-Religion is the opium of the masses. -Religion is the impotence of the human mind to deal with occurrences it cannot understand. -Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions.
So true...
Now, what do YOU think? Does religion cause wars? Does it keep people in line? Or is this topic pointless? I think that religion is BAD. With no religion on Earth, there would be less war. WW2. Massive slaughter of Jews. Without Jews or any other religious group, WW2 may never have even started.
Personally I don't veiw religon as a good or bad thing. As long as it is practiced with a certain degree of organaztion and kept seperate from the state then thats fine, but a personal belife of mine is that "the hands that help are far better than the lips that pray."
I just got finished dissecting and re-synthesizing a massive amount of Kant who deals with this question in a somewhat indirect way. He argues that a belief in god is a maxim that should be followed by everyone in order to have a summum bonum, or supreme good. This allows certain actions to have their own intrinsic moral worth. I like this argument a lot because it doesn't argue that there is a god, only that we should act as though there is.
Religion can't be bad, because breakfast is good and thus so is Breakfastarianism. And since Breakfastarianism is a religion, and Breakfastarianism is good, religion in term must be good. Good being the opposite of bad just helps boost the fact that religion is good, and not bad.
Er...not necessarily. I think you'd find it harder to discuss whether religion is good or evil, as opposed to good or bad.
Good as opposed to bad means it has a higher standard, or it is beneficial.
Good versus evil is more akin to benevolence/beneficience as opposed to malevolence/maleficience.
To say that religion is benevolent/malevolent etc. is very difficult indeed, seeing as religion is not an entity within itself- it can't exist without a population that practices it!
Moe: while being able to practice a quasi-theistic outlook without having to subscribe to theism is certainly nice, I must say this...
I DON'T LIKE THE CATEGORICAL IMPERATIVE!!! D: D: D:
god or evil? it is the same....it is only a personification of things we do and eternal fight between things that are good or bad.. What is your opinion?
Bad.Most wars caused have something to do with religion.If people concentrated on the present,not on what will happen when they die,the world would be a much better place.Im not saying that im an athiest or anything though.I just think that religion causes more pain and suffering in the world than good....
Xanatu: If people concentrated on the present,not on what will happen when they die
This is in fact quite relevant- as it is a criticism that certain figures within the Church make of various interpretations of Church doctrine that concern themselves more with the promise of an eternal life or some heavenly reward (or hellish punishment).
I'm not arguing the existance of a God/Creater/Thingy, but every single religion is man made. Like the bible or the Quran, both were written by men, and look how serious people take them... That's like someone thinking The Lord Of The Rings is a religion.
I don't see how anyone couldn't like categorical imperatives Certainly good/bad is entirely relative, but I think many many people in the world operate on the ideology that good/evil are more universally defined. I don't see how some entity like money, politics, or religion can actually be good or evil. The entity itself isn't actually doing anything, only the people involved in it. Even assuming a "supreme good" we can't assess things like religion. We we have been "better off" without religion? Of course not! Things would simply be different than they are now.
That's not an assessment that's even possible to make. If things are different, then they are just different. You can compare an certain set of circumstances to other circumstances that don't exist (and when you don't even know what those circumstances are) and assume that one would be better than another. What if we ended up with our poopers where our mouths are? Then we would smell poop all day! Certainly some people would claim that's not as "good" as where our poopers are now, but really it's not better or worse - just different. mmm... that was a tangent
Like the bible or the Quran, both were written by men, and look how serious people take them... That's like someone thinking The Lord Of The Rings is a religion.
Actually, some person created the Jedi church, Jedi from StarWars, so some people are StarWars fanatics...
