Has religion played a positive or negative role on the world?

[REDY]

Religion accelerated develop of civilization to some level, but after overrun this level religion started decelerate it...now its clear that religion harms people than helps them

 

[storealex]

In ancient times, people fought bloody and cruel wars that had nothing to do with religion.

In modern times, people fought bloody and cruel wars that had nothing to do with religion.

People will fight. Religion or not.

 

[aneeshm]

Care to offer some explanation?

You have a graph, of different types of religions.

On one axis, you have the monotheist tradition on one side, and on the other, the naturalist.

On the other axis, you have, on one side, the missionary religions, and the non-missionary ones. All religions of the world can be fit into this matrix, or graph.

And the nature of each differs wildly based on their position in this graph.

 

[Kraznaya]

In ancient times, people fought bloody and cruel wars that had nothing to do with religion.

In modern times, people fought bloody and cruel wars that had nothing to do with religion.

People will fight. Religion or not.

But you cannot deny that religion does help increase the likelihood of war. Also, can you name some of the wars that clearly had no religious undertones?

 

[CurtSibling]

In ancient times, people fought bloody and cruel wars that had nothing to do with religion.

In modern times, people fought bloody and cruel wars that had nothing to do with religion.

People will fight. Religion or not.

You have a point.

Many wars have men that hold up their invisible friends and gods as the main focus for their troops.

But these cases still lead us to hold religion responsible, or more accurately, the misuse of religion.

And of course, in the absence of religion (EG: Commies) war still happens.

...

 

[Neonanocyborgasm]

This is not a debate on whether god exists or not, so don't turn it into one. I got bored a few minutes ago and decided to look Jesus up on wikipedia. Following the various links etc. got me wondering.

Has religion played a positive role on the world? It's certain that it has been a major factor in the world, but has that effect been positive?

Generally negative. Religion has been a useful tool to unite people that would've otherwise had little in common, and therefore, little interest in uniting. But that same tool of unification often resulted in a decrease in innovation, science, and expression of ideas, as attempts at conformity and uniformity in the religion overrode those concerns. The more dogmatic a religion, the more this has tended to be true.

Nowadays, I think religion has no role, but it will persist for psychological reasons.

 

[Sh3kel]

But you cannot deny that religion does help increase the likelihood of war. Also, can you name some of the wars that clearly had no religious undertones?

The Peloponnesian Wars come to mind, as do most of what these guys did up to and including the reign of Augustus Caesar. Both Ancient powers fought hard over territory and political power rather than the favor of some faith or another - in fact, even the Persian emperor of Xerxes just came in and accepted the Hebrew god as another deity to revere after effectively wiping out the Babylonian empire - and all of this information is readily available in every course in the Ancient History of the World. I'd say that the fact the majority of fights in the Ancient world were fought over "secular" motives and had little if nothing to do with religious justifications effectively rules out most of your claims that the ancient world was dominated by religious in-fighting. Even back then Humanity was a bloodthirsty horde of maniacs willing to kill each other over some precious resource or sliver of land, without the justification of an invisible deity egging them on.

As a side note: If you're even thinking of saying "but what about the gods of war in those culture, weren't they revered by the fighting men in the ground?" as a smart-ass reply on how even then there was religious undertones to the fighting, I'm going to have to politely ask you to read history and stop reading mythology. Burning nations because an invisible man told you so was common only in the most remote and savage parts of the world during the Ancient world (the land of Israel in the time after Ramsess II) and didn't gain jihadic popularity to the point it became a life style until the 6th century when the Islamic prophet of Mohammad wiped out half of the population of Mecca and its surrounding areas during his great expansion. Religious warfare culminated in the dark ages with the crusades, which were a futile and mostly political move aimed at taking back the areas taken by the Moor invaders and later the Arab hordes. There's a reason why we call the time between the fall of the Roman Empire and the Renaissance "The dark ages". It's because it's the only time in Human history when humanity truly did suck as much balls as it was painted to: The time before and the time after these "dark ages" was surprisingly more secular than you think.

 

[CurtSibling]

Keep in mind that many early innovators were members of the church or working for holy orders.

Not that I would ever support religion, but I will concede that they didn't always snuff out inventors.

.

 

[Sidhe]

The Peloponnesian Wars come to mind, as do most of what these guys did up to and including the reign of Augustus Caesar. Both Ancient powers fought hard over territory and political power rather than the favor of some faith or another - in fact, even the Persian emperor of Xerxes just came in and accepted the Hebrew god as another deity to revere after effectively wiping out the Babylonian empire - and all of this information is readily available in every course in the Ancient History of the World. I'd say that the fact the majority of fights in the Ancient world were fought over "secular" motives and had little if nothing to do with religious justifications effectively rules out most of your claims that the ancient world was dominated by religious in-fighting. Even back then Humanity was a bloodthirsty horde of maniacs willing to kill each other over some precious resource or sliver of land, without the justification of an invisible deity egging them on.

As a side note: If you're even thinking of saying "but what about the gods of war in those culture, weren't they revered by the fighting men in the ground?" as a smart-ass reply on how even then there was religious undertones to the fighting, I'm going to have to politely ask you to read history and stop reading mythology. Burning nations because an invisible man told you so was common only in the most remote and savage parts of the world during the Ancient world (the land of Israel in the time after Ramsess II) and didn't gain jihadic popularity to the point it became a life style until the 6th century when the Islamic prophet of Mohammad wiped out half of the population of Mecca and its surrounding areas during his great expansion. Religious warfare culminated in the dark ages with the crusades, which were a futile and mostly political move aimed at taking back the areas taken by the Moor invaders and later the Arab hordes. There's a reason why we call the time between the fall of the Roman Empire and the Renaissance "The dark ages". It's because it's the only time in Human history when humanity truly did suck as much balls as it was painted to: The time before and the time after these "dark ages" was surprisingly more secular than you think.

I've done all this before suffice to say I believe along with the historians that religion is the thrid biggest killer in European history, and religious people think it's the nazzis et al, I wouldn't even go their, it's like talking to yourself, you may get intelligent discourse, but your unlikely to change your mind.

The fact that the first two thousand years of European history absolutely destroys the Nazzis input seems to hold no interest either.

 

[Sh3kel]

Generally negative. Religion has been a useful tool to unite people that would've otherwise had little in common, and therefore, little interest in uniting. But that same tool of unification often resulted in a decrease in innovation, science, and expression of ideas, as attempts at conformity and uniformity in the religion overrode those concerns. The more dogmatic a religion, the more this has tended to be true.

Religion gave you by social evolution the set of laws you follow today. The weekend is a Jewish invention.

 

[Sh3kel]

I've done all this before suffice to say I believe along with the historians that religion is the thrid biggest killer in European history, and religious people think it's the nazzis et al, I wouldn't even go their, it's like talking to yourself, you may get intelligent discourse, but your unlikely to change your mind.

The 3rd biggest implies there are two other factors you're omitting. I'm guessing it's gonna be "Territory" and "Resources", which would then place religion in an admitted third position - but a distant third by far...

Your kind of logic is like saying that if some factor kills 6,000,000 people, a second factor kills 600,000 and the third factor kills 60,000 then all of those factors are equally evil. I agree that having even a single person die for a worthless cause is pointless and a waste of human lives, but given historical data, if 6 million die due to cause A and 60,000 die due to cause C, A>C, by a factor of 10^2.

 

[Sidhe]

The 3rd biggest implies there are two other factors you're omitting. I'm guessing it's gonna be "Territory" and "Resources", which would then place religion in an admitted third position - but a distant third by far...

Your kind of logic is like saying that if some factor kills 6,000,000 people, a second factor kills 600,000 and the third factor kills 60,000 then all of those factors are equally evil. I agree that having even a single person die for a worthless cause is pointless and a waste of human lives, but given historical data, if 6 million die due to cause A and 60,000 die due to cause C, A>C, by a factor of 10^2.

Let's not forget that war also spreads famine and disaese the top two? Shall we? Staistics are statistics, you can intepret them any way you like. I simply maintain that on a table and presented by historians I find credible this is probably true.

And no I do not equate acts based on numbers alone, and most of the wars were pretty pointless, in the run of things.

 

[Sh3kel]

So if war triggers the first two causes of death in European history, then surprisingly, war becomes the greatest killer in European history. And what causes war? Well, we all know that pretty much any thing will do. Be it the assassination of an Archduke in the streets of Sarajevo causing a string of Mutual-Defense treaties to come into effect and millions of people to get killed in pointless trench warfare, the raiding of a Pastry shop by drunken soldiers such defined by the official cassus belli of the French empire against the Republic of Mexico in the 19th century or even the commands of an invisible deity.

Religion in itself doesn't kill people. Stupid people with guns kill people. Blaming religion without factoring the human element is useless logic.

 

[Xanikk999]

Religion in the very early days of civilization, may have had a positive effect on law and order in communities.

But overall many people have died in the name of religion, however many positive things happened because of religion.

Some religions also encourage charity, which has a positive effect. Mostly nowadays most religions encourage peace. But terrorists who twist thier religion do not.

 

[CenturionV]

Has religion played a positive or negative role? Its always existed and always will, so its kind of like asking if humans have played a positive role in civilization?

Obviously the answer is yes, religion is a natural part of all civilization. No civilization has every existed without it and none ever will.

 

[Neonanocyborgasm]

Religion gave you by social evolution the set of laws you follow today. The weekend is a Jewish invention.

The laws I follow today are a product of English common law, which was set up by the king to gain his subjects' trust and allegiance over church law, which was more prevalent at the time.

 

[Swedishguy]

Without religion life would be miserable for ancient people. It was unavoidable.

 

[CurtSibling]

Without religion life would be miserable for ancient people. It was unavoidable.

Life was miserable for people back then.

Especially if they had the wrong religion to a conquering enemy.

...

 

[Eran of Arcadia]

I think people overestimate how much belief in an afterlife helped people. Remember, the ancient Jews didn't believe in one; the ancient Greeks believed in one that was worse than their current state; a lot of small tribal religions tended not to focus on the afterlife.

At any rate, I think that spirituality is the natural response of any self-aware being to a world full of things larger and more powerful than it; I think that as humans have a tendency to organize, religion is organized spirituality just like government is organized group leadership.

 

[MobBoss]

But you cannot deny that religion does help increase the likelihood of war. Also, can you name some of the wars that clearly had no religious undertones?

There have been plenty of them. Pretty much the bulk of all wars throughout history were for power...not for the sake of religion.

I've done all this before suffice to say I believe along with the historians that religion is the thrid biggest killer in European history, and religious people think it's the nazzis et al, I wouldn't even go their, it's like talking to yourself, you may get intelligent discourse, but your unlikely to change your mind.

Actually, I proved you directly wrong on that point.

The fact that the first two thousand years of European history absolutely destroys the Nazzis input seems to hold no interest either.

You never proved this point in any way, shape or form. Some estimate 60 million plus people lost their lives because of WW II. And I also proved to you that simply from WWI, WWII and the Nepoleonic wars, over 100 million people died in secular warfare. Even if you added up everyone that died in all the wars for religion throughout European history, you dont even come close to that number. No where near it.

And no I do not equate acts based on numbers alone, and most of the wars were pretty pointless, in the run of things.

As well you shouldnt.....historical numbers distroy your arguement.