Religion is predominately a positive for humanity

I’ll begin by thanking Pro for his compliment. You might be surprised to know that the great anti-religious commentator Sam Harris apparently did not agree with your thoughts in the previous incarnation of this debate. Seriously though: on to my arguments, which I’ll split into three categories. 1. There is no proof that religious people are ‘better’ than nonreligious people. In fact, some of the only proof is that it makes people worse. The late great Christopher Hitchens said “Religion has run out of justifications. Thanks to the telescope and the microscope, it no longer offers an explanation of anything important. Where once it used to be able, by its total command of a worldview, to prevent the emergence of rivals, it can now only impede and retard—or try to turn back—the measurable advances that we have made. Sometimes, true, it will artfully concede them. But this is to offer itself the choice between irrelevance and obstruction, impotence or outright reaction, and, given this choice, it is programmed to select the worse of the two. Meanwhile, confronted with undreamed-of vistas inside our own evolving cortex, in the farthest reaches of the known universe, and in proteins and acids which constitute our nature, religion offers either annihilation in the name of god, or else the false promise that if we take a knife to our foreskins, or pray in the right direction, or ingest pieces of wafer, we shall be “saved. ” I apologize for the long quotation, but as Oscar Wilde said “Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation. ” 2. Religion destroys logic My mother is a long-standing Christian, and as an atheist, it greatly disturbs me to think that by her Baptist doctrine, she would rather hear that I had an inoperable brain tumor rather than hear that I don’t pray to the same god she does. Her doctrine, that is, the doctrine of Christ, says that anybody who doesn’t accept Jesus is destined to burn in hell for an eternity. This is a small example of the terror and complete suspension and disregard for logic that religion brings. Take that small example and blow it up and apply it to geopolitical events. The result? Terrorism, intolerance, genocide, wide-spread female genital mutilation, condemnation of birth control, corruption in government, and plenty of other problems. Of course, I’ll be the first to criticize the West’s nearsighted attack on Islam, but the idea cannot be ignored. What makes the Jihadi detonate a bomb strapped to his chest in the playground of a Shia school? It’s certainly not a logical choice. Those who say that they don’t represent Islam are just plain wrong. Who is to say that their interpretation of the Quran (which makes ample justification for violence) is incorrect? This violence among the religious isn’t new. Take for example, the countless massacres under the Ottoman leader Selim I, who spread the Sunni Islamic empire by sword, just as his de-facto religious leader, the hotly debated Muhammed, had done for his lifetime. He once ordered that 40,000 Shia should be killed, and said ”the killing of one Shiite had as much otherworldly reward as killing 70 Christians. ” This kind of logic-less slaughter is found chiefly in religious circumstances. 3. History shows that religion is a primary source of destruction and intolerance. Just glance through the history of most religions. They are packed with hatred, violence and war. The Catholic linage is literally stuffed with wars and acts of blatant terrorism – all approved by the church. The crusades are the obvious example, but take for example, the Christian tradition of anti-Semitism, under which the grounds for Nazism were paved. Jews have been long persecuted in the Christian tradition, being banned from work, separated and placed in ghettos. Or take the Fourth Council of the Lateran in 1215, a meeting by the Pope to make Jews wear different, distinguishable clothing. It was long decided that Jews drank the blood of Christian children, and therefore, a Jew could at any time be blamed of ‘blood libel’ and be put to death. The Jews, historically, were forced out of their homelands numerous times. It’s a legacy of unbelievable brutality. Christianity, in the general context of its history, has only recently changed how it treats holy war.