Is religion evil?

[AlonzoMourning23]

anthony requested this poll in the Islam thread, so here it is.

[PittsburghAfterDark]

:rollseyes:

Moral equivilency alert.

[AlonzoMourning23]

uhh..... ok. Someone said "why don't you ask if religion is evil", so I did.Â*Â*I have no idea what your complaint is, unless you are offended that I'd house different religions under the same term.

[Mayberry]

Religion is not evil. I find most organized religions to be rather unsavory though. Seems most of them are just out to make money. Especially Baptists. My wife drug me kicking and screaming to her Baptist church. I walked out after 20 minutes because all the preacher did was harp on about how much money you were supposed to give. This is the same church that is building a subdivision, tax exempt of course, and selling $250-400k homes. The pastor drives an Escalade. He ain't getting any of my money, and you'll never catch me in a church again. Crooked bunch of hypocrites if you ask me. And before anyone even says anything, I've been to Methodist, Catholic, "non-denominational", and even an Islamic service when I was in boot camp. (I figured what the hell, we could go to church, or polish our boots. I picked church.) None of them impressed me much.

[bobbylien]

I understand your sentiment Mayberry, but many pastors don't have it as good as baptists do. My pastor(i'm lutheran) lives in an old house across the street from the church and drives an old car. I think many christians are very hypocritical and extremely materialistic. I don't go more than once a month mostly because there arent many people around my age there and the few that are around my age are a bunch of losers.

[dsanthony]

Religion is an institution. It is not evil, at worst it is amoral. People are evil (in the relative sense of course) and some christians are evil and some muslims are evil, and many self-righteous athiests are evil.

[T.J. Wolfe]

Malachi 2:3 doesn't sound very pleasant.

There are dicks in every religion, but where I come from most of them are christians. Shit, I'm sure where many others come from most of the dicks are atheists, jews, or whatever else.

I just don't see why we always need an answer to everything. I don't know who created the universe, but I'm sure as hell not going to believe some fairy tale.

[lily]

I think Tull said it best

So I asked this God a question
and by way of firm reply,
He said - I'm not the kind you have to wind up on Sundays.

I see no need to go to church to praise God.........especially those mega-churches, complete with giant screen TV

[Buck Laser]

Jesus told me he loves me, but he can't stand the rest of you.

[lily]

Do you have witnesses? I saw God once, he didn't single me out as special though.;)

[Buck Laser]

Do you have witnesses? I saw God once, he didn't single me out as special though.;)

I called Him on a 900 number in Tulsa. He speaks English pretty good, considering it's his second language and all...:D

[PittsburghAfterDark]

Do you have witnesses? I saw God once, he didn't single me out as special though.;)


WTF are you talking about Lily!

I've MET G*d.

She's black.

[Nathan Brazil]

It really depends on what you do with it, but I'd put it in a "neither" or "balanced" category, so I plopped on the "Unsure".

Religion leads people to make up lies about the world that they then use to justify evil acts.

Religion also leads people to beleive that if they follow the rules, they'll go to heaven, which can be a good thing, unless the rules tell you to steal airplanes and murder buildings full of people.

Over all, reason is better, but many people aren't capable of that. So what we need to do is engineer a religion that satisfies the rocks without encouraging martyrdom (Islam) or forced conformance (Christianity). Buddhism works pretty good.

[Greyhound]

Is religion evil?
No. Religious extremist are.

[lily]

Excellent point, Greyhound. Welcome!

[firefox]

I chose "unsure" for this same reason. Religion is a tool, essentially. You can use it for constructive or destructive purposes. Personally, I'm agnostic because logically no one can be truly atheist without faith (think about it) :)