Religion is overall not beneficial to the well being of society and humanity

I will go straight into a rebuttal of my opponent’s opening argument. Rebuttals It seems like the entire first half of my opponent’s argument is comprised of “Correlation equals causation.” “The safest state to live in the USA is Vermont.[2] It is also the least religious state.[3] Mississippi being the most religious state[3] is also the 10th most violent state.[4] As of 2010 Mississippi had the second-worst gun-murder rate in the nation.” This point is irrelevant. I could attribute anything else to the murder rate there. Why attribute religion? What would make religion more responsible for murder rates there? “Furthermore secular nations donate the most money and supportive aid, per capita, to poorernations. “ Again, irrelevant. Does this somehow invalidate the good will that religious peoplehave? “The Global Peace Index Moreover Demonstrates That Least Religious Countries among MostPeaceful, Highly Religious Countries among the Least Peaceful[5]” Again, why should religion be responsible for these problems? There are many other thingsthat could be causing their peace problems. “Oliner (1988) and Varese and Yaish (2000), in their studies of heroic altruism duringthe Holocaust, have found that the more secular people were, the more theyrescued and helped persecuted Jews.” Once again, irrelevant. Religion is not the sole defining quality of a person. There areplenty of good and bad religious people and atheists “Numerous studies, show that atheists, when compared to religious people, are actuallyless likely to be, racist, anti-Semitic, dogmatic, ethnocentric, andauthoritarian.” Before I attack this one, I’d like to see sources. “Furthermore secularism also correlates to higher education levels. 63 studies in 2013 found that atheists are on average more intelligent than believers. [9]” Irrelevant once again. Again, religion is not the defining quality of a person, and it is not the final determiner of a person’s intelligence. There are many more plausible reasons for this, such as just better intelligence and scholastic aptitude. Why would religion be related to this? Rebuttal to Christian Wars and Oppression If we never had religion, would these events have never happened? Perhaps, but religion wasstill not the sole cause of these problems; it was the religious followers that caused them. I will go back to my car analogy here. A car is a great use of transportation and can be useful when used properly, but millions of people die on a regular basis as a result of drunk driving. If we never had cars, would all those accidents have never happened? Yes, but if we never had cars, we would never be able to reap the benefits that their presence brought. It wasn’t the cars that caused the deaths, it was the people driving them. The same logic applies to religion. Religion can’t cause anything by itself, good or bad, because it is not a sentient being. Only the people that have power and cancontrol it are the problems and all the followers do the same. Rebuttal to Suppression of Scientific Progress This is related to my last rebuttal in that religion wasn’t the cause of this happening. And I find it interesting that my opponent calls it “The Christian Dark Ages”, as if Christianity single-handedly plunged the world into a dark age. And also, his diagrams state that if we never had religion, we could have been exploring the galaxy by now. On what grounds? What does he have to saythat we would have been exploring the galaxy without religion? What sources does he have to say religion was the only cause of this, and that it wasn’t due to other reasons? I await a response to this so I can properly rebut this. Rebuttal to Stress Once again, this is the fault of religious followers who are either misinformed or looking to exert power over weak people. Religion doesn’t require any of these things; the religious leaders do, however. Rebuttal to Misogyny I need to ask again, is it the laws of Islam that directly require these? Or is it thereligious leaders that do so? Conclusion My opponent’s arguments don't appear to hold water. Almost the whole thing is built on the assumption that “Correlation implies Causation”. Why should religion automatically be attributed to most of these problems? And why should secularism automatically be attributed to good? Why not the people themselves? There are many corrupt people that act without religion. Truly good people will do good, and truly evil people will do evil, regardless of religion's presence.