Religion's Effect on society

Tell me you are being sarcastic Jerry! Russia suffers under oligarchy and China has persecuted religious believers. Benevolent liberal nineteenth century style Christian values could only be improvement.

Parro I think the world would have been better of without mother Theresa. she is hardly the best example of religous conviction. You can not select what you choose. You can not pick the good moral teachings from religion and claim that alone should be considered. Need we go over all the terrible advice religion gives us and the evil that it perpetrated.

Tell that to the untouchables she helped in India. If helping the poor, sick, and orphaned, makes the world a worse place to live in please back your statement up.

Religion has had many different effects on society all the way from terrorists to civil rights. Osama Bin Landin to Martin Luther King Jr. With religion we have advanced ex. abolisionists, civilrights, inalianable rights. With religion we have declined ex. hate crimes, clinic bombings, and 911. It is not the religion itself that has brought about these good and bad things but the way in which people have interpreted it and acted in it's name. Would there be any terrorists? christian and muslim, if religion did not exist? I believe so. Would there be people like Mother Thersa if religion did not exist? I also believe there would be. Is it fair to blame the religion for good and bad people that come out of it? I believe not, because there would be good and bad people without the existence of religion.

I disagree. There would still be terrorism, but not as much. Religion is responsible for most terrorism, but this is not to say that without religion, there would be no war. People have always said that if we wern't fighting over religion, or oil, government, ect., we would just find something else to fight over. I don't think this is true. Eventually, we will run out of things to fight over. To not blame religion for the death and hardship it causes because it would have happened for some other reason is like not convicting a rapist for raping an attractive woman because someone else would have just done it anyway.

So your saying religion flew airplanes in to the towers on 911? An religion bombs abortion clinics? I always assumed a person did those things.

If you are one of those people that blame religion for those things then you must also be one of those people who blame video games and Marlyn Manson for what happened at Columbine.

Belinda: "Tell me you are being sarcastic Jerry!"

Yes I was Belinda. I have followed this thread a while and see mostly that religion is assigned the scourge of humanity. But it is the natural urges that lead to evils, not religion; at least not Christianity.

You misinterpereted my post. I didn't say I blame religion. I just said that if there wasn't religion, then these things wouldn't have happened. I blame the people who were influenced by the religion.

Parro , Mother Theresa. Just google the truth about her and you will be suprised.

Mention of a nun with a torture fantasy delusion is amusing. But right on topic. "From Wikki" I know it's Wikki but like Xris said do a search and learn about this sick individual. Mother Theresa indeed.

She has also been criticized for her view on suffering. She felt that suffering would bring people closer to Jesus.[78] Sanal Edamaruku, President of Rationalist International, criticised the failure to give painkillers, writing that in her Homes for the Dying, one could "hear the screams of people having maggots tweezered from their open wounds without pain relief. On principle, strong painkillers are even in hard cases not given. According to Mother Teresa's philosophy, it is 'the most beautiful gift for a person that he can participate in the sufferings of Christ'

Belinda: "Tell me you are being sarcastic Jerry!"

Yes I was Belinda. I have followed this thread a while and see mostly that religion is assigned the scourge of humanity. But it is the natural urges that lead to evils, not religion; at least not Christianity.

But I wrote: "Benevolent liberal nineteenth century style Christian values could only be improvement." I said nothing about the cruel excesses that are also associated with Christian belief. It can only improve Christianity or any other religous sect for the followers to exert the utmost criticism upon its beliefs and practises.The human is very easily carried away by devilish ideas.

Actually, I read them for entertainment. To recieve a course on a religion creates a bias coming from the teacher, which probably will affect your opinion of it.

I consider Buddhism to be more of a philosophy than a religion.

You seem to be avoiding my request which was to prove to me that there is a large difference between religions, not the affect of that opinion. And just to be clear, I don't mean how most people interperet the text, but what is actually written.

To receive a course in Religious Studies or Theology can come with a bias, although in Higher Education that bias will usually be a postmodern bias rather than a bias in favour of any of the subject faiths. In spite of that bias, a course will educate about the rudimentary structures of different religions, their cosmologies, their ethics, their histories, and will give a better working knowledge of fundamental matters like "What is a religion?". That you read them on your own as a sort of entertainment helps to explain your crippling ignorance of the subject matter.

For a new example of that, the sentence "I consider Buddhism to be more of a philosophy than a religion." betrays a misunderstanding of 'religion', of 'philosophy', and of 'Buddhism'.

I demonstrated the differences in my posts above, and the differences are evident in their incompatible cosmologies, ethics, and social policies. And, if you looked at the world without those blinkers, they'd be writ large all around you.

You misinterpereted my post. I didn't say I blame religion. I just said that if there wasn't religion, then these things wouldn't have happened. I blame the people who were influenced by the religion.

This makes more sence to me Kingkool, so your saying you echo my sentiment? That people's interpretation of religion either causes them to do great things for society or preform hanus acts upon it, but either way it's the individuals that do these things and not the teachings in any certain religion that do these things. It's kind of like the gun argument in a way. "Guns don't kill people, people kill people." "Religion doesn't kill people, people kill people." "Religion does not help the poor and sick, people help the poor and sick."

Parro , Mother Theresa. Just google the truth about her and you will be suprised.

I believe I saw the article that you wanted me to read but wether or not it holds any truth I don't not know. But lets assume it is true and this man saw her treating people inhumanly. If that is all she ever did then how did it not harm her reputation? I still don't think it is safe to say based on that one article that the world would have been better with out her. We could say that about Hitler however.

I guess since Mother Teresa is the example you decided to pick on then you agree with me on MLK?

Parro Mother Theresa was just one sick individual. She sent 90% of the donated monies to the Vatican. She and her sisters were treated in Swiss hospitals while her charges suffered. She believed suffering was a gift from god but not for her. I despise her and the church that permitted her horrors. We stupid and naive fools believed the propaganda. No you can not pick and choose your heroes, your best examples. Simply because when they fail the test you disown them. Do you really want Mother Theresa to be held up as an example of the value of christian beliefs? It's the singers not the song.

Parro Mother Theresa was just one sick individual. She sent 90% of the donated monies to the Vatican. She and her sisters were treated in Swiss hospitals while her charges suffered. She believed suffering was a gift from god but not for her. I despise her and the church that permitted her horrors. We stupid and naive fools believed the propaganda. No you can not pick and choose your heroes, your best examples. Simply because when they fail the test you disown them. Do you really want Mother Theresa to be held up as an example of the value of christian beliefs? It's the singers not the song.

Did you know her perosally or is all your information about her second hand, as is mine? If she was an evil person then why is that not her reputation? Propaganda I guess, but either way if you want to believe that religion does not promote any good deeds and only evil ones then you are wrong.

When you shed a tear at the end of a movie do you believe god wrote it? There is a whole industry and study that studies human thought patterns for profit. The idea is thousands of years old. When you look at the patterns of nature and the beauty uf never picking favorites or passing judgement. Nature is so brutally honest but god the creator picks and chooses and suffers heinously with jealousy you might choose another belief. That's not control intent or nothing man made there. Mother Theresa's torture fetish was sexual. Argue all you want it was the human animal's desires. The universe and nature would never choose such a course of action. Do I need to know her personally? She chose a course that in innuendo would forgive her for her animal instincts. She then felt free to act out her transgressional desires. She even hid it all behind a BS charity. I myself am responsible for my actions here among my fellow man. My human animal tendencies are very real but I don't act, I evaluate. My beautiful wife and I play with these instincts in a mutually respectful way sometimes. I have no need to hide behind a lie that claims to be righteous while practitioners perform the opposite. My opinion only

Nothing wrong with giving an opinion Eyesofastranger. People are missing my point though by nit picking on Mother Teresa.

You are missing the context. What is the tree of the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil? Does it have little fortune coolies hanging on it that say, being naked is bad, stealing is wrong?

Immediately before eating from that tree Adam and Eve were naked and knew no shame. Immediately after eating from it they made clothes and hid from God because they were naked. Who made it evil to be naked? Not God because before eating there was no judgment of evil. The entire concept for me shows that Adam and Eve made it evil to be naked. Adam and Eve chose to decide what was right and wrong and what they would or would not do. The tree thing is just the concept of judgement of good and evil.

Jesus came to tell us "judge not". It is this judgement of sin and especially the sin of others that causes wars.

And if we go back, to before they ate, to why they ate we can see the beginning of the evil that made them eat. The serpent asked them did god really say do not eat of that tree... then he inferred "evil intent" was the reason god told them not to eat. So the original sin was not trusting God that eating from that tree was a bad idea. Instead they believed the words of the stranger the serpent. They did not trust god and so they ate from the tree of knowledge of good and evil. And that is why they hid from god because they were ashamed and spiritually naked they knew god could see they had not trusted him. They transferred that guilt into shame because they were physically naked and made clothes to try to hide their spiritual nakedness, it doesnt work BTW. This physical world is just a reflection of the spiritual world. We wrestle not against flesh and blood, being naked physically, but against spiritual wickedness in high places, in our hearts where we imagine that god is wrong Where we go against the golden rule that we know we should obey and instead choose to do to others that which we would not want done to us., and we know we are naked before god and he sees us do what we know we should not.

The spiritual world of our thoughts and evil motives becomes revealed in the physical world where our evil machinations become physical. That is why Jesus said if you even have lust in your heart you are guilty of adultery ...in the spiritual world even if you do not excersize it in the physical world. And nothing that goes into a man makes him unclean, but what comes out of a man. Everything happens in our thoughts the spiritual world before we manifest it with our physcal actions.

Sorry that this went so long but I kept thinking of how the concept of sin starts within us like not trusting the spirit of truth and righteousness... and then ends up becoming a physical action like trying to hide our spiritual nakedness with a physical action like putting on clothes.

In the story of Adam and Eve, it was Knowledge of Good and Evil, not Knowledge. They had Knowledge, they just had no concept of good and evil, they knew the rules, and broke them.

I've always found that aspect to be rather non-sensical. God designed them without the knowledge of good and evil, and then demanded they obey his edict to not eat the fruit, a task which requires knowledge of good and evil. And then punishes them for a task which, by his own design, they were unable to avoid. "I will make you without the knowledge that you should not steal, then demand you do not steal this fruit, and then when you do I will punish you for it!"

In medeval times, catholic service was held in Latin, which nobody spoke, for illiterate people. Not only that, but even if you were able to read and or speak Latin, only members of the church were allowed to have bibles in their possesion. People were dirt poor, and still had to give ten percent of their earnings to the church every year. The ten commandments were law. The pope lived a luxurious, extravagent life, while others starved to death. This is an example of religions negative affects.