THW ban religion

Introduction When we analyze how people behave, we see that (non-fanatic) religion brings honesty, law-abidance, charity, and morality.[1] We can conclude that most religions are forces of good in the world. Yet despite this, my opponent supports a motion that would completely ban adherence to them in an egregious violation of human rights, simply because he can list some examples of "corrupt" religions or religious practices that, by no means, say anything about all religion in general. Because of all the risks of my opponent's proposal and the existence of better alternatives, I am proudly go against the motion that this house would ban religion. Rebuttals Again, I shall use the same numbering system for arguments used by my opponent for better clarity. 1. While one could argue that teaching your child your own religion—thereby passing on cultural traditions and customs—is somehow "corrupt" or "evil", it would still not justify a complete ban of religion, only religious indoctrination. If a complete ban on religion were imposed, then religious fundamentalism would prevail for reasons explained earlier, and that would cause children to be filled with more extreme religious teachings. In addition, religion does not appear to warp values or shock children—on the contrary, it teaches children what is right and what is wrong. Religiosity is correlated with morality. [1] It tells children that they're important because God or gods care about them. 2. While some religious organizations may have a minority of their clergy members be pedophilic, this does not justify a total ban on religion. First of all, not all religious worship takes place in churches or other major congregational places—a mildly religious person or a person who believes in a religion that does not require group worship might only have an altar at their house. As such, not all religions could encourage any pedophilia in the first place, and therefore not all religions should be banned. Secondly, even in religions that do have congregations and clergy, most clergy do not abuse children; those who do are prosecuted like any other child abusers. In addition, my opponent's proposal would only make religious child abuse worse. Since there would still be religious people, but they would all begin worshipping underground, religious people would become distanced from the rest of society, making pedophilia harder to report. People might avoid reporting incidences of pedophilia in religious groups because they're afraid that they'd be prosecuted. The status quo is better than the situation in my opponent's proposal, since at least the abused can report abuse to authorities without fear of prosecution. 3. On the short term, demolishing all churches is costly; demolitions need to be planned, detonation charges need to be planted, and so on. Let's assume that cathedrals and temples of non-Christian religions didn't exist, and all churches were tiny ones in suburbs built inside small houses. The lowest estimated cost would be around $3,000.[2] As stated above, there exist around 37 million churches in the world. Bulldozing all of them would cost around 111 billion dollars. (This is a VERY low estimate; it ignores that some churches are in remote places, and therefore require bulldozers to be transported.) Let's see what we can build on the land to pay that 111 billion dollars off. If we built civic services like police departments or hospitals (operated by the scientific establishment :)), then the government would lose rather than gain money, as they are governmentally funded. If we built private homes or shops, then it would take some time for all the debt to be paid off through taxes. 4. Religion makes the place a better place by contributing to better morality and charity.[1] Religious organizations like Global Vision help give aid to poverty or disaster-stricken areas. Churches, Temples, and Gurdwaras operate soup kitchens and help provide shelter to homeless people because religions often have charity as an ideal. 5. Debate is based on balancing risks and benefits. If banning religion were otherwise beneficial, then yes, costs should not stop us from doing so. However, it isn't beneficial, and the fact that it costs a lot would be an additional "risk" adding to the lack of benefits. 6. I argue that religious people are not inherently vengeful nor violent; instead, removing their rights is what would make them vengeful and violent. Any action that egregiously violates human rights would cause violent backlash—for instance, some Jewish people armed themselves up against the Nazi military during the Holocaust. Yet we don't call them vengeful and violent and thereby justify the Holocaust. Let's say that the government banned freedom of speech, of protest, and of press, and forced everyone to listen to obvious propaganda 24 hours a day. There would be violent uprisings and backlash, but we wouldn't therefore call speakers, protesters, and journalists vengeful and violent and justify the government's actions. 7. The fact that religion can be occasionally abused does not justify banning all religion, only abuse of religion. 8. My opponent asserts baselessly that Sikhism is like communism. He then claims that there exists an active caste system in Sikh societies, thereby making Sikhism a system that creates hierarchies; this is untrue, since Sikhism views castes equally, and it's just that some Sikhs do not, thereby causing the existence of hierarchies. [3] 9. Astronomer al-Battani helped make the Tables of Toledo used to predict movements of stellar objects. Ibn al-Haytham was instrumental in developing fields like optics and perfecting the scientific method. In fact, religious obligations led to the creation of a way of calculating the direction of Mecca, the location to which Muslims turn to pray. Scientific development thrived under Islam. [4] Reconstruction To add to my original point about cost, I shall talk about the costs of incarcerating religious people. Since, under my opponent's proposal, the government would also need to prevent people from conducting worship in private, it would be necessary to incarcerate religious people so authorities can stop them from worshipping through heavy monitoring. This would mean placing close to 4/5 of the Earth's population in jails. Ignoring the fact that it would be tantamount to genocide, such a mass-scale incarceration would be costly; food and water need to be provided, and new jails need to be constructed because most of the people in the world are now in prison. We'd also need to send rockets to space in order to get religious astronauts, who do very well exist,[5] down to Earth to be thrown in jail. I don't need to explain why that's costly. Conclusion In this debate, there were two main issues. Firstly, would we be better off without religion? And secondly, if no, then would banning religion actually make things better? While both sides made valid points, I believe I held the high ground on both of the issues. To prove that we would not be better off without any religion, I showed that mainstream, non-extreme religion leads to charity and morality through statistics and examples. In response, my opponent listed facts that do not apply today, such as "religions were created to break up the working class" or do not apply to all religion and therefore do not justify a banning of all religion. I have shown, using my alternatives point, that you can be free from the bad sides of religion without banning it altogether; it was a point that went unaddressed by my opponent. As such, I have shown that we'd not be better off if religion disappeared. I also showed that even if religion were bad, banning religion would not make things better. I have argued that it is costly and that it would cause violent backlash against authorities. I further argued that banning religion is impossible to do due to the possibility of house churches appearing, and that underground worship caused by a ban on religion would lead to more instances of religious abuse, not less. I believe that my arguments still stand and haven't been successfully addressed. Therefore, be it resolved that this house would not ban religion. Sources [1]https://www.christiancourier.com... [2]http://thehousingforum.com... [3]http://www.sikhcastes.com... [4]https://en.wikipedia.org... [5]http://www.theatlantic.com...