1. Comment #81949 by sidfaiwu on October 25, 2007 at 12:43 pm

I'm with Shermer on this one. Religion is both beneficial and harmful, it depends on the which aspects and which interpretation of the sub-sub-sub denomination is being practiced.

On balance, I think religion is bad as commonly practiced in modern times. Debates on this topics tend to consist of both sides marshaling as many anecdotes as possible that support their side. I just don't like the anti-intellectual and authoritarian tendencies of religious belief.

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2. Comment #82017 by Kinzuakid on October 25, 2007 at 2:38 pm

Quite the contrary: there is no more powerful retardant to societal progress than religion.

The answer to the latter proposition (is it now?) is self evident- the "developing" world is littered with the shells of once great peoples now enslaved by their religions, committed to servitude and the regular war. No simpler rebuttal could be found than "let's take out the atlas and look for some examples".

As for the past, a variation on Hitchens' challenge theme is in order: name me a societal benefit from religion, if you can find any benefit at all, that could NOT have arisen from the secular. Remind your opponent to avoid mistaking "in spite of" religion with "because of" religion.

A core drawback to society is that religion makes its members content with ignorance. How much more could we as a species have accomplished without the vast funneling of resources (physical and intellectual) to religious causes over the centuries? Even a microscopically small fraction of that capital could have made the machine age arrive centuries earlier. We have repeatedly survived and improved our lot in the face of religious opposition, improvements in our condition we take for granted daily. Benefit from religion? The onus is on the religious, not the agnostic or athiest.

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3. Comment #82044 by Mewtwo_X on October 25, 2007 at 3:29 pm

"Religion provides benefits and roles to society that could easily be done with secular institutions. In centuries past, it was the choice of the people to make religion responsible for these social roles."

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4. Comment #82046 by dialector on October 25, 2007 at 3:31 pm

Was religion beneficial to the development of society? Is it now?

Was beneficial? This is a poorly formed question. It is like asking, "Was being an embryo beneficial to the development of a human being? Embryos are good things in their capacity as embryos, but nobody wants to stay that way.

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5. Comment #82171 by kev_s on October 25, 2007 at 7:29 pm

Jared Diamond in "guns, germs and steel" describes the growth of societies starting from bands (dozens of people) to tribes (hundreds of people) to chiefdoms (thousands of people) and to states (over 50,000 people). Religion was one of the methods by which the ruling elite maintained control over large groups of people when the society was too large for family and tribe-scale cooperation to function. Although it is possible, therefore, to credit religion as being one of the factors that established the modern nation states, (often through conquest in the name of religion), that is not something to be terribly proud of. There can not be many Christians, for example, that would argue that our societies are anything Jesus would have wanted. (I'm thinking about G.W Bush vetoing health care for the poorest children, for example.)
But although it can certainly be argued that religion has helped build our modern, unjust societies, it is no help in maintaining them today. Now we live in mega-states that have to tolerate (some better than others) multiple, conflicting religions. In a global society where the "group" comprises the billions of all of us, it is time to move beyond religion as a source of the glue that binds us together. Now religion is doing more dividing than binding. If we don't find a better way to live together the alternative is to face a future of terrible religious wars as each competes to be 'the one'.

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6. Comment #82294 by MuNky82 on October 26, 2007 at 2:38 am

Comment #82171 by kev_s is BRILLIANT.

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7. Comment #82438 by NormanDoering on October 26, 2007 at 10:30 am

Here's an even more controversial statement that I fear might be true:

Religion was necessary in the development of embryonic civilization, and so was slavery.

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8. Comment #82524 by cdhabecker on October 26, 2007 at 2:51 pm

D'Souza: "Slavery was part of the cultural fabric before Christianity." "Christianity mobilized the first movement in the world to abolish slavery. First the Quakers, then the evangelicals." (D'Souza vs. Hitchens)

Rebuttal: You are admitting that, despite controlling the most powerful nations on earth for hundreds of years, Christianity didn't mobilize an anti-slavery movement until the 1800s? Of this you boast? And isn't it interesting that this movement happened in an upstart country that was the first government of the people, by the people, and for the people?

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9. Comment #82559 by cdhabecker on October 26, 2007 at 5:40 pm

General argument from D'Souza: Christianity was the origin of our moral framework; its introduction was a radical departure from human nature as realized in the philosophy of Athens, and Christianity has been the instigator of later (good) moral advancements (abolition, democracy, and so on).

Rebuttal (from Shermer): Society is in the midst of grinding out another moral advancement that Christianity not only didn't start, but is actively fighting. That advancement is the disappearance of homosexual persecution and prejudice, with same-sex marriage being an obvious milestone. In a couple of decades the advancement will succeed, and then people like D'Souza will claim that it was Christianity that made it all happen.

I really like this rebuttal because the gay-rights situation -- especially same-sex marriage -- is current, relevant, and obvious. I have always been in favor of same-sex marriage, but this tie-in to Christian oppression has inspired me to take this up this cause actively with this message:
- GLBTs deserve equal rights.
- It is a rational moral imperative to protect the rights of GLBTs.
- Christians have been in opposition; shame on those who still are.
- If you are a Christian who has come around, then denounce those Christians who are still in opposition, otherwise shame on you.
- (Implication) Christianity isn't a moral beacon -- you can do better.

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10. Comment #83066 by Corky on October 28, 2007 at 7:52 pm

Religion was useful in ancient times as a unifying force to form a nation. Then it became abusive to it's own people and became a means of control of the masses by priest/king elites. Today it's used for legal robbery and mind control.

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11. Comment #83188 by Hasan on October 29, 2007 at 8:06 am

What we can reasonably and confidently state is that in today's world, religions pose big obstacles to progress by keeping a lot of things falling under the domain of social sciences as off limits for discussion. Religions treat the moral code, social code as inherent in themselves as absolute and having no requirement of rational discourse.

Secondly, religions in the past have always thrived in oppressed populations. What they have essentially done is to elevate these oppressed members of the society to a higher level and delegate the oppressive ruling to oblivion. That sums up their morality contribution too. But when these religions did come to power, they were as oppressive in their turn if not more so.

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12. Comment #83227 by cdhabecker on October 29, 2007 at 10:59 am

D'Souza claims that Christianity has been, on the whole, a gift to the world. On this basis, he argues that Christianity is good and should continue.

Rebuttal:
Let's recall how D'Souza's father (grandfather?) was converted to Christianity. I believe the three words were "the Portuguese Inquisition." Dinesh mentioned something about bayonets and an unenthusiastic reception among his ancestors; we can easily understand that we wouldn't want to live through such a trial. Nevertheless, Dinesh tells us, the end result, conversion to Christianity, was a glorious thing.

So, if it led to such a wonderful result, does Dinesh advocate a new Portuguese Inquisition? I think not. He dare not. And of course we would not want such senseless, superstitious barbarism ever again.

Dinesh mentioned several other bad episodes in Christian history as well. I'll let you judge whether he was right to minimalize the suffering of the Inquisition or the Salem witch trials, or to ignore hundreds of years of Christian authoritarian rule. The point is that while Dinesh considered all of these means to be ultimately justified by their ends, he did recognize these episodes as bad and not to be repeated. In fact, he stated hopefully that there is "nothing in Christianity that denies or prevents moral development" (Shermer debate, video #2, 29:45).

So there you have it; we agree that Christianity, far from being a wonderful, divine intervention from a caring God, has been a messy, brutal affair, characterized by a consistent claim to divine knowledge that has, nevertheless, been repeatedly found to be lacking and in need of improvement. Of course Dinesh claimed that Christianity can allow moral development -- it needs it.

Dinesh chooses to give up Inquisitions and witch trials, but he insists on keeping the core attribute that produced them: faith; believing that he knows things that he can't possibly know -- claiming that he knows God on a personal basis, knows his detailed thoughts and desires. Believing all of this based on no concrete evidence, and in spite of much better explanations of the world.

No, we can do better than Christianity, and we owe it to ourselves and our children to get off that broken down relic.

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13. Comment #83380 by lpetrich on October 29, 2007 at 9:43 pm

This is the argument of Plato's Royal Lie, a religion which Plato invented for his Republic so that that Republic's citizens will accept the legitimacy of the rule of its philosopher-kings. And philosopher-queens, for that matter; Plato thought that women were capable of being philosophers.

And Plato did not make excuses for the deficiencies of his society's religion, a welcome departure from a very annoying practice of many Xian apologists; he proposed that it be banned as full of bad examples like heroes lamenting and gods laughing.

That aside, Dinesh D'Souza rewrites history enough to make a Stalinist proud. I find it curious that he is willing to celebrate blatant heretics like Quakers and evangelicals; anything to win arguments, I guess.

Furthermore, many Xians defended slavery as justified because black people have the curse of Ham on them; given his skin color, Dinesh D'Souza also has that curse on him.

And later, during the US civil-rights struggle, many people defended segregation as a Xian principle of morality, that God intended the races to remain separate and not mix.

Furthermore, DDS's defense of the Inquisition in India is much like the traditional Communist apologetic that "you cannot make an omelet without breaking eggs"; the end justifies the means.

As to democracy and republican government the words "democracy" and "republic" go back to pagan Greece and Rome; though they had lots of slavery, they often thought that governments are to represent their citizens and serve their citizens rather than of being their citizens' masters.

In fact, many early-modern supporters of democracy used ancient Greece and Rome as examples, even if rather romanticized ones; some of the US Founding Fathers admired the Roman Republic.

And Xianity can't get much credit for feminism; it has been a mostly secular movement, with hardly any churches supporting it.

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14. Comment #83396 by Garnok on October 29, 2007 at 10:56 pm

I would have to say that it was the other way around: society was beneficial to religion. Without a society, religion (as we know it today) would probably never have existed as it requires numbers greater than were possible before our development of agriculture. While religion probably had, and still has, some benefit to offer society (things tend to work full circle) the real question should instead be: was religion necessary? I would have to say no. Religions were man- made and as such we could obviously have thought of the things that we find in religion to be valuable. That we find those ideas in multiple religions and philosophies, often seperated by time, distance and geography, supports that to an exceptional degree in my opinion. While a religious person may see that as proof of their god at work, I see that as the commonality people share from us all being human beings. I leave it to others to decide which is the more reasonable.

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15. Comment #84371 by anonquick on November 1, 2007 at 11:28 pm

The Gist:the West has de-clawed and de-toothed Christianity. Its a domesticated kitty.

Narrative goes something like this, in Europe power was split between church and nobles. One argument for why priests are celibate is that the church was fighting back against the nobles putting their sons and nephews into positions of power in the church and it was in danger of becoming a play thing of the rich. So there has always been this fight between church power (which is a man made institution), and aristocratic power.

This is different from most cultures where religious power and aristocratic power is fused (ALL men in the Brahmin caste of Hindu society, the highest caste are priests; in Islam you have Theocracy).

There are lots of other examples in European history of this attempt to domesticate religion. The new world - same process.

Then bring in all our structures - Law, the courts, police, law makers, etc and contrast this more primitive times and places - the church was psychotherapist, welfare state, the police, the judge, even the inspector of MEAT! whereas we have secular mechanisms for this.

Then push the idea that Christianity is man-made. We can do better! Yes there is more to life than buying stuff, and making money, but WE all make all that other stuff to. Because its all man-made. We can have individual and collective means that make the world a better place and make society better for us all, and some of that may even look like religion, and WHY SHOULDN'T IT? Religion is just man made, so what ever good things it can do (like inspect meat) we can do without it.

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16. Comment #84827 by Elentar on November 3, 2007 at 7:00 pm

I suspect that relgion evolved originally as a form of shiboleth--an expensive display which indicated tribal loyalty--intended to root out or fend off defectors (in the sense of the term used in economic games like the prisoner's dilemma.) The expense of the display served two purposes: a show of fitness, and a show of dedication, at first to the tribe, and eventually, to tribal leaders. The sacrifice entailed was meant to demonstrate a willingness to place tribal values above personal gain.

This also explains the bizarre attitude of religion to women and female sexuality. Impregnating a female of another tribe is another way of gaining reproductive access to that tribe, since the expense of raising the child falls on the woman (and her tribe, if the father abandons her) much more than the man. Controlling female sexuality, and bartering females as a way of cementing alliances, becomes another way of securing points of entry into the tribe.

The problem is that it never worked very well, and has long since outlived its usefulness. Tribalism creates flashpoints between tribes, which is quite dangerous in a global village. The shibboleth is too easy to fake; in many religions it now amounts to no more than a profession of faith. And the persistant misogynistic attitudes are obsolete in an age of birth control and safe abortion.

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17. Comment #84833 by Russell Blackford on November 3, 2007 at 9:03 pm

cdhabecker, I do support provision for gay marriage, in current circumstances, but with a lot of reservations. The whole idea of marriage has a religious connotation that we should be stiving against.

I hope that a time will come when the state no longer recognises such a thing as "marriage" at all, and simply provides a body of law to ensure the welfare of children and sort out the respective rights of people (twosomes, threesomes, groups of siblings, communities of students, or whatever) who have lived in some mutual dependency, whether or not sex was involved. Of course, such a body of law already exists, even if it needs refinement.

There's no reason for the state to recognise one way of life (at the moment, heterosexual monogamy) over any other.

Of course, the religionists will oppose what I am suggesting tooth and nail: they just can't help themselves in attempting to use political power to try to impose their narrow concept of how people should live.

The point is that religion has always tried to impose its particular vision of the good life, via the power of the state or whatever political arrangements preceded it. The real advance began back in the 17th century when the authority of religion to do this began to come under challenge.

Religion didn't do much good that I can see, but we probably couldn't have avoided it so the idea of a world without religion in its history is moot. The Enlightenment reaction against religion's excesses has been beneficial, however.

You could say that religion has been necessary to reach the present point, but so have war, famine, plague, and natural disasters. Per impossibile, replay the tape of history without any one of those things, and nobody knows what would be result: it might be something worse than we have, or it might be something better. The trouble is, we can't really imagine our history in the absence of these various evils.

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18. Comment #105748 by notsobad on January 1, 2008 at 6:46 pm

The beneficial parts can be easily performed by different means, and we can get rid of the many harmful parts.

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19. Comment #130247 by martino on February 20, 2008 at 7:38 am

No

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20. Comment #184855 by Strappado on May 26, 2008 at 9:51 am

"Was charcoal beneficial to the development of the economy? Is it now?"
The abacus?

Almost any great invention in the past have been surpassed by new modern inventions.

There is most no connection between what's been useful before and what's useful now. Even the famous conservative slogan ("If it's not broke, don't fix it") allows for fixing something - if it's broke.

It is fairly obvious today that religion is something that needs to be fixed one way or another. As Atheists we may want to get rid of it altogether, but even religious people will see that religion can't go on like it did hundreds of years ago, when it apparantly, gave us so much progress.

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21. Comment #196273 by Eric Blair on June 19, 2008 at 3:06 pm

I'm not sure how you can separate religion as an influencing factor in history and say definitively whether it was good or bad.

Even if we limit the discussion to the behaviour of religious institutions or religious people, all we can say is some was good and some was bad.

But so what? Except as the topic for an academic debate, the question has no relevance.

It also implies that we have a decision to make whether to keep religion or do away with it, and/or that somehow if religious people realized that the historical ledger for religion is on balance bad, they would stop believing.

The first possibility only encourages those who view atheists as closet totalitarians, while the second is simply bizarre.

EB

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