THIS HOUSE BELIEVES THAT CULTURE IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN RELIGION

I negate. DEFINITIONS This House Believes – can be discarded. It was not relevant in PRO R1, and it will not be relevant in my case. Culture - the behaviors and beliefs characteristic of a particular social, ethnic, or age group Religion – Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, etc. Important – prevalence RE: PRO The thesis of my opponent's case reads "[c]ulture is more important than religion mainly because it's already our "natural way of living" unlike religion that needs many commandments that could actually control our way of life." 1) She is absolutely true that most, if not all, religions have some type of commandments that their believers must follow. However, this argument works for the CON, as it proves that religion is more prevalent in people's lives than culture is – A supreme being's orders is of much greater significance than what a measly little human being feels is intuitively correct. 2) And even if that's not true, she never shows why our "natural way" is more important than "commandments". A branch off of her thesis says that "religion actually has implemented laws and doctrines, unlike with culture, there are no specific laws and restrictions we should follow." 1) She is wrong when she says culture has no specific laws and restrictions. The laws and restrictions of a culture are [usually] not written down, but the guidelines for different cultures DO exist. Let's take the Chinese culture. The Chinese have this tradition of giving old people respect and obeying your elders. That's a restriction, right? You can't suddenly cuss out your grandmother if you follow the culture of the Chinese. As for switching cultures and how there are no restrictions there, that is the exact same thing for religion. To switch from Christianity to Atheism is against the laws of Christianity, but to switch from the Chinese culture to…. Something-else culture is also not right, in a Chinese culture-ist's point of view. CASE: (basically reiterating the above, with a few new things) Contention 1 – Culture is AS important a religion Culture is pretty much the same thing as religion, and is equal in terms of prevalence in everyday life. Actually, I'd say they're exactly the same thing. My opponent's definition of religion is "a system of faith or belief which is actually headed by a superhuman being", and I would say that many cultures actually have a superhuman as a figurehead. Let's take Haruhiism. The culture of Haruhiism is based off of the anime series "The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya", and its followers hail Haruhi Suzumiya as God. However, we don't consider Haruhiism as a religion, but rather a culture – or a "cult". This is where we see the only difference between culture and religion – Religion has more followers and is more widely accepted, whereas something like Haruhiism, which only has a very small following in comparison to the biggest religions, is seen as a culture. Granted, many cultures do not have a holy supreme superhuman uberbeing as their leader, but both of them determine how a person lives. Since Culture and Religion are pretty much the same thing, any importance that religion holds in a person's life is the same Contention 2 – Culture is LESS important than religion. My opponent points out in her case that culture is our "natural way of living", and specifically defines it as "our lifestyle, tradition, way of doing things and our philosophies". However, culture is defined by religion as well. Let's go through her list of things, and compare between different religions to see if there's an important difference. LIFESTYLE: Hindus don't eat meat. I [Atheist] like meat. This generally means that I can't invite my Hindu friends to Black Angus or Texas Roadhouse. TRADITION: Christians say "grace" before eating. I [Atheist] don't. This generally means that I'll be seen as disgraceful. WAY OF DOING THINGS: I'm not sure if this is true, but my English teacher told me that Jews believe that being studious means that they're getting closer to God. I [Atheist] don't really care about God, so I just wing things unless I really care about them. This generally means that Jews will be more successful at pretty much anything than I will be. PHILOSOPHIES: Religions define what is moral and what's not for people. I [Atheist] define my own morals. And because I find a lot of things fine, this generally means I'm freer than religious people. Religion defines culture; therefore it is more powerful and therefore more important than culture. And even if that's not true, our "natural way of living" is overruled and defined quite easily by a few holy laws. We've all seen some movie in which gangsters basically don't care about killing, as their culture tells them that it's okay to kill someone as long as they are not in your gang – they might be an enemy. However, if one of those people were to suddenly convert to Christianity, which says "Thou shall not kill", then their "natural way of living" is suddenly changed. They can't kill any more. Culture is NOT more important than Religion. Culture is either AS or LESS important than Religion.