Students beat classmate to death screaming Allahu Akbar (New graphic video)

[JWeinCom]

A_C_E said:

JWeinCom said:

I don't think religion is beyond question just because people are psychopathic enough to kill someone for having a different view to them. We're talking about cold blooded murderers.

By beyond question I mean that society doesn't allow you to question it.  Obviously, if you can get killed for it, it is treated as beyond question.  Thankfully, most places aren't that bad, but even in more secular nations, there is an idea that we should not question people's religious beliefs.  

Due to Wall Street the corporate cover-ups are astonishing, political scandals are very widespread in every country. The amount of allegations that jump out of every news outlet about politics is immeasurable. Religion, corporations, politicians, they can get away with it all. But this raping of children is an institutional problem, not a religious problem. These people aren't raping the kids because they are religious, it would be a fallacy to claim so.

If it is a religious institution, then it is also a religious problem.  You can't ignore the fact that the ideas, aka religion, are enabling these behaviors, and enabling them to get away with it.  And while we often turn a blind eye to political scandals, I don't think any known pedophile would be allowed to go on unscathed.  

Right. Except it's not a fact, it's a belief, and judging by how many homosexual Christians there are in America kinda brings me back to my point that people are lazy Christians or lazy Muslims who can calculate for themselves in a non-proprietary manner that listening to a book in a literal sense isn't the right step to take. That's their decision.

Suppose we completely eliminated the idea that homosexuality is a sin against god.  We could somehow magically obliterate that thought completely.  Would that be a positive or a negative for society?

This is a good point but your point here would seem to pertain only to violent people who could be triggered into a violent act. I mean, 7 billion people in this world and we have a growing population. We've done ok with religion. With 7 billion people comes room for violent engagement whatever the excuse, whether it be religion, sports or dental work.

Sure.  And we should do what we can to minimize violent engagement as much as possible.  

I will say though that I do agree we would probably be better off if religion just sort of went away over time and people got more into sciences and logic and put there money into research as opposed to false prophets and the like.

I'm a little bit confused then... You seem to be indicating that the problems with religion are the results of the institution/individual and not the result of the ideas themselves, but then you're also saying that we would be better off without religion.  Maybe I'm misunderstanding you, but those seem to be conflicting ideas.

If it is a religious institution, then it is also a religious problem.  You can't ignore the fact that the ideas, aka religion, are enabling these behaviors, and enabling them to get away with it.  And while we often turn a blind eye to political scandals, I don't think any known pedophile would be allowed to go on unscathed.  

I have to disagree because without the institutional structure you have much less power for cover-ups. I'm not saying that 100% of religious people who commited crimes would be caught, but breaking up the institution would bring these crimes down the same levels as the current standard of society. There are too many examples that both of us could go through to show that religious people can do both bad and good which leads to the religion being inherently neutral.

Suppose we completely eliminated the idea that homosexuality is a sin against god.  We could somehow magically obliterate that thought completely.  Would that be a positive or a negative for society?

I know where you are coming from. You're basically saying if we erased religion then homosexuals would be less hated against. I see your point and I agree that religion plays a role here in offering bias against certain individuals, but we are talking about human beings that are bias in the first place. What I mean to say has already been said and that is religion is a catalyst to already existing societal problems. It's not so much religion that is the problem but the education, or lack there of, that needs to change. To answer your question, it would be a positive for sure but with proper education we could deter those kinds of thoughts from society.

I'm a little bit confused then... You seem to be indicating that the problems with religion are the results of the institution/individual and not the result of the ideas themselves, but then you're also saying that we would be better off without religion.  Maybe I'm misunderstanding you, but those seem to be conflicting ideas.

My point all along has been that religion is not the root problem. Religion can be a catalyst for anything but it cannot be inherently bad or good. People are the root of evil so the more that people are educated from all sides, as opposed to just what they want to hear, the more people can assess reality for all its calculated glory.

I think to argue the catalyst vs the root cause is a chicken and egg situation.  People influence ideas, and those ideas influence people.  Whether it's the cause or the catalyst seems to be a pointless distinction.  The question for me is whether it is beneficial or harmful to the world.

I disagree on religion not being inherently good or bad.  I would say that any religion that encourages any particular dogma is inherently bad.  I would say that dogma is the root of most large scale societal problems, and religion is one of the main sources of that.  Even if the religion was founded on generally good ideas (which I don't believe any religion I'm familiar with is) if it involves dogmatic beliefs, it's probably going to lead to bad results.