JWeinCom said:
You're taking a pretty narrow view of religion. You are ignoring that the entire middle east, and large parts of Africa, that are suffering incredibly due to the influence of religion. Then you have the mass pedophilia of priests whom the catholic church has fought to protect, acts of prejudice against gays, the insistence of taking away individual rights, etc. There are still many places where you can be killed for believing the wrong thing. My issue with organized religion is that it fundamentally teaches you to obey. It teaches you that someone else is qualified to instruct you on what this all powerful being wants. The catholic church, where the pope is literally viewed as divine (and I like this pope but divine he ain't), is particularly dangerous in its heirarchical approach. The idea that the clergy is godly and to be implicitly trusted is why they've gotten away the abuse that they've gotten. All of this is not to say that religion has no good value. I know some organizations do charitable work, and it can be valued for the individual. But, I think that these services can be rendered without the dogma and heirarchy that can, and have frequently, been abused to terrible ends. I've felt a sense of community in many places without religion being involved. I think the good of religion can be done without religion. However, I think the bad done by religion cannot be done without it (or at least would be much harder to do). To beat up on the Catholic Church some more, can you think of ANY organization that could survive such a scandal as the catholic church did and still survive? |
)Let's start from the bottom and go all the way up from to the top:
1. Any big political organisation, would probably be able to survive such a scandal and survive.
@bolded: Literally everywhere teaches one to fundamentally just obey what they're told. Schools teach you that you need to obey the higher ups and lick up to them as much as you can to get somewhere. Politics teach you to obey and trust them and hence most politicians ( Especially Presidents/Prime ministers ) are seen as people who know better than you and should be trusted even when that may be unqualified or are like puppet behind strings. The bad thing about this is that previously these where not actually the main functions of such institutions. School was there to make you use your brain and not be spoon-fed and respect towards people in power should be the reason why you obey them and not just because. Politics was set up to fundemantly make you not obey whatever the upper powers choose, you and the rest of the nation could change whatever the higher-ups had chosen. All of them yet, turned to teaching the average folk that obedience is key. Hence we can almost come to a conclusion that practically humanity cannot exist with someone whether it be that person up there ( Who may or may not exist ) or someone whose seen as a role model down here.
@First Paragraph:
Suffering incredibly due to influence of religion comment: Extrimists exists in everything whether it be politics of religion. Most people in the middle East/Africa are suffering at the hands of a couple of groups of extremists who are thirsty for blood. There are then numerous wars being waged for religion but we are all human and hence pride for one's homeland may sometimes get out of control. They may be fighting in the name of religion but I highly doubt that that's the whole story.
@Pedo comment: Ounce again we are all human, you have urges and we all have urges. Stuff like this happens everywhere and you really can't stop. You also can't blame a whole institution for a problem a small portion have made.
@Gays/Individual rights: Morality exists and you can't really help it, the church is just morally against gays. Ounce a black man dining in a restaurant was almost forbidden but the church back then supported against all negative tides, equality for these people. Unfortunaly the religious Morality ( or catholic Morality ) only goes this far.
@Getting killed: And someone can get killed/ hasseled for being Gay/Black/White/politically different/ everything really. It's how it goes and it really can't be stopped.
