Is religion harmful to society?

[Pyrotex]

I'm ...Today, religion looks down on stem cell research, calling it "playing with god" when it could indeed help millions of lives. ...

So far, I have enjoyed your posts. Good job at a balanced presentation. :evil:

 

Notice how when religions accuse this group or that person of "playing god", they ignore all the logical fallacies they generate??

 

It's "playing god" every time you have surgery, every time you wash your hands and kill all the germs on them, every time you use disinfectant and bandaids, every time you take aspirin for pain. In the ages of the 1st Millenium and before, all infections, diseases, aches and pains were visited upon Man by god, either as a punishment, or a test.

 

What does it really mean to "play god"? Does it not mean to take away god's authority and decisions? To do the things that god had traditionally done? Did not god create the day and the night? What are WE doing making electricity and flourescent bulbs?

 

Religious pundits too often are guilty of "cherry-picking" just those specific circumstance to call "playing god" -- and they ignore the vast realms of other circumstances where we have long since taken or made godly powers for ourselves, and altered the paths of god-decreed happenstance that should have occured by his will.

 

To those pundits, I say, "deal with it". :lol:

[The D.S.]

Thank you, Pyro, and you have extreme Kudos to your previous statement concerning "playing God" and the logical mishaps that fall with it. I wonder what people would say if we called them out on such a statement? I can imagine a very quiet response...:hihi:

[HydrogenBond]

Is religion harmful to society?. There is one social experiment that showed that the opposite was true. The case in point is the old Soviet Union which did away with religion. This experiment gave us a lot of data involving hundreds of millions of people and the affect of religious taboo. Utopia didn't form, rather it became a repressive society with high rates of alcoholism, little individual liberty, little economic prosperity, high rates of systematic murder and imprisonment, etc. There was a lot of good science.

 

The experiment changed. "Would religion help this society without religion". In the early 1980's religion was allowed to make a comeback. The autonomy of countries was restored, human rights improved, economic prosperity increased. There was still a lot of good science. So the answer based on that experiment was, lack of religion was harmful. While adding religion to a society without any religion, was very beneficial.

 

If we tried to analyze the data, without religion man tries to act like God but it too limited to do a good job. He gets paranoid and repressive. When a higher power is assumed in control there is more self restraint and a greater willingness to accept others since one is not the final judge. One can push the limit, but does so more in the constraints of an open society.

[Rade]

I do not think religion, in itself, is in any way harmful to society. Religious abstractions are the product of the primitive human mind--they represent a primitive form of philosophy held by humans early in human evolution as their attempt to offer a comprehensive view of reality. Thus to say that religion is harmful to human society is to say that philosophy (in primitive form) is harmful to society--which is false.

 

Now, what has become harmful to society, is that a small group of alpha humans many many years ago decided to twist (transform) the meaning of religion abstractions such that they were held to be the product, not of the human mind, but of Divine revelation--of the essence of the reality they attempted to comprehend. They did this because they understood that this was the only way to control the individual human mind, and thus behavior, of the primitive humans in their tribal groups. Today this small group of people go by the titles of minister, rabbis, priest, imam, mystic, witch doctor, etc.

 

Thus, I conclude that all religion derived from Divine revelation will always be harmful to society, while all religion derived from abstract reason within the human mind is worthy of the title "good".

[Rade]

Is religion harmful to society?... There is one social experiment that showed that the opposite was true. The case in point is the old Soviet Union which did away with religion....

Not at all--the Russian Orthodox church was never diminished in the hearts of the people in the former Soviet Union. Communism is nothing but a variation on the religious theme--it substitutes the Divine Revelation of God with the Divine Revelation of the "State"--the vast majority of the common folks in the former Soviet Union rejected this philosophy. It was not religion that transformed the Soviet Union, it was the economic folly of Communism.

[Buffy]

Of course, especially over the last decade or so in the US, the political parties sure have taken on the trappings of religions: their positions are absolutist and taken as faith, and those who speak against those truths are accused of apostasy ("lowering taxes," "universal health care," etc.)....

 

Have we replaced one demon with another?

 

I think one of the great problems we have in the Republican Party is that we don't encourage you to be nasty. We encourage you to be neat, obedient, loyal and faithful and all those Boy Scout words, which would be great around a campfire but are lousy in politics, :hihi:

Buffy

[The D.S.]

Buffy, would you elaborate further about the Republican Party for me? What is your meaning?

[Buffy]

Well, I'll try to be non-partisan: the Democrats have their sacred cows too.

 

But in the last couple of weeks, the extreme conservatives in the Repubilcan party (I prefer to call the "reactionaries" actually) have been flailing John McCain for being a "Liberal" and not worthy of the Republican nomination. Ann Coulter even said she'd vote for Hillary if McCain was nominated!

ANN COULTER: Hillary is absolutely more conservative. Moreover she lies less than John McCain, she's smarter than John McCain. When she's caught shamelessly lying at least the Clintons know they've been caught lying. McCain is so stupid he doesn't even know he's been caught.

 

ALAN COLMES: Go! Could you fill in for me next week? Let me get this straight, would you vote for Hillary Clinton?

 

COULTER: Yes!

 

COLMES: You would actually go into a voting booth ...

 

COULTER: If it's close and the candidate is John McCain, because John McCain is not only bad for Republicanism -- which he definitely is -- he's bad for the country.

 

COLMES: Can I tell you the last thing Hillary Clinton wants is Ann Coulter's endorsement.

 

And its all because he "betrayed" "conservative principles" by actually working with Democrats in the Senate on compromise legislation and supporting "extreme liberal positions" like outlawing torture.

 

I think the government should be spying on all Arabs, engaging in torture as a televised spectator sport, dropping daisy cutters wantonly throughout the Middle East and sending liberals to Guantanamo, :hihi:

Buffy

[chilehed]

The Old and New Testaments are full of "miracles" which have no explanation in a rational universe...

First, that’s just a philosophical presupposition on your part, and you have absolutely no way of demonstrating it by means of science. Second, it has absolutely nothing to do with what I said: the important part isn’t whether or not it’s true that a rational god created a rational universe, the important part is that they believed that it’s true.

 

Modern Science had its birth (arguably) with Copernicus, Galileo or Newton.

Perhaps, perhaps not. That has nothing do do with what I said – but notice that all three of them were products of Christendom.

 

None of them invoked their religion as a defense of their scientific ideas.

That also has nothing to do with what I said. I’m not talking about whether or not their religious beliefs formed the content of their discoveries. I’m talking about how the culture of Christendom was uniquely suited to foster scientific investigation, precisely because of the way it viewed the universe as being created by a rational god.

 

Copernicus studied the Greek language, mathematics, and the writings of Plato in Bologna, and in 1500 gave astronomical lectures in Rome. In 1501 he was installed as a canon of the cathedral of Frouenburg, and immediately was given a leave of absence to study law and medicine. On his return from leave he conducted his astronomical observations from a turret in the cathedral, recalculated the orbits of the sun, moon and major planets, and published 27 observances. In order to do this work in the Cathedral, he would have had to get permission from the Church hierarchy. In 1533 he gave lectures on his theories to Pope Clement VII, who approved of his work. There’s nothing here that sounds like the Church was standing in the way of science, and in fact the Church made it possible for Copernicus to conduct his work.

 

In fact, the Vatican Observatory is one of the oldest astronomical institutes in the world. Pope Gregory XIII constituted a committee to study the data involved in the reform of the caledar that occurred in 1582. The Papacy founded three early obervatories: the Observatory of the Roman College in 1774, the Observatory of the Capitol in 1827, and the Specula Vaticana in 1789 in the Tower of the Winds within the Vatican. Catholic cathedrals in Bologna, Florence, Paris, and Rome were constructed to function as solar observatories. When Kepler said that planetary orbits were elliptical rather than circular, Catholic astronomer Giovanni Cassini verified Kepler’s position through observations he made in the Basilica of San Petronio. Does any of this constitute an aversion to scientific investigation?

 

Not only that, the Jesuits have a long history of scientific investigation. 35 of the moon’s crater are named in honor of Jesuits, and there's a good reason for it. The Jesuits contributed to the development of clocks, barometers, geometry, optics, magnetism and electricity, and symbolic logic. They theorized about the human anatomy, the possibility of flight, the effect of the moon on tides, and the wave aspect of light. They were the first western scientists to make contact with India and China, in the 17th and 18th Centuries. And the Jesuits made great contributions to the field of seismology, having installed 38 seismographic stations around the world between the years 1868-1950. Again, hardly the kind of thing that would be the result of a religion that stifled science.

 

And let’s not forget about the Monks, who were masters of advanced agricultural methods. They conducted breeding programs for cattle and plants, and introdiced cattle rearing, brewing, bee keeping, cheese making, and water storage and irrigation techniques to many areas that knew nothing of them. Gregor Mendel, the father of genetics, was an Augustinian monk who did his work in the garden of the monastary. And again, he would have had permission from the Abbot of the monastery to perform his scientific investigations.

 

The Monks were also known for their metalworking skills. Evidence of a 16th Century iron smelter has been found associated with Rievaulx Abbey in North Yorkshire, England, and the slag at the site has a very low iron content, significantly lower than typical for the age and approaching the levels found in the slag from a modern furnace. Not too shabby an accomplishment for people who don't like scientific advancements.

 

That’s just a small peek at the advancements made by Christians and done with the permission and blessing of the Catholic Church. You can claim that the Church has stood against science if you like, but there is absolutely no credebility to such claims. They are utterly without historical merit.

 

And again, one of the things that made it possible was the Catholic insistence that a rational god made a rational universe, and that by studying the universe you can learn about God. No religion had EVER had such beliefs, and they were a vital component of the culture from which modern science had its birth.

[Galapagos]

Is religion harmful to society?. There is one social experiment that showed that the opposite was true. The case in point is the old Soviet Union which did away with religion. This experiment gave us a lot of data involving hundreds of millions of people and the affect of religious taboo. Utopia didn't form, rather it became a repressive society with

high rates of alcoholism, little individual liberty, little economic prosperity, high rates of systematic murder and imprisonment, etc. There was a lot of good science.

 

The experiment changed. "Would religion help this society without religion". In the early 1980's religion was allowed to make a comeback. The autonomy of countries was restored, human rights improved, economic prosperity increased. There was still a lot of good science. So the answer based on that experiment was, lack of religion was harmful. While adding religion to a society without any religion, was very beneficial.

 

If we tried to analyze the data, without religion man tries to act like God but it too limited to do a good job. He gets paranoid and repressive. When a higher power is assumed in control there is more self restraint and a greater willingness to accept others since one is not the final judge. One can push the limit, but does so more in the constraints of an open society.

 

Correlation is not causation.

The formation of the Soviet Union resulted in high crime rates and low standard of living foremost because communism is an inherently flawed economic plan.

As ice cream sales rise, violent crime rises. This does not mean ice cream is causing people to be violent, it has to do with ice cream sales rising in the summer and heat making people more prone to violence.

As mentioned above, more than a third of the Soviet Union's population professed religious belief and practiced despite the government's policy. It was also mentioned that what was going on with Stalin was bordering on religiosity anyway. A more accurate way to describe what happened, is that the collectivists tried to play 'the invisible hand' of a free market economy, not the invisible hand of a god. This resulted in poverty and crime, because no one governing body or individual can know enough about the aggregate economy to properly plan it.

In contrast with your "social experiment",

 

According to Norris and Inglehart (2004), 64% of those in Sweden do not believe in God. According to Bondeson (2003), 74% of Swedes said that they did not believe in “a personal God.” According to Greeley (2003), 46% of Swedes do not believe in God, although only 17% self-identify as “atheist.” According to Froese (2001), 69% of Swedes are either atheist or agnostic. According to Gustafsoon and Pettersson (2000), 82% of Swedes do not believe in a “personal God.” According to Davie (1999), 85% of Swedes do not believe in God.

 

Yet Sweden is known for having an relatively low crime rate when compared with other developed nations, on the opposite end of the spectrum from the U.K., the U.S., and Australia, which have a majority theist Christian population.

 

 

I'm sure many other things contribute to the crime rate in Sweden, and I am personally not qualified or prepared to say what those things are. Take this as you will.

 

 

To answer the thread, yes, I'd say religion is in many cases very harmful to society. Turn on the news for a little while, or open a history book if you can't think of a way religion has been used to justify atrocities on a grand scale.

Religion is also helpful to society in some cases, but is it necessary for people to be helpful and good? No, it is not.

Mythology is nice to look back on and understand how we got where we are today, but people asserting it as truth with no evidence, and using it to justify illogical and harmful decrees is something we need to phase out of our society.

[Qfwfq]

That also has nothing to do with what I said. I’m not talking about whether or not their religious beliefs formed the content of their discoveries.

That's a much better effort than your first reply to Pyro :hihi: but you aren't effectively defending your points and you are knocking down a strawman or two. I'm not contradicting the interesting facts you cite about history of science, I'm talking about skewed nexus between what you say and what he says, don't blame it only on him as you did above. I do however criticize statements such as:

I’m talking about how the culture of Christendom was uniquely suited to foster scientific investigation, precisely because of the way it viewed the universe as being created by a rational god.

How uniquely? The Greeks weren't Christians and neither were the Muslims that made progress while Europe was wallowing in the earlier Middle Ages, with the amanuenses doing no more than preserving the classic works. you cite late --or even post-- medieval facts which can more properly be called Rennaissance, these were a reprisal of classic investigation with the addition of new things from the Middle East and India (not Christian either). How does all that prove your point?

[chilehed]

That's a much better effort than your first reply to Pyro :hihi:

Yeah, I was in a bad mood at the time, and should have known better than to be posting.

 

I do however criticize statements such as:How uniquely? The Greeks weren't Christians and neither were the Muslims that made progress while Europe was wallowing in the earlier Middle Ages, with the amanuenses doing no more than preserving the classic works. you cite late --or even post-- medieval facts which can more properly be called Rennaissance, these were a reprisal of classic investigation with the addition of new things from the Middle East and India (not Christian either). How does all that prove your point?

Certainly they took advantage of the discoveries of those around and before them. But the question was "is religion harmful to society?", and Pyro made the claim that science and Christianity have always been at war. The fact is that Christianity has never been at war with science; its presuppositions about the nature of God and the meaning of the universe created an environment that fostered scientific investigation, and its religious hierarchy took an active role in supporting such investigations. So the answer is no, religion is not necessarily harmful to society and in fact Christianity has proven to be a great societal good.

 

How unique? What other religions conciously understood that a rational god made a rational universe, that because of this the universe must work accoding to laws that can be understood by human reason, and that something of the nature of God is manifest in creation such that learning about the universe can serve to illuminate what can be known about the nature of God? It can't be denied that that combination of beliefs would be a powerful incentive to scientific investigation.

[REASON]

The fact is that Christianity has never been at war with science; its presuppositions about the nature of God and the meaning of the universe created an environment that fostered scientific investigation, and its religious hierarchy took an active role in supporting such investigations.

 

How unique? What other religions conciously understood that a rational god made a rational universe, that because of this the universe must work accoding to laws that can be understood by human reason, and that something of the nature of God is manifest in creation such that learning about the universe can serve to illuminate what can be known about the nature of God? It can't be denied that that combination of beliefs would be a powerful incentive to scientific investigation.

 

While I'm not going to sit here and suggest that you are completely wrong in your understanding of the relationship between religion and science throughout history, I do believe you are sugar-coating it to say the least.

 

For example, in your explanations of historical scientific contributor's relationships with religion above, you failed to mention Galileo. If Chritianity has always been positive and supportive of scientific research, why did the church force Galileo to recant his findings that were in support of the Copernican Heliocentric model of the solar system, in favor of the Geocentric model that was approved by the church at the time, and spend the last days of his life under house arrest?

 

Why was it necessary for the Catholic Church to prohibit the advocasy of heliocentricism? Could it have been that Christianity, during the inquisition, had too much state power, and used it to stifle Galileo's assertions because they were contrary to the long accepted Geocentric model that remained consistent with the literal, biblical understanding of the universe? Absolutely!

 

Why was the Library of Alexandria repeatedly burned by conquerors with religious interests? Was it because it contained scientific research and information that was considered paganistic, or inconsistant with the Qur'an?

 

Or how about in our society today? Why is there such an outward and open resistance by Christians to the science of evolutionary theory, or Darwinism, if Christianity is so supportive of rational explanations consistant with a rational god? Or how about stem cell research, cloning, the biological nature of homosexuality, birth control, or even global climate change? All of these issues are deemed morally inconsistent with religious teachings, and there is a concerted effort by the religious hierarchy to demonize these concepts as heresy. This is not unlike the attitude during the time of Galileo.

 

I tend to believe that throughout history, religion has only been tolerant of science when the information and products it generates are not in conflict with interpretations of the scripture. The scriptures have always been seen by religious leadership as superior to any scientific notions. And when religions have been in positions of power, it was not uncommon for scientific ideas to be rejected and condemned if they were considered threatening. Some, such as Giordano Bruno, were even burned at the stake as heretics for their ideas.

 

To me, it is when religious institutions are in positions of power that they become harmful to society because they will attemt to subvert scientific advancement they deem inappropriate in favor of their form of dogmatism. I fear this has become more prevalent in our government today.

 

In my personal experience, their hasn't been this loving symbiosis between science and religion as you seem to imply.

[ughaibu]

religions conciously understood that a rational god made a rational universe, that because of this the universe must work accoding to laws

It's not clear that the universe does work under the rule of laws, various prominent philosophers of science, such as Cartwright and van Fraassen, reject the notion.

[chilehed]

It's not clear that the universe does work under the rule of laws, various prominent philosophers of science, such as Cartwright and van Fraassen, reject the notion.

That may be true, but it's not revlevant to this discussion. What's relevant is that they believed it to be true.

 

Still working on a reply to REASON's post.

[ughaibu]

It was also believed true by Anaxagoras, Democritus, Epicurus, etc, without the requirement for any gods. Religion, christian or otherwise, isn't required for the view that the universe behaves according to the dictates of assumed natural laws.

[chilehed]

While I'm not going to sit here and suggest that you are completely wrong in your understanding of the relationship between religion and science throughout history, I do believe you are sugar-coating it to say the least.

 

For example, in your explanations of historical scientific contributor's relationships with religion above, you failed to mention Galileo. If Chritianity has always been positive and supportive of scientific research, why did the church force Galileo to recant his findings that were in support of the Copernican Heliocentric model of the solar system, in favor of the Geocentric model that was approved by the church at the time, and spend the last days of his life under house arrest?

There's a huge popular mythology that's grown up about exactly what happened and why. Galileo wasn't the first person to propose a heliocentric model. Copernicus had come to the same conclusion, and, as I pointed out in my post above, in 1533 Pope Clement VII received his lectures on the subject with approval (afeter which he was encouraged to publish them). So when Galileo came along 60 years later with the same conclusion it was old news.

 

hy was it necessary for the Catholic Church to prohibit the advocasy of heliocentricism? Could it have been that Christianity, during the inquisition, had too much state power, and used it to stifle Galileo's assertions because they were contrary to the long accepted Geocentric model that remained consistent with the literal, biblical understanding of the universe? Absolutely!

There's also a huge poular mythology about the inquisitions, but you're close to the right answer. Galileo went beyond teaching heliocentrism as a predictive tool, he began to claim that it actully reflected reality. But the evidence available at the time was insufficient to warrant abandoning the belief that the Ptolemaic system, which was adequately predictive and which also agreed with the accepted understanding of the meaning of Sacred Scripture, was not the way the universe actually worked. Cardinal Bellamine told Galileo in 1615 that if he could provide sufficient proof that the heliocentric model reflected actual reality (rather than merely being a good predictive tool) then the Church would look at it and reconsider its position, but otherwise there was no reason to rock the boat. And yet not only did Galileo continue to publicly and loudly insist on teaching that his model reflected reality, he apparently began to claim that Sacred Scripture itself (not merely the accepted and common understanding of it) was in error. The first rocked the boat hard without having sufficient evidence to do so, and the second was outright heresy.

 

Galileo's letter to Castelli was presented to inquisitions twice as evidence of heresy, but both times the charges were dismissed. Apparently there had been some dissembling in the charges made against him, but when the actual texts of the letter was evaluated nothing was found to substansiate the charges.

 

Galileo created his own problem by his lack of prudence, and the predictable result was that patience with him was lost and he was told to shut up about it. Nothing at all would have happened to him if he had been more circumspect.

 

And in retrospect, given that we now understand the universe to be acentric (rather, that any center it may have lies outside of 4-d spacetime), it seems a bit odd that people today fault the Church for being resistant to the claim that scientific observation had determined that heliocentricity reflects actual reality.

 

Why was the Library of Alexandria repeatedly burned by conquerors with religious interests? Was it because it contained scientific research and information that was considered paganistic, or inconsistant with the Qur'an?

I’m not terribly familiar with that topic. My understanding is that, of the four times the libraries were attacked, only one had anything to do with Christians and it’s not clear that any of the libraries were destroyed at that time. The objects targeted for destruction were the pagan temples and religious articles, and the motive was not any animus against scientific knowledge. It's already been pointed out that Christendom had no problem with absorbing the scientific discoveries of other cultures.

 

Or how about in our society today? Why is there such an outward and open resistance by Christians to the science of evolutionary theory, or Darwinism, if Christianity is so supportive of rational explanations consistant with a rational god? Or how about stem cell research, cloning, or the biological nature of homosexuality? All of these issues are deemed morally inconsistent with religious teachings, and there is a concerted effort by the religious hierarchy to demonize these concepts as heresy. This is not unlike the attitude during the time of Galileo.

You’ve raised four separate topics in one paragraph. How long do you want this post to be? :) Real life calls, I have to be brief.

 

Evolutionary theory: The objections are twofold. First, that it conflicts with what (among Young Earth Creationists) is the common understanding of Sacred Scripture. Second, that it’s bad science! That’s really important here – the fact that the objection is that it’s bad science proves that the motive isn’t an aversion to science. Again, what is relevant here isn’t whether or not they are correct in their assessment of the scientific merit of the theory, what’s relevant is what they believe about the merits of the theory.

 

Stem cell research and cloning: I’m not aware of a single Christian who is opposed to stem cell research, and there are no Christian denominations or advocacy groups that stand against it. Not one. What is resisted is embryonic stem cell research, and the motive is not an aversion to science. The objection is again twofold: 1.) The belief that it is morally illicit to engage in the creation of what is objectively a distinct human person, outside of the context of the marital act. 2.) The belief that is it morally illicit to destroy the life of an innocent human person in the pursuit of scientific research. You might object that such an embryo is not actually a human person and that there's nothing immoral about creating it in a petri dish, but once again that is totally irrelevant to this discussion. We’re discussing motives here, what’s relevant is what people believe.

 

The biological nature of homosexuality: again, the objection is that there is insufficient evidence to demonstrate that there is a biological vector, and that it's bad science. What’s relevant is what they believe about the merits of the theory.

 

The scriptures have always been seen by religious leadership as superior to any scientific notions. And when religions have been in positions of power, it was not uncommon for scientific ideas to be rejected and condemned if they were considered threatening. Some, such as Giordano Bruno, were even burned at the stake as heretics for their ideas.

Bruno was condemned as a heretic for his theological ideas, it had nothing to do with his believing in the Copernican model. If it did, they would have condemned Copernicus.

 

In my personal experience, their hasn't been this loving symbiosis between science and religion as you seem to imply.

I certainly can’t speak to your personal experience or perceptions.