Religon is never the problem it's the people who use it to gain power. Discuss!?

Question

Yes jon why am i wrong

Basically does religion cause more trouble than its worth and if so (as in the question) is it just fundamentalists manipulating it for there own gain

i see some people have been reading dawkins! just remember that not all religous people are exteremists

Answer 1

kind of hard to discuss it with out any points or factual data to support your statement. so i'll just say this. you're wrong.

edit: I'm not sure, why do you think you are right, my point was simply that you did not explain your position so i simply advocated it with out any explaination. The question doesn't really make any sense without further explaination.

edit 2: it would be the same as me saying, drinking water is bad for you. discuss. what is to discuss? now if i continued by saying that if you drink pure H20, it will actually do more damage than harm because our bodies require the impurities that are in the water. Discuss. now there is something to talk about.

edit 3: ok now it makes sense. the problem is not that the religion itself causes problems. majority of all religions are based upon good morals and if followed, you are likely to have a good life. you are correct in saying that the problem is that the problem is the people. People are flawed, greedy, and power hungry. look back a couple years and look at the Catholic preists who were molesting all of those choir boys. does that make Catholosism bad. no, that just make the corrupt people in power bad. it's a case of a few bad apples spoiling the bunch. I would however disagree to the point that some religions are the problem. for example the ones that promise you will gain access to heaven and 50 virgins await you there if you do suicide bombings. those religions are created by man for man. so i suppose that you could argue that is as well the problem of the people using religion to gain power.

Answer 2

Religion isn't a problem...and yes there are people who use it to gain power....but I'm not sure that's what you mean. We don't live in a time anymore where the Vatican, for example, controls the morals of society. Were that the case, Brazil wouldn't have allowed financing for birth control. People can try to use religion to manipulate others and persecute others who do not conform to their particular ideology. We all have our own beliefs, mine being Christianity. Problems ensue when we condemn each other in this life and the next for not agreeing with our own beliefs. Personally, I have my own soul to worry about and if I do disgaree with someone else's faith, I leave it for God to judge them.

Answer 3

Yes Will, it is always people who are "the problem". Religion is just a product of the human psyche. Religious belief presents no particular problems unless it encompasses doctrines that encourage abuse, hatred and intolerance. It is unfortunately common for people to abandon rational thought in favour of adherence to pernicious religious doctrines. Pernicious doctrines invariably consider that the greatest sin of all is to challenge the doctrine and so the disease passes from father to son to grandson and on. For those of us who try to live our lives free from irrational doctrine this can be a problem but as religion seems to be here to stay we shall have to learn to live with it. An interesting site that considers these questions is Infidels.org.

Answer 4

This is old old conundrum and it is a problem which we are constantly fail to address. It is perhaps fair to say that all of us are guilty of using our religious faith or lack of it to our own ends.

Why?

We are human and full of fault and sometimes the harder we try the more we get it wrong

Should we not try?

Yes we should try because if we don't we will get it even more wrong and reduce ourselves.

So religious faith is not in itself wrong but we must ignore the merciless who seek only power

Answer 5

Does anyone else wonder why separate studies have found that 92% of people in the U.S. believe in some sort of God and 8% of people have an IQ higher than 130? I think there may be a correlation.

Answer 6

Unfortunately, there is no real connection between church and religion, nowadays.
Religion is just a tool for conceiving very material goals by many priests. And I always wondered how an intelligent person could believe in church.

Answer 7

It's a shame people feel that bribery (Heaven) and blackmail (Hell) are required before people we be nice to each other. I heard that in the US atheists are considered pretty low. Amazing when you consider that most of them are nice people DESPITE the fact that they know there will be no afterlife to make them suffer or reward them for their behaviour in life.
Religion is BAD. End of story. Unfortunately so are lots of people, so getting rid of it overnight would leave lots of very unpleasant people around with no "Good-but-entirely-fictional-Book" to tell them how to behave.

Answer 8

The dogmatic adherence to a set of ideologies ( which is what religion is) is the root cause of division among peoples and often leads to violence and other forms of conflict.

Answer 9

Religion is needed for the order it brings, its only a small portion of people of various religion abuse it by using there power religion give them for negative. imagine if every one thought there is no consiquence for what they do.

Answer 10

more good comes out of religion than bad. Some people need it and much less abuse it. I'm not a religouse man, I admire those who are and thank god it exist