has a specific plan for us, and that certain people know what it is, and we should listen to them?

Why not just analyze what everyone has to say, and sort out the good ideas from the bad ones, and embrace the good?

Why can someone say that because their imaginary friend has endorsed a certain rule, it is automatically good?

Without the fear of eternal damnation, what incentive would people have to be decent?

Yeah man, I don't buy that shit either.

who can, apparently, cannot restrain themselves from rank mayhem without the fear of eternal damnation.

I have no fear of damnation, nor a belief in it. Yet, I've never raped, robbed, beaten, killed, or tortured for fun. I'm kind to animals and others, worry about my fellow man, and give to charity. Surely puzzling ain't it? Shouldn't, I be a downright son-of-a-bitch?

Just to make sure you aren't interested in doing them.

The murderer of George Tiller, for instance, thought he was righteously visiting god's judgment down on a baby killer.

Belief in eternal damnation is no hindrance to bad behavior, and can actually increase its chances.

Agree totally. My post was just the argument I've heard in the past...

...


Back of my hand to Divine Judgement.

Isn't this a John Lennon song?

Clever man he was, too.

Some scholars have opined that of 1,763 wars in recorded history, only 123 were motivated by religious causes, accounting for less than seven percent of all wars and less than two percent of all people killed in warfare. https://www.huffingtonpost.com/rabbi-alan-lurie/is-religion-the-cause-of-_b_1400766.html It's true that many people have used religion as an excuse for behaving very badly. But it's too simple to say that none of these bad acts would have occurred if religion did not exist. Some clergymen abuse children, but so do some scout leaders, coaches and teachers. Would European settlers in America not have committed genocide against Native Americans if there had been no religion? Would our society be far more advanced if religion had never existed? I doubt it. We human behave badly because we are animals - like gorillas or lions - who are motivated, perhaps genetically (like gorillas and lions) to seize territory in order to maintain power, protect our tribes and our assets and further our genetic lines, not to establish the validity or supremacy of our "god."

Without religion we wouldn't have had the Crusades or the Thirty Years' War or the massacre of the Cathars. We also wouldn't have the great cathedrals of Europe, and maybe not even the engineering that made them possible. If you don't feel inspired by a belief in a god to build edifices that reach to heaven, why would you go to that effort and expense when your little mud hut is sufficient for your solitary, nasty, brutish, poor, short life? Without religion we wouldn't have the glorious music of Palestrina or Gabrieli or Bach's B-minor Mass. We wouldn't have the Sistine Chapel or Michelangelo's painting on its ceiling; we wouldn't have Van Eyck's Ghent Altarpiece (and maybe he wouldn't have bothered to develop the art of oil painting at all). We wouldn't have Angkor Wat or the Taj Mahal or the Izomu-taisha temple or the Great Buddha of Bodh Gaya. We wouldn't have the poetry of William Blake or George Herbert or T.S. Elliot's Ash Wednesday or the writings of Thich Nhat Hahn or Thomas Merton or the magnificent language of the King James Bible. Religion has inspired great art and great acts of charity as well as great evil. If nobody had a sense of any force greater than themselves or a desire to explore whatever that might be, would we nevertheless strive for some transcendently beautiful expression?

I'm not a believer but I'm glad to be living in a world that includes Chartres Cathedral and J.S. Bach. Religion has been responsible for great art and great evil. I think the evil would still have existed without religion, but I'm not so sure about the art.

I see...

Artistic genius will create, whatever the environment.

I don't think the enormous contribution to our culture to be just an "occasional" good, and as I said, not every evil (nor even most of them) can be attributed to a specifically religious motivation. I don't hate religion, although it's not my thing. I look at it as an attribute that reflects the psychology of humanity, good and evil, rather than controlling it.

nitwits spent obliterating ancient culture?

For example: The Taliban obliterated the 6th-century Buddhas of Bamiyan. ISIL has destroyed at least 28 historical religious buildings. Henry VIII dissolved the Catholic monasteries in England and destroyed many of them. The Crusaders burned down the ancient synagogue in Jerusalem in the 11th century. The Maya codices, which were records of gods and rituals, were destroyed by the priest Diego de Landa. A large number of Hindu temples were destroyed during the Islamic invasions of India. Quite a bit of what remains of ancient culture consists of buildings, books, artwork and records with religious connotations. So does it matter if newer religions destroy relics of the older ones because they're all bad?

against the harm it has done though out history, yes it's an occasional good thing. Art and music would still have been created, and might even have developed to be even more beautiful. Science would have flourished sooner.

I know something of history. On balance, I believe religion has done more harm than good in sum.

and the suggestion that the world wouldn't be much better without religion than with.

Religion is a tool, it's a symptom, it's a result...it isn't a cause or the disease.

Remove it and you still have the same humans doing the same fucked up shit, just with a different "reason" or "excuse."

Science was used to justify slavery. That's not science's problem, that's humans being humans.

Checkmate atheist!

Indeed...

That's the cause of most of the truly horrible things in the last century. New myths. Even Salafism to a large extent is a modern idealized view of how perfect society was, as most rump civilizations tend to do, to say why they should rule the world and they, among all peoples, show how humans should truly think, act, and believe.

The deaths under the Inquisition are usually exaggerated. They pick a couple of hotbeds of anti-heretical zealotry and expand it to include everywhere (picking a different 'random sample' leads to smaller numbers, but oddly it's always the same random sample that's picked).

Tribal genocide over women, land, and perceived (or real) slights probably accounts for more. But that not only doesn't feed a new myth, it counters a new myth and is therefore completely unfactual. Whatever the evidence.

Try shifting your focus outside of yourself. It would be an interesting exercise, and possibly informative.

We all need a mantra.

While I agree that it is a sad observation on the the humane race that religious beliefs or lack thereof have led to atrocious behavior, I’m not sure that a world where non belief in a myth would result threat to spend eternity in hell would prevent the ills you mention. I think one would have to do a rather in-depth hsirotical study to draw any kind of conclusion.

Living in a world of “alternative facts” makes me suspect that “myth making” simply be one of those characteiistics the human mind.

Just a thought