Religion is predominately a positive for humanity

I’ll begin by thanking Pro for the compliment, which is rare when discussing religion, as I’m sure we both know. On to rebuttals, or perhaps, rebuttals of rebuttals. 1) My first point is a declaration of a viable argument, that religion has run its course, and being that no proof can be raised to show that religion makes us ‘better’ then it truly has no purpose. The Hitchens quote was a bit long, but his points build on top of mine. Your points on my absolutism are not related to this debate, and are mostly just conjecture. I don’t see how my own personal beliefs factor in – this should be about evidence; about what I have written on the page. As an ex-Baptist I have the religious history that Hitchens could not claim. I went to bible school for two years, in fact. I know the other side well; I debated Atheists on the existence of god much as you are doing now. So any absolutism you detect is well-won. I’m open to learn, but I’m deeply skeptical. 2) If the example I used was too charged with emotion for Pro, I can just as easily use a different example, because I think you missed the point. Obviously, from my perspective, god is myth, so my mother’s belief is ludicrous. To my mother, it might be quite real (although I haven’t had the ‘would you rather I had a brain tumor’ talk with her). If we assume god exists, then surely it is much worse that I be damned to hell. This example was intriguing because it shows the dichotomy that exists between an Atheist and a Theist. Her logic is faith based. If I have a brain tumor, I know I what I have because I can go get a CAT scan and can clearly see the tumor. My mother, on the other hand, can’t go get a heavenly CAT scan (this example is running out of road) and speak with the Lord about me and my damnation. She has no way to quantify heaven or hell or the fate that she has decided is totally real. This is the point. If we use her faith-based logic, then medical science and the ‘real-world’ must take a backseat to the eternal, unearthly realm, which, unlike medical science and the ‘real-world’ isn’t strictly verifiable. Otherwise, as any pastor will tell you, “What is the point of having faith, if it was provable”? Faith, therefore, is suspension of logic. My point was that if we apply faith to a geopolitical standard, we get some serious effects. Your points on terrorism strengthen my own viewpoints. To a terrorist, his reliance on faith is to the detriment of not only the human race in general but to the thousands of fellow Muslims who are routinely slaughtered by extremists. The problem is that Islam in particular does make ample room for violent interpretation. Faith is what causes terrorists to blow themselves up. Read some of the first hand accounts of suicide bombers. Here’s an excerpt from one of them. (http://www.therazor.org...) Stiti: "No, that's not it. That's not right. I didn't go to commit suicide. I went to die a martyr's death. I wanted to get the reward. I spent a month in the mosque. I learned there how important it is to be a shaheed. It is the loftiest objective. It's very important for the Palestinian people, nationally and religiously. It's the biggest and most holy thing you can do. And then you receive all the rewards in Paradise." I made my position on moral evolution fairly clear. Plenty of my points remain unchallenged, for example, what about the atheistic tribes that have somehow survived without a shred of religious bias? They have morality, in fact, they even practise a kind of socialism. I claimed that human morality is intensely subjective, and it often based on past histories. My points on taking morality from what I would call a wicked god remain mostly unchallenged. Who is to say morality isn’t defined by cultural bias? Also, my points on the toxicity of religious community are unchallenged. Your points on slavery are especially ironic, being that the slave owners used verses from the bible to back up their divine right to own slaves. “Who is to say that if you were born in Syria, you might be a fighter for ISIS right now?” Exactly right! I might be! I’m thankful to be in a place where secularism is celebrated and science and reason are allowed to challenge dogmatic beliefs, not in a place where such ideas are encouraged to ferment. This is why the spread of secularism and logic and science is so important – not to brainwash or destroy tradition, but to allow people to see that there is another way to look at the world. 3) I can make it clear what I think; and that is that religion has been both a vehicle and a source for hatred and intolerance. Be careful not to bias all your arguments to Christianity. History is not kind to religion – and that goes for multiple cultures. The Bible is a deeply contradictory book, as I pointed out. Sure Jesus might have said “turn the other cheek” (a ludicrous practise, if you ask me), but at the same time, the god of the Old Testament smites entire cities. Are we to believe that this god is somehow less important than the very same god who appears later in the book? This sense of the New Testament/Old Testament god is relatively new in the Christian doctrine. It’s apologetic and isn’t very genuine. As for the Crusades, well they are more supported by Jesus’ words than by anybody else’s. The doctrine of unbelief, which ties back into my mother and her faith-based logic, was a primary motivator. I’ll leave up to Pope Urban II, and his declaration of the First Crusade on 27 November, 1095, to better explain it: “Who, who will go chase off these infidels and take back what they have taken and polluted? Who, if it is not you? ... May nothing keep you back, not even your love for your children, your parents, and your wives....Remember what the Lord has told us in the Gospel: He who loves his father and mother more than me is not worthy of me....Jesus also said that he who leaves all to follow me will have an eternal reward. This is why I ask you, not in my own name but in the name of the Lord, to convince the Francs of every rank, foot soldiers as well as the knights, the rich and the poor, to go help the faithful servants of Christ and to push far back the race of infidels....This, I say to those gathered here and I will do so to those absent: This is what Christ ordains!” I think it’s made clear what the Pope ordered. Unbelievers will go to hell, and so torment and war and violence are somehow ‘worth it’ if you can save a few from the unquantifiable hellfire that awaits them. Add in this notion of ‘holy land’ and the situation becomes toxic. Your quotes from atheismuk.com are not related to what I think. I never said them, and I don’t know why you posted them in the first place. Are you trying to make me out to sound rude by fitting this quote over top of what I am actually trying to say? I never claimed any of those points. We improve as a species; it is what we do, and we’ve been doing it for a very long time. I say all ideological fanatics and sources of fanaticism should be cast out. I’m glad to read that we agree that ideological fanaticism is so very toxic. I’m sad to read that you can’t see that religious texts are a primary source of such fanaticism. We don’t need them to justify our existence any more than we need them as scientific documents. So why not cast them out? Why make justifications? My fourth contentions remain unchallenged, but I’ll assume you probably just ran out of space.