THBT religion has a detrimental effect on the modern world.

Thank you for that good start to the debate. I hope I can make this interesting. Anyway, I'm going to be making some contentions first, and I will follow that with a rebuttal to my opponent's case.People who claim a religion are more likely to give to charity:According to The Chronicle of Philanthropy, 65 percent of the people who claim a religion give to charity. Conversly, 56 percent of people who do not claim a religion give to charity. It's about a 10% difference, but that is statistically significant and cannot be ignored as an important point. [1]Certain religions even have mandations to give to the poor. Several verses in the New Testament teach that Christians should give to the poor. Muslims have Zakat as one of the five pillars of their faith, which is a teaching that the rich should cleanse themselves of some of their money and give it to the poor.Institutions:Faith based institutions bring several signficant benefits.Catholic Hospitals:Catholic hospitals make up a little over quarter of the world's health care. They are all non profit, and they never turn anyone away. These institutions represent a significant part of society, and they are an overall positive social force. [2]Faith-based schools:Faith-based schools are actually more advanced than public schools in a lot of areas. First of all, faith-based schools have greater overall diversity than public schools do, enrolling proportionally similar percentages of ethnicities in comparison to the U.S. population. [See pages 15-17 on source 3] One of the second significant benefits is that faith-based schools tend to be better for historically disadvantaged students, scoring at grade levels beyond their public school peers [see page 24 in source 3]: 1.7 grade levels ahead for black students 2.5 grade levels ahead for hispanic students 1.6 grade levels ahead for low-income students Judging by the evidence, it's easy to conclude that faith-based schools are actually better for the population than the public schools are. Religion tends to improve people's health and happiness: Catherine Sanderson, psychology professor at Amherst College, says that religious beliefs "give people a sense of meaning," and "it gives a sense of well being or comfort." While she goes on to say that, of course, these feelings aren't completely unique to religion, it is still important to realize that religion carries these benefits inherently. She says that the benefits religion provides are important to a person's emotional and physical health. [4] Now, as that concludes my case, I'm going to be addressing my opponent's case. First, I would like to make an observation. The resolution is to examine the overall effect that religion has on the modern world. That means that my opponent is tasked with providing a statistical significance in his claims, not just a claim that certain aspects of religion are harmful. I can claim that, because some people are allergic to strawberries, strawberries have an overall negative impact on society. I must attach some sort of statistically significant figure to back up that claim. Moving on to my opponent's first contention: My opponent's first claim is that religion hinders progress socially. To back up this claim, he says that religion opposes black emancipation. However, the evidence he provides to support this claim, doesn't actually support his claim. To begin, this verse would have to specifically say that blacks were the specific slaves. To assume that "slave" is the same thing as "black" is actually very stereotypical and borders on racism. Slaves could have been any color, and they weren't slaves under the same kind of definition we might think of today. Slavery in the Old Testament was actually used to fight poverty, make peace, or have a daughter marry into a family. [5] Slaves were provided for, in the sense that they were given a home and food in return for the work that they did. Honestly, it was just a way for the poor person to skip the middle man in purchasing. Instead of making a little money then buying a little bread at the market, they could work for someone and receive housing and food in exchange for that work. Aside from that point, slaves were released after every 6 years. [6] My opponent also says that women are not allowed to teach according to the Bible. This is, again, a misinterpretation. Paul explains just a little better in 1 Corinthians 14:34-35 "34Womenf should remain silent in the churches. They are not allowed to speak, but must be in submission, as the law says. 35If they want to inquire about something, they should ask their own husbands at home; for it is disgraceful for a woman to speak in the church." From an exegetical standpoint, you must understand that he is not speaking to our culture. In these verses, Paul is essentially trying to say that a woman shouldn't speak in church; because, largely women in those societies did not know anything that the men didn't already know. Thus, a woman teaching or asking questions would more than likely just slow down a church session. Timothy, being one of Paul's prodiges, would've already known this. The bottom line is this: a woman was not allowed to speak, because she could ask questions that her husband could just answer at home. Instead of interrupting the service to ask "so how many disciples did Jesus have?" she could just ask her husband. The problem we face today is taking this out of the context of the original society being written to. In the modern day, I have no doubt that Paul would've just left that out. In fact, according to the Bible, God specifically chose several women to be leaders. [7] Even if you disagree with the defense I've presented, my opponent still hasn't technically connected his argument with its statistical effect on the modern world. This actually brings me to the next part of my rebuttal, regarding statistical signficance. This entire first contention can only possibly apply to 32 percent of the entire world. [8] My opponent must also prove statistical signficance among that 32 percent. Claiming Bible verses or citing one pair of mentally ill parents does not make up a signficant enough statistic to affirm the resolution. My opponent's second claim regards fanatacism: I'm going to make this brief, as I'm running out of character space. Essentially, this argument is non-unique. There will always be fanatics. Religion is just a belief for them to hide behind, but they could also use secular beliefs like anarchy, imperialism, materialism, etc. Not to mention, my opponent has not provided statistical significance here, and the Muslims he references make up a 10th of the Muslims in the world. [9] The Shia Muslims are the fanatics, and the Sunni Muslims are actually very peaceful and oppose the fanatacism. As far as the argument on unity goes, people place each other into cliques by nature. It's just something we do. We classify and divide. It happens in high school, it happens at work, and it happens in social interactions. This is not unique to religion in any way. It's just another thing that religious people do that's wrong, but the rest of us do it too. Thank you for reading, I wish my opponent luck. Sources:[1] https://philanthropy.com...[2] http://www.catholicnewsagency.com...[3] http://www.amcsc.org... [4] https://www.washingtonpost.com... [5] http://www.compellingtruth.org... [6] http://www.religioustolerance.org... [7] http://biblehub.com... [8] http://www.washingtontimes.com... [9] http://www.pewforum.org...