Resolved: Religion is inherently evil.

I will accept my opponents definition as my having the necessity to "prove" that religion is inherently evil. However, I would also ask that the debate does not become a debate of semantics about the definition of evil or some other argument such as that. As in it is my belief that if I have proven that religion is overall a force for bad then I have achieved my purpose.Just to get the process of defining evil out of the way im going to define evil as "Morally wrong or bad, immoral, wicked." -http://dictionary.reference.com...Assuming this is acceptable I look forward to a fun debate and will begin.Throughout the debate I intend to prove that religion is inherently evil due to these 3 reasons.1: Religion overall is both unecissary and has a inherent creation of conflicts.2: Religion hinders a persons ability to develop their own moral code and puts that power on potentially corrupt leaders.3: The amount of good in the world religion adds is fairly minimal and would occur otherwise.Contention 1: Religion overall is both unecissary and has a inherent creation of conflicts. First of all to prove this point we must first prove that religion is not actually necissary for a well functioning society. To do so we may look towards Phil Zuckerman in his huffington post article. (1) In the article he talks about the country of Denmark where over 44% believe that religion is a force for bad and only 14% actually believe that religion is in any way a force for good. (2) Rather than a moraless, lawless place Phil Zuckerman explains that Denmark possesses one of the lowest crime rates, highest standards of living and rather than placing their faith and purpose for life into their work and relationships, placing them 14th (according to the world bank) in the world for per capita income placing them just 7 below the much more resource rich and larger United States (3). So as we can see religion is in no way necissary to have and maintain a well functioning society. So after that realization all you can look towards is the bad effects that religion has had on the world. For a recent event we can look to the shooting in the Sikh temple (4). A man believing the Sikh temple to be in some way related to muslims shot and killed 7 people adding to the over 700 incedents in the united states since 9/11, in an anti-muslim attack. Not to mention of course throughout history the over 809 million deaths due to religion (5). Which is more deaths from both World War II, the Holocaust and the Stalin's rule combined. The fact of the matter is with this amount of murder and damage done from these wars as well as masacres. The biggest attrocities, the biggest genocides and the largest wars have been faught entirely on the basis of religion. Events such as 9/11 and the subsequent wars in the middle east as well could very easily be attributed to the ability of Osama Bin Ladin to recruit members using the Islamic principle of Jihad. Without religion many of the world confilcts simply would not exist thus making religion not only obsolete, but also a very obvious force for bad or evil.Contention 2: Religion hinders a persons ability to develop their own moral code and puts that power on potentially corrupt leaders.As with the very definition of religion being a " Principle or series of of beliefs held to with ador and faith" we can already see that the very purpose of religion to be dictating a series of beliefs and morals to a person before they have concieved of any other moral beliefs or guidelines, (Presuming like the majority of people that are religious they were born into their religion). But in having this system we as people loose our own ability to create a morals that apply to what we actually believe. The Taliban uses Islam and its concept of Jihad to promote violence (6). Now im not by any means trying to say that Islam as a whole entirely promotes violence but with the case of the Taliban and other religious leaders like Osama Bin Ladin, we see this system of forcing beliefs and principles can be easily used for very negative effects, such as 9/11, countless suicide bombings worldwide, two major wars and several massive genecides in the middle east with the fight between Sunni and Shia. Again with my previous point proving that religion is escentially useless the fact that it can be so easily corrupted by dangerous individuals makes it an extremely dangerous practice and quite obviously should be discouraged. We see the same effect in history many different times, through the crusades where Pope Urban II led a deadly religious war (7) or the Inquisition where the Roman Catholic Church led a deadly war that led to the brutal torture and murder of thousands. In all of these cases religion and the destruction of an individuals ability to come up with their own basis of morals has given leaders the power to comit horrible attrocities that otherwise would not ever have been able to occur, Another very obvious reason showing once again that religion is evil.Contention 3: The amount of good in the world religion adds is fairly minimal and would occur otherwise.According to the christian post (8) they say that there is absolutely no correlation between religion and voulenteerism. With a recent study finding that 56% of Christians volunteer whereas 54% of people describing themselves as non-religous volunteer. A 2% difference that can easily be dissmissed as a statistical anomally, meaning that there is absolutely no difference between a religious person and their moral values and percieved need to help others through volunteering and a person with religion. While granted this doesn't encompass all possible forms of morality it does encompass a large part of a persons moral in terms of williingness to give. Another study done by Psychology Today (9) done in 2009 found that there is virtually no correlation between religion and morality with several different ways of determining morality. (Check source 9 to read the full report). The report actually found that religious people were: less tolerant of minorities and cheating in religious schools is 16% higher. What we have to realize through these two studies is that there is absolutely no kind of correlation between being religious and living to a higher standard, helping people, giving to charity, or being a better citizen in any way. ConclusionSo with quite literally, no positive societal benefits to religion, religion causes an increase in conflict leading to many deaths and unecissary wars and genocide and gives potentially corrupt leaders a massive boost in unquestioned authority giving a greater opportunity for subjigation and recruitment for terrorism it is absolutley necissary to conclude that religion is absolutely a force for bad in the world and should be considered evil. I thank my opponent for the opportunity to debate this topic and I look forward towards a response.(1)http://www.huffingtonpost.com...;(2)http://derrenbrown.co.uk...;(3)http://en.wikipedia.org...(PPP)_per_capita (4)http://www.cbsnews.com...;(5)http://www.bookrateblog.com...;(6)http://pakideology.com...;(7)http://en.wikipedia.org...(8) http://www.christianpost.com...(9)http://www.psychologytoday.com...