| Eagle367 said: See that's where we differ. You think religion is the problem. I think religion is an excuse. Human beings in there nature have the ability to do utmost good and can make any number of excuses to do so and humans also have the ability to do utmost evil and make any number of excuses to do so. If it was not religion it would be something else is what I'm saying. There are a hell of a lot of excuses to make to do almost anything in the world. Even in a time where there would be no religion on Earth if such a time is ever to come, humans will still be fighting over something. There will still be wars and terrorists. Its just that religion provides the perfect excuse for insane vehemntly evil people to do just about anything. We can't try it but I would gladly be up for an experiment where we can test this hypothesis |
I agree with you to the extend that humans have the capacity for evil. But, I disagree that they can make any number of excuses to justify it.
Historically, there are only a few things that have been really able to drive people to commit horrors on such a grand scale. Nationalism (or tribalism I guess), racism, and religion. Those are the big three. Political ideology is a gray area for me, but you might want to throw it in there.
Those are the driving forces of nearly every attrocity I can think of. There aren't a whole lot of others. These ideologies make you believe that you are better than others. Not that you are smarter, stronger, more handsome, but you are inherently more worthy of life than them. That's the kind of thing you need to drive people to that kind of behavior.
As for the experiments, you really don't need to do the experiment... cause its been done. Studies have been done testing the degree of religiosity of a country vs the societal health. Almost always, secular societies have a better societal health, in most every category. Correlation is not causation, but it's a good reason to believe that people will not just find a substitute for religion as a reason to persecute.
