Is Religion a source of evil as Dawkins claims

Richard Dawkins claims religion is source of evil. What is your idea on this.

 

I wholeheartedly agree with him.

 

Most of the human progress has been after the renaissance and the declaration of rights which again was influenced by Greek philosophy. I cant but help imagine if religion hadn't forced us into dark ages how far advanced we would be. Atomic theory in its basic form was proposed by the Greek and we have advanced it only by a hundred or so years. I find it incredulous that 45 percent Americans believe that universe is only 10k years old. We have physically observed light from billions of years ago.

 

The whole "dark ages" are a bit of a misnomer. There was a lot of great things being done during the middle ages.
However, while I might not completely agree with Dawkins (the man IS a prick), religion is, while not necessarily evil, at least a crutch for people to lean on, and sometimes (quite often) use as an excuse for doing atrocious things to other humans. Not to mention that the whole "if you just believe, everything will be forgiven, and you'll go to heaven blah blah" stuff doesn't really create any incentive to do anything useful or good while here on Earth.
Is religion the ultimate evil? Probably not. Is it a thing humanity would be better off without? Definitely.

 

So all those women burnt as witches, restrictions on science and knowledge and cultural genocide, slaughter and rapes were part of great things?

 

Those things have happened always, not only during the "dark ages".
I suggest you read up a bit:
http://listverse.com/2008/06/09/top-10-reasons-the-dark-ages-were-not-dark/
http://www.independent.co.uk/voices...ter-than-we-give-them-credit-for-8215395.html
http://www.academia.edu/3313369/The...the_Dark_Ages_The_Medieval_Origins_of_Science

A lot of bad things happened, but the "dark ages" is a very broad span, and categorizing the whole era as the "dark ages" is a popular, yet very wrong thing to do, as there were multiple distinct time-periods, not to mention that Europe, and the rest of the world, wasn't on the same level in every country - one country's "dark ages" might be a completely different thing in another country.

 

Can you elaborate on the progress in science between the time when Christianity took over Europe and until secular values were adapted during renaissance.

Here is a little insight into religion.

The following account is related in Charles MacKay’s “Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions: Part I” published in 1841, in the chapter called “The Witch Mania.”

This passage describes the genocide of the people living in a particular part of northern Europe. They were the people of Stedinger. “The Stedinger were settlers, mostly from Holland, who opened up marshy land next to Friesland, on the Weser. For refusing to pay tithes to the Archbishop of Bremen, a crusade was preached against them and they were wiped out in 1234.”

Another one

For fear the zeal of the enemies of Satan should cool, successive Popes appointed new commissions. One was appointed by Alexander VI, in 1494; another by Leo X, in 1521, and a third by Adrian VI, in 1522. They were all armed with the same powers to hunt out and destroy, and executed their fearful functions but too rigidly. In Geneva alone five hundred persons were burned in the years 1515 and 1516, under the title of Protestant witches. It would appear that their chief crime was heresy, and their witchcraft merely an aggravation. Bartolomeo de Spina has a list still more fearful. He informs us that, in the year 1524, no less than a thousand persons suffered death for witchcraft in the district of Como, and that for several years afterwards the average number of victims exceeded a hundred annually. One inquisitor, Remigius, took great credit to himself for having, during fifteen years, convicted and burned nine hundred.

In France, about the year 1520, fires for the execution of witches blazed in almost every town. Danaeus, in his “Dialogues of Witches,” says they were so numerous that it would be next to impossible to tell the number of them. So deep was the thraldom of the human mind, that the friends and relatives of the accused parties looked on and approved.

 

Religion, government, commerce, etc., are all human constructs that can be used in a variety of ways, including for good, for evil, etc. Since human actions run the gamut from really good to really evil, these constructs are also going to span the same space. It is less a reflection of the constructs than it is on humankind. These things did not make people do evil or good things. People did and do evil or good things because that is what humans do. Assigning blame to a process or system is a bit silly, in my opinion.

 

There are good ideologies and evil ideologies. Our actions are dictated by our ideas. Principles of humanisim are human constructs also and dont seem to be so evil as destroying knowledge, burning women alive and slaughtering in the name of religion. We dont stone gays or adulterers here but humans following a different ideology do.

 

Atheists have killed far more people in the last hundred years than the religious, and that includes the most recent virulent strain of Muslims. PolPot, Mau, Stalin, butchers all.

I think what makes atheists particularly concerning is their devout belief they have no belief in the divine. Most put complete and blind trust in an all powerful government to heal all the inequities in society when even a casual study of history would tell you it is a complete fantasy.

These are the people who want to gut the 2nd amendment to disarm the public, gut the first amendment to rid us of the "evil" religious and free speech that invades their "safe space". The ironic thing is, the "Evil" religious people in America are generally the ones operating the soup kitchens, raising money for the poor, and providing a sense of community, while the atheists would have their government god forcibly take money from the middle class at the point of the gun to redistribute it to the poor, free from the shame and consequence of living off of others. Where religious charity helps raise people up, government charity helps keep people down, living in a perpetual state of dependence and low self esteem.

I write all this as an agnostic. Its been a very long time since a preacher told me who to hate, but there isn't a day that goes by when an atheist isn't spreading their message of hate, loud and proud.

 

Humans are quite capable of evil and also quite capable of rationalizing their evil actions based on religious, political, familial, cultural, and many other excuses. You could eliminate as many of these constructs as you would like and evil would still exist because it is part of the human condition. Yes, any construct has the potential for evil leaders to get the sheeple in our midst to follow along in their evil ways, but I do not see one construct being particularly more effective at that than another and the evil leaders would simply use a different construct if one was somehow taken away from them.

Here is an off-topic example: the Internet was originally predicted to destroy social community because we would all be isolated in our homes talking to a computer. However, humans are by nature social and that could not be changed; therefore, the Internet quickly evolved to offer more socializing than possible before its existence (e.g., DP members socializing from all around the world.) Our basic instinct to socialize would not be denied. It is the same with evil.

 

Family Guy nailed it:

 

"Amen" to that. Religion has also it`s good parts but it`s mostly bad.
Remember the dark ages? How about the inquisition? Glorious times.
Add that to how religion is brain washing our children`s minds in Romanian schools and you have the big picture.
Even if God was real. What do you think about a god that kills children just because Moses couldn`t live Egypt ?

 

Well that's a Bible story you're talking about, not God. Finding out the Bible is a pack of crap doesn't deny the existence of God. It simply shows men are good at selling books.

 

religion is a divide hence evils come out of it .

 

If we needed more evidence that anything, including religion, is simply a human construct that will be used for petty human purposes, the Pope just added fuel to the fire. Apparently, he just made a statement that Donald Trump is not a Christian because he wants to regulate our borders and not have illegal immigrants in the U.S. LOL, using that "yardstick" I doubt that there is a "Christian" developed country in the world as all others have much stricter border controls and immigration policies than anyone here has even suggested to date. It just emphasizes that humans, including the Pope, will distort anything, including religion, to meet their needs.

 

I thought you were into free speech.

 

I am totally into free speech, much as I am into dark, semi-sweet chocolate. Of course, neither of those topics have anything to do with my statement above. The Pope can say whatever he wants whenever he wants and no skin off my butt; I was just pointing out his use of new-found religious dogma regarding countries' borders to further his own agenda.

I do wonder if we could ship him 50,000 illegal immigrants (a small number for us over here) to put up in his country, a.k.a. the Vatican? It would be the Christian thing to do.

 

What you might not have taken into account is that around the world, well I can speak for Australia at least, Trump is seen as a total dick with extremist views on many matters. His history with the so-called birther movement amongst other conspiracy theories already has him pegged as a nutter. Then he comes out with more outrageous comments. It would be like electing Alex Jones. If every other country is hearing what we're hearing I can understand exactly where the pope is coming from.
Trump might do these things simply to get attention, and you guys might see more than just the headlines, but all we see from other countries is that he's a nutjob of the highest order who, from his ivory castle could not have the slightest clue what the average American might want.

 

Again, Trump is also not the issue being discussed in this thread. There are other threads on DP dealing with that. But, there is no doubt in my mind that the liberal, lamestream press in the U.S. has its distortions and lies quoted verbatim by their lapdog press friends around the world. So, I am not surprised that there is this attitude in many parts of the world. Of course, getting back to the original discussion, it is merely another example of how human constructs (in this case what is supposed to be an apolitical press that keeps check on government) are so quickly corrupted to serve the needs of the humans involved with them. The reason that many Americans are not so concerned by what the press says about Trump (or anyone else, for that matter) is because the liberal press has so little credibility here after decades of being caught lying and defaming people whom it disagrees with. Many people are enjoying how Trump is making a mockery of the corrupt press, in fact.

A little more perspective on this issue: Back in 1980, the press provided even worse, more biased coverage of Ronald Reagan. They painted him in terms even worse than what they are trying to do to Trump now. The world was going to end in a blaze of war and enmity if Reagan was elected, for example. Even back then, the U.S. citizenry saw through the press' hysterical lies and voted Reagan into office. History has since shown that he, almost singlehandedly and without firing a shot, destroyed the Communist empire of the Soviet Union, thereby freeing hundreds of millions of people from its cruelty as he said that he would do. Again, just more evidence that humans will corrupt/change any institution (religion, government, the press, etc.) to suit their petty needs.

By the way, I am not committed to Trump at this stage. I simply want to best candidate on that side to win because it is absolutely essential that the lying, thieving, and completely corrupt Clinton machine be stopped at all costs. The Clintons and their nasty political thugs are again a great example of the topic of this thread: over the past few decades, they have taken politics and governing to new lows of human debasement, all to suit their greed and hunger for money and power over others. I have lost count of how many lives they have ruined and how many people are literally in fear of their lives due to the Clintons.