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Is religion good or bad?

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MEOWli 2 Apr 3
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In the words of Neil Degrasse Tyson, “stay out of the science classroom”.

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I assume you're asking about overall harm vs benefit. Of course religion does good in the world, in specific ways, sometimes. But religion is not inherent to such good being accomplished. It's just that religion is a common way for people to find community and cooperation, because it's there, handy to use for such things. If it weren't there, other means could be found.

To illustrate, a lot of good works are done by private charities in the US. But in countries with a large social safety net financed by high taxes, those same good works are accomplished through government. There are very few private charities in such countries, because they aren't needed. Because people can count on basic levels of health care, food, clothing and shelter, and some kind of basic retirement, because society has bound itself to take care of the weak and vulnerable, no one needs rescuing.

To me, religion is primarily an epistemological problem. Religion, for the most part, demands belief without providing any substantiation for the things it demands you believe. It strongly tends to lead people away from, rather than towards, an accurate mental model of the reality they exist within. It's occasionally, right, but then, so is a stopped clock right twice a day.

So the harm of religion is in its strong tendency to motivate people to have unrealistic expectations, to be excessively idealistic, entitled, and/or controlling, to interpret experienced outcomes through various distorted lenses, and to encourage various forms of circular reasoning and other forms of uncritical thinking.

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