many people have died because of religion this is a undeniable fact,my question is what good does religion do to i guess justify these deaths?

idk if justify is the right word i just mean does the good outwiegh the bad.this is not a ritorical question.

I have no idea. I know that for someone like me, the answer is absolutely not. For someone like BigErf, religion is probably a big positive in life. Overall throughout humanity? I'm not even going to try to guess.

With or without religion and spirituality people die. So why the hype over religion?

Religion explains its the nature of man as the root cause of evil, violence, malevolence, etc. Almost every crime or foul act in the world can be traced back to one listed as prohibited by the 10 Commandments or its some extenuated or hybrid version of one of them. You can apply pride to several of them and come up with all kinds of new combinations of evil motivations.

I like the simplicity of the bible. Because once you can spot the root you can spot what sprouts from it really easy. Its just like plant evolution: lots of diversity in the forms of evil but they're mostly all symbioses and recombinant mutations of the top 10 evils that Moses carried down from Mt. Sinai. Matters of the degree of evil is very important in human relations but not from God's perspective. From his perspective we are all sinners. The sin starts in the mind. Coveting for example is a an overweening desire that leads to theft, scheming, hoarding, etc. etc. It starts in the mind.

Quite simple really why do people want to complicate things? Do they think they are smarter when they complicate things?

At this time I believe good outweighs the bad because we are still under the Restrainer. In fact there's a very good chance that's a key difference between OT evil times and the somewhat more progressive NT times of today: the presence of the Restrainer actively at work in the world today. God has not lifted the Restrainer...yet.

So you believe that people would not be killed without religion? And that without religion we would all be at peace?

Your assertion that religion killed these people and that without it nothing would have happened is absurd. Look at the numbers, the amount of people that have been killed in the name of religion is small in comparison the the amount killed otherwise.

He said nothing of the sort.

He never asserted the bolded part either.

He may not have said it directly, but he definitely implied this. If these things would have happened anyway or that religion was not the ultimate source, then why even ask the question?

The question is not whether religion causes all harm or even the most harm. The question is what would the world be like without it, and would that be a better world. If religion were the cause of just a tenth of a percent of the wars/deaths in human history it would still be a valid question to ask whether religion is harmful. I think it's a good question, but probably impossible to answer satisfactorily.

never meant to imply this.

probably.

Didn't the Soviets already answer this?

In fact the Soviets didn't even stop at the Soviet Union. Their anti-religiosity spread in the eastern block. Richard Wurmbrand was imprisoned and tortured and he was Romanian. Just for handing out leaflets.

Lenin and Marx regarded religion as the opium of the masses and thought it led to the exploitation of the working class by the bourgeosie. They never even grasped that men can be motivated by ideas other than those of material gain. So they deprived people of their fundamental personal right to religion for the good of the working class group.

The Soviets went after the Russian church in 1917. Laid off for a while then went after them again in 1929. Turned most of the churches into science and atheist museums. The persecution toned down in the late 30s with the WWII problems they had to confront. Then it resurfaced again in the 60s with Breshnev.

The Jews had lots of problem in the USSR. While a lot of Jewish activists were active with the Mensheviks and the Bolsheviks the class mentality of such groups seems to be at odds with Jewish ethnic identity. 2 million of them emigrated to the U.S. early in the 19th century. Plus the USSR had a problem with acknowledging the Holocaust against them. They tended to lump it in with atrocities against the Soviet Union. That seems to suggest a submerging of ethnic identity by the atheist/communist government.

See the wiki on History of the Jews in Russia.

Yes, the soviets answered the question "what would the world be like without religion?". are you really that delusional and close minded?

Oh I'd say Marx and Lenin were atheists all right. They perceived religion as an opiate which is another way of saying a delusion.

So maybe their atheism was a critical ingredient in their construction of a communist reality that they then helped superimpose over the Soviet Union.

Its quite common for religious opinion to precede other intellectual opinions.

Too bad so many people had to pay for their personal misperceptions that were put into practical theory.

You missed the point. You said the Soviets answered the question of what the world would be like without religion, then you proceeded to list a bunch of religious persecution.

I lean heavily toward "bad outweighs good" on this one. Though I only have any real conviction of that in terms of recent history (last 1,000 or maybe 2,000 years).

Then again, religion may have been a necessary phase in human development. I think it offers plenty of things even at the neurological level, and I do agree with many of the detractors of modern atheism on at least one point: We need to find a way to replace these benefits before we can finally end religion.

I've been thinking a lot about this as well. Religion and religious concepts could have been an evolutionary necessity. It might not be limited to religion though.

Nowhere is this clearer than when dealing with a young (4-9 years old or so) child. We tell them about things like Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, the Tooth Fairy, and the afterlife. If a 5 year old's close relative dies, it's MUCH more comforting to let them know that their relative is still watching over them from heaven than it is to say "They're dead, and I don't know what happens from there."

Although, something I just thought of that's pretty sketchy...

If you're a Christian and the deceased relative was, say an atheist, what would you say to the child?

"xxx is in a better place now" (blatant lie)
"xxx is watching over from heaven" (blatant lie)
"xxx is burning in hell" (this child's future won't pan out too well)

I would tell him the truth "honestly I do not know"

Would you say this to your child in every situation where you "honestly didn't know"?

(e.g. A good true Christian relative died, how the universe started, how life started, if life has a purpose, whether God exists, whether Christianity is correct, etc.)

I think you see this from a more utopian perspective than I do. You said what would the world be like if it was purely atheist or something like that. Which I now have to assume you take to be somewhat of a utopian prospect.
But to me it came across like you said what if the whole world was one race. If I'm not of the one race I'm naturally going to think this means something very negative for me and others like me and I'm going to take stock of what actually has happened in similar situations. A bit reactionary of me I know but I'm in the potentially eliminated group because another group thinks it has the intellectual wherewhithal to entertain these very powerful judgmenatary ideas which could put it one step closer into going into effect.

Historically its the meek, over trusting or the slow to react that are the first to be slaughtered.

I disagree.

They believed that the way religion is formally practised is detrimental to the growth of society as a whole; that the church essentially existed to oppress people.

religion only looks as good as the people employing it. there have been people in the past, people here today, and there will be people in the future that will use the faith of others and religion to suit there own evil purposes. most religions are not bad. people are bad.

in fact, i wouldn't be surprised if it weren't atheists or agnostics that used religion for there own gain, since there is no such thing as God or hell, and no accountability for their actions. i wonder if Hitler truly believed in a God.

Why would you assume that? I specifically said I do not know if a world without religion would be a better place. The first four words of my first reply in this thread are, "I have no idea."

I have no idea what you're talking about. How could you have possibly inferred that what I said had anything to do with one world race?

I just read your post too literally and overlooked the "I have no idea." Probably read too many posts in a row and they ran together and I overlooked your nuance, sry.

As for races. It was just an analogy to explain my kneejerk response to what I thought you were implying.

Probably but oppression is a pretty wide open category and could include opiate/delusion as a means to oppress.

As a Christian in this argument, you should be really careful about using one terrible example to show what effect religion or a lack thereof has on senseless violence and oppression. Urban II was a Christian, can I just go ahead and say that his actions answer the question of what the world is like with religion?