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Religion and its effect on society
oneeyedjack909
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
So is religion bad for society? Were the communists right to brand it as "opium for the masses"? or does the hope and morality that most religions give their followers benefit and enrich humanity? I'm sure most people have had positve and negative encounters with religion, wether it was finding comfort in the hope it offered and maybe some sort of divine 'religious experiance', or the negative parts of bull-headed fanaticism and frustrating illogical thinking. Is it good for religion to effect politics? or should all government be atheistic. discuss
"A mans first duty is to his conscience and honor"- Mark Twain
"Those who are willing to give up essential liberties for a little safety diserve neither liberty nor safety"-Benjamin Franklin
"Those who are willing to give up essential liberties for a little safety diserve neither liberty nor safety"-Benjamin Franklin
oneeyedjack909 on
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am i going mad?
There's a whole lot about helping the poor and the meek inheriting the Earth, but I never seem to hear much about those bits for some reason, either.
Even the money grubbing evangelicals at the Paradise Community Church are ridiculously generous. It's good business for the big man.
Also, thanks to the theology department thread I've just found out about the Earth Bible, which is a national joint project amongst theology departments to "develop and publish ecojustice principles based on interpretations of the bible, relevant to the current global debate on ecology, climate change and ecoethics". It all sounds a bit spaztastic, but it's out there.
In fact I still get to hear every week from my mom about how they hired blah-de-blah new choir directors, and commissioned hand-carved wooden angels painted with gold for either side of the sanctuary stage, or what-have-you. Lucky me!
It's nice that some of them are starting to come to grips with climate change, though. At least down there - haven't heard much of that sort of thing over here.
It's bad because religion tends to make dogmatism acceptable (or a societal virtue) and skepticism unacceptable (or not a virtue) in varying degrees. I would suggest that the former (dogmatism, yes!
I would say that the good that churches certainly are capable of doing is mitigated by the problems of people being too devoted to a fantasy to affect any real help on the world around them when they aren't actively doing real harm, and the anti-skepticism meme that religion spreads that, at the very least, creates an epistemological mudpit where good ideas can die and bad ones can flourish.
I suppose we could shut all those down though.
Yahweh tells humans to "go forth and multiply" and says they have dominion over all the beasts. This is in direct contradiction to the prevailing thought at the time it was written. In the Atrahasis epic, the gods tried to get humanity to limit its population.
Do you think religion is the only thing motivating people to operate shelters? Why not just secularize them?
Religious Canadians seem nice. I've never heard of anything like that from any of the churches/religious groups in my area,
The buildings are the churches and mosques, they are funded by the churches and mosques which gets funding from its members because secular society doesn't fund shelters, and secular society doesn't provide enough volunteers for the secular shelters that exist.
edit: secular society here. and probably many other places.
It's possible alot of the religious institutions in your area do this. not EVERY religious building in vancouver turns into a shelter, and most people here don't know that they do. It isn't exactly like there's big newspaper ads saying " DID YOU KNOW THAT MOST EMERGENCY SHELTERS ARE RELIGIOUS BUILDINGS? "
It's becoming big news here though because the city council put forward a motion to force religious buildings to get a social services permit to host meals, overnighters, and work as emergency shelters. This has come forward in the news because BIG SURPRISE it will add massive red tape to most of the support network for homeless people in the city.
edit: It's very possible that if all the religious buildings just disappeared a secular alternative would come forward. I find it highly unlikely that in a place like vancouver with land costs the way they are that it would be anything near the level of what goes on now. Community gyms would be the obvious place to have emergency shelters and there isn't anywhere near as many of those as churches. In addition, many MANY people hate the idea of stinky homeless people in their neighbourhood (and some of this is well-founded, homeless people are generally addicts and booze heroin pot yadda yadda). Alot of these community gyms would not be able to operate as homeless shelters because of some vocal people in their neighbourhood. I know of the church that was the catalyst for the whole permit idea -- some neighbours complained they were bringing homeless people in and sullying the neighbourhood. The church got a permit for social services, people still complain anyways! Imagine if it was a building owned by the neighbourhood.
I'm not ready to break crosses into giant T's but Jesus Camp scares me, too.
Honestly, I like things the way they are now in general America, in the middle of the extremes and committing to neither - people accept two contradictory notions at the same time and see the value in both. Hooray!
They would just find another excuse to carry out their fundamentalism.
Oh, but what about the delightful perks religion brings? "Where did we come from and what do we do next?" are neatly answered by almost all religions. Even if the answers don't make any sense, that's still good enough for lots of people. Does that mean the trade-off for the 'harmful stuff' is acceptable?
People no matter what their religion have te duty as citizens to play a part in the Government.
Religion will aways influence politics because it is important to people, and people should support their own beliefs.
Church and state. One contaminates the other. Keep them separate.
It gets a thumbs up form me!
You can't possibly be a real person.
Sure, a nice set of fairytales makes up for genocide any day.
Oh, come on, Cat. Religion has never caused harm to any innocent person ever. You know that.
The overall issue, though, is that irrational thought of all kinds is damaging to other human beings. This isn't just religious thought, this is all kinds of irrationality. The irrational atheist is just as damaging. The simple fact is that when people refuse to open themselves to change, to allow for new evidence, and to accept the world as they find it, they live in a fantasy world, and the decisions based on that fantasy can damage the reality the rest of us attempt to scrape by in. That isn't to say that we should be cynical about the world, but merely that while fighting to create a better world, we should base our decisions on the world as we find it, not on the world we wish existed.
Battle.net
When in conflict and your side is able to come together in the face of suffering and slaughter the enemy without hesitation you tend to win and survive.
God wiped out the dinosaurs without breaking a sweat.
But dogmatic societies are inevitably self-destructive. Not to mention that fanatics have a nasty habit of getting themselves unnecessarily killed. A man who believes in what he's fighting for (belief and faith/fanaticism/dogma being different things) but thinks rationally will inevitably triumph, even in death, because the fanatic cannot adapt, cannot change, cannot grow.
And, of course, I would hate to give the impression that I believe in some kind of emotionless robot-like rationality. I think that it's both entirely unrealistic (no one acts like that) and foolish. Our emotion must inform our reason, it connects us with other human beings, gives us a sense of what to value.
The man who thinks, believes, and still stands between death and those he loves will never waste his life (or death) as the fanatic does.
Battle.net
Yes, fanatics have their usefulness.
But I would suggest that for purposes of societal cohesion, there are plenty of other cultural themes in existence to draw us together. Similarly, I would argue that societies on earth are slowly coming together- wars between Russia (or China, or...) and the United States are becoming less and less likely. Wars are rarely fought between wealthy nations in the present day.
I would argue that even this admitted useful facet of dogmatic thought is rapidly becoming more of a hinderance than a help, as nationalism is a very strong inhibitor to extremely useful enterprises such as the European Union, United Nations, or World Trade Organization.
|daydalus.net|
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Their pacifism will be the death of them.
Outstanding word choice. Who'd have thought those endowed with religious moral fiber could be such self-serving weasels?
It's not about the individuals' value though, or their moral rectitude. Of course we don't believe our societal values, while historically owing to Judeo-Christian traditions and their forbears, are the sole province of the churches. So why are they holding up more than their share of the weight? Secular institutions can and do make valuable contributions but a disproportionate amount of charity, of aged care, of shelters and kitchens, of support networks, scholarships and funding is coming from religious groups. I live in a country where maybe 10% of the population are rocking up to church regularly and still every support organisation I've come across, and I work with a few, has some church or another lending assistance.
The structure of Christian church networks, their history of community involvement and the nature of individuals who they typically attract make them exceedingly valuable to society. It's not about whether the services they provide couldn't be just as or even more effectively provided by secular groups. Hell, in some areas of health and education I'd love it to be all secular, because Christian values just get in the way of common sense. The simple fact is they're there. And anyone who wants to gleefully dismantle the churches first needs to start matching the benefits they bring to my community.
Change would have to come from the bottom up. People throughout Europe have given up religion in droves. Those churches were dismantled from the inside out—and yet many European countries give plenty to charity and support their poor pretty handsomely.
Like I said, I don't see why a charitable person who gave up their faith would suddenly stop being charitable. And if fear of God's punishment is the only reason a person gives to charity, that's pretty damn lame.
You're not a stranger to sarcasm, are you?
And I think changing the focus from here and now to some hypothetical after-life or the desires of some hypothetical father figure in the sky is detrimental to everyone, ever.