You want her end slutty? Certainly that's why you have no children.

The fastest growing group concerning religion is the non-religious or "religious but do not attend any form of service" group.

Draugnar and Synalon make very good points.
I would add patronizing of arts, especially in Western Europe.
Many forms of music have a religious background

And to some degree, religious institutions provide education, even if it is only learning Scripture and holy texts.

Actually, Catholic schools have some of the most well rounded graduates who go on to greater things in life. The disciplinarian approach to teaching does provide evidence of its effectiveness in its results.

I'm actually rather shocked that someone can't see a single good thing religion has done. Look deep at some of the religious practices that these days make little sense.

Jews don't eat certain kinds of meat such as pork. Why? Because at the time they didn't know it needed to be cooked at a higher temperature than beef (or something like that) so avoiding it meant less sickness and longer life and a healthier community.

Look at the 10 commandments. They aren't a bunch of crazy rules. They mostly all make sense in today's world. Being jealous of your neighbor is unhealthy. Killing people is bad. Stealing is bad. These are basic rules of society that we take for granted now, but back then someone had to carve them in stone. Religion taught people how to live better with each other.

Look at the Islam or Muslim (sorry not sure which of both) rule about using one hand to eat and the other hand to wipe your butt with. (Correct me if I'm wrong please.) I'm lands with not a lot of water and no modern bathrooms that makes tons of sense.

Religion taught people how to live with each other and even how to live with themselves. How to live longer and safer. And that is just one aspect of the positive things that religion has done.

Much of it not needed now of course. Personally I was brought up Roman Catholic but do not practice and am pretty much agnostic now. Too much hypocrisy. But that doesn't mean there wasn't positives along with the negatives.

Another benefit of religion that still helps in today's modern world is the belief in heaven and hell. Or rather the belief that there is some cosmic justice that will be asserted after life. Why does this matter? It helps those who lose a loved one continue on with life. It helps them deal with the murder who has gotten away with it. It helps people cope with the unfairness of life by believing that the scales will balance in the end. I don't know whether or not they will. But that belief helps people live in an unfair world.

"Religion taught people how to live with each other"

This part actually made me chuckle at work that people looked over at me. You should perhaps amend that sentence with 'as long as you are the same religion as me.'

Alderian, perhaps to some its like saying 'Hitler was a really good artist, and you should have heard Pol Pot sing.'

That's less than 1person per 300000 ...

Yeah that guy that said religion does no good in the world was way out of line. I personally really don't believe much of Christianity, and in fact I get really pissed off by a lot of Christians, but then I signed up to go to Africa with a Christian missionary organization. These people are devout, but a very different kind of Christian, namely the kind that is willing to cross an ocean and go help destitute people. Thus, they were really cool and amongst themselves were really never judgmental or rude about the faith, and they never even asked me about my own faith, or lack thereof.

Hm, I always wondered about the whole pork thing. I know that a friend of mine recently converted to Islam because "people living in caves can't come up with things like that on their own, therefore, god exists." More-or-less referring to a lot of the rules that I found rather strange, but made sense in the long run. (i.e: sleeping on your side rather than your back/stomach, for health reasons; shaving certain areas for hygene reasons; brushing your teeth every day; etc.)

So he converted to Islam because Jews were kosher? How bizarre!

Alderian;
"Look at the Islam or Muslim (sorry not sure which of both) rule about using one hand to eat and the other hand to wipe your butt with. (Correct me if I'm wrong please.) I'm lands with not a lot of water and no modern bathrooms that makes tons of sense."
Yea, You're right. We are 'supposed' to use our right hands for everything, and wipe with our left hands. But lets try to go a little deeper into this rule shall we? You said it's a good rule if you don't have a modern bathroom. Well they STILL enforce this insane rule even on the richest muslims. We aren't allowed to use paper towels (or at least that's what my mosque told m, I'll find some online site support this later). We are supposed run water from our wrist down to our hands while wiping. yea this is something they did a lot way back when the majority didn't have modern bathrooms, but that doesn't mean that they should unfairly enforce this rule. Since I am a Muslim (gone Athiest, sssshhh don't remind my parents), I know a bunch of shit about Islam that if they were gone public, it would significantly decrease the number of people converting into Islam.

@DBJ, read amonkeyperson's post. All of those little rules he's making fun of were the main reason that my friend converted.

When I was five years old, I had an imaginary friend who could do magic. Whenever I did something wrong, he got the blame, and any time I did something right, I took all the credit.

Seems to me that any organised religion is just about reversing those roles, but the bizarre thing is that it is still the same kind of ridiculous intangible belief in an invisible being. Religion is a crutch for people too weak to believe in themselves.

He converted into Islam cause people force him to not use paper towels even though they're right next to him?

More-or-less. He cited just about all of those strange rules as proof of god's existance, as they came about randomly to highly uncivilised people (his words, not mine).

Gordok, When you blamed your imaginary friend did you parents punish him? If someone said Jesus wanted him to kill his neighbor, what would you expect the local police to do?

Onar; Another rule is that guys aren't alowed to pee standing up. This rule wasn't made because somehow people weren't able to pee standing up when they were living in caves. It's simply because for just a minute, we stand while praying. And they don't want to accociate standing with peeing AND praying. So everytime someone pees standing up, they get beat. I did.

is that the reason behind it? I heard something to the effect of splashing, and "when you pee standing up, can you guarantee that you won't get any piss on your clothes?"

I didn't know that. I do know though that if a guy sits down while peeing, unless he's doing double business, he isn't a real man!

@amonkeyperson I think you're missing the thrust of my point, which is that in my opinion, all organised religions are a way of man not taking responsibility for our own actions. Good things happen 'by the grace of God'. Bad things happen because 'its all part of his plan' or he 'moves in mysterious ways'.

And of course my parents didn't try to punish my invisible friend - that would be crazy, right? ;)

Yea whenever I tell someone about that They always say that it's probably something to with cleanliness. But in my mosque, they have urinals that are like buckets, so when you hit the bottum it wont be able to come up high enough to splash on you. But they covered those up with tin foil and made us all use the stalls. So by covering up those urinals I'm pretty convinced that it's because they pray standing up.


Which is also kind of wierd because old people are allowed to sit and pray because they might not be able to do all the motions. But don't they sit and pee too? shouldn't they make the old people stand and pee?

Gordok; I'm justing saying, that in the legal system in most civilised countries, you won't be able to put the blame on God, You're going to take all the shit, so what's the point in believing in God if you con't succesfully blame him for things that went wrong in your life? I'm not sayign that this is why people have faith, I'm just going along with Gordok thinks about organized religion.

Well, If I remember properly, one of the motions involved in Islamic prayer is supposed to be really healthy for the body. Helps you take-in more oxygen, or something.

amonkeyperson, my point was that there are a lot of "religious rules" that benefited humankind. Rules that served a purpose. Many no longer server a purpose now that we know to cook pork to a higher temperature and have great bathroom facilities and such.

And yes, many religions still push these now outdated rules for presumably the stupid reason that it was claimed to be God's word or something so we can't abandon it now even though it is senseless. It would be better for them to say "hey, we had this rule and here is why but now we know how to deal with it another way so it's okay now." And that is why I'm not a practicing Catholic. Too much political stupidity, not enough sense.

Dingleberry, I thought it was implicit that I meant live with each other within that religious community. Obviously different groups with different behaviors/beliefs/worldviews will struggle with each other. But it doesn't take religion to make that happen. There is more than enough non-religion-based intolerance in the world.

DJ, I'm pretty sure human kindness existed before religion because we can see kindness in primates, monkeys, and all sorts of social animals. Maybe it's better worded that human kindness exists without religion.

Draugnar, I would say that charity's are funded by people not religion. Do Christians (or religion) represent a larger portion of charitable donations than the portion of the population they represent? What about the GDP they represent? I'm not seriously asking you to go out and find the numbers, I'm just making a point. =)

Alderian, I will say that I agree that religion provides social cohesion, but I still don't think it's a good price to pay. You're right that a lot of old advice is manifested in religion and other mysticism, just under different jargon, ie. vomiting when poisoned so as to "purge evil spirits". But this is secular knowledge and doesn't owe anything to religion or divine word. People have known that people get more sick off of eating pork than beef long before it was written down (otherwise how would they know what to write). Is God required to pass an uncompromising rule so that people know this? No, they could just be told... and the uncompromising rule always falls into obsolescence when secular knowledge is updated to include the reason why people get sick more often from eating pork than beef. Then it just holds us back.

And the Ten Commandments? Give me a break. More than half of them are ridiculous now... You shall have no other gods before me? You shall not make for yourself an idol? You shall not make wrongful use of the name of your God? Remember the Sabbath and keep it holy? I mean the only ones that are even really a part of modern law are you shall not kill, you shall not steal, and you shall not bear false witness against your neighbour. And trust me, these sorts of things are common sense, burned into our human nature. Every society and every religion knows these things... no society could exist if murder and theft were rampant. Even monkeys have been shown to have a sense of fairness.

I don't mean to be derisive, but it seems that most of the benefits touted in the name of religion is really just secular knowledge clothed in religious text.... as though it came down by divine word when it was really just learned through experience and cultural transmission. I mean, when missionaries came to the New World, the heathens weren't convinced by the awe-inspiring and obvious truth of the New Testament, but by the amazing technology and advances that the Spanish brought with them...

Also, if I recall correctly, Islam is currently the fastest growing religion in the world, though Christianity remains the majority. I don't see Islam becoming the only religion, but certainly in some time it will become the majority.

Chrispi "DJ, I'm pretty sure human kindness existed before religion because we can see kindness in primates, monkeys, and all sorts of social animals. Maybe it's better worded that human kindness exists without religion."

You lost me here. You see human kind in primates? I'm not sure what you are saying

I would say that charities are funded by religious people.
Although I don't know the numbers, anecdotal evidence from my own life makes believe religious people donate to charities much more than non-religious people.
Islam, for example, makes charity mandatory through zakat.