Religion is predominately a positive for humanity

On to rebuttals. Contention 1: Meaning, Purpose and Hope One key way to judge the positive effects of religion, is to consider what the situation would be like in the absence of it. If you remove religion, you remove the concept that humanity stands apart as "sacred" I assume that Pro is not a proponent of evolution, and so I also assume that he makes no room for evolution in his thoughts on morality. I think it’s perfectly reasonable to assume that we evolved a morality as a means of survival. Chimps for example show many signs of morality, though not as evolved as ours. This theory makes far more sense; it allows for the moral hiccups that everybody experiences. Proof of this can be found fairly easily. Just go to one of the rapidly-shrinking untouched islands; on which you will find tribes of people living and comingling perfectly fine without the words of Christ. Or, take the countless historical examples. Just take the Pirahã people in Brazil, who have existed for thousands of years with no concept of a god. They have developed social systems and have survived quite happily without a religious concept. How do you explain such a phenomena? I argue that this notion of humans being ‘sacred’ is actually toxic. It gives us this feeling that we are somehow immortal, that we are only here briefly; and that belief has spawned some truly poisonous ideas. We should see ourselves as incredibly mortal; that this trip on earth is our only trip, and therefore we should try to leave the world a bit better off and not sit around awaiting the return of Jesus. Contention 2: Community and Identity The flip-side of this point is that existing in a community of people who say and believe the same things that you do doesn’t breed a great deal of creativity, or challenging ideas. If you have your faith shaken (probably by a guy like me) during the week, and you start to second guess what you believe, you can always go back on Sunday morning and have everybody tell you how much I am wrong and how much you must be right. Not to mention what happens when these tight knit groups clash with other tight knit groups. These kinds of flare-ups are generally very destructive, especially when both groups are meeting once a week to congratulate each other on how right they are and how wrong the other group must be. How about those groups that continue racist practises? For example, the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, whose leader, Warren Jeffs regularly says outrageous things like, “The black race is the people through which the devil has always been able to bring evil unto the earth. ” “a local congregation often provides advice, care for the poor and sick, and other services on a far more personal level, and sometimes more effectively, than the government or secular organisations” True, but look at the countless mega-churches that make millions and pump those millions into things like smoke shows (literally) and laser shows and big high-definition screens and lavish video productions and so on. Not to mention that eight of the ten biggest charities are secular – the difference is that secular charity doesn’t come with little pamphlets and invitations to come to the local church. Contention 3: Call to Action If the positive of religion is charity, (which can just as easily be accomplished without a religion), that’s fine. We can count that as a positive, but it’s also a positive for those who don’t have a religion, as charity is something everybody does. So it’s a positive for secularists as well. The problem is that religion comes with negatives that secularism doesn’t have. It rapidly becomes a diminishing returns kind of situation. Okay, the Quran says “Pay the poor-due. ” That’s fine, but it also says of unbelievers "And kill them wherever you find them, and turn them out from where they have turned you out. .. " This is something secularism simply doesn’t have. There is no code for murdering apostates in the secular tradition. Nor do people have to be compensated in some heavenly realm for every good deed they do. People are inherently selfish creatures, and I see no problem in giving to the homeless because you don’t like seeing homeless people begging for money, not because a cosmic judge will someday pat you on the head in another universe. Contention 4: Moral Compass This reply ties into some of the stuff I mentioned in the reply to the first contention. It is interesting that you mention Mother Teresa. I recommend our old pal Hitch’s article on her. (. http://www.slate.com...) This ‘true north’ theory is frankly a load of rubbish and rhetoric. I’m glad we don’t take our morals from the Christian god, who, in a fit of rage declared in Genesis 6:17 “And, behold, I, even I, do bring a flood of waters upon the earth, to destroy all flesh, wherein is the breath of life, from under heaven; and every thing that is in the earth shall die. ” What kind of psychopathic god decides that a fair punishment for behaving exactly as they were created to behave should be complete and utter annihilation of the entire world. Or, who decided that a fair punishment for keeping the Jews in slavery (a common practise in ancient times) would be wanton slaughter of innocent children. “And Pharaoh rose up in the night, he, and all his servants, and all the Egyptians; and there was a great cry in Egypt; for there was not a house where there was not one dead. ” Then in THE SAME BOOK describes rules for keeping Hebrew slaves! “If you buy a Hebrew slave, he is to serve for only six years. Set him free in the seventh year, and he will owe you nothing for his freedom. ” Exodus 21:2. Not only racist and obviously biased to the Jews, but insane! What kind of god decides to create a human race with a fatal flaw only to send his son to earth in the middle of one of the most illiterate societies to be tortured to death for the very flaw he created – and then expect modern people 2000 years later to honestly believe in him? It’s sadomasochism! If the Christian god exists he surely is a delusional psychopath. There is no ‘true north’. Just think that millions of millions of people have decided that it’s okay to see homeless people. In a perfect society, we’d be shocked – we’d run to the nearest homeless guy and have them sleep in the basement of our luxurious house! But we aren’t shocked, and we don’t all do that, believer, or not. We’ve decided, sub-consciously, or not, that it’s not shocking or truly terrible that people get hooked on drugs and are forced to beg for money in the street – and yet it is! It’s my personal belief that nobody does anything for selfless reasons. It doesn’t make sense in evolution, and I don’t think you see true selflessness – ever. Everybody has a selfish reason to do something, even if that reason is to feel better about yourself. I don’t have a problem with that. It’s equally as ludicrous to assume that ‘better’ and ‘worse’ only exist with religion, as if a Brazilian tribe couldn’t understand that if one their children is killed it isn’t ‘better’ or ‘worse’. I think it’s pretty clear. What an outrageous claim. ‘Better’ and ‘Worse’ are purely subjective, just as a Catholic priest might think it’s ‘better’, or if you like, ‘more moral’, to have AIDS run rampant than it is to have widespread condom use in Africa. Just as the psychopathic god you claim is ‘true north’ thinks that perfect moral punishment for the sins of Sodom and Gomorrah should be total and absolute destruction. Myself, as an atheist, I look at that and my subjective true north differs from the so-called holy god. I think we shouldn’t condemn entire cities to destruction every time we don’t like them. Gen. 19:24-25 “Then the LORD rained upon Sodom and upon Gomorrah brimstone and fire from the LORD out of heaven; And he overthrew those cities, and all the plain, and all the inhabitants of the cities, and that which grew upon the ground. ”