Has religion been more of a positive influence on civilization or has it been more negative?

Answer 1

Negative, it creates a enough negativity on this site alone

Answer 2

Given the numbers of crusades, holy wars and jihads, or killing, maiming, and torturing people in the name of religion, the answer has to be that religion is an insane idea whose consequences have been mostly negative.

Going to war, killing people, maiming people, torturing people to believe one certain way over another is not what any religion purports to believe at its base. The message all religions preach is peace and love, yet the way humans go about their lives has little to do with peace and love. It's as if the advice is too simple, so we have to complicate it to make it more understandable. How insane is that?

Imposed celibacy for priests has contributed to the pedophile priest scandal in the Catholic church. It is not natural for people to be completely celibate their entire adult life.

Religion has created many ways to enforce sexism, such as women not being allowed to be ordained. Mary Magdelene has been framed throughout history. Men have historically and culturally been privileged and preferred. Women in religion are adjuncts, never the main players. Sexism is always wrong. Any institution that promotes sexism as a belief or a way of life is inherently wrong and needs to be retooled or scrapped.

Religion has also spawned great art, music, painting, sculpture and literature, but to my mind, the sexism, perversion of the human sex drive and wars tilt the scales toward a negative influence overall.

Cheers, K

P. S. Cheers to BeObjective -- 6,000,000 reasons why religion (even state-sanctioned religion like fascism) is negative -- just look at the Holocaust. Hitler may have killed as many as 10,000,000 or more people if you count the Jews and the Gypsies, the teachers, intellectuals, professors, writers, handicapped, blind, old, infants, toddlers, diseased, and those labeled subversives.

I agree: different religions just means separation. None of us are separate. Just love God, love each other, do your best, and when you don't do your best, pick yourself up, learn from your mistakes, make right, and keep going. How simple is that?

Answer 3

Religion began as an attempt by primitive peoples to explain what they could not understand. It filled in the unknown that many people feared, and allowed them to cooperate. So--once upon a time--religion was a positive influence.

Now, however, we have answered most of the formerly unanswerable questions that justified the existence of religion, so religion is no longer necessary. Think about it this way, if you were trying to publish a book in the world today, would you hire a dark-age scribe?

Answer 4

Try comparing with the fruits of atheism in the 20th and 21st century, all the religious problems from the beginning still don't measure upto those for murder and mayhem. There are plenty of religious squabbles, but they don't always lead to significant evil except through lapsed religionists who do not understand their religion.

KILL TALLY
Joseph Stalin, atheist - Approximately 20 million, including up to 14.5 million needlessly starved to death. At least one million executed for political "offences".
Mao Zedong, atheist - Kill tally: 14 to 20 million deaths from starvation during the 'Great Leap Forward'. Tens of thousands killed and millions of lives ruined during the 'Cultural Revolution'
Pol pot, atheist - Kill tally: One to three million (or between a quarter and a third of the country's population).

Fidel Castro and company, Kim Jong II and company, etc, you want to check their tallies ?

The list goes on and on in the 20th century.

(BTW atheism is a religion because their dependents are just as aggressive and murderous - witness the Soviet union massacre of religionists within that union)

Answer 5

No! But "orginized" religion has had a negative influence. Hell just look at the history of religion.

Answer 6

Negative !!
Just think about it, how many people have been displaced, killed, persecuted/tortured, banished etc.... the list is endless. All in the name of religion.

Now people get mistreated just by thinking the wrong spiritual way. Mankind or womankind will never be able to set aside different beliefs and just treat people as people.

Answer 7

It has been more of a negative influence in the world than anything else

Answer 8

Definately Negative. I can think of 6,000,000 reasons between Hitler, Gehad and Israel. How can you overcome that many deaths w/ what religion has given the world? Also having different religions inadvertently separates and segregates people.

Answer 9

Religion per se is a positive force in it's purest form and if used as it was intended. It is us who follow religion that turns its use to something negative.

Answer 10

Its very difficult to say, because that kind of comparison would require an example of culture without religion (which has never ever existed)

Until you have a control group, you can not make any conclusions.