Does anyone agree with this?

Question

Religion in any form has done great things for the human race. Without it, in my opinion, we would not have come as far as we have. There would be no law, no civilization as most people would have had nothing to live for. We would have not grown as a society. Even the wars religion has caused have helped us advance in society and have made way for great as well as terrible inventions. Can the religious and the non religious agree on this? I hope to hear each side.

So many great answers here, how will I ever pick which one is best.

Answer 1

If anything religion has stood in the way of science, fights it all the all the way, and therefore holds us back.

Like galileo who was imprisoned for his crazy idea (theory) that the earth revolves around the sun in the 1600's. The catholic church squashed that idea because they felt it was in conflict with the bible. They "believed" the sun revolved around the earth. They eventually had to cave in on their "belief" since there was overwhelming evidence to the contrary, hundreds of years later. We all know how that turned out. Galileo wasn't forgiven by the catholic church until the 1990's by pope john paul.

Then just this passed month, George Bush (evangelical christian) vetoed a bill which would allow government funding of stem cell research, a promising new science. Eventually they (the christians) will have to cave on that "belief" too, I'm sure.

Hindsight is 20/20, and it is impossible, unless your a believer, in which case, anything is possible, to know what civilization would be like if belief in higher powers wouldn't have been involved.

I think however that we could be alot more advanced in science if people of faith would stay out of it.

Believers can keep their faith.

Let the rest of us study and research to find the facts.

Answer 2

I believe that also. You are right in the fact that we would have no laws. Because I am not sure which faith, but I think it was either the Christians or the Catholics that came up with the basics of our founding laws. probably both. I also know that it was our founding fore fathers of the U.S.A that thought there should be rules against things and situations that could harm others and cause chaos. Ya know back when people did some CRAZY things.
Anyhow, I digress. Relgion is different for EVERYBODY!!! NO ONE THINKS THE SAME EXACT MENTALITY AS ANYONE ELSE!!! I think a lot of us have to categorize our beliefs. Which also makes me believe that religion is like politics if you really read over the history of almost all religions. Including the ones that were made up!
As for the war comment, I do not believe that any war has any true positive effects, being as how SOMEONE ALWAYS DIES. Its like thousands of tiny brush fires all over the world. America can not posibly put out every single one of them!

by the way, do you really think we have "grown" as a society?

Answer 3

No, I don't agree. I don't think religion has done great things for the human race. It has caused hatred, wars, bloodshed, intolerance and much more.

I believe man would have created laws all on his own, without a devine presence. It has endorsed repression and repressed women's rights, leading women to believe they are and should continue to be subservient to men. It encourages people to hate and discriminate against other people just because someone a LONG time ago wrote it in a book. Many other books have been written saying it's okay, but they insist that is the only book they can obey.

Religion encourages blind faith... faith in something one cannot verify even exists. It discourages questioning at all... and if you DO question, they are told to have faith. And it has given the religious the impression that they are the only ones on this earth who matter and the right to tell others what they can and cannot do (and the unbelievable gal to think they can make laws based on their bible).

Finally, religion has done its best to destroy and/or control science, from Gallileo (who was labeled a heretic because he said the earth circled the sun... the religious leaders demanded he repent) to the latest issue with Intelligent Design (which has no roots in science no matter WHAT the religious folks want to believe).

No... I cannot agree on that.

I can agree that religion has done a great job of comforting people who need comfort and giving those who need it something to believe in. But that's about it.

Answer 4

I don't agree with that statement. It's not religion that's responsible for any of this. It's man that's responsible. I might be wrong, but I can't think of a single society of people throughout history that hadn't developed some religious ideology. So you can't say or imply that if religion didn't exist then we wouldn't have any of the things that you stated. Therefore conversely you can't say that it is responsible. Religion always has been an inseparable part of any culture because it has been an unavoidable, uncontrollable instinctive quality of man to come up with these ideologies. Possibly it's due to a trait in humans to never be satisfied with questions going unanswered or a desire to have an explanation for everything We didn't have answers for existence so we invented religion to fill in the void because we thought we should be able to know this.
Perhaps atheism has finally been allowed to develop in humans as we apparently get closer to having actual answers, or at least simple explanations, to the order of the universe. It seems the claims of many religion continue to have fewer and fewer unknown places to root themselves into. Maybe our current explanations of the universe are not correct, but I think it would be apparent to everyone that it should be possible to find the real truth. Just compare the religious beliefs of a thousand years ago with common knowledge of today.

Answer 5

Religon is a necessary phase, a kind of side effect of what makes us intelligent to begin with.
Intelligence has its roots in the ability to make far fetched connections. Sex equals babies. Moon in virgo means plant corn.
Unfortunately, as we gather more and more of these connections, sometimes we fail to stop and weed out the bad ones.
Thunder always follows lightening? maybe one causes other. Good.
Mysterious force causes lightening... Goood....
Large bearded man is mysterious force...... ok, too far. Go back.
Animism, the precursor to religion, is easy to understand. We all remember a time when we were growing up when we suspected that there were unseen forces at work.
Religion is an organizing of these random hopes and fears, and in its perfected state, offers us the same thing: some form of eternal life, justice, happiness, etc. and requires of us something: a sacrifice, a chant, simple belief, whatever.
Now this is OK, for the most part, but people are also power seekers, which is how we came do dominate our environment to begin with. Many people see religion as an easy way to make others do what they want. Most people are happy to go along with it, because it absolves them of any actual thought. Later they go along with it because their parents told them it was so, or because they are afraid. Fear is the main ingredient of any religion. Promise on one hand, threaten on the other. God, save me from thy followers.
So, yes, Religion, despite all the death destruction and suffering it has caused, has some redeeming values.
OR has in the past.
We now know enough about how things work to abandon our superstitions and get on with things.
Realistically, this is not a very good option, because people, for the most part, are too weak to consider their own permanent mortality. They cannot face it, so they still need to pretend, even if they don't really believe it.
Fortunately, religion has been changing, all religions, becoming easier and more convenient for modern man. (some hold-outs obviously)
This is nothing new, of course, no religion stays the same for very long. Religion, in some form will stay with us, or at least the weaker minded segment of the population.
The major shift that we may see in our lifetimes (in educated society) is that Athiests will no longer be prosecuted, and unbelievers in general will not feel pressured to pretend they believe when they really don't.

Answer 6

I am not religious, but I do agree. Most of the lessons in the Bible are pretty much common sense, so if you do not have any, you'd better start reading! Most religions have the same message, love and respect yourself and others-bottom line. Do not do anything that would disgrace you or others. A good message if your parents don't teach it to you first. Some people need religion or they would go crazy and do all sorts of nutty stuff, some people need an answer to what happens after life and religion provides them with that. Me, I'm okay with not knowing-I just try to live an honorable life.

Answer 7

Both good and bad come out of any idea and any action.

Saying "religion has done good things" is both a strictly true statement and a very misleading one.
The better question to ask is, "while religion can be said to have caused good things, is it necessarily the BEST way to go about life?"

To which the answer is "no". You don't need religion for law, creativity, purpose, ingenuity, or anything else. Pretty much all things work better if you're not trying to use myths and superstitions as guides. Ask any atheist.

Answer 8

Religion has added some and has taken away. While there are valid arguments for either side, your question makes me think of all the suppression of intellectual and scientific endeavors by the church. People being persecuted for believing the world was not flat, that kinda thing. Under the fear of persecution and prosecution, many intellectuals did not realize their full potential and, thus, religion actually inhibited our advancement. We may have been able to grow even further as a society if religion had not gotten in the way of science.

Answer 9

Man is very ingenious and driven with or without faith in God. If God exists and is the infinite creator then whether each person believes or not will not change the structure of our vast universe and our life on this planet. What changes is the life of each person who chooses to believe or not. Good and evil exist and persons choose which they want to follow. Advancing as a society is not really all that important. Who is to say that our lives today are better or worse then in each civilization before us. Excepting out the very vile civilizations.
Try to imagine life in 2200. Some would argue it will be very very difficult, if life continues as we know it at that time. The real question is what are each of us going to do with our lives while we are here on earth and can we make a difference in the lives of those we come in contact with?

Answer 10

Well even though religion has spawned some advances it has probably caused more harm than good. Not only the religious wars, but the inquisition, the death of martyr after martyr after martyr. Hitler used religion to justify the persecution of the jews. There are far to many religious atrocities that have been commited in the name of "God", "Yahweh", "Allah", or "Qetzlcoatl" than could be named here, but i can give you a website that catalogues many of them here: http://skeptically.org/enlightenment/id7.html

Religion has oftened impeaded scientific development as well, think of stem cell research, Gallileo Galilei, the scopes trial, and copernicus.

So no, I do not agree with you, religion may have done some good things for us, but in the long run it weighs down humanity.