Psst, stop spoiling @skado worlds of dreams, etc, etc, you may well cause him to cry into his pitcher of Moonshine or something, thus embarrassing himself amongst all the Hillbilly Hicks.

@Triphid He posts the art though. The only one here who really does that.

@BufftonBeotch To each his or her own opinion.
Somewhat a terrible shame though, imo, that his postings and researches seem to go as far as he can comprehend rather than, also imo, HIM trying to EXPAND his Brain Potential.

Mostly that cooperation and understanding produce better practical outcomes than fault-finding and conflict. And that a capacity for imagination is our superpower rather than our Achilles' heel. And that religion is a product of the various forces of evolution rather than a product of criminal intent. And, as with other evolved traits, it isn't going away. And that we will need to choose whether to focus on and accentuate its transcendent potentials, or its exploitative potentials.

How about you?

@skado You gotta start slowing down on that intake of Moonshine and Whacky-bacci there @skado.

@skado As with anything there are pros and cons. The cons of religion and their effect on our society then and now have been more horrific than the good they do.

@Betty
Please tell me how you quantify those two.
And please tell me why you blame bad behavior on a philosophy that advises treating people with love and tolerance.

The fact that people don’t follow their own religion’s advice is not the religion’s fault.
The religion that I was raised in (and abandoned at 14) did not prescribe doing any of those horrible things. And horrible deeds in history have certainly not been limited to religious people.

@skado Read some history books.

@Betty
In order to have a scientific basis for the claim that one quantity is larger than another you have to do more than read books. You have to have a method of compiling all the instances of each quantity and then compare to see which is larger. That's what science is - measurement. Reading some history and getting an impression is not scientific measurement.

Share with me, if you will, one source you have read which attempts to quantify, for example, all the good religion has done.

@skado Your religion did not, in your youth perhaps, "prescribe doing any of those horrible things." But that was a rare exception, it has prescribed a lot of them for much of the past, and what is more important, it will increasingly do so into the future, indeed it is plainly becoming just that prescription and little more.

As for how you blame bad behaviour, on a philosophy that advises treating people with love and tolerance. Well that is not at all hard. Firstly, because Christianity hardly does give that advice, and I am not talking about just Old ver. New Testament, even in the New, the kind philosophies, are only quite a small part of the whole. And secondly, any belief systems potential to create kindness or cruelty, are not mainly based in its few statements of humanity, which you can find in almost all philosophies, but in its whole structure and all its ideals, in part because that is where you find its potential for unintended consequences. Marxism is mainly about humanity, but as we all know, that has done untold harm, and you may find humane ideals even in Mein Kampf. But the main idea in Christianity anyway, both its source and its traditions, is not humane kindness, but the idea of a personal god, with which you can have a personal selfish narcissistic relationship, (NT and the Catholic/Protestant tradition.) and extreme racist nationalism ( OT, and the Jewish tradition.)

And while those remain in the back ground and base layers, the potential for the most extreme inhumane behaviour still remains. While even if you did succeed in creating a sanitized sub-cult based on the few humane statements in the sources and a metaphorical interpretation of the rest. Like leaving a machine gun and belts of ammunition out on the side-walk, but saying. "I only keep it in case an dog or cat injured in a road accident needs a humane death." the terrible potential would still be there.

The potential for cruelty and inhumanity, always remains if built into the system. While the chances of getting a sanitized Christianity promoted anyway, are frankly, just a childish fantasy. Since religion, like any belief system or marketable product, needs to have something to offer if people are to take it up. And religion as a belief system has always thrived most by providing an alternative to the beliefs of the mainstreams and the state. In its greatest hours, like the Middle Ages, it thrived by asking for humanity when the state and secular thought was only organized thuggery. But now that situation is reversed, most states now (And this is why the USA centric view fails. ) accept welfare as their main duty, and human rights are a growing belief system. To oppose that, and gain popular support, religion can only move into the darkness and appeal to those who want criminality, as it is plainly seen to be doing.

Atheism is not about abolishing belief, but about replacing old broken and corrupt beliefs with better ones. Just as Christianity itself replaced corrupt state paganism, back in the days of the Roman empire. For Christianity and traditional religions are not just a problem, because of their power to directly oppose progress, but also simply because they get in the way, taking time and resources from better belief systems, like environmentalism, true democracy, human rights, science, socialism, welfare, the green movement, progressive arts etc.. Which are not only better at forwarding what they do, explaining what they want directly, and free from dangerous inherited baggage, but actually better at building communities and creating their own rituals, narratives, storeis, metaphors and traditions. In fact all of the things that people look to traditional religions for.

For histories which an attempt to quantify the good which religion has done, though that is almost impossibly complex, there are many. In resent times Yuval Noah Harari in Sapiens made a good stab, but if you want a really good a comprehensive overview, which is a really good read and quite positive about religion, then The Outline Of World History by H. G. Wells, ( Who was an even better historian than a novelist. ), which concentrates on belief systems in a very positive way, is a really useful read, even though much of it is very out of date and factually inaccurate in parts now.

@skado As for the claims that you need science not history. Firstly, you know full well that such things are not and never could be within the remit of science, and that those sort of quantity measurements are quite impossible, so that is just a cheap bullying tactic of demanding the impossible you are directing at Betty.

And secondly, almost all your quotes and attempted justifications, come from anthropoligy, which is a branch of history, albeit with slight scientific pretentions.

And you may treat this as an 'ad hom' if you wish and igrore it.

@skado, @Betty Dear Betty, please note (even if you don't want to read my above) that such measurements that you are asked for by Skado, are of course quite impossible and far from being within the remit of science. Also remember that asking for the impossible is a playgound bullying trick.

@skado Why don't you prove to me that religion has never done any harm.

@skado If you are talking specifically about Christianity, there are only thin slivers of love and tolerance.
Most of it is filled with instructions on mass genocide by a very petty tyrant.
Instructions on only allowing young, female children to live when you besiege a village in because they are virgins and you can rape them without fouling your innate male holiness.
Lots of instruction also to beat into the mid of a slave that they must be obedient to the master or also lose any comfort after death.
How convenient!
Even Jesus, this supposed deliverer of love has words in his mouth that he did not bring peace but a sword.

@BufftonBeotch
Have you ever participated in a Christian religion?

@Betty
I haven’t claimed it has never done harm. I just wanted to understand the basis of your claim that it has done more harm than good.
If it’s based on feelings, I can understand those feelings. But feelings don’t always reliably reflect the objective facts.

That’s why we invented the scientific method - to get beyond our natural human biases.
The reason most atheists say they reject belief in a literal deity (as I also do) is because there is no scientific evidence for such a creature.

But the preponderance of evidence suggests that religious thought and practices are a product, or at minimum, a byproduct of natural selection. Which means it has served to enhance our survival and reproduction.

So no matter what ills it may have brought, they apparently did not outweigh the benefits, or we would likely now be extinct like our other human cousin species.

That is a brief outline of my thought process. It is guided by the available science that I am aware of.

The reason I ask other people to share their thought processes is because I know there is bound to be science that I am not aware of. We all have varying opinions, and that is as it should be, but if there is a firm body of science that contradicts my view, I want to know about it.

So far, no one has offered any scientific inquiry that produced evidence that supports the very popular belief among atheists that religion has done more harm to Homo sapiens than the adaptive benefits it has provided.

If we must follow the evidence when we decide whether to believe in a literal deity (and I think we must) then we must also follow the evidence when we decide if religion does more harm than good. All I’m asking for is for someone to point me in the direction of that body of evidence so I can go read about it. When I see it I will change my view. Until then, unsubstantiated opinions, understandable as they are, cannot outweigh scientific evidence.

@skado Not by choice. But I was forced to through most of my childhood dependency.
And I read the entire bogus book.

@BufftonBeotch
May I ask, what denomination?

@skado Church of God Anderson, Indiana brainwash flavor

@skado Are you trying to tell me that one good deed will erase a lie, beatings, rape, or death?

@Betty
No. I haven’t claimed that. You are claiming religion has done more harm than good, and I’m just asking if you’re basing your position on any scientific studies that I could read, or if it’s just opinion. If it’s opinion, then there’s nothing else to discuss. If it’s science, then please share. Thanks.

@BufftonBeotch
I don’t know much about Church of God. Did the minister preach from the pulpit that genocide or rape or slavery were ok?

@skado It may be that Betty made an unsubstantiated statement, with which as it happens I do not agree either. But that does not excuse, firstly, asking for something that can never be. Because as Betty rightly pointed out, her comments related to things which fall only within the sphere of history, and are not or ever likely to be within the realms of science, and asking for things which are impossibilities is simply morally reprehensible bullying of the worst sort. And secondly it is also morally disgusting to tell someone that their opinion is valueless.

@skado You keep hiding behind the word "science". So tell me how does your idea of science measure grief? How does it calculate the heartache when the perpetrators of rape and abuse are not held accountable and the religious entities cover it up? How does your science calculate the hatred of people of color, homosexuality, and cultural and religious differences?
Or....Are you going to tell me they do not qualify as harm?
If you chose to answer with wanting "scientific studies", then I will be convinced that you lack empathy.

@skado, @Fernapple Unmarked graves of indigenous children were found on the site of schools that were designed to eradicate their culture out of them. These were children that were taken from their parent and home by force to be housed in catholic run schools. There are allegations of physical and sexual abuse. The children that survived were rehomed to catholic families. The harm is ongoing to not only the surviving children but their families.
There is also conversion therapy done by religious groups.
This is not just history.

@Betty

"...how does your idea of science measure grief?"

It doesn't.

And that's the point I'm steering toward with my Socratic questioning.

When you are dealing with immeasurable quantities, there's no way to claim one quantity is greater than another.

It's easy for all of us to empathize with the headline-grabbing atrocities that rip our hearts out, but much more difficult to notice that only by virtue of a belief in a loving redeemer who will set it all straight in the afterlife are the silent billions able to face the crushing heartache of living with the unfair circumstances fate bequeathed them in this life. How does your science-averse emotionality measure that?

The problem I have with blaming "religion" for those atrocities is that when we accuse the wrong entity of a crime, the real culprit is still free to commit more of the same. Is that what we want our empathy to do?

What are you going to blame for the hideous crimes in history of regimes that outlawed religion? Or governments of any description? Or capitalism, for that matter?

Hideous criminality is one of the many capacities innate in human nature, and magnified by evolutionary mismatch. Religion, historically, is the only institution that has tried to offer a counterbalance to that mismatch. The fact that criminal minds are attracted to power centers, and love nothing more than infiltrating them and degrading them, only attests the strength of human biological nature when opposed by mere institutional resistance.

What you call religion, I now call corrupt religion. But until I became familiar with the various related sciences, and what they have to say about human nature and the evolution of religion, I felt much the same as you do.

All empathy-driven beliefs are well-intentioned, but only by learning the facts can our intentions become effectual at solving real-world problems. Science has a better track record at discovering the facts than does the sincerest empathy.

The irony of this life-long non-believer finding himself defending science against the beliefs of atheists is more boggling than this tired old mind can bear. I'm gonna leave it there.

Best regards.

@skado No religion is NOT the "only institution that has tried to offer a counterbalance to that mismatch." in saying that you are doing exactly what you are blaming Betty for, which is making statements about the past based on nothing more than unsupported value judgments. And in this case even worse, an absolutist value judgment. All human institutions have to offer control of anti-social behaviour, simply because institutions are social constructs, and can only exist by doing that, and for the most part, mainly only exist to do that. In fact institutions like politics, from a clan level through tribal and on to the nation state and eventually internationalism, have a much greater interest in forwarding good social instincts, ( As did trade networks to a lesser extent in early times. ) because without supernatural claims, the only justification they can offer for their existence, is the demonstration of their abilities to succeed in doing so. While religion was always probably from the beginning, been to a degree on the negative side, as a promoter of personal narcissism, since it profited by that, and by countering the social order, with appeals to individualism, and individual claims to the favour of divine authority. Which it could do, because it alone could gain authority without demonstrating any benefits to larger society. (Royalty may sit on the border between religion and politics, and has elements of both.)

And yes science does have, "a better track record at discovering the facts than does the sincerest empathy. " Which is why it deals only in hard facts and not the speculative value judgements, more within the realm of history, which you claim to base on it. And that is why doing such things are truly horrible, exactly, because they throw out the truly valuable and wonderful gift that science can offer. If not because of the sickening double values, expossed by blaming value judgments for some things, while using them to support others.

And yes, crime is "innate in human nature", but it does not have to happen. Over balancing and falling on the floor is also innate in human nature, though it does not have to happen, because our balancing mechanisms are of limited capacity. Which means that I am much more likely to fall down, if I go skiing, than if I go for a walk. Because there is a mismatch between my balance mechanisms, designed for running on the flat plains, and sliding down mountains on culturally and technically developed skids. So if I want to avoid falling over at all cost, it is best not to go skiing or join a ski club. Just as if I want to avoid being anti-social or criminal, it is best to avoid human institutions which favour and enable criminality and anti-social activities. Human cultural institutions can modify human behaviour, yes greatly, but if that is the case, then it is truly stupid, to suppose that they can only modify it in one direction.

Most human institutions will tend to offer a mixed bag of both good and bad elements, some doing more good to regulate and modify human actions, and some more bad. But the claim that one institution alone is single handedly the only one which is responsible, for all the good, and that all others are at best neutral, is a truly horrible distortion and plain lie, of the worst sort, straight from the psychopathic dictators play book of nasty lies which mislead. While the claim that institutions are not sometimes responsible for worsening the bad things that people do, and that all the blame can be shifted on to human nature, is just a version of the the old and long discredited original sin ideology, created to precisely to belittle humans and generate the misery of guilt, so that others could pose as the liberators.

@skado Out of curiosity. How would "you" scientifically measure the data of emotion? Grief, hurt, pain, longing, and heart ache are so individualized by personal experience, culture, personal investment, emotional attachment, type of relationship, duration of involvement, depth, and length of duration. How would you quantify that information into scientific data since that data would be drastically different from person to person?

@Betty See also my above, I know its a long read.

@Betty The point is that he could not, no one could, he is asking for the impossible as a bullying method.

@Betty

“I” wouldn’t.

That’s my point.

Neither “I” nor you have any way of quantifying those values, so as to say one is, without doubt, greater than the other, based on either currently known science or our emotional reaction to them.

All “I” can do is notice that

1. Genetically encoded physiological and psychological traits that formed in the context of pre-human and human hunter/gatherer societies over more than two million years on the African savannas are not likely to be radically altered in a span of only a few thousand years.
2. The primary cause of species extinction is evolutionary mismatch - a rapid shift in the relationship between biologically evolved traits and environment.
3. The invention of agriculture eleven thousand years ago produced the most radical and rapid environmental change H.sapiens had encountered in its existence - of a magnitude greater than those which have caused the extinction of many other species.
4. One of H.sapiens’ genetically evolved traits is a capacity for complex culture.
5. Culture (non-genetically transmissible behavior) can be radically modified much more rapidly than physiology or hardwired psychology.
6. Shortly (in evolutionary time) after the invention of agriculture, the minimal religious component of egalitarian hunter/gatherer culture ballooned into the overarching, behavior-modifying, cultural system we now call organized religion, with the effect of radically altering nomadic, tribal, hunter/gatherer habits to fit sedentary, cooperative, agricultural society… in record time.
7. The rule of thumb for assessing whether a trait, be it biological, cultural or biocultural, is adaptive - is whether it is found in all human populations, in all geographic locations, and in all time periods… a criterion which religion meets handily.
8. From this oversimplified list, and mountains of qualifying and clarifying supportive data, it appears to me that we have reason to suspect that religion, offensive and controlling and burdensome as it surely is, has acted, and continues to act, as our main counterbalance to evolutionary mismatch, which will only increase as technology accelerates the pace of environmental change. The undeniable fact that our Pleistocene instincts resist, corrupt, and abuse this system, while truly horrifying and despicable, does not, in my personal opinion, outweigh the benefit of being extant instead of extinct.

This is why I currently favor religious reform rather than abolition. We don’t (in my opinion) need to believe in things that aren’t true, but we, as a group (individuals vary) need a social institution whose only purpose is to daily, weekly, support the modification of biologically evolved behaviors which would otherwise undermine the social cohesion necessary for large, agriculture-based societies to function.

All contrary evidence welcomed. Everyone is entitled to their opinion, of course, but there is nothing to argue about regarding opinions - they are what they are. Mine is no better than yours. What can change my opinion is evidence that I was not previously aware of.

Thanks for asking.

@skado 1. Yes
2. Yes
3. No, the development of complex culture was itself the greatest mismatch.
4. No there are many traits which generate a capacity for complex culture.
6. Shortly only in evolutionary time scales, not in cultural and historic.
7. Only religion in the broardest sense, religions are so diverse that there is hardly a single common component to them all, beyond saying that some sort of religion would happen, that justifies almost nothing within them any of them.
8. Complete rubbish. Religion is probably the least successful of all human institutions at addressing the mismatch and has probably always been a burden and a drag on those other institutions which did attempt to address it. And even if it did once serve to address the mismatch to some degree in the past, that is no reason to suppose, that it is a good tool for that now, let alone the best.

And your final. No, all opinion is not equal, and although the 'ad hom' is a fallacy when addressing fact, it is very relevant when evaluating opinion.

@Fernapple Thank you for having my back.

@skado Religious reform? Even if it could be done how would you keep greed, criminals, and opportunist from infiltrating? It can't be done for the long term. In my opinion it is a pipe dream.

@Betty I quite agree. I tend to use as my personal definition of religion, that religion is the same thing as the fallacy of, proof by authority. In other words it is, any institution which gives justification to ideas without any presenting evidence, but only by unsupported authority, whether that authority comes from the supernatural, tradition, respect for an old book, just because its old, or group think, (We think that, not the others.) To understand therefore why it has such a deep natural connection to the anti social and criminal. You only have to ask yourself. Who would want authority without any wanting to offer justification ?

@Betty You are welcome.

@Betty
The history of religion is a history of constant reform, modification, and evolution. What’s a pipe-dream is thinking that the job will ever be finished. It will always be an ongoing maintenance responsibility.

If you think even that maintenance is a pipe-dream, do you think the eradication of religion entirely would somehow be easier?

@skado Psst, do NOT tell anyone this, it IS classified information BUT, none-the-less a TRUE fact though, NOTHING IN ANY Religion what-so-ever has EVER been able to stand up to ACTUAL and even the SHALLOWEST of Scientific Scrutiny and Questioning.
And WHY, you may well ask?
Well that answer is as simple as 1 + 1 = 2, RELIGION cannot and NEVER has been able to ACTUALL offer up and Prove itself to be anything more than merely Suppositions, Innuendos, Assumptions, Camp-fire side Fairy and Spooky/Scary Tales, etc, etc, ALL designed to make the gullible listener/s afraid enough of the shadows and want to pay for the services of a Charlatan dressed in special costumery to come along and weave his/her magic spells, etc, etc, and PRETEND to drive the also totally imaginary "nasties" away from those who are gullible enough to pay him/her for his/her fakeries.
Plus, and as an adjunct, to RID the world and Human Kind of the POX that is religion FIRST and Foremost we need to actually ENLIGHTEN the Fools and Dolts that are, have bee, and will be sucked in by the mumbo-jumbo garbage that the purveyors of religion use to to entrap them in the first place.

@Betty Hopefully, and imo, FIRST to actually READ more HE would NEED his child, either son or daughter or both even, to be educated above his level, i.e. Lower Pre-School or Diaper Training Grade, which they most probably are, but he has not the nous, etc, to comprehend words greater than those made from 2 to 3 syllables UNLESS or more of his children are there to do so, etc, on his behalf.

Yes, a nice depiction of stone implements possibly from the Neo-lithic .
Though Australian Aboriginals were still making such things went the first European Explorers arrived on these shore just over 200+ years ago but they had and still NO Religious significance even to this day.
They were merely tools and weapons used to make the necessities for survival and weapons for both hunting for food and protection of the person and the members of both family, tribe and clan.

Perhaps but still, imo, taken WAY, WAY out of its original context though.

@Triphid @Betty @Fernapple

Skado: But the preponderance of evidence suggests that religious thought and practices are a product, or at minimum, a byproduct of natural selection. Which means it has served to enhance our survival and reproduction. (Absurd assertion followed by false conclusion)

When you are dealing with immeasurable quantities, there's no way to claim one quantity is greater than another. (That is just hilariously and pathetically stupid. So there's no difference between a pond and a lake...)

What are you going to blame for the hideous crimes in history of regimes that outlawed religion? (So Skado accepts the Christian propaganda that communist regimes that committed mass murder didn't control people with a belief system, usually a personality cult).

...psychological traits that formed in the context of pre-human and human hunter/gatherer societies over more than two million years on the African savannas are not likely to be radically altered in a span of only a few thousand years. (The psychological evolution fanatic is somehow ignorant of Gould's Punctuated Equilibrium).

Hideous criminality is one of the many capacities innate in human nature, and magnified by evolutionary mismatch. Religion, historically, is the only institution that has tried to offer a counterbalance to that mismatch. (Recall Hitchens's admonition that to make people commit utterly wicked hideous crimes, you need religion.)

This is why I currently favor religious reform rather than abolition. (Skado has no problem with the lies being told and believed)

From this oversimplified list, and mountains of qualifying and clarifying supportive data, it appears to me... (megalomania much?)
...it appears to me that we have reason to suspect that religion, offensive and controlling and burdensome as it surely is, has acted, and continues to act, as our main counterbalance to evolutionary mismatch (Some new form of Creationism perhaps?)

@racocn8 I love it, you hit nearly every nail perfectly. Though you perhaps would be amused to know when quoting Skado's "..psychological traits that formed in the context of pre-human and human hunter/gatherer societies over more than two million years on the African savannas are not likely to be radically altered in a span of only a few thousand years." That Skado has claimed elsewhere, to be a big fan of co-evolution, in other words that cultural evolution has an impact on genetic evolution. Another example of his having it both ways.

@racocn8 Agree with that concept re- Survival came first and foremost, then followed, much, much
by the "Tribal/Clan Elders" seek out answers when asked questions by the younger and slightly more mentally evolved member/s of the tribe or clan.

@racocn8 Imo, SHOULD try, at ALL times, to remember that Religions STILL hold some sway, be it slowly and steadily reducing most thankfully, over the processes and publications of results in the scientific Realms of which humans are now exploring and learning from.
After all, it was NOT all that long ago that Galileo was IMPRISONED by the Church, nor was not so very long ago that the Frenchman, can't quite recall his name atm unfortunately, was THREATENED with Imprisonment and Excommunication by the Catholic Church should he even DARE to mention anything in his translations of Egyptian Hieroglyphics that made the ancient Egyptians appear to be greater, better, more civilized, etc, etc, than those living at that the time of his "decoding" the Rosetta Stone.
Even to this very day, religion/s STILL try, and sometimes succeed most unfortunately, to control anything and everything they possibly can.