On Balance, Religion is a Positive Social Force

May the best argumentation win. Cheers! DEFINITION OF RELIGION Though I admit that all religions are “faith based” they do not need to include faith in ‘the supernatural. ’ There are many religions, recognized by the World Council of Religions (i), like Buddhism, Taoism, Confucianism, Unitarianism, Unitarian-Universalism, and even some forms of Judaism and Christianity that do not require faith in a supernatural being. They would fall under part 2 & 3 of the definition I provided in rd 1. The key difference between a religion and any club with rules, like a bowling league, is that a religion is imbued with sacred cosmic meaning - a means to strive for absolute Truth(s). (i) . http://www.millenniumpeacesummit.org... I will illustrate the advantages of religion as a social force. In round 3 I will extend my advantages and forward a defense against common misguided attacks on religion. ADVANTAGES OF RELIGION 1. Religious Folks Tend to Give More to Charity According to USA Today, “a study released Monday by the Chronicle of Philanthropy found that residents in states where religious participation is higher than the rest of the nation, particularly in the South, gave the greatest percentage of their discretionary income to charity”(ii)(v). This is supported by further studies that found Muslims in the UK gave more to charity than any other faith/ideological demographic due to adherence to the pillar of Islam known as “zakat,” the Arabic word for charity(iii). A study done by the Pew Research Forum on Religion on Muslims charitable giving throughout the world, due to their adherence to zakat, gives us reason to believe that this trend is not UK specific (iv). Most religions hold a key moral teaching about helping the poor. Islam has Zakat, Christianity has the teachings of Jesus, Judaism has the teachings of Hillel and “tikkun-olam,” and Hindus have karma, etc. Religious people adhere to these principles because they want to (1) enjoy a pleasant afterlife, (2) please God, (3) feel pleased by following cosmic Truth(s), and or (4) be affirmed by their fellow adherents for being a model disciple (vi). In contrast, though secular morality is valid, it’s far less pervasive than religious moral teaching, and sometimes convoluted. For example, the ethics posited by Nietzsche and Sartre encourage selfish hedonism, and Marxist ethics devalue the life of whomever doesn’t share your ideology (vii). (ii) USA TODAY, 2012: . http://tinyurl.com... (iii) NBC NEWS, 2013: . http://tinyurl.com... (iv) PEW RESEARCH, 2012: . http://tinyurl.com... (v) Chronicle of Philanthropy, 2013: . http://tinyurl.com... (vi) . http://www.er.uqam.ca... (vii). http://www.marxists.org... 2. Religious Folks Tend to Be Happier & Healthier According “to Catherine Sanderson, a psychology professor at Amherst College, Religious beliefs ‘give people a sense of meaning. It also gives them a social network. It gives a sense of well being or comfort. ” The article continues to say, “It also turns out that people who have religious or spiritual beliefs are happier than those who don’t, no matter what their beliefs”(viii). According to several studies conducted by the Journal of Social Psychology & Personality Science, Harvard, Duke, London, and Yeshiva University, religious adherents tended to be happier and healthier than atheists and agnostics. In one case: “In 2012, researchers led by a group at Yeshiva University analyzed the health outcomes of more than 90,000 women over an eight-year period and found that those who frequently attended religious services were 56% more likely than non-attending women to report high rates of optimism, and 27% less likely to report depression. Other studies of the same group found a 20% lower mortality rate. ”(ix) (viii) Washington Post, 2013 . http://tinyurl.com... (ix) Wall Street Journal, 2013: . http://tinyurl.com... 3. Religion Provides a Strong Sense of Community Religion provides people with a strong sense of community, and social cohesion. This leads to happier people, and to a group ethos of a “safe-space” where individuals can share prayers, hopes, dreams, and fears without fear of judgment or social embarrassment. This mutual expectation of positive relations stimulates and environments that encourages the positive development of each person’s moral character (x). (x) Prof. Graham & Haidt, University of Virginia, 2010: . http://tinyurl.com... 4. Faith-Based Institutions Faith based hospitals and schools, especially those operated by Catholics, serve millions and millions of people worldwide. They operate 26% of health care facilities in the world (xi). The extent of faith based schools and hospitals may be sufficient reason to vote PRO right now. All Catholic hospitals are non-for-profit, and never turn anyone away regardless of color, creed, gender, nationality, sexual orientation, or ability to pay. Studies have found that faith-based institutions have been essential in fighting poverty in the developing world (xii). Students that attend Catholic schools tend to score better on standardized tests than student whom attend public schools. And many of these schools are designed to serve low income students (xiii). Some strident atheists, like Hitchens, presume that these invaluable institutions could exist without religion, and that they could all quickly be replaced by atheist administrations; put your money where your mouth is. There is a reason faith-based folks like Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Mother Teresa, and Martin Luther King, Jr. risked their lives to help others while people like Christopher Hitchens stayed in comfortable settings to and make a living off of smear-campaign journalism. I believe it requires a faith in something beyond this life, not always religion mind you, but most-often religion that compels one to risk one’s life for others (xiv). (xi) Catholic News Agency, 2010: . http://tinyurl.com... (xii) Nigerian Institute of Social and Economic Research, 2011: . http://tinyurl.com... (xiii) Huffington Post, 2013: . http://tinyurl.com... (xiv) US Holocaust Museum, Dietrich Bonhoeffer: . http://tinyurl.com... 5. Potential for Social Transformation Religion has had a transformative impact on society. In many cases it has been liberating when used to unite people against oppression, as was the case with Liberation Theology in Latin America. Though, Liberation Theology was inspired by a mix of Marxism, and the Christian social gospel - this dialectic between sacred and secular demonstrates the strength of religion. To religion’s critics, religion is rigid, unchanging, and monolithic. Sociologists and scholars of religion know that religion is diverse and constantly evolving. Sociologists and scholars of religion base their understanding on the most up-to-date empirical evidence, and ethnographic studies. Meanwhile, most ideological critics of religion, like Hitchens and Dawkins, rehash purely philosophical dogmatics that have not been updated since Freud. When Islam was founded, tribal traditions in the Arab world sanctioned post-birth infanticide, constant tribal warfare, and no rights for women. Islam spread so quickly in the 7th-9th centuries because it banned infanticide, preached tolerance for “all people of the book” (Abrahamic faiths), and taught that women could own property and act as equals among men. The spread of Christianity throughout the Roman world, transformed a society that valued sexual and military conquest above all into a civilization that encouraged philanthropy, and self-discipline. The spread of Buddhism had a similar effect on the far-East. Though religion is far from perfect, we must consider what zeitgeist the major world religions replaced, and how much worse the world would be without these religions rather than focus exclusively on their faults. Source: . http://www.learner.org... 6. Faith in Metaphysics Needed to Sustain an Ethical Framework If I hear on the news that a man was killed by a car-bomb in Syria, how will I react to it? It depends on my emotional disposition, some people are more emotional than others. We can all agree that the death happened, but I may not know how to evaluate it ethically. Whether or not a man was killed is purely an empirical question, but answering “is this right” is an ethical question that no scientist can conduct an experiment for. I would say, according to my faith in Human Rights, that the car-bomb was wrong because it took the life of an innocent man who SHOULD have had a right to life, liberty, and happiness. It’s the presence of “should” that turns the conversation into an essentially metaphysical one. Meta or beyond physical reality refers to all concepts that cannot be accounted for in the material world. This includes love, human dignity, and human right. Faith is required to believe in ideas like Human Rights, since no empirical data can be collected for an intangible idea. Faith in Human Rights, is epistemologically co-equal with faith in God. (More on this conversation in rd 3. ) SOURCE: A Secular Age by Charles Taylor, Harvard U. Press, 2007. 7. Religion Does not Conflict with Science And Religion's Legacy to Western Civilization(This is being previewed as a courtesy to my opponent. I will explicate this point in rd. 3. )