All right! Let's get this party started....

[Dookus]

I believe religion is the most destructive force on Earth today. I believe it causes more death, pain and suffering than anything else. I believe it impedes finding solutions to the real problems we face.

Let's debate!

[gottaB]

1. Isn't that sort of like saying Satan is responsible for everything bad?

If God isn't organizing people, they must be doing it themselves. Sometimes they do good deeds, other times the cause trouble. Some of the most notorious troublemakers of the Twentieth Century weren't religious. I think it's a wash.

[Dookus]

2. well

people don't ACT based on their belief in Santa - at least people in positions of power don't.

One simple example: The Pope could do more to eliminate poverty and need in the third-world by simply endorsing birth control. Hundreds of millions suffer in desperation because they have more children than they can care for.

[gottaB]

3. Another simple example: Eugenics

;)

[Dookus]

4. Is that an argument?

If so, it fails on many grounds. I don't know what you're trying to say.

[gottaB]

7. Eugenics has caused more death, pain and suffering than any religion

Many devout eugenicists beleive that Hitler gave their movement a bad name. Apparently that's unwarranted.

[Dookus]

8. wow

I'm not sure where to begin.

Hitler wasn't an atheist - he was a Christian.

Eugenics is NOT a tenet of atheism.

The deaths of World War II were in no way largely due to eugenics.

Religion is directly or indirectly responsible for probably hundreds of millions if not billions of deaths over the centuries. How many deaths do you blame on eugenics?

[gottaB]

9. Neither is eugenics a tenet of theism

It's absurd to call Hitler a Christian in this context. Nazi ideology was rooted in racist superstition, and dressed up in the trappings of science.

And what about Stalin? Stalinism is not a tenet of athiesm? It's irresponsible to scapegoat religion for the sum total of man's inhumanity to man, and fail to address the damage caused by non-religious tyrannies in our time.

[Dookus]

10. Nice dodge

[Dookus]

17. LOL

I just saw that I typed "Santa"

And yet, the argument still works :)

[slutticus]

13. Well...not really...

You see...only those who believe in god believe in satan.

To many of them, satan is responsible for all evil in the world, and god the almighty is responsible for all good. It's this simplistic view of the world and the removal of responsibility from humankind that is one of my major concerns. If you think most people in this day and age don't think like this....think again.

Instead of looking within ourselves for the good and evil in this world, we look elsewhere.

And just off the top of my head, THE MOST notorious people in the world right now are fucking psycho-fundie freaks taking their marching orders from "god".... our beloved prez and osama.

It seems to me that all the "Good" that is available from religion can be gained without it. Why the need for it? An effective means of control? I just don't get it...

[gottaB]

19. yes, slutticus, what you say about Satan is what I am saying

And my point is that it is both irresponsible and simplistic to attribute to religion specifically misdeeds that belong to humankind in general.

True, psychofundies have been in the ascendancy, and if you follow the news it would seem that Bush and Osama are the most notorious psychofundies of the day. Will that be the judgement of history? To be sure, there are histories being written at this moment around those two figures. Seen objectively, however, there are more violent conflicts raging in the here and now. The killing fields in Darfur have revealed that the Sudanese government's embrace of Islam has in fact been less of an organizing principle than windowdressing--and that has always been observable, although religious fundamentalists have done their darnedest to obscure it. Jumping, for instance, to the next greatest human tragedy in Africa and the world, in Uganda, we find the handiwork of Joseph Kony's Lord's Resistance Army, which would have been a rather insignificant episode in the history of millenarian kooks, if not for the involvement of Sudan's ruling National Islamic Front. Do you suppose that the reasons the NIF supported the LRA are religious in nature? I would think any such arguments would be transparent attempts to rationalize wholesale slaughter. Looking at all of Africa's wars over the past twenty years, seeing the horrific scale of the killings and the depth of indifference among the nations of the Occident and Orient, one would be hard pressed to name religion as public enemy number one, the cause of humanity's greatest suffering. While there have been terrible outbreaks of religious violence, in Nigeria for instance, most of the continent's killings cannot be reasonably attributed to religion.

And if we exclude Africa from our thinking about the world, as many are wont to do, is there a case to be made? We, we Westerners of some education and concern about the world, are very much aware of the spectacular crimes of our latter day Torqemadas, as we should be. However, equally heinous cases of prisoners being mistreated have been reported in Asia, cases that have little or nothing to do with religion. Are you aware of what's been happening to the Hmong in Laos? What about Burma? Tibet? Western media, it seems, have been more apt to report on and comment upon religiously motivated violence in Asia than on other kinds of violence. That reflects in part the use of "the war on terrorism" as a framework for understanding international affairs. The issue of religious extremism represents a reasonable concern for Westerners, under the circumstances, but it is also apt to become an obsession. Other causes of pain and misery abound.

[Biased Liberal Media]

5. Well I believe that people take religion and interpret it

into what they want it to be, and many people are brainwashed bc of it. That's just MY opinion though.

[Dookus]

6. And you're right

of course.

But the bigger, underlying problem is why use superstitions to argue for or against ANYTHING? All views are NOT equal. If we lived in a rationalist world, we'd be making MUCH faster progress on the big issues we're facing.

[Pithlet]

11. If all religious people

treated the matter as it really should be, a personal matter, then religion wouldn't even be a problem. If people gathered with others of their religion to worship and revel in their faith, and left other people alone, there wouldn't be a problem. If, when doing charitable works, they always only did so because it was the right thing to do and a tenet of their faith, and NOT as a tool to coerce others to join, then there wouldn't be a problem. If religion and morality and ethics were considered by all to be mutually exclusive things, then there would be no problem. The reason religion has been such a destructive force in the world is because too many religious people don't do those things. It isn't bashing religion to acknowledge that. If enough religious people stopped reacting in a knee jerk fashion to discussion of those issues by screaming "You're bashing me!", or even just acknowledged that we have a right not to believe as they do, and that doesn't make us lesser citizens and Christian haters, that would go a LONG way.

So, basically, I agree with you :)

[Dookus]

15. My feeling is that

if you really BELIEVE your religion, you CANNOT keep it a personal matter. If your religion tells you you have an obligation to save souls for Jesus, then you simply can't keep it "personal".

If your religion tells you to fight infidels, how do you keep that "personal"?

[Pithlet]

16. Well, there is the rub

It's utopian fantasy land type wishful thinking to believe that religion could exist without all those problems I mention. For those types of religions that advocate the type of obligation you mention, you wouldn't be able to keep it personal if you follow the tenets of your faith. Those types of religions are a problem, I agree, and they're a problem because they won't leave non-believers alone.

[slutticus]

12. No debate from me...

..."Of all of the tyrannies that affect mankind, tyranny of religion is the worst."
-- Thomas Paine

[leftofthedial]

14. I can't come up with anything in your statement

that needs much debating.

:thumbsup:

but I'll be back soon to discuss this further.

[jonnyblitz]

18. I believe religion is the most EVIL fraud ever

perpetuated on humanity. its used to keep the rabble in line, plain and simple. anything "good" that supposedly comes out of religion exists OUTSIDE of religion already .

[NashVegas]

20. I Believe Religion is Something Some People Need - Or Think They Do

"opiate for the masses."

Sometimes, some people need a little drugging. Through the religion of the sky-god Jehovah, western civilization came to have a set of rules defining an ethical code of living. We call them the 10 Commandments. And there are others, less well-stated.

If nothing else, this code allowed the western race to expand exponentially, as people were maybe a little less barbaric towards each other (debatable).

For the moment, let's set aside mental illnesses that cause people to act outside of society's boundaries.

If the race were going on free will *alone* I reckon it would split down into two groups: one which could continue to flourish, and one that could not. Because you simply can't expect everyone to be a perfect superman without a carrot and stick. Without the carrot and/or stick, we turn into a race of sociopaths with no recognition of boundaries in behavior.

The carrot / stick need not be religion, as traditionally defined. Even an atheist can see a correlation in reciprocal behavior in the current lifespan.

But what about those who can't? How do you keep them from becoming a destructive force?

I believe this is a crisis many of the religious in America are grappling with, whether or not they are aware of it. As man increasingly usurps Jehova's power, all those miracles don't look so impressive. It wasn't that long ago that when tragedy happened, it was called "God's will," but now we file negligence suits. Even good Xians file them. The more you try their faith, the harder they cling to it.

Frankly, I kinda fear what's going to happen if/when this group ever collectively loses its faith in and fear of a god.

[lil-petunia]

21. damn you, you took the words out of my mouth!

:)