Organized religion causes more harm than good

There are some interesting Dichotomies here that are likely to have an effect on the way that this debate proceeds. First of all there is the Organised Religion notion We can have organised religions, unorganised religions, codified religions, organised groups with common cause that are non-religious and unorganised groups with the commonality of interest that are not religious. Then we have harm and good and the notion of more in their regard to these, as though there are units or quanta of harm and good Eunons might be a good word. These Eunons may be held by an individual or group and their or society as a whole and their gain or loss be a consequence of the actions be they groups or individuals. I don't like this kind of notion but if we are to talk about more harm than good then we had better be able to measure it or at least pretend we can. (There are difficult questions here for example is it worse to be made quadraplegic or to be killed). If your sexual favours are always in return for a fee is rape via refusal to pay as bad as the loss of a leg. We know how the law stands on these things but do they equate so neatly when we attempt to measure quanta or euons. Alternatively we can treat good and harm as some kind of metaphysical stuff which exists independently of the physical world. Say for example in a dualistic framework. But such treatments risk adoption of religious concepts to the debate when religion is the subject of the debate this is a recipe for paradox and debate collapse. In the absence of a fully fledged general scientific theory of harm and good we have the legal definition of culpable causation. According to adversarial law a person is legally responsible for harm if they are the factual cause of that harm. The test being 'but for'. 'But for the event ie Mr X's shooting of Y, Y would not have died on (date D at time T). Since the alleged causal chain stretches far back; ie under the 'but for test' an event such as the birth of Hitlers' grandmother's could be said to have caused the German genocides of the Second World. In law it is the proximal events which are considered primarily in terms of blame or harm it is Mr X and anyone abetting or leading him to perform the act of shooting who are culpable. 1) How do you feel about voluntary organisations in general. These organisations exist to promote the interests of their members and their interests which define the group. A corporation is such a grouping. It can be fairly certain given the diversity of interests within a multicultural society that the success in achieving lasting change in support of their members will inconvenience ,cause harm to groups which do not share those interests. Society is competitive, in any act of societal change there will be both winners and losers. 2) How do you feel about movements that spontaneously arise have little inner cohesion and no effective control over there members beliefs and or actions. Was Charles Manson a religious fundamentalist a spaced out hippy or just someone who read too much into the Bible and Nietzche. Punk rock, where no-one could work out what it was to be truly nihilistic. Are these groups better or worse than organised groups are they anarchistic or ptrogressive. Are they neutral. 3) Are not all groups like the human species as a whole; organised and disorganised inheritors of traits of Jingoism and xenophobia. Group bias is a human trait, it can be demonstrated in Soccer riots between and in the churches, people who have everything in common other that the team they support and little in common demographically with the average supporter of their team or denomination. 4) It is often difficult to determine whether a group organised or not constitutes a religion.Buddhism and Jainism are non theistic religions, forms of atheism exist within Hinduism, some religious groups have a heirarchy of control, others like Sunni Islam have teachers but no real notion of hierarchy. Judaism was seen as atheistic by later Ancient Egpyptian and Judaism and Christianity. There are atheistic Jews who are nevertheless Given these considerations I will argue that while that there is nothing special about religious groups that makes them more or less good in secular terms. I will argue that organisation increases the possibility of successfull action for good or for harm. I will then look at the gross contribution amounts to more than the action of individuals within organisation. I don't want go through a history of all religions but will argue that in the West while religion has had beneficial effects over the long term,on balance.