others c) and it does make me feel better as well.

About the sexual orientation. In the Bible it says that "Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is abominatin" (Lev 18:22). But not the person who does it is the abomination, the act itself is abomination. But that doesnt mean that i should hate the person who did it. I am to love all the people. That again doesnt mean that i have to accept the sins they do.

About the disrsepect to science. I have friends from church who are physicists, doctors, lawyers, public health workers, social workers, nurses, biologysts, really, scienists of all walks of life. And they are Christians who love God and they fellow man and use this scientific knowledge to help others. I also was very good at science and i still like it and read about it. Science actually is there to help us understand how God made things happen. That is what i belive.

Quotes from Tesla Tesla is considered the inventor of the modern world. And in his autobiography he talks about how he came up with many of the things he invented while studying the Bible. He also claimed that all of the wisom/knowledge he had came from God. Was he a man who disrespected sciense ?
 
Do people really need religion to help other people? Would anything that Mother Teressa did be any less helpful had she been an atheist? How does religion help a humanitarian be a better humanitarian?

I think religion helped motivate Mother Teresa. I believe that she, despite her doubt in the existence of God, was able to see things in humanity and the greater picture that we often overlooked. Or she emphasized universally great matters while overlooking the small things we tend to focus on. Her own spirituality must have helped with this.

Religion tends to help us see the things of greater importance in life than our own desires and needs. When people start focusing on small details and nit picky matters, there is a problem.

A humanitarian doesn't have to have religion to be a better humanitarian. It might motivate a person who is not a humanitarian toward being one; it should by no means be a tool. Good point though. :)
 
"Religion is child abuse. Children are terrorized by threats of punishment, such as eternal damnation in a fiery hell, shamed about normal, healthy sexual function, trained to disrespect science and reason, and indoctrinated into a particular religious faith, thus depriving the child of the opportunity to make their own free inquiry later, when they are mature."

-Richard Dawkins. "Childhood, abuse and the escape from religion". The God Delusion.

Religion leads to Holy Wars and Religious Terrorism. Religion leads to suppression of scientific progress, literature, and art. It has been used to oppress people by race, gender, sexual orientation, etc. It strips a man of his conscience and demands that good deeds come from fear of eternal punishment not from compassion.

It is a continual detriment to society.

Not saying it doesn't have some personal benefits. It wouldn't survive if it didn't have some.

Human abuse of religion leads to Holy Wars and Religious Terrorism. Again, take the Crusades as an example. Were they really motivated by God? I think not. I think they were motivated by warped people using their understanding of Him for their own gain and that of their society.

Religion is not child abuse. Threats by parents because of their own warped view of religion is what the child abuse is. Religion is in many cases man trying to reach God, and in one case God trying to reach man. It should never be motivation for threats or fear. If a parent says to a child, "You will go to hell if you have sex out of marriage. This is because our religion says so." then they are forcing their child to adhere to it by using fear. Sooner or later the child will grow to question the religion or obey it out of fright.

I went through nine years of Catholic school which I deeply disdain. I understand the difference between healthy religion and... how do I describe it? I have no clue what went on in the minds of most of my teachers. I just think many of them had serious psychological issues that had gone on for YEARS without treatment. They must have such ailments to go so intrinsically against their own religion, with every single one of their ideas twisted from the root.

Real religion teaches a respect for science and reason because real religion involves science and reason! Dawkins has blown up a perhaps now-inadvertent misuse of religion into an all-encompassing "this is how all religion is and what all religion promotes" idea. Religion does NOT promote this and IS not this! Man-made rules and man-made abuse is what promotes this! Man-made rules and man-made abuse is exactly what this is. I still have mental scars from such, and likely will until I die, but I fight them with actual religion, actual trust in God, and reasoning.
 
It's simply my opinion. I can respectfully agree to disagree.

Now if you asked me to do that a year ago...
 
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I can do that too. I guess it just comes down to opinion.
 
Religion promotes the idea of judgment.
My religion has the one true God...Yours doesn't. There's one judgment.
You will go to hell if you don't adhere to what the church says. There's another judgment even within one's own religion.
Humans are created in the image of God and therefore are intended to inherit the earth - not the other creatures created by God. Another judgment. Now it's ok to destroy the habitats and the Earth.
You don't believe in a God? You are the work of the devil. Another judgment.

I was surprised to read the idea of religion being equaled with social Darwinism. Culling the mentally unstable because they are willing to die for their God? I'm sorry - but being surrounded by fundamentalists of many religions down here - I see no one dying for their God. They keep breeding more fundamentalists because they think it's God's Will. No culling of the mentally unstable going on at all....

Religion does not promote the concept of taking responsibility for one's actions. They advocate following the leader(s) and what they say is good for the flock.

Religion is a dangerous invention by man to control the masses.

Religion - with all of it's convoluted rules and customs - is a wall between humanity finding their spirituality.
 
The biggest issue I have with organized religion is that in my experience, it tells people what to do instead of teaching people how to think for themselves.

I don't see how anyone can presume to know the mind of god, assuming such a being exists. The bible is interesting historically, and has some wonderful stories and parts that are poetically lovely, but being edited by man and (mis)translated over time does not allow me to put faith in it.

There are many who feel themselves superior by simply belonging to/attending a house of worship, and put down those who do not believe as they do. I've even had people tell me that the reason my husband and I had difficulties early in our marriage was because we hadn't been married in a church. Lolwut? I don't want any part of something so irrational. After all, if god exists and is omnipresent, wouldn't s/he have witnessed our vows, no matter where we were?

I have no problem with people who feel religion helps them be a better human being, but please do not try to tell me that I am wrong for not believing as you do. If particular religious beliefs cause no harm to others, then I feel the practitioners of it should have the freedom to do so. Sadly, this is not always the case. Look to the Burning Times for an example of the kind of fear-mongering and subjugation that was encouraged by the Catholic Church.

Not that I believe all religions or religious people are bad. Some good things have been done as well, and at its best, religion reminds people to think of and help others. I just personally don't feel the need for someone to tell me how to be a good person, nor do I feel comfortable worshiping in a large group. Being in a large group makes me uncomfortable anyway, although I can understand how some people find comfort in sharing their faith with other like-minded individuals. I feel more spiritually open in a quiet, natural setting, although sometimes being in an empty church, alone with my thoughts, gives me a sense of peace as well.

It comes down to a matter of respect. Though our opinions may differ, we are each entitled to them. If people would speak open-mindedly about such things, and recognize that other perspectives are as valid as their own, we could learn so much from one another. Naturally, this applies to not only religion, but many other beliefs as well...
 
I can do that too. I guess it just comes down to opinion.

Just to clarify my point for a few people.

I feel any dogmatic institution is a problem. Religion is inherently dogmatic. It isn't the only thing that is, but it's certainly the most common. It is dogma that makes people do things like fly planes into buildings.

The psychology of dogma is well-established. Followers of a dogma don't interpret the meaning themselves. They defer to someone in a position of authority. That is what makes it so dangerous.

In the absence of dogma, people call it spirituality, not religion.
 
Religious systems, along with the abuse thereof, have led to some pretty deplorable episodes in human history. At the same time, religious systems also contain within them some of the most viable frameworks for true human enlightenment.

I'd say religion, done well, is more essential than ever.
 
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