Is religion harmful?
Is Religion harmful? It is an interesting question and something which can spark a lively debate I would imagine?
A Survey by YouGov, in Britain, has found that 42% of the 2,200 people taking part considered religion had a harmful effect. I would argue that there are many things that some could take as simple that anyone else could claim, until they are blue in the face, would cause us harm in some way.
In my own personal opinion the fight for belief has extended across the centuries in many wars. How many people, regardless of their religion, have died because they thought it was the will of their God?
It is continuing today, because according to a few: only God can judge people and so for the belief that conquering and destroying, killing enemy soldiers and innocent people is the right thing to do, how do we judge if it is the case?
Too many things are dangerous and if we don’t pay careful attention to what we are doing we could get hurt. That applies as much to crossing the road as it does to taking a gun or a bomb in your hand with the sole purpose of intent to harm.
The majority of the time we control our actions and so therefore what we say and do should be edited by us and us alone. I don’t believe that there should be a case of blaming it on someone else i.e. ‘the voice of the Lord commanded me to do this’. However that is just my belief and the situation I find myself in is not that of someone in a war torn environment and I hope that I am lucky enough to never find myself in such a position.
Of those polled only 16% called themselves atheists; 28% believed in God; 26% believed in “something” but were not sure what; and 9% regarded themselves as agnostics. I wouldn’t judge someone for their belief. I would question their methods their reasoning behind their acts and way of life would be ‘because I just feel like that’ without having the common sense to back their beliefs up.
So when people attend mass every week, is what they pray for and believe harmful? I think like everything there can be a good and bad side. The problem with that is there all always people ready to take the extreme of the bad side and use it as an excuse for their actions.
I realise the way I may come off after reading this and my ability now to be calm sitting here typing this is one thing. If it came to a stage where I’d have to defend my beliefs in a physical nature or else it could be cost me my life; then I do not know how I would react.
Thursday, September 6th, 2007 and is filed under GOD, Thoughts & Questions, Views on News.
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Sean Says:
If people truely lived the words of their religions then there would be world peace, but they dont and they use the badge of their religion to diferenciate themselves from their enemies. It is used as a divided line in the human nature of tribalism, like people from different football hooligan groups. Humans kill humans and always will, they will use any excuse be it religion, west aginst east, politics, colour, race. Many atheists killed people and famous athetics such as Stalin and Moa put to the sword the argument that the world would be a better place without religion.
There are many many good things done in the world by different religious groups but this is rarely mentioned - for me the world would be a horrid place without religion, just look at societies who are becoming more and more faithless, crme rates shore, poverty increases, gap between the rich and poor increases and the focus on the “self” leads to moral decline.
Give me religion any day - pity more people don’t live the words of their professed religions.
September 6th, 2007 at 4:56 pm
Michael Says:
I agree with Seán. In this country religion has been misused as a tribal identifier North and South. Many people who claim to belong to a particular religion to ally themselves to a political or cultural ideolology would have scant knowledge of the same, would reject its teachings entirely in favour of dubious secularism and blame it for many of the failings in today’s society. Revisionism fails to acknowledge the vital role played by religion at a time when there was no mechanism to defend the rights of the populace or later when the State devolved its social obligations to the churches in regard to education and welfare. Now we have government authorities dictating how we should think and believe in a feeble attempt to usurp the unique role of religion in civil society.
September 15th, 2007 at 12:06 am