"Is religion a force for good?" US ="Yes" Canada = "No!"

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I'll never forgive the Catholic church for destroying Tony Blair. :/

He was such a good politician before he became a religious zealot sometime during his second term in office which inevitably led to it all going tits up in spectacular fashion.

I'm surprised Britain is as high as it is.
 
Branduil said:
Any poll which lumps all religion together like that is pointless.
Click to expand...
Religions all hold one thing in common: they all believe in a divine power. And that's bad, because it can only be taken on faith that such a power exists.

Fundamentally, baseless faith is bad. It can can result in good things, but even a 'good' religion is like picking a random horse for a race and just happening to pick the right one. It makes it a lot harder to criticize the guy who picks the wrong horse if you praise the guy who picked the right one, despite that neither of them had any reason behind their choice.

The actual religions may be totally different, but the fundamental irrationality of their existence is why they are bad.
 
Branduil said:
Ah yes. I remember seeing a "First Religionists Meeting Hall" just the other day.
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I don't think any religion is a force of good. I know there are different religions, but I don't think any of them are a force of good. So I think this question is valid. In other words...


Christans and Catholics are both religious, they are religious people. They are not the same religions, but they both fall under the category of "religion".

The number 3 and 27 are both numbers, they are numerical numbers. They are not the same number, but they both fall under the category of "numbers".
 
Slavik81 said:
Religions all hold one thing in common: they all believe in a divine power. And that's bad, because it can only be taken on faith that such a power exists.

Fundamentally, baseless faith is bad. It can can result in good things, but even a 'good' religion is like picking a random horse for a race and just happening to pick the right one. It makes it a lot harder to criticize the guy who picks the wrong horse if you praise the guy who picked the right one, despite that neither of them had any reason behind their choice.

The actual religions may be totally different, but the fundamental irrationality of their existence is why they are bad.
Click to expand...

:lol

So people who believe in luck, karma, or purpose fall into this category too, right? You know, since it's supernatural, baseless faith. Following this logic, their line of thinking must be inherently bad, regardless of direct negative influence, since "it can be only taken on faith". You're painting with such broad strokes that I'm not sure you know exactly what you're encompassing(like many on gaf regarding the topic).

And that horse analogy makes no sense at all. Unless you're saying that only one in eight religions are "good", and even then you could stretch that analogy across 500 different other topics.
 
whitehawk said:
Christans and Catholics are both religious, they are religious people. They are not the same religions, but they both fall under the category of "religion".
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Catholics ARE Christians.

You mean protestants. Protestants and Catholics.

And I'd argue they ARE the same religion.... but of course that's not your point :D

Howabout "Christians and Buddhists" for your analogy? :D
 
FunkyMunkey said:
:lol

So people who believe in luck, karma, or purpose fall into this category too, right? You know, since it's supernatural, baseless faith. Following this logic, their line of thinking must be inherently bad, regardless of direct negative influence, since it can be "only taken on faith". You're painting with such broad strokes that I'm not sure you know exactly what you're encompassing.

And that horse analogy makes no sense at all. Unless you're saying that only one in eight religions are "good", and even then it's purely opinion or life experience talking.
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Let's not make a simple question so nebulous. In everyday life, is irrationality a consistently more advantageous quality to possess than rationality?
 
gutter_trash said:
LOL at Protestants trying to deviate Catholics as "OTHER" and naming themselves as "the Christians"
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A lot of societies make that false distinction.... particularly if Christianity reached their country after the reformation. You had a lot of Protestants coming into those countries, calling themselves Christians, and distancing themselves from the Catholics as being "some other religion"...
 
Monocle said:
Let's not make a simple question so nebulous. In everyday life, is irrationality a consistently more advantageous quality to possess than rationality?
Click to expand...

If by "irrationality" you mean believing in a god but still pushing for peace, tolerance, equal rights, scientific progress, etc., it doesn't matter.

If by "irrationality" you mean holding signs that say "God hates _____" and dedicating your life to wanting inequality for people, no, and the type of press people like that get should display that.

If by "irrationality" you mean believing in karma, luck, or purpose, it doesn't matter.

... and so on.

Ignoring the sizable gray area in the middle nullifies the obvious point you guys are trying to make. Of course harmful irrationality is harmful, but a small bit of irrationality isn't harmful, in itself. By lumping all of baseless hope/faith into the category of "bad for society", well that's quite an illogical feat.
 
November 26, 2010

Be it resolved religion is a force for good in the world...

Pre-Debate

Pro: 22% Con: 57%

Undecided: 21%
Post-Debate (Preliminary)

Pro: 32% Con: 68%




FUCK YEAH CANADA



Hitchens wins again..
 
FunkyMunkey said:
:lol

So people who believe in luck, karma, or purpose fall into this category too, right? You know, since it's supernatural, baseless faith. Following this logic, their line of thinking must be inherently bad, regardless of direct negative influence, since "it can be only taken on faith". You're painting with such broad strokes that I'm not sure you know exactly what you're encompassing(like many on gaf regarding the topic).
Click to expand...
Yes. Some definitions of religion would even include those outright.

FunkyMunkey said:
And that horse analogy makes no sense at all. Unless you're saying that only one in eight religions are "good", and even then you could stretch that analogy across 500 different other topics.
Click to expand...
The number of good religions or bad religions isn't important.

But yes, that analogy is applicable to over 500 different topics. It's an illustration of outcome bias. The point is to illustrate that a positive end result does not mean that the process of getting there was good.

FunkyMunkey said:
If by "irrationality" you mean believing in a god but still pushing for peace, tolerance, equal rights, scientific progress, etc., it doesn't matter.

If by "irrationality" you mean holding signs that say "God hates _____" and dedicating your life to wanting inequality for people, no, and the type of press people like that get should display that.

If by "irrationality" you mean believing in karma, luck, or purpose, it doesn't matter.

... and so on.

Ignoring the sizable gray area in the middle nullifies the obvious point you guys are trying to make. Of course harmful irrationality is harmful, but a small bit of irrationality isn't harmful, in itself. By lumping all of baseless hope/faith into the category of "bad for society", well that's quite an illogical feat.
Click to expand...
Irrationality may result in good or bad things. If you make a choice irrationally, even if you happened to pick a good answer, you made a bad choice.

As a process, irrationality is bad, even if it sometimes results in good outcomes.
 
I personally don't believe religion is a force for good in the grand scheme of things. I'm in fact a big fan of Hitchens.

With that said, while I think overall religion is bad, it doesn't automatically mean people who follow are bad. In fact, some people live a very honest, loving, forgiving life because they will based their morals on religion.
 
DevelopmentArrested said:
What I posted are the audience numbers. preliminary post debate numbers vote: pro 32, con 68. final numbers monday
Click to expand...

I wasn't talking about your numbers. I was talking about the poll in the OP.

The post debate numbers you posted weren't really spectacular. They both gained the same number of supporters at the end.
 
Branduil said:
Any poll which lumps all religion together like that is pointless.
Click to expand...
As a person who has never believed in god and generally hates religion, I agree with you whole heartedly. The question is so broad it says nothing about the people answering it I can even begin to give a shit about.
I would wager, 90% of respondents would put a nice healthy "but" after their answer which muddies the whole thing. Very few people have such a simple view on the subject. The ones who do are not thinkers, but rather stinkers, doo-doo brains and fuck-sticks.
 
I'm continually amazed at the fact that people keep debating this topic. Its a subject where you can't have any common ground. Someone will bring up an example of a secular state that is progressive, then someone will bring up an example of a disastrous secular state. Someone will bring up an example of a relatively prosperous religious state, then someone will bring up the example of a backwards theocracy.

The best way to go about this would be "agree to disagree" but then someone will say something like "that kind of thinking is harmful to our progress" and it just starts over again.

My opinion? I agree with the person who said that the question is meaningless. If they had asked "Which religions do you believe are a force for good?" or "Which religions do you believe are harmful?" we could get more useful data that doesn't just simply represent the religiosity of a certain place. And the fact is, there are SEVERAL religions out there, but the layman only knows of judeo-christian religions, and thus decides to think of "religion" as Islam+Christianity+Judaism
 
BowieZ said:
Eh, actually Gerard Pique is better.
Click to expand...
I agree, but I love the fact that they're easily the closest male friends to one another in all sports. They hug and like kiss each other on the cheek all the time.
 
Saudi Arabia doesn't have freedom of religion. Sweden has a state religion they don't give a fuck about anymore. If you believe in freedom of religion, stay in the middle of the debate.
 
Monocle said:
Let's not make a simple question so nebulous. In everyday life, is irrationality a consistently more advantageous quality to possess than rationality?
Click to expand...


This makes it sound like your saying anyone religious is incapable of being rational at ALL. Again, trying to corral shit that doesn't/shouldn't be corralled.

I really hate it when you a-holes make me defend religion. I'm not very big on it, but it just seems alot of you that are anti religion are just as completely delusional as the worst of the holy rollers.
 
I'd say it's mostly a force of good.
That's not fail to acknowledge the work of thousands of religious folk who volunteer countless hours of their time counseling the troubled, donating food and living essentials, and being upstanding members of society.

Sure, you can do all of these things without religion, but many do these things in the name of God. Also, many religious families instill a good sense of discipline into their children, which is something that America needs more. Religion also has helped many people turn their lives around and has given people hope and inspiration to do better in their lives. Religion is supposed to be a positive thing.

Yes, there are fanatics, over-opinionated zealots, and ignorant fools, but that doesn't take away from the good that many many people do on a daily basis.
 
DevelopmentArrested said:
Probably the most one-sided debated I've ever seen.
Click to expand...

Anne Widdecombe is one of the most catastrophically pompous blobs in English political history. That the audience didn't vote for her to be summarily executed should be considered a narrow escape.
 
Slavik81 said:
Religions all hold one thing in common: they all believe in a divine power.
And that's bad, because it can only be taken on faith that such a power exists.

Fundamentally, baseless faith is bad. It can can result in good things, but even a 'good' religion is like picking a random horse for a race and just happening to pick the right one. It makes it a lot harder to criticize the guy who picks the wrong horse if you praise the guy who picked the right one, despite that neither of them had any reason behind their choice.

The actual religions may be totally different, but the fundamental irrationality of their existence is why they are bad.
Click to expand...
fa-fa-fa-fafa-fa-fa-faaaaalse:lol

Unless I misunderstand what you are getting at, the philosophy of said religion might play a role in why they chose the religion itself. There are sect of Buddhism for example, that basically shrug off all the spiritual/supernatural stuff and lean on the philosophy and ideals. This is still a religion and they may engage in certain rituals and excersizes in order to help themselves become better people or actualize the world they would like to live in, but they can completely disregard any ideas of divine power.
The words we are using here are just words and the meanings are loose and differ from dictionary to dictionary, but I don't think divine power is mutually exclusive to religion.

Also, say they are all bad because they rely on faith and irrationality is a bit too much of a blanket statement for me. Consider the fact that religion predates scientific method by quite a bit. The large basis for what we consider "morality" and "good" (don't steal, don't kill etc.) comes to us through the organization of complex societies which were certainly aided by religion itself. I'm not saying we should live in a theocracy and post the fucking 10 commandments on the wall... but calling the entire construct of religion and faith "bad" just because it isn't rational seems a bit reductive and soulless to me. Its easy to assume we could have done everything we've done without religion, but illogical to do so.

When I was a teenager I would have said, "More evil has been done in the name of god than anything." which may be true. This is a bullshit point though, because more GOOD has been done in the name of religion than in anything either. Basically, religion is the grease that gets the uneducated or the inclined (its a genetic predisposition afterall) to act. Its sad that this is the case and it would be sweet if people could be compelled to be organized for good through other methods... but I really haven't seen a lot of evidence for this and it would be completely illogical for me to just assume it could be done effectively just because I WISH it was true.

We have thousands of years of history to show we can basically improve ourselves (and we have) under the charms of magical men in the sky. I don't see any reason to assume we should throw that baby out with the bathwater and say its all bad because its not based on logic. Sometimes logic isn't enough (which sucks) and all the wishing in the world won't change that.
 
Anybody that claims that all organized religion is poisonous to society has a lot of work to do to prove it. Sure, you can point out a lot of instances where religion does bad, but I can probably point out of tons of instances where it does good. And certainly, some religions are better than others.

So I'll make it a little easier for you. Explain to me how the organized religion known as "Unitarian Universalism" is bad for society.
 
Branduil said:
Any poll which lumps all religion together like that is pointless.
Click to expand...

Pointless to you. Personally I don't care whether someone thinks that Islam is a force for good but Christianity is a force for evil or vice versa. What's the point of that?
 
ZealousD said:
Anybody that claims that all organized religion is poisonous to society has a lot of work to do to prove it.Sure, you can point out a lot of instances where religion does bad, but I can probably point out of tons of instances where it does good. And certainly, some religions are better than others.

So I'll make it a little easier for you. Explain to me how the organized religion known as "Unitarian Universalism" is bad for society.
Click to expand...
It's also hard to prove religion is beneficial too right? On one side you have people helping other people in the name of God, on the other side you have people killing and fighting in wars in the name of God. This seems like a never ending debate.
 
I like how the thread title suggests that the USA offered a weak "Yes" while Canada offered a forceful "No!"

The USA (according to this poll) leaned 15 points into "Yes" territory.

While Canada leaned 14 points into "No" territory.
 
Puncture said:
This makes it sound like your saying anyone religious is incapable of being rational at ALL. Again, trying to corral shit that doesn't/shouldn't be corralled.

I really hate it when you a-holes make me defend religion. I'm not very big on it, but it just seems alot of you that are anti religion are just as completely delusional as the worst of the holy rollers.
Click to expand...
Well then that would be your personal misreading. By some sort of logical misfire you seem to have identified a nonexistent premise concealed in a straightforward question.

Since you brought it up, I want to acknowledge that virtually everyone apart from the criminally insane, mentally handicapped, very young and senile are capable of rational behavior (to widely varying degrees of consistency). My position is not that religious people are wholly irrational, or irrational by nature, or utterly incapable of learning to be rational, but that religion itself promotes irrational behavior—most blatantly by stipulating faith on the part of its adherents. By direct consequence, a religious person, generally speaking, behaves more irrationally, and is likely to think for themselves less frequently, or to make poor decisions informed by one or more irrational beliefs, or to have greater difficulty thinking logically because their irrational beliefs impede them, than an equally educated irreligious person. Buying into fantastic myths, self-serving dogmas and unfalsifiable propositions are not common symptoms of strong critical thinking skills.

Obviously, there exist numerous exceptions to these very broad statements, but none of these outliers, I would argue, challenge the trend I described.
 
BocoDragon said:
Catholics ARE Christians.

You mean protestants. Protestants and Catholics.

And I'd argue they ARE the same religion.... but of course that's not your point :D

Howabout "Christians and Buddhists" for your analogy? :D
Click to expand...
Buddhism is the least intolerant and offensive religion I have studied, but I do need to read God is Not Great to see what Hitchens objects to about Buddhism, since it the only major criticism I know that bothers with the East. I really don't need any convincing on Hinduism.
 
Staccat0 said:
fa-fa-fa-fafa-fa-fa-faaaaalse:lol

Unless I misunderstand what you are getting at, the philosophy of said religion might play a role in why they chose the religion itself. There are sect of Buddhism for example, that basically shrug off all the spiritual/supernatural stuff and lean on the philosophy and ideals. This is still a religion and they may engage in certain rituals and excersizes in order to help themselves become better people or actualize the world they would like to live in, but they can completely disregard any ideas of divine power.
The words we are using here are just words and the meanings are loose and differ from dictionary to dictionary, but I don't think divine power is mutually exclusive to religion.

Also, say they are all bad because they rely on faith and irrationality is a bit too much of a blanket statement for me. Consider the fact that religion predates scientific method by quite a bit. The large basis for what we consider "morality" and "good" (don't steal, don't kill etc.) comes to us through the organization of complex societies which were certainly aided by religion itself. I'm not saying we should live in a theocracy and post the fucking 10 commandments on the wall... but calling the entire construct of religion and faith "bad" just because it isn't rational seems a bit reductive and soulless to me. Its easy to assume we could have done everything we've done without religion, but illogical to do so.

When I was a teenager I would have said, "More evil has been done in the name of god than anything." which may be true. This is a bullshit point though, because more GOOD has been done in the name of religion than in anything either. Basically, religion is the grease that gets the uneducated or the inclined (its a genetic predisposition afterall) to act. Its sad that this is the case and it would be sweet if people could be compelled to be organized for good through other methods... but I really haven't seen a lot of evidence for this and it would be completely illogical for me to just assume it could be done effectively just because I WISH it was true.

We have thousands of years of history to show we can basically improve ourselves (and we have) under the charms of magical men in the sky. I don't see any reason to assume we should throw that baby out with the bathwater and say its all bad because its not based on logic. Sometimes logic isn't enough (which sucks) and all the wishing in the world won't change that.
Click to expand...
I understand what you're getting at, and I agree with most of the facts you lay down.

It's not a coincidence that most of the religions that exist today tend to be 'good' religions. The the religious are actually quite rational. For the most part, they have very good reasons for their beliefs. It's a bit of a survival of the fittest. Belief systems that clash severely with human prosperity die off rather quickly.

But it's possible to take things a step further: to look at the beliefs and morals we evolved and see the underlying reasons why they're good. When we all understand the reasons for our beliefs, then perhaps we can have more agreement on a moral system.

At one point, irrationality was ok. After all, your ability to make good rational choices is limited by knowledge. Without information to base a decision on, you might as well make a random choice. I think that now we have enough information to make better choices.
 
Slavik81 said:
I understand what you're getting at, and I agree with most of the facts you lay down.

It's not a coincidence that most of the religions that exist today tend to be 'good' religions. The the religious are actually quite rational. For the most part, they have very good reasons for their beliefs. It's a bit of a survival of the fittest. Belief systems that clash severely with human prosperity die off rather quickly.

But it's possible to take things a step further: to look at the beliefs and morals we evolved and see the underlying reasons why they're good. When we all understand the reasons for our beliefs, then perhaps we can have more agreement on a moral system.

At one point, irrationality was ok. After all, your ability to make good rational choices is limited by knowledge. Without information to base a decision on, you might as well make a random choice. I think that now we have enough information to make better choices.
Click to expand...

Plus its not like religion invented or has sole possession of morality (far from it). Its pretty much written into our genetic code. We are completely capable of being moral and ethical without religion.
 
hamchan said:
It's also hard to prove religion is beneficial too right? On one side you have people helping other people in the name of God, on the other side you have people killing and fighting in wars in the name of God. This seems like a never ending debate.
Click to expand...

This is why, despite the fact that I'm an atheist/agonist, I can't answer the question with a yes or no answer.

I feel like some people really do need the direction of religion in order to be good people or inspire them to do good, even if it creates deficiencies or problems elsewhere. But a lot of shit has been pulled in the name of religion.
 
brain_stew said:
I'll never forgive the Catholic church for destroying Tony Blair. :/

He was such a good politician before he became a religious zealot sometime during his second term in office which inevitably led to it all going tits up in spectacular fashion.
Click to expand...

He was a crashingly tedious Christian towards the end of his university years, I believe.
 
I like to think that people don't need a big fella upstairs (or several big fellas, or a world tree, or an awesome alternate reality waiting for you in the afterlife or whatever it is they believe) to be good people, but I am regularly disappointed
 
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