Is belief in Relgion dangerous?

[Artois]

Is religious belief a danger to the world?  We see rival religions blowing each other up in the middle east, Al-Qaeda has declared war on the infidel west, life loving Christians murdering abortionists, Clergymen covering up decades of child abuse, muslim bombers on buses, and a few crusades, inquisitions & genocides all for the greater glory of God/Allah.

Does it worry you when the leader of the western world (the President) believes in God?  Did Blair really shine a light for Christian Prime Ministers?  Does the growig unrest in Iran scare your shia socks off?

Is ability to make a leap of faith, and believe in the 'supernatural/divine' seem scary in anyone over 12?  Does this faith/belief colour other thought processes?  Can a mind make pure, logical, rational thoughts, yet have faith in the unrational?

Yours, terriffied, and living in a bunker...

Artois

[Hamish MacWolf]

Firstly, on an associated point, it needs to be clarified on whether the question is “religion” or “faith” dangerous. All too often, they are deemed to be synonymous, but in fact, they are two different things.

Faith is the belief, religion is the system. Much of what should be attributed to religion is instead blamed on faith. For example, suicide is forbidden in the Koran, but politically-motivated Mullahs within the religion of Islam encourage, or even order it. Or, nowhere in the New Testament are Christians ordered to capture, or even particularly be bothered about, the physical city of Jerusalem. The crusades were ordered by a series of corrupt Popes, many of whom schemed, bribed, purchased or murdered their way into office. It was more of a medieval Italian mafia than the kindly benevolence we acquainted to John Paul II.

So “religion”, a system created and maintained by humans, who are by their very nature flawed and corruptible, will always be dangerous to someone. Incidentally, within religion, I would also include atheism, when it becomes a system. Communist states which have adopted atheism as the official religion have perpetuated some atrocities which are just as despicable as the worst excesses of any other faith. Truly, no-one is immune from the pitfalls of an official religious system.

As to some of your other points, more pertaining to faith, then yes, faith is also dangerous. It will always be dangerous to those who lie on the other side of it. And once again, I say this of every faith and non-faith. Simply because, faith is an attempt to provide nothing short of The Meaning of Life. Not the Monty Python film, but the goal of most philosophers throughout history.

The answer provided by any one faith will be infinitely dangerous to everyone outside of it. If a faith suggests there is an eternity beyond death, and there is a specific way to attain it, then all who do not adhere to that way are in for a rough ride. If a faith suggests an endless wheel, where advancement requires an enlightenment, the unenlightened are going to be very frustrated. And if a non-faith suggests it is all a load of bunk, those who do not agree will have their most important reality threatened, not to mention the perpetual targeting they will face, from condescension at the mild end, to execution at the other.

So faith and religion are both dangerous, for different reasons. As a final note, if the premise is put forward, “If they are dangerous, we should avoid / ban / destroy them”, I am afraid that simply isn’t possible. There will always be faith of some kind, held by some and disagreed with by others. The existence of faith is intrinsic to both humanity, and this world. Is humanity dangerous? Of course. Is this world dangerous? My word, yes!

Thus the question is not whether to do away with it, but rather, how best to chart a course through it. At least, that’s my opinion.

[ratcharmer]

In response to the opening question: NO

Let me start by going through a few examples of conflicts often blamed on religion:

The Middle East:
In order to gain allies during WWII England promised the same piece of land (Israel) to two separate groups who did not have a friendly history with each other. At the end of the war they were told to share the city. It hardly seems surprising that they ended up fighting. It's also worth noting that Israel ranks 19th in the least religious countries of the world. Link:
http://www.gadling.com/2007/08/23/least-religious-countries/

The Crusades:
Examine some of the architecture in southern Spain, especially in the older buildings. You'll note there is a distinctly Moorish influence. That's because the Seljuk Turks had invaded Europe in an attempt to expand their empire.

Turkish forces had recently conquered Jerusalem from the Byzantine Empire, Europe united under the Pope and retaliated. The two factions spent a great many years fighting back and forth over who would control which territories. Later Popes repeated the use of the term Crusade over wars of other causes.

I'm not going to go into detail about each of the crusades. The wikipedia article is pretty good, here's the link:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crusades

The IRA:
Often blamed on conflict between Irish Catholics and English Protestants. Consider this though: England conquered another country and then took it over. Ireland then tried to rebel, and was defeated. The remnants of Ireland's army continued guerrilla fighting, eventually forming the terrorist group.

Jihads:
During fighting in the middle east the US supported Israel and several other countries. The US made enemies in doing so. Those enemies then attacked us as best they could.

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Please be clear that I'm not trying to place blame or point fingers for any of the above conflicts, merely pointing out that none of them were cut-and-dry "we are religious therefore we fight you!". I have never found a record of any major conflict wherein I honestly think religious differences were the main cause behind the battle.

If the world is ending, you can't blame it on religion, unless God is destroying the world, Rapture style.

Notably, the Cold War, which is definitely the closest humanity has ever come to wiping itself out, was between the US (a country that claims neutrality on religious grounds, though that's debatable) and the USSR, which was one of the few officially atheistic states ever to exist. They even enforced atheism by law.

Incidentally wasn't the USSR also known for repressing people and a heavy emphasis on big brother/secret police type policies?

Just saying, there aren't to many examples of purely atheistic states out there, and some of the ones that are out there aren't exactly shining stars of freedom, peace and happiness.

Religious beliefs are frequently corrupted/manipulated for propaganda purposes, but blaming wars on religion is like blaming the USA's foreign policy on eagles.

"Doing away with" religion has been tried before. It's usually called genocide. It hasn't turned out well in the past.

[airframe]

Notably, the Cold War, which is definitely the closest humanity has ever come to wiping itself out, was between the US (a country that claims neutrality on religious grounds, though that's debatable) and the USSR, which was one of the few officially atheistic states ever to exist. They even enforced atheism by law.

Incidentally wasn't the USSR also known for repressing people and a heavy emphasis on big brother/secret police type policies?

Just saying, there aren't to many examples of purely atheistic states out there, and some of the ones that are out there aren't exactly shining stars of freedom, peace and happiness.

Religious beliefs are frequently corrupted/manipulated for propaganda purposes, but blaming wars on religion is like blaming the USA's foreign policy on eagles.

"Doing away with" religion has been tried before. It's usually called genocide. It hasn't turned out well in the past.

Atheism is just lack of religious beliefs, it's not communism. Also, lack of beliefs doesn't imply wanting exterminate all religious believers. Your probably talking about Hitlers final solution where nazis tried to exterminate one religious group. Not all of them, one of them.
Soviets tried invading Finland but I would hardly say it was because of religious convictions or the lack of them.

[jmizzle7]

Hamish mentioned the most important aspect of this discussion - the difference between faith and religion. Religion is denounced as a breeding ground for corruption many times in the Bible. As a devout Christian, it makes me sick to see fellow Christians trying to live according to a specific set of religious rules and codes instead of acknowledging their continuous shortcomings and living in repentance.

[Belthus]

The problem is the True Believer, who has no doubt that his/her ideology has a monopoly on truth. The ideology may be religious or secular. Moderate forms of any ideology can coexist in a pluralistic society, with some tension. The extreme forms are always pressing to marginalize or even wipe out ideological competitors.

[Hamish MacWolf]

The problem is the True Believer, who has no doubt that his/her ideology has a monopoly on truth.

May I be so bold as to substitute your term "True Believer" for "extremist" or "zealot"? If that is the case, then I am in full agreement. When faith replaces thought, rather than complements it, disaster is sure to follow.

I actually think that if anyone adheres to a faith, they should be a true believer. Token faithful give me the irrits. "Oh, I don't really believe all that stuff, but I quite fancy the architecture, and the wine is quite tasty."

And as to your comments on moderation, I might add a quote from CS Lewis:

Christianity, if false, is of no importance, and if true, of infinite importance. The only thing it cannot be is moderately important. - C. S. Lewis

[ratcharmer]

Atheism is just lack of religious beliefs, it's not communism. Also, lack of beliefs doesn't imply wanting exterminate all religious believers. Your probably talking about Hitlers final solution where nazis tried to exterminate one religious group. Not all of them, one of them.
Soviets tried invading Finland but I would hardly say it was because of religious convictions or the lack of them.

No, I'm not talking about Hitler, although he is a fine example of the dangers involved in this sort of  "everything that's wrong with the world is their fault" type of thinking. If you think that I sound a bit alarmist here I would point out the following:
On this very forum there are posts suggesting religious people are less intelligent, more prone to hostility, more likely to be sexual predators, deluded, try to repress others and that pretty much every war in history is because of religion. I hope you will forgive me if this makes me uncomfortable.

I know you aren't planning on trying to have me executed, but if this is what the reasonable people who are willing to sit down and talk to me are saying, then I'm terrified to hear what the real wackos are up to. I might need a bunker to hide in myself . . .

I really wasn't trying to talk about communism at all, the USSR is simply pretty much the only officially atheist country I know of. There aren't a lot to choose from.

The USSR is one of the few states to officially adopt atheism as the official religion and attempt to abolish all other belief systems. Officially it was only to be done through education, but in practice it led to the wholesale murder of thousands upon thousands of innocent people.
*edit: I looked up the numbers. Make that 17 million people. (not all of them for religious reasons, but many of them)

I'm not trying to be rude, it's just that some of the things people are casually discussing here are making me really, really uncomfortable. Try reading through some of the posts in this section, but switch out religious/christian/muslim/jewish (or whatever) for "atheist" and pretend they were talking about you. Do they still seem reasonable?

[Demagog]

There is no belief in religion. There are people that believe in the supernatural, and they are coined as religious, or they are said to practice a religion.

Belief in the supernatural is not dangerous in any way, shape or form. Misspelling things is very dangerous though. People will ridicule you and not take you seriously. Just thought you should know.

[Scaredgirl]

I think the concept of religion is dangerous because it removes individual responsibility and replaces it with "the will of God".

During human history, people have done some horrible things in the name of religion, horrible things that they would have never done if there hadn't been a "higher power" telling them to do so. Current example is suicide bombers. You would never get these people to do these terrible acts if there weren't the promise of martyr's afterlife with a bunch of virgins.

I think someone said "evil people do evil things, but only religion makes good people do evil things.".

[jmizzle7]

I agree that religion makes people do terrible things. Religion is the structure we humans put on whatever faith we have in order to understand and control it. The really big problem lies with what SG said - people use their deity as a scapegoat for their own dirty deeds. If they can't escape their punishment via insanity, they just say that God told them to do it...

[ratcharmer]

@Scaredgirl: The Columbine shootings were done by atheists, who killed themselves at the end of the massacre. In fact they specifically sought out religious classmates to murder. It is clearly possible to have a suicide bomber mentality without religion.

Here's a link to a site about recent atrocities. Note that the top 2 were lead by an atheist.
http://www.scaruffi.com/politics/dictat.html

I'm not trying to blame what they did on their atheism, merely pointing out that there are many cases where atrocities happened without any religious influence.

There is no logical basis for assuming religious people are more warlike than anyone else. A great many religions are known for their pacifist leanings.