Random middle of the night thoughts on religion

[Prodigy54321]

Can false belief be "good for society?"

IMO, false beliefs can be good......for the people who don't hold them.

so a group believes that they will be rewarded in an afterlife for things they do on Earth...one of things is giving to charity and helping in other ways such a volunteering...

IMO, there is no denying that a population with this belief will be more charitable than one without it...and so, religious people claim that this is a good thing that religion has over a lack of it...

and they're kind of right...this is quite a good thing for those recieving the charity...

for those who are giving, they happen to believe something that isn't true...so their charity that is due to this belief can be seen as a bad thing for them...they're putting out and putting out, but they'll never get their reward.

I suppose that we could argue that their belief that they will get a reward and the good feeling that comes from it is worth their charity..but I don't know of any way that we could know whether or not this is true.

so this group of people's false belief is good for people who recieve their charity...and may be bad those who are being charitable because of this false belief.

the bottom line is that the things that religion gives us that we think of as "good" cannot just be dismissed under the notion that people will do it anyway...

when religious people talk about how religious people give so much to charity and help in their communities and compare it to the good things that atheists do...we can certainly talk about atheists who have given so much, like Buffet and Gates (and others...I rememeber something about a tremendous organization in India, I believe it was..not sure though..just from memory)...but really, I find it hard to believe that if we have two people, one who believes that they will be rewarded in an afterlife for doing charitable works and one who doesn't...the former wouldn't be more likely to give more...*although there could be a chance that this belief hold people back from being very productive..and thus, are less capable of giving larger amounts..like gates and buffet for instance.

anwyay, I don't know where I'm going, as usual...but

religion can be good for society, right?

or does the fact that people believe something that isn't true outweigh the good that comes from it...or since we don't know any specific figures..can it ever? or can it never?

and yes, I assumed there is no afterlife...at least not one related to charity on Earth.

[Duke]

There are a lot of benefits to having other people believe all sorts of things. The only bad I can think of is in the holding back of understanding the universe on the whole, and the violence that comes when they come into contact with people who hold a different set of random beliefs.

Like, I see it as a huge disadvantage to be delusional, but ask a religious person what they think. They typically think it's a huge advantage across the board, so who am I to argue with them?

[Taraz]

I think religion can be good for society. It fulfills a lot of different needs. On a societal level, I don't see how believing something that is false is necessarily bad.

If the whole world were the same religion we probably wouldn't have nearly as many interpersonal conflicts. Some people might have internal conflicts because their religion tells them they are evil (e.g. homosexuals).

Let's say everyone's religion was simply that they followed the Golden Rule. That seems like a pretty positive thing.

[JussiUt]

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Let's say everyone's religion was simply that they followed the Golden Rule. That seems like a pretty positive thing.

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We again come to the definition of religion, Taraz. I wouldn't call that a religion. I mean, it can be said of most of the atheists that they try to follow the golden rule. I believe religion contains more than just ethical teachings. But we've been over this.

Religion can be a good thing, absolutely. It's hard to say whether religious people are more charitable due to the historical bias but it makes sense to think that those who seek an award in the form of an after-life would be more charitable than those who do not have any special personal prizes in mind (the core of a charitable Christian isn't nearly as always an egoistical belief though IMO but often an utilitarian one just like most of the atheists have).

The comfort of religion is good. I claim most people would be able to live without this sort of comfort if brought up differently as a child but nevertheless it gives comfort to people (and naturally anxiety too). It's just those dogmas that bother me. Those irrational, narrow-minded, intolerant and superstitious dogmas. Religion divides people into sects which is very bad in terms of the prospect of world peace. If we could get rid of the dogmatic and divisive nature of religion (like I discussed with Taraz in another thread) then religion would be just fine and dandy.

[MidGe]

Taraz,

Any religion that claims its god is vengeful, wrathful, angry, jealous etc... has to be questioned.

Any religion whose role model, like in christianity, displays road rage [or is is it temple rage [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img] ], kills two thousand pigs, to exorcise demons etc. has to be considered a religion for sociopaths and bad for society.

This is without mentioning the incompatibility between benevolence and omnipotences, and, the world as it is, if a god, the root of religion, is responsible for it all [designer or creator, or whatever]..

[godBoy]

There's a beautiful thing called progression MidGe, your thoughts show no progress in all the time i've been reading your posts.. I may have to stop wasting my time.

Perhaps I could design and send you a little image that you could use every time you wanted to present this argument.
Then you can just simply drop the MidGe-Bomb any time you wanted and people wouldn't have to read it over and over again. Save time on both ends.

If I made it look really cool would you use it?

[MidGe]

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There's a beautiful thing called progression MidGe, your thoughts show no progress in all the time i've been reading your posts.. I may have to stop wasting my time.

Perhaps I could design and send you a little image that you could use every time you wanted to present this argument.
Then you can just simply drop the MidGe-Bomb any time you wanted and people wouldn't have to read it over and over again. Save time on both ends.

If I made it look really cool would you use it?

[/ QUOTE ]

I'll leave the 'little' images to you. I have little interest in those, but I have interest in the real which you seem to consistently ignore. Well, at least, I can't see any progression from your naive theist position, which forces me to counter with arguments you have no answers for. Answer the argument, but don't repeat your boring position (if it was not dangerous), based on delusion, and I'll move on too.

[JussiUt]

MidGe, I think you're clinging too much on the God of the Old Testament and its horrors. It's a very easy target. In order to understand religion and religious people you need to go deeper than that (I can't say for sure you haven't and you probably have but the latest replies from you don't really indicate that).

[MidGe]

[ QUOTE ]
MidGe, I think you're clinging too much on the God of the Old Testament and its horrors. It's a very easy target. In order to understand religion and religious people you need to go deeper than that (I can't say for sure you haven't and you probably have but the latest replies from you don't really indicate that).

[/ QUOTE ]

[ QUOTE ]
Any religion whose role model, like in christianity, displays road rage [or is is it temple rage ], kills two thousand pigs, to exorcise demons etc. has to be considered a religion for sociopaths and bad for society.

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Old testament?


PS I am glad your god is correcting his ways [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

[luckyme]

here's a few things to weigh -

- selection bias. What if people that are more innately group-thinkers tend to be religious and free-thinking individualists tend to be atheists. Assume your premise is true and religious types give more to charity, but now we'd realize that it's not as likely it's the religion behind that aspect but the group-think tendency.

- do we have any evidence the premise is correct? Because religious charity is organized there is a tax and/or a reported aspect to it. The atheists I know give a lot in more erratic, untracked spots.

- what if religious people tend to be in older established communities and not in the more influx populations. You then have a similar effect the groupie personality causes - we tend to look after 'our own' and have methods in place to do it.

- if you subtract the advertising value to the religion out of the charity you'd have a lot less of pure charity. Like MacDonald's 'we give 50c of every burger sold today to X'.

I won't go on, just wanted to note it's not a clean, easy comparison. Overall, even if the charity premise were true, it'd be minor and would lose out to all the drawbacks for civilization that religion carries with it.

luckyme