Religion has had a positive effect on society on balance.

Firstly I will dispute your arguments. Your first argument is that many events have been caused by religion. Like I have already said, religion is rarely the cause of the action. If it was, then why did the Muslim and Christian empires co-exist for hundreds of years in peace and friendship? Why is one of the main men in the IRA Protestant? Because religion is only the banner of the nation, used to justify whatever they already want. Lets look at your examples and see if this applies to them: Holocaust: So the holocaust was not religious in the slightest. Germany faced massive debts following WW1, also the people of Germany where struggling, Hitler then united them and we all know what came after. No historian considers religion a cause of the war and the actual causes are known and not really disputed, sorry but this claim is false. Hitlers motives where to further the German race and take land to feed the people. Indeed, Hitler rejected his faith as a boy and was an Atheist. Though the truth behind Hitlers faith is not factual, by going against the main principles of Christianity and warring with Christian nations-we can assume Christ wasn't a huge influence in his life at least. Indeed, Hitler had the same ideas most atheist dictators do-which is to better their race and consider life to be like a breeding program for perfection. So no, the holocaust had nothing to do with religion and indeed suggests religion does encourage peace because the lack of it in Hitler demonstrates a moral vacuum. In which more animalstic, primal moralls take over, these are based around evolution and perfection. Al-Qaeda: Anybody who truly understands this issue knows that Al-Qaeda are a response to Western invasion. An obvious, world-wide, religious or not, response to a foreign force bombing your country. Witch Burnings: yes okay, paranoia fuelled by religion. However, this is members of the church, not religion as a world wide entity. Indeed christianity itself says nothing of witches, its folk-law mixed in with religion, they also beleved in faries and goblins back then you know. Also, witches where real back on the day, at least in the mind of the women practicing witchcraft. Silly I know, but true. I know two 'witches' myself, though don't believe in any of it I may say. So though its bad on the surface of it-burning women who where apparently something we now know doesnt exist-but it's more complicated than that. Still bad though, I conceded this point. Beheading Saxons. This was a war between a society and another society. Both had different religions. This war was about military conquest. Do you really think, in the real world, people car about what someone believes? People want power, safety, food, riches, they don't really care about anything else. Like, it's more noble to say your killing people because they are believers in bad customs and are not followers of your god-than it is to say you want more money and land. Again, Jesse saying turn the other cheek did not encourage beheading. It's was again, just a banner. So despite the fact that these are examples of military conquest rather than religion persecution, they are limited in their substance for the side of the argument they wish to support. For religion has been benifitial in holding societies together and mediating their social stricture, these things are more subtle and difficult to calculate. It's easy to list a war and a massacre simplistically, and short-sightedly assume a simple causing factor. Indeed history is more complicated than that. Also, I would like to say that dictators hate religion. So religion obviously is some kind of hold on them-of course it does though, because its somebody better than them, who has their own laws that control even the dictator. Everybody knows the worse a dictator gets the more self-obsessed he becomes and then he becomes the religion of the society. All societies have needed religion, and if they don't have one set in stone by profits and wisemen, then they have one revolving around the dictator. Which is a recipe for disaster if we can learn anything from: Pol-Pot, Hitler, Stalin, Mussalini, Than Swe, Kim Jon1, Kim Jon2, Mao-Zedong and the current Chinese government. I'm sure these names alone have conjured up for violence than all your points. Which I remind you are mainy military conquests, or other things loosely related to religon. Your second argument is that it strips us of our basic rights. My friend, it gives us our rights! Forget the last 100years, not allowed to work one day out of seven? Thank The Lord. Work was so hard that if you where not allowed to be forced to work, then brilliant. Secondly, rights don't exist. There is no law but the law of the strongest. Until 1900, women didn't even have the right to vote, and women could be raped in marriage in my life-time. So my dear, think about the world in the feudal system, the bible gives rights to all men. Such rights, even though they have been present in the bible for a thousand years, only became actual law in the last 100 years! My dear boy, contextualise religion into history, and learn history. I know how religion can seem pointless in your little life, but look deeper. Without religion, there is only dictators. (Obviously not now, as religion has played it's role in entrenching its message of peace and love into the very society). I will respond to your rubbutals: You say there is no evidence for the claim that without religion there would only be the ruled and the rulers. How could they be evidence? There has always been religon. However, what we know about human nature and societies suggests that without religon, there would only be rulers and the ruled, as political discourse has no platform without the religious institution. In ancient days there was the ruling class, the rest of us, and the religion. The religion had a body though, it wasn't just an idea or a book, it had 'priests' 'churches' or equivalent. The Druids religious leaders where said to be able to walk onto a battlefield and stop the battle (because they where an entity separate from the peasants, and the rulers, that where common amid all nations of the religion). Religion, or the church,was neither ruled or a ruler. And so without the church, there would in fact only be the ruled and rulers. You may say, well what about social revolution? Social revolutions began in, and with, religion. There is no social mobility in medieval society's, apart from the church. Like I say, you where born either a peasant, or a nobleman and neither could or would alone have changed that. Obviously there is no proof, there couldn't be, but I think the fact that only 100 years ago things where blatantly unequal even in the UK, demonstrates how hard its been for the powerful to give up power. Even now arguably its more unequal! So for three reasons, what you say is wrong about rulers and the ruled: 1. The church offered a platform for opinions to be made, philosophy to be explored, and resistance and communication to be made with the ruling class. Peasants had no chance of putting an idea to their lords. So the church actually facilitated the social conditions that allowed for the world we see today, that doesn't just have the ruled and the rulers. 2. There was actually only three main institutions in the medieval world-peasants, church and state. So without the church, there would only be rulers and ruled. Remember, the church answer to the religion, not the state. So they are neither rulers or ruled. They can question authority. 3. You give America as an example. America is a recent state whose founders where religious and where seeking a world without religious domination. The circumstances make this an exception because its origins where not that of a 'naturally forming' society. These where people already influenced by society. Humanity itself, and its journey of social development, is a different question to the origins of America. Your second rebuttal is that the American government protects rights without religion. I will list why this point has little weight. 1. As I have said, the American society is a recent society that was formed by religious men already influenced by society. It's therefore not an accurate model for representing the social psychology of mankind, in how our social values develop. 2. It's only one society, the rest of mankind has very slowly developed their social value and this I argue is facilitated by religion. 3. America was actually formed by members of a society indoctrinated with Christian values. 4. The rights of this, man made, system didn't even extend to women or other races. Slavery was allowed. Jesus, 2000 years before said 'turn the other cheek' and all men are equal. So the followers of Christianity where arguably more socially evolved than the Founding Fathers, 2000 years before the American constitution. Your next rebuttal states that, in response to my saying religion acts as an entity above kings, that America doesn't have a king. Yes, again like I have said. The very notion of not having a king was unheard of in the medieval world, without religion constantly challenging the authority of the king, no peasants would do so, nor could they have the unity and strength to make any social change. Those pioneers would never have existed without religion. This is a discussion about mankind, not America, which is an exception in many cases and has no long history. Your other rebuttals seem to argue that because certain bad things, that you think are religious in origin, have been done; that my explanation that religion is the organised consciousness and the thing that says 'do good' in world, is false. No, just because religion is saying 'do good', doesn't mean people will actually 'do good', or what they believe to be good.