Is religion still relevant in modern society?

[Marks]

Runa216 said:

Marks said:
Seriously? So its only religious people that harm others, are homophobic, are sexist, etc? I know you're like the most anti-religious guy on the site but even you can't say that with a straight face. 

What do Hitler, Stalin and Mao have in common? All strongly anti-religion. Not saying atheists are killers or anything, all I'm proving is that violence and religion don't go hand in hand. 

And do you seriously think homophobia was invented by religion? Yeah the bible is anti-gay but only in the Old Testament (before Jesus and everything). I know so many people that hate gays but none of them are due to religious beliefs, its just because gays are different. People will always hate those that are different. If homophobia ever goes away then it will just be replaced by some other form of hatred. I don't see hate in general ever disappearing from humanity. 

And just like I said with homophobia, sexism I'm sure wan't invented by religion either. Yeah I guess some religions like Islam say that men are more important than women, but do you really think sexism is suddenly going to disappear overnight if religions disappear overnight? I doubt it. 

All I've said is that religions can teach kids good values, I didn't say kids can't learn good values without religion. Big difference between those two statements. 

Ladies and gentlemen, hypocrisy 101.  I didn't say Atheism was pure or anything, I didn't try to proclaim that being an atheist would make you a perfect, flawless human being (after all, a lot of modern corporate greed has nothing to do with religion.)  all I said was that it's a logical fallacy to assume in any way that religion is in any way the source of morals, or that it 'teaches kids ethics'.  See, the bible may teach some good things, but for every good lesson they can get, there are three bad lessons to negate it, so since you're gonna be picking and choosing what morals to pass down, why not eliminate the part of the equation that assumes an invisivle man in the sky brought down rules from the heavens?  seems a bit extreme just to teach some kid not to steal. 

Look, just calm down for a second and go re-read my original post. All I said is that religion CAN teach kids good values like not to steal, not to kill, etc. You're the one that brought up everything else like homophobia and violence. 

And like I said I'm not a religious guy anymore, but I was brought up religious, and I was told not to steal or I'd go to hell...and guess what? I've never stolen anything in my life. I've outgrown my religious beliefs but I haven't outgrown the morals I gained from it. And I'm not saying religion is the only reason I'm not a serial killer, I also have really good parents that raised me well, but having religion at a young age certainly didn't hurt.