Belief in an afterlife negatively impacts the world of practical affairs

I will have to deal with my opponent's points rather quickly so that I will still have time for a closing argument due to his skilled tactical responses. My opponent's arguments: 1) "...a politicians belief in the afterlife cannot possibly affect the policies they make. Instead as I have shown and will continue to affirm is that politicians policies are influenced by their belief in the religion and its values instead of by their belief in the afterlife." - First, I am speaking of more than *just* politicians and the policies they make. I must note that I believe my opponent has fundamentally either misunderstood the debate or give him credit for trying to change the topic. He stated the following points in rebuttal previously: "...this debate is only about belief in the afterlife, and henceforth reaching it." "...this debate only involves the politicians belief in an afterlife, and that they will judged regarding their decisions." "...My opponent, so far, has made the mistaken notion that by not making policies that uphold religious beliefs, a person will not go into the after-life." "If a person does not make said religious policies that affect constituents, that person will still enter the afterlife because not making policies for other people is not considered a personal sin because the person in question has not actively committed that sin them self." These are all straw-man arguments that I never made in the first place and are as said irrelevant. I must also note that this was in fact not my "primary point." Due to my opponent's movement of where I actually put this argument you might believe that it was. Do not. I clearly labeled my primary argument in R1 as point number three, where it says "This is my primary argument." Very clever! All my opponent has done to refute my actual primary argument is make the claim that charity impacts the world in a positive way, and that this is somehow to the credit of the religious in the majority of cases. I responded by saying that being charitable does not equate to being religious, he then responded by saying "Nor does being religious not equal being charitable" after a long set of statistics. Agreed. The point is that neither religion/non-religion is mutually exclusive to charity. The fact is, for the true believers in the major religions of the world (which all include a belief in the afterlife), this belief (which I admit is a part of faith) provides a cushion and a justification for a number of actions that impact the world in a negative way. See my examples from R1, all of which were of individuals making bad or careless choices due to the fact that they believe in the afterlife alone, not due to any other tenet of faith. Any time a person puts themselves in a position where they may lose their life, which is alright because they *believe* they *might* go to a place that *might possibly* exist it impacts the world negatively. Any time a person does lose their life because of this belief, whether they are the fundamentalist terrorist bomber who thinks he is going to be with 70 virgins soon or the people the bomber killed, the world is impacted in a negative way. Add up all of the religious wars throughout history, all those that went ahead with decisions that affected themselves negatively because of the cushion of the afterlife specifically, and then all those that suffered because of the original decision of some other person, and you have quite a negative impact. 2) My opponent then makes the case that it is not the belief in the afterlife that affects the actions of believers, but the faith itself. "Faith" is what disables the critical thinking ability to make the idea of the afterlife believable in the first place. I am glad my opponent made this argument, however. His own example brings out that a faith can exist without an afterlife. If only! Think about how much more reluctant so many people would be to steal, die, or kill for things that *might exist* if they weren't brainwashed to believe that this *possibility* does in fact exist with a certainty and that they are going there when they die. That religion or faith are in themselves a detriment to mankind I fully concede. However, I am making a specific indictment of the effects of the afterlife belief itself. That the "faith" is there before the specific afterlife belief I fully concede as well. However, it is the afterlife belief that provides the cushion and the comfort required for such things as the Crusades, fundamentalist bombers, and the devaluation of life in general by all religions (I am a [religion x'er] and I must go to war with [religion y'er] because my locality is majority [religion x] and I was raised like that, and in doing so will have done god's will and will therefore get into the afterlife) to take place. As said, if more people did not believe in an afterlife, then more people would be reluctant to risk their lives for their faith. The comfort and cushion would be removed from their outlook on this life if they knew that this life were all that existed, and they would have no choice but to focus their FULL attention on this life and this world. Does every individual that believes in an afterlife have a large negative impact on the world? No. In general, has the belief in an afterlife large positive impact on the practical world? No. In general, has the belief in an afterlife had a substantial negative impact on the world? I believe I have shown it has. I would like to thank my opponent for this entertaining and enjoyable debate. I await his final round eagerly. VOTE PRO, as I have shown that the belief in an afterlife certainly has a negative impact on the world of affairs. Britt