Religion is good for humans while homosexuality and gay marriage is bad for humans

Since my opponent gave no definitions, I will define humans as “The human race; human beings collectively.”. Homosexuality as “The group of people who are attracted to the same sex.” Religion as “The belief in and worship of a superhuman controlling power, especially a personal God or gods.” And finally good as “To be desired” whereas bad is simply the negation of good. Homosexuality Pro’s argument is that gays are detrimental to humanity because they were the cause of HIV. This is a genetic fallacy, just because something harmful originates from X doesn’t make X harmful. For example, the latest Ebola outbreak started in a small village in Guinea [1], but it doesn’t follow that Guinea is harmful to humanity, even though Ebola is. We also don’t consider pigs to be harmful to society, even though Swine influenza came from them [2]. The argument works both ways, as straight people can get and spread syphilis and herpes, but we don’t consider relationships bad for humanity. Furthermore, Pro’s argument is about a disease that he states mainly affects homosexuals. However, homosexuals are a very small percentage of the population. Within the US, it is said to be 3.8% [3] and within that, only about 20% have HIV [4]. So, Pro’s argument is that small group of people within a small group of people possesses a harmful disease, therefore the entire group is harmful to humanity. That clearly doesn’t follow. Pro has failed to demonstrate his BOP in this section. Religion Pro shows that religion can help with prevent suicide, stress and aggression. However, Pro hasn’t shown that the elements of religion that do this are religion specific. For example, religion may prevents suicide, not because of something religion specific, but because the social aspect of religion create a good source of support. Prayer may relieve stress because it gives a sense of hope or the conception that you are talking to someone. All of these can be achieved sans religion. From a societal standpoint, Pro has failed to uphold his BOP. There are some reasons to think religion is harmful from this standpoint. Religion can cause tribalistic thinking, as it separates believers from nonbelievers. It teaches believers are special and are going to a special place separate from the heathens. This can cause condescension and disrespect to others and at its worst can cause religious wars. Most religious teaching possesses fragments of what we consider backwards laws. Such as capital punishment for small offences, this can cause ideas such as Dominionism [5]. Lastly, a sociological study done by Professor Phil Zuckerman found that a nation being religious has no benefits over a non-religious society. In fact the secular societies fare better than religious ones [6]. Zuckerman concludes “Atheism and secularity have many positive correlates, such as higher levels of education and verbal ability, lower levels of prejudice, ethnocentrism, racism, and homophobia, greater support for women’s equality, child-rearing that promotes independent thinking and an absence of corporal punishment, etc. And at the societal level, with the important exception of suicide, states and nations with a higher proportion of secular people fare markedly better than those with a higher proportion of religious people.” [ibid] Pro has failed to uphold his BOP in either sections. Back to Pro Sources [1] http://www.who.int... [2] www.merckvetmanual.com/mvm/index.jsp?cfile=htm/bc/121407.htm [3] http://gaylife.about.com... [4] http://healthland.time.com... [5] http://rationalwiki.org... [6] https://secularpolicyinstitute.net...