The Discussion Corner

[Doram]

Oh, no. Japan was just as broken after WWII as Germany was. There was something quintessential about Japanese culture that was broken as part of that process - their fierce belief in their own superiority. And compared to a lot of other cultures at the time, they were probably one of the closest to actually laying claim to best culture on Earth. Art and science was promoted, the poor were cared for. Life was tough, but it was doable, and you had the support of your whole country behind you. In WWII, they were swayed by the hatred of others into acting hatefully themselves, and then their fierce pride had to be utterly broken before they backed down. That's why there were two bombs dropped, when ANY other nation would have balked at one. Japan was totally "You go down at ALL costs!", and then the first one hit, and Japan just went "OMFG, but you know what, STILL NO!" It was only upon seeing the next bomb, and realizing that they truly were facing extinction, that they finally gave up. That's something that was lost to humanity and the Japanese people that will possibly never be recovered.

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And as for the rest of it, let's step back to the underlying issues - the emotional and psychological basis of action that is rooted in human nature. In the matter of reason as a driving force for the species, I believe that logic and reason ARE the keys, but they are ONLY keys. As tools, they can be used for good or evil, but the difference is morality.
"There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics." - Mark Twain

Morality, as I define it, is the process by which humans learn to live peaceably with each other. We are communal creatures, and tend to gather into groups for support, and as intelligent creatures have externally expressed rules for living together properly. All the oldest and most persistent rules of morality are geared towards peaceful coexistence with your fellow man. Don't kill. Don't steal - property or relationships. Courtesy and manners. All designed to allow us to live next to each other without destroying each other. All of this evolved from a purely Darwinian effort to promote the species - even wolves have a sense of society and morality. There are bits of it woven into every government and religion, though none thus far have supported a moral lifestyle completely properly thus far.

Now, often opposing morality is nationalism or group identity. It also comes from the tendency of humans to form groups for support, but what started as the purely Darwinian competition between groups for survival has evolved into the most ugly fundamental foundations of war. Us versus Them. Marking the rest of humanity as "Them" allows us to think about them as not human, and once that is done, it is a short jump to the horrors we know as war. And all this can flow most rationally and logically, once you abandon the idea of them as human beings. That is why there is always an effort to portray your opponent as a beast. The pigs. The horde. The swarm. "Them", who are so different than us. And it is also a short hop from "We cannot let them conquer us." to "We cannot let them continue to exist." And all of this can be expressed very subtly as well. It doesn't need to be as obvious as an actual declaration of war. It can be as subtle as "Gay people shouldn't be allowed to get married." Them. They aren't like us, so they must not be human. We cannot give them human rights. All prejudice and bigotry falls into this category as well.

Until humanity can overcome group identity as a justification for hatred and violence, humanity will not know true and complete peace. Until humanity knows true and complete peace, it will not be able to focus enough on their world to make the final advancements that it desperately needs to make. If our species is to survive into the coming millennia, we need to evolve past this self-destruction.

[Karyete]

All I can say is that reading this thread alone proves how intelligent everybody can be - and probably is, even if they don't know or believe it.

[lordpat]

I was thinking on reviving the thread, and now that it has posive feedback, why the hell not? So let's get moving... I'm gonna let this topic stay til tomorrow to see if someone else wants to reply to Doram.
I have thought a couple of subjects, so this should be intresting.

[lordpat]

Ok, sorry for the double post.

Anyway, as promised, the topic for discussion.

Is religion beneficial to humanity? Why so? What about just unorgaized religion? Is there a diference? Why/Why not?

[Karyete]

I'm quite fond of religion. Personally, it fascinates me to see how other people live, and how I think it's, naturally, quite strange living like that because I live differently to them. But it's great to learn about others, and how their lives work compared to yours. Just my view.

[Oranjui]

This is probably going to come across as really mean-sounding, but I feel like religion is there as a sort of way for people who can't handle reality to cope and find a way to explain some of the oddities of nature. In that sense, it's most definitely beneficial. However, as long as it's around, there are going to be extremists like Westboro Baptist Church, and the Catholic church in...what was it? Something starting in the 5th or 6th century (religion, at least the most popular one, has given us that format of timekeeping, too, which is probably much more convenient to use than estimating the date of the origin of the universe and using an absolute scale)? All of the brainwashing and purging of those who aren't explicitly described in any sort of literature or scripture was ridiculous. That has probably been the worst that religion has done for us. Religion meshing into government is a problem, too, as not everyone has the same views. Not even close. If we have a governing body that is heavily influenced by religion (which it still is in the US, no matter how you try to say it), it's going to cause a lot of problems. Discrimination, or maybe just outright xenophobia, has become a huge problem here. We're only just beginning to get past that era. What's to blame? Obviously the time differences and knowledge of the world at the time, but religion itself can be partially credited for the differences in knowledge. Because of what it has done to culture in the past, that's all that the people in that time knew. Slavery. The KKK. Internment/concentration camps. Wars. As a result of all this, slavery and racism and sexism and all this unbelievably stupid stuff has developed and stayed around in society (not so much slavery, but that's still in certain areas of the world). We're recovering, but there are going to be massive scars on the face of humanity because of religion.

tl;dr: Casual religion (where it wouldn't completely change your lifestyle or mindset) is good (basis of many world cultures, also helpful for understanding/coping with the world); religious extremism/fundamentalism (where it causes harm to other people and cultures) is bad (causes discrimination, hatred, violence, generally not very good things).


This is all mostly just rambling based on a tiny bit of reading I did on the subject I did a few months ago so I'm probably wrong on a lot of points. Feel free to shoot me down and stuff if you want. (I know I didn't really address the last three questions very well, if at all. Maybe another time)

[~MP3 Amplifier~]

With this one, I don't feel there is a yes or no answer. Religion can be a wonderful thing but it can also be a destructive thing. I'm quite on the same level as OJ when it comes down to what's good or bad but I guess my overall view is slightly different because I was once a theist, and quite a strong theist at some times.

When it comes down to extremism though, this is something that you get with every religion; thankfully those groups are usually at a minority. I am technically a Catholic because I have had baptism, confirmation and communion; however this does not mean I am still a practicing Catholic. I am mostly agnostic as I am not even sure what is out there, and if I'm honest, I have no real interest or willpower to search for an answer. I quite like being in the unknown, after all, there are so many things that we don't know about the world and there always will be.

However, I have a friend (and if she sees this, I hope she doesn't mind me saying) who is one of the strongest believing Catholics I've ever met, but by that I mean she is very dependent on her religion, I don't mean she's an extremist. I won't go into her story, but lots of people have different reasons to turn to religion. A lot of the time it may be because they cannot cope without it. But there are all sorts of reasons- they may grow up in a religious family or home, they could even have a religious experience. And even though a religion's beliefs may not be agreeable to everyone, some people might learn about Catholicism or Islam etc and connect with it, deciding that the beliefs are something they find very personal to them.

The point I'm trying to make is that religion is generally a very personal thing so it's a hard question to answer for me. Sure, if you preach to the world around you, then that has a direct affect on other people- either good, bad or neutral. But from the general public, people I have met who belong to different religions, more often than not live their lives in peace.

While I'm not very religious anymore, I'm certainly not against it, because you can sometimes see just how important it is to people. And it can be really quite beautiful to see a person be so connected to something like that. A few times in the past I've talked to people about their religions and they've been brought to tears (of happiness) just explaining their views to me. And I honestly wish nothing more than happiness for people.

[NanTheDark]

I always look at this topic and feel like answering, but I don't for two reasons:
1. Everyone gives incredibly long and detailed essays as answers. I'm kinda lazy to do that. I can, but I don't feel like it most of the time. xD
2. I feel I might say something dumb.

But whatever. 2nd reason is dumb by itself, and 1st reason can be screwed over by me just giving a short answer.

So... let's see what comes to my mind. Which may or may not be related to the actual question by the end. That's how my brain works. xD

Is religion beneficial to humanity? Why so? What about just unorganized religion? Is there a diference? Why/Why not?

Religion by itself is born from the necessity of human beings to provide an answer to questions that can't be answered in any other way. Now, faith is something everyone has, everyone believes in something, whether it be God, people, that tomorrow's gonna be a better day, that there won't be a bug in my sandwich, that kinda thing. XD

So Faith isn't the same as Religion.

Religion is kind of... organized faith. Basically, a bunch of people decide "Hey, this is what we should have faith in" and form a community around that. It happens all over the world in different ways, beliefs in different things and in different ways. Abrahamic religions (such as Christianity, Judaism and Islam) just can't be compared to Shinto, or to Buddhism, or Hinduism, or whatever.

And that's when the problem comes of "What's the true religion?", or rather, "What's the true faith?". Which one of the things we believe in is true and which is false? Thing is, we just can't answer it. There's no way to prove anything, due to the nature of this topic, therefore it's all reduced to a shouting match of "MY RELIGION IS BETTER THAN YOURS", and at the end everyone is offended.

Myself I'm a lazy catholic and I think it's best to just live and let live.

This is the part where Xero comes in and yells at me because we christians are supposed to spread the message and tell people about God and whatnot, to save their souls and whatnot... problem is, THEY KNOW. In fact, we spent centuries doing just that. The missionaries that traveled the world, the Crusades, the Spanish Inquisition and all that annoying stuff. Most of the world knows about Christianity, whether they practice it or not. And see, if they know about it and they don't practice it... I think it's justified. They have their reasoning. And besides... how do they know if our truth is the truth of the universe and whatnot?

I'm pretty sure someone out there has been confused by the fact that there are so many religions, all promising to be pretty much the panacea to your existentialist problems, some promising everlasting life, some promising becoming one with the universe, some promising that the gods are jerks and you're screwed either way, I don't freaking know. And they are perfectly right! I mean, if you're someone with no religion (I don't know if Atheism should be regarded as a religion, given that it's the LACK of one, but some people see it as a religion, as weird as it sounds to me), well... what to do?

You can embrace your family's religion, you can study all religions you can and see which one sounds better, you can do a lot of things. Sadly... just by reason alone you can't really figure out your answer. You have to use, well, faith. Whatever sounds right in your heart.

I believe in God because at least for me it makes sense. I can't really explain to you why it makes sense that God exists... well I might try, but I can't convince people of it, because I can't present you with concrete facts. I might give you my weird as hell reasonings about the universe, but I can't say it's true. It might as well be a beautiful novel. I dunno.

That's the main problem of religion, the way I see it.

Also, religions being pushy. Seriously, you can't just force people into a religion. People should be free to choose what they want to believe in.

So yeah, is religion beneficial to humanity... yes. In the way that faith can give you something to look forward to. A reason to keep going. I'm pretty sure that if religion didn't exist, suicide rates around the world would be way higher.

Not everyone needs religion. Not everyone needs faith. But there's a lot of people who do.

Unorganized religion... I'm not sure of what you mean by it, because religion is organized by definition. A religion has a set of rules that state what things are like. Maybe you refer to like, sects, or whatever, religions that have fewer people in them. Or maybe you just refer to you having faith in something without needing to participate or being active in a community. Sorta like me, I guess.

Now, I'm pretty sure some is gonna bring up the HOLY WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARS *epic guitar shredding*

That's a bad facet of religion, I guess, but in the most part... this doesn't come directly from what a religion is supposed to be. It comes from certain characters using their influence on people to make them do things. For the most part these fights aren't because "MY RELIGION IS BETTER THAN YOURS!". It often comes down to "I WANT YOUR LAND AND NATURAL RESOURCES AND STUFF!". Religion is just, strangely enough, what makes your soldiers keep going in that case. It's like Patriotic Fervor, except for a religion. And this sucks because often people bring out this argument. And it sucks... because it's true. People have used religion as leverage to get people doing things.

As well as nationalism has been used.

And utter desparation, and certain ideals, and philosophies, and just the fact that we're poor, or maybe our race is superior, or whatever.

It's not religion's fault. It's the fault of certain people who decide to start a campaign to do terrible things and decide to put a nice sticker on it to attract followers. It's like I said RUNOUW'S SO FREAKING AWESOME WE ARE THE BEST LET'S GO TAKE DOWN WIKIPEDIA or some random crap.

...except something that sounds better. I'm not good at giving speeches. xD

So yeah, I guess that's all I have to say. Religion by itself isn't bad, in fact it can be good for the spirit. People are bad.






♫Killing in the name of!♫

This must be the most randomly written post in this thread yet. The arguments probably make no sense, and there's probably a lot of things that can be argumented against. Maybe even the format in which I wrote this is wrong. But I don't care. :3 Also, this post has rock music. And that's always badass.

Also, Xero, if you're reading this, I'M SORREH

[lordpat]

I'd say that unorganized religion is one where there is not governing body and such. That is of course up to interpretation of the readers, but that is how it is at least to me. While some definitions carry "organized set of beliefs", what is usually portrayed in "unorganized religion" is that there is no human organization (authorities and such). Buddhism is usually considered an unorganized religion. At least that is the way I see it. Probably it was a malformed question on my part, as I have yet to find a reliable source with the definition of unorganized religion.

[Venexis]

Seems like a lot of answers in here are blurring the lines between whether religion itself is a good or bad thing and whether the effects of religion are good or bad. If the topic was about the effects of religion, I could argue either side, as several people already have. However, the question seems to inquire about religion as a concept (at least, that's how I choose to interpret it)- a concept that cares not whether we interpret it as a moral guide or a command from God to kill our neighbors for interpreting it differently. This becomes a much more interesting question: Is the concept of religion beneficial to humanity? A more interesting question should naturally have a more interesting answer.

I'll preface by saying that this is my opinion, and something I've personally thought about a great deal over the course of the last few years. Those of you who have had similar conversations with me will probably remember that even as recently as a year ago I was of the opinion that there was indeed some vastly more complex "God" (perhaps "system" would be a better word?) out there. I would have also advocated that such a force would operate less through miracles and more through scientific phenomena over the course of hundreds of thousands of years to eventually bring about mankind as we are now.

My views on topics like this have changed since then.

Is religion beneficial to humanity? Why so? What about just unorganized religion? Is there a difference? Why/Why not?

First thing that needs to be established is that as far as the concept of religion is concerned, organized and unorganized practices are fundamentally identical. It isn't about how an individual practices their faith, it's about what attracted them to the faith. What does it offer them in return that makes an individual want to stick around and continue practicing? What can it offer humanity as a whole?

Again, people who have heard me speak about similar topics have heard my answer to that. Religion offers a welcoming sanctuary in a cold, unforgiving, and terrifying universe. It comforts people by saying there's a divine plan; everything happens for a reason, even if we don't understand it. It distracts from the fact we're all hurtling through emptiness on a rock moving at mind-boggling speeds with no ultimate end goal, totally at the whim of any random cosmic event that might want to obliterate us entirely. It reassures that we aren't lost, that humanity wasn't just a freak accident, that there's some purpose to all the horrible things that happen every day.

Maybe there is a purpose. I used to think that such comforts were harmless. If religion lends meaning to someone's life, is that really such a bad thing? There's a sinister side to it, though. Just as it distracts from the apparent hopelessness of our species' future, it distracts from the fact that we are very much in control of our own fate, that we do not have to and should not sit back and blindly trust that starving children or rape or the murder of innocent people will all work out in the end.

We are not the plaything of a god. Despite its intentions, the concept of religion promotes the idea that we're somehow not whole without it. This is disgusting. Although humanity has flaws, we're incredibly capable of addressing them and making a better future regardless.

Ultimately, my final answer is no. Religion is not at all beneficial to humanity, as it tries to blot out both the positive and negative realities of the world we live in. Maybe we are lost in the universe, alone and insignificant- we've come this far, though, and we're constantly learning how to make our tiny slice of the cosmos better. Conversely, maybe there is a divine purpose for every action- but this doesn't mean we should avoid questioning it, especially when it appears to violate our sense of what is right and wrong.

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In anticipation of the "well without religion there'd be no morals" comment, the two appear to have no link. In fact, morality may have actually developed well before religion. There are several documented examples of social animals also displaying less sophisticated moral values in line with our own, caring for the sick and injured, repaying favors, and so on; this strongly suggests that even in the absence of religion, humanity would still have an almost identical moral code.