Why do people hang onto superstition (religion) when it is so detrimental to society?

Question

1. prayer for instance, does not work.
2. religion forces mankind to do horrendous acts in the name of "god".. i.e. 911.
3. relgious people reject obvious scientific facts.. i. e. rejection of evolution.
4. relgion and politics has: kept women as second class citizens, been used to justify racism, causes wars, ostracises whole groups, etc...
5. there is absolutely no proof of any god.

Answer 1

You say that Religion is detrimental to society, but are there very few successful Atheist Empires, right?

Prayer, in most religions, including many denominations of Christianity, is viewed not so much as a petition to get things as it is an act of approaching God. If you look at the Lord's
Prayer, you won't see a place to ask for a pony.

I don't think you can fairly claim that religion forces people to do horrendous acts. Horrendous acts have pretty complicated origins, and just focusing on the religious origins seems unfair. What about economic forces, racial strife, etc?

Many religious people do believe in Evolution, even thought it's not a "Fact," it's a "Theory." (But please realize the difference between a scientific theory, and the common use of the word "theory.") Many, many religious people accept scientific reasoning and practices. Catholic Universities, for example, do teach courses in evolution.

And, as we both have said before, many people use religion to justify bad behavior, but that doesn't mean they wouldn't use something else to justify it if religion weren't around.

Answer 2

1. prayer for instance, does not work.
You have no proof. For all we know it does.
2. religion forces mankind to do horrendous acts in the name of "god".. i.e. 911.
People only use religion as an excuse. They are not following any form of religion. Those terrorists were brainwashed and gave muslims a bad name.
3. relgious people reject obvious scientific facts.. i. e. rejection of evolution.
I am a christian and don't reject science. You are talking about a minority of people who still do.
4. relgion and politics has: kept women as second class citizens, been used to justify racism, causes wars, ostracises whole groups, etc...
Once again. People who did this used religion as an excuse. Hitler was a christian. Did ordering the killing of 6 million Jews follow the 10 commandments? I am a female and am not a second class citizen. Men have used this as an excuse to opress women. Women were never really persecuted in christianity anyway.
5. there is absolutely no proof of any god.
There is no proof that there is no God. Neither of us is right.

We hang onto religion as we did not imprison scientists hundreds of years ago, people who are long dead did.

Religion brings people comfort.

Kate

Answer 3

1. Prayer DOES work. So sorry it isn't working for you. Perhaps it is lack of faith or a hardened heart that is preventing you from seeing the answers to prayer that God is giving you. He does't always answer "yes" - He answers in the way that He knows is best for all concerned.

2. Religion doesn't force mankind to do anything horrendous. It is a person's character deficiencies that cause them to do horrendous things in the name of God or some other cause.

3. I am a Christian and I don't reject obvious scientific facts. God created humans with the ability to think and to invent and create things. He gave us science as a tool. He knew that the abuse of the ability to use science would make us arrogant and think we don't need Him. The vast majority of Christians are not against scientific facts - they are against the notion that science supercedes the evidence of the Bible. It is possible for science and Biblical concepts to go hand in hand. Problem is, so many evolutionists totally discount the Bible, while many Bible scholars are able to prove the facts of the Bible WITH scientific evidence.

4. Religion and politics have not kept perpetuated sexism, racism, wars etc. Again, referring to point #2, it is the character deficiencies of people that perpetuate these things. Many religious and political groups do a lot of good to help the poor, the dying, the suffering, the underpriviliged, the women in countries where women are treated as property etc. Again, people will latch onto to a religious ideal or political belief to justify their evil actions. It is not the religious ideal or political belief that is to blame - it is the person or group of people who abuse those ideals or beliefs in order to harm others that is to blame.

5. There IS proof of God. You don't see Him because your heart is hardened and the Bible says you WON'T see Him because of your hardened heart. Talk to anyone who has actually had answered prayers, miraculous events take place or had direct spiritual intervention take place in times of extreme crisis, and you will see that there is indeed a God. The mere fact that you draw breath is proof of God because no scientific evidence has ever been able to explain, no matter how hard people try, how this earth and the universe could have just accidentally "happened" and evolved to the state of complexity it is in now. Mere chance and accident cannot make something as complex as every life form is. There HAS to be intelligent design here.

Answer 4

I think you're taking a very, very narrow and specific subset of Middle Eastern (i.e., JCI) religions and applying it with a very, very broad brush to ALL religions. In so doing, you reject obvious scientific *methods* like objectivity, logic, and proof.

1. Prayer as a form of positive thinking DOES work, actually, and has been scientifically demonstrated to do so. Whether or not there's anyone there listening seems to be a moot point and is a subjective matter of belief; when I offer mead to FreyR, for example, while I may (and in fact do) believe he hears and responds, it is more important that I *proceed* and *behave* as if he is there, than if he can be objectively proven to be so.

2. I would say that religion, especially JCI religions, offer people an excuse to do horrendous things, rather than coerce them. Although the dichotomous thinking JCI tends to engender as worldview certainly doesn't HELP.

3. Well, some do, some don't. An awful lot of 14 year old post monkies here in R&S do, yes, and the currently politically fashionable Religious Right, although I think the latter just finds it useful in getting out the ignorance vote.

4. Again, JCI religions only, especially in regards to the treatment of women. That seems to be a Middle Eastern tendency in general, and a case of cultural bias being reinforced by religious interpretation. A woman of 1000 years ago in Heathen Scandinavia had more rights and autonomy than a woman in Saudi Arabia TODAY, but both cultures had/have a "religion."

5. No, but there is ample proof that people throughout history have been drawn to ecstatic experiences and communal expressions of faith.

To deny the historicity of subjective religous experience and its role in the unification of communities and cultures is just as weak-minded and narrow as insisting on one single form of religion for everyone. The impulse to connect to the divine is human; unfortunately, so is the tendency to treat subjective gnosis as objective truth.

Answer 5

There is some sort of need for the thinking mind to belive in some sort of afterlife and higher power I guess- but why do you care? I don't belive but it's not like I commit the same bias by thinking myslef superior.

1) no more then wishing for something except they transfer the ownership onto a "higher" power

2) Politics and anyother type of belief system, including an ethical code do the same thing

3) They also reject scientific justification for euthenasia of the old and disabled, as well as abortion and capital punishment

4) Religion has more often been used as an additional justifier for such crimes to add-on to the justification- I mean the Conquistadors were primarily about Gold first, God second.

5) True enough- but that has been the case since the beginning, what difference is it now.

Why must so many atheists like yourself give the rest of us a bad name? Why belittle others belifs and in turn basically try to convert them to yours? it makes you no better.

Answer 6

1) How do you know? Are you somehow privy to every single time someone has prayed and what the results of that prayer were?
2) Religion does no such thing. People don't need religion in order to do horrendous acts. Religion is just an excuse for them.
3) Even if evolution (in the sense of universal common descent) were true, how is it so bad that people disbelieve in it?
4) Same as #2 above.
5) By definition, there can be no proof of God since God is supernatural and therefore beyond our senses (unless He so wills that we can perceive Him).

Answer 7

1. It gives people hope, sometimes that's enough to keep society going.

2. It also motivates others to great acts of charity. Case in point most Hospitals in this country were set up by religious institutions.

3. That might be unfortunately true of some, but for many in history religion has been a catalyst for scientific study IE Issac Newton.

4. Atheistic society's have no trouble using racism and ostracizing people as well. My father could not get a job in the field of his college degree, because of his ethnic background. This was in the Soviet Union in the 1970's. Are you going to say this was because of religion?


Religion is a double edged sword, good men use it to help others. Evil men use it to help themselves at the expense of others. Others simply do not use it at all, and they can still do either good or evil to others.

Answer 8

1. No more than meditation
2. Osama citied only political, not religious motives for 911 (removal of US troops from Saudi Arabi, end to sanctions against Iraq, restoration of 1967 Israeli borders, etc.)
3. Less than 16% of modern Christian denominations reject evolution - it is official Church dogma in the world's largest denomination.
4. Religion spurred the modern women's lib movement, the modern civili rights movement, etc.
5. There are many rational philosophical arguments for God - some make so much sense that Richard Dawkins refused to address them.

Answer 9

Good question! They fail to see the obvious anachronisms! They believe in god and the power of prayer, but ignore the cruelties and pointless deaths, giving god the credit when their prayers are 'answered', but not the blame when things don't go right. They condemn the subjugation of women, but fail to see that the major religions treat women, even now, as second-class. Even most women quietly accept that women cannot become priests, or Imams, which is institutionalised sexism! Which is accepting that in the eyes of their deity, women are inferior.
They ignore the evidence of evolution by somehow incorporating it into their beliefs, or discrediting it. They ignore the ideas and knowledge for which there is proof, in favour of ideas and beliefs they inherited from the parents and religious teachers, for which there is not one shred of evidence other than hearsay.
Whoa! That felt good! Thank you for giving me the opportunity to have my little rant!

Answer 10

1. prayer does work
2. 911 was caused by some psychotic insane cult
3. religion does not make you reject science, maybe science makes you reject religion.......you actually believe that you came from a monkey or a bacteria? You involved into this complicated human being from a bacteria....
4. religion is not the same as politics. and how has religion been used to justify racism......
5. there is absolutly no proof of having feelings or love. how do you justify that.