Is religion harmful?

[Zeno]

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Is religion harmful?

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Depends on whom welds the most religious influence. See Torquemada or Girolamo Savonarola for the negative side of the ledger. See, ____________________, for the positive side of the ledger.

-Zeno, The Antipope

[MidGe]

Religions is harmful in the fact that it isn't truthful. Since all religions contradict themselves by sects, and only one could be true if at all, religion is as harmful as any other lie or denial of reality.

[rubberloon]

The interaction of the catholic church, the papacy and primarily western europe had massive effects. Including the persecution of heretics and pagans around 400 and the orthodox-catholic split around 700. The larger interaction of islam and its neighbors is still with us. As Djilas said (in Wartime, his account of Jugoslavia 1941-5) the first excuse for people to kill each other is language, the second religion, the third politics but they don't need an excuse to kill each other.

[CrayZee]

There are positive aspects of religion, but not mutually exclusive to religion (i.e., community, altruism, death coping mechanism, etc.). But, yeah, religion is more harmful than not...but the "science worldview" could be too difficult for most individuals to grasp or appreciate. (Faith is easy, all you have to do is simply believe.)

Perhaps the "faith worldview" is something programmed into our genes in that we mostly like to follow authority. After all, the saying goes, "too many chiefs and not enough indians" leads to what, I don't know...too many skeptical thinkers out of control?

But on the positive side, people are generally more knowledgeable about the science perspective than in the past. At least in industrialized societies. This could be a reflection of the shift in work from labor jobs to more creative-type, specialized knowledge jobs in technologically and economically advanced societies.

[Taraz]

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Faith has been detrimental to humanity since its conception, and certainly religion is not dependent on faith as we can see from the practice of Buddhism. Faith is the chink in the armor of human rationale - it delivers blinding happiness at the cost of awareness. It is not religion or spirituality that is harmful; it is faith that makes a religion so easy to propagate and sustain, and faith that makes every act in its name unjustifiable.


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It's thus far been very harmful, but there's a theoretical possibility that it doesn't need to always cause problems.

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I don't see how anyone can claim this as fact. I think you can make the argument that religious thinking in the modern society is 'harmful'. But to claim that over the course of history religion has been detrimental to humanity is a very bold claim for such an insanely complex issue.

[t.conley]

I guess I would say faith and religion are different things. Secondly I started watching and like 30 seconds in the narrator says, "those who adhere to Judaism, Islam and Christianity still prefer to ignore reason and have faith in their forever unprovable omnipresent creator." I could be mistaken but I suppose that this statement takes faith to have or at least I need faith to believe it is forever unprovable.