Personally, I think the world would have been better off without it. But some, sadly, need religion. They need "truth" fabricated, instead of thinking for themself. I take the evidence presented to me, and come to a conclusion based on facts. "Faith" is a word to keep the illution of truth at place. I KNOW most disagree, since many are religious. Religion has done some good, but in my opinion, it has done far more evil.
Religion as the root of all evil?!?!?! If anything the absence of religion, name the three most evil people of our time. Hitler, Stalin, Binladen. Only one had religion, and he twisted his beyond beleif.
To Talo, alright, but lets see since Satan caused humans to commit the first sin and since "The wages of sin are death" everyone who dies is cause by him. Win.
Samy, he means that the fundamentals are the same. Who or what you worship can be considered a specific. Also, God created all the people, so wasn't he inadvertently causing their deaths? It's kind of like a bomb debate discussion I had a while ago. If someone planted a bomb and another person detonated it, who killed the people? What if the bomb was really a psychopath and the planter was the person who made him so?
I think that God is basically art incarnate. Religion is the thing that inspired people to write songs, poetry, etc. It probably was the beginning of independent thought. It was originally all about free speech. Ideas about hope, love, and happiness were finally written down on paper. The fact of the matter is that free speech does cause hatred and violence. It causes wars and suffering. But if everyone and everything were purely analytical and logical, what would happen to creativity? It would probably still exist, but it would be stunted. I also think that people who argue logically about the existence of God are wrong. How can you prove or disprove a symbol or a thought? (I use 'thought' not as a factual idea, but a thought. Like a panting. What science or logic describes, "I don't like how that looks."?)
So... Yes, religion causes evil, but it does enough good to make up for it.
Samy, he means that the fundamentals are the same. Who or what you worship can be considered a specific. Also, God created all the people, so wasn't he inadvertently causing their deaths? It's kind of like a bomb debate discussion I had a while ago. If someone planted a bomb and another person detonated it, who killed the people? What if the bomb was really a psychopath and the planter was the person who made him so?
No satan would have been responsible for their death, and really they have nothing in common.
Sorry, I guess the analogy didn't quite fit. My point is this: God created the humans knowing that they would die. God didn't directly kill the people. However, he knew that his creations would die. Satan (he's Lucifer, right?) is another one of God's creations. Something made Lucifer rebel. Since everything is either God or one of his creations, then either God or one of his creations made Lucifer evil. Therefor, God indirectly (or directly) made Lucifer evil. God couldn't accidentally do this because he's omniscient. If Lucifer kills everybody with his diseases and evil and stuff, then God indirectly is the killer. God is like the bomber, and Lucifer is the bomb. After all, God made Lucifer.
Well this all comes back to freewill, I say that we all have freewil includind lucifer, he wanted to literaly be god so he rebelled.also lucifer doesn't make viruses they were just an effect of the fall of man. God may have created the bomb but he didn't plant it or detonate it. Does that make sence?
Religion has got to be the Root of all evil. This thread was made a year ago, found at the bottom of the Forum, and you guys picked up without missing a beat as if it was on the front page the last 5 months. Nothing starts controversy like religion, nothing creates more war than religion, nothing is more hated than some one who doesn't practice yours.
Thank you, Samy, that makes perfect sense. Free will must have an element of randomness in it because randomness is pretty much the only thing that an omniscient mind can't predict. So that means that God accidentally made Lucifer evil. It's kind of strange to think of something perfect making an accident, but meh.
So... God created free will, which created evil. Some believe that religion created God (which created free will, which created evil). God must have known that free will would create evil, though. (Murphy's Law) Given enough time and true randomness, every possible outcome will happen. An omniscient mind would know this. So God still inadvertently created evil, although he created many, many good things in the same package. The people who say that religion created God could also say that religion created evil, right? Prove me wrong with another one of your uber-philosophical explanations.
Throughout history it would seem that religion is on the whole a bad thing. However imagine a world where there was never any religion. This would seenm ok nowadays, but in hundreds of years ago religion provided the only form of moral code there was. Imagine how many more terrible things would have happened if no one had the fear of going to hell.
I am an atheist, but i can still see all the good that religion does in the world. All of the charities and things like that.
Even though wars were fought over religion, quite often it was used as an excuse and was really just for power or wealth. If there was no religion undoubtedly people would have found another reason to fight each other.
I agree with woody. Now people have prisons to be afraid of instead of hell, so atheists still have to obey the law. I'll take a guess that it also had to do with the honor system way back when. Instead of "who cares if Joe kills Bob? At least he's not killing me.", it's "I care if Joe kills Bob. If I don't do anything about it, I share part of the blame, and God will smite me, too. He did it with the Great Flood, so he'll do it with me. Surely there was at least one innocent person with the Great Flood, so God must generalize sin."
I also just realized that I made a mistake in my paragraph above woody's. It should say that God either purposefully or knowingly created sin. Of course, when dealing with omniscient beings, purposefully and knowingly are synonymous.
