Debate: Is religion good or bad for the world?
Side: religion is bad

I suppose that without a logical basis for your understanding of religion you shouldn't assuredly attest to anything about religion. Your statement starting with "Historically religion has been more interested in" illustrates that you are comfortable using the term in an illogical manner. People can "be interested in X" religion cannot.Pardon the expression, but for Christs sake, man. If i said "the White House said today in a memo blah blah blah," i wouldn't expect you to point out that the White House cant talk, i would expect you to understand that i am referencing the actions of the people in or having to to with the building, not the building itself. And to then use my figure of speech against me as "illogical" and therefore con conclude that i shouldn't attest to anything about religion because of it is, once again, a cheap shot. All three entail people working together willingly. Not necessarily, but as much so to everything else of humanity. Reducing a concept or idea down it a fundamental component of it and then trying to call it the same as another idea you've found a similar component in might be technically correct, but, especially when splitting hairs, i think i would better serve our purpose to look at government as the organization, machinery, or agency through which a political unit exercises authority and performs functions, religion as the service and worship of God or the supernatural, commitment or devotion to religious faith or observance, and language as the words, their pronunciation, and the methods of combining them used and understood by a community.This, opposed to deciding that because they all have people in them they are somehow completely indistinguishable. I think you're arguing from a point where language no longer means anything. But the question is as pointless as asking if human thought is good or bad for the world today. Addressing specific lines of thinking makes a whole lot more sense than trying to evaluate thinking in general. How many different ways do I have to put it for you to make the connection that criticizing religion in general is an exercise in futility?Probably about as many different ways as i need to lay it out for you that it's not. But that's rather a stupid question, you're just drawing attention to the fact that we disagree and insinuating that it's the fault of some sort of an understanding disorder on my part that we haven't resolved anything yet. Don't you think i feel the same way about you? Would saying so help anything?Religion is not as unavoidable or essential as thinking. A world without religion is entirely plausible, a world without thinking is a little harder to imagine. You misunderstand me. I view religion as an inexorable function of the human condition.Okay, but i am 100% without religion, yet i still seem to be here, functioning. I have beliefs and opinions and views on things, but none of them could be called religious. If religion is an absolutely necessary and irrevocable part of the human condition, how can i be without it? And what's to stop the whole world from ending up like me, and like so many other people who are without religion?And you also seem to be making to separate points, one that we cant remove religion and the other that we cant criticize it. I disagree on both counts, but especially the latter, particularly because i don't think that anything is above criticism, because i think that questions like "is government bad for the world?" are entirely valid. And religion is less essential than government, so follows criticizing it, and perhaps even imagining a world without it.With gradual enlightenment, religion will simply evolve to be less rife with delusional thinkingBut then it wouldn't be religion. For me the defining difference between systems of values/beliefs, as you've often put it, and religion is the nonsense factor. At the point where you no longer have to base your values/beliefs on dogma/faith, religion no longer has any place. Spirituality, maybe, but not organized religion.