Topic: Are Societies Better-off without God? (Read 847 times)

God is love, oneness, unity.

Religions that do not practice unconditional love are not of god at all.

Don't be fooled to allow satanic religions preach in the name of god without the actions to back it up.

A world without love would be a world of hell indeed.

Religion is a good tool, but bad master 

The only major religions that I can think of that fall into the "forgiveness" category would be Jewish and Christian. Both of these religions offer forgiveness only to those who have faith in the religion. Faith in the religion means sincerity with the idea of not doing such a thing as murder. A person of one of these two religions, who thinks that he has safety in his religion while committing murder, because of the forgiveness idea, has deluded himself into false thinking.




Forgiveness is only granted where there is sincerity, a sincere wish that the murder had never been done, a sincere wish intent to never do it again.

People change. People are "flaky." If a person forgets how he was sincere, and does the wrong again, and then again in sincerity repents, he is forgiven again. The danger is that every time this happens, the sincerity is dulled a little more. There just might come a point when the repentance sincerity is a complete lie. When this happens, the belief in forgiveness doesn't enter in, and there is no forgiveness any longer.

It isn't a free-for-all in Judaism or Christianity.

Well of course.

Let's say two people commit a murder and get away with it.  The non-religious one will still have to live with his guilt and shame his entire life.  The religious one just prays to his god for forgiveness and continues life with a clear concious. 

With religion, you have a "get out of jail free" card that basically nullifies the moral compass.

Perhaps in my post quoted above, I am skirting the question. Perhaps the real question is, are societies better off existing than not existing. They wouldn't exist without God.



EDIT: Societies wouldn't exist without God, whether they acknowledge Him or not.

Societies do not exist without God. Why? Because people would not exist without God.

People are people. Take a look at past societies. The idea of God suggests moral and ethical rules. A society is strong when it keeps the moral and ethical rules that God provides. Once the society deviates from the rules that God provides, it fails and falls.

People are people. Some of the people who follow the laws of God the best, are those who don't believe in God. Some of the worst people - ones who break the laws of God the most - are those who confess to believing in Him. BUT THIS ISN'T THE NORM. Mostly it is the believers in God who follow His rules. The society stands strong when most of the people believe in God.

Exactly!

Sea storms are not the wrath of Poseidon, thunders don't come from Thor's hammer, mental illness is not demon possession, tide goes in tide goes out is just the moon's gravity, and so on...

as a saying from tony stark goes "Magic is just Science i haven't figured out yet"

Because most people are stupid/uneducated/gullible/indoctrinated and believe in magic!

I can't imagine why



In all seriousness, your religions encourage the oppression of women, they forbid people to use condoms, they hate homosexuals, some religious sects are even against medical treatment, they encourage violence against children, they are against abortion in all cases oh and they think evolution and science is a joke, they also actively do everything in their power to suppress critical thinking as they have already done many times in this forum.

So yeah, of course non-secular states are going to turn into shit holes faster than secular ones, it's because religious people won't be capable of thinking their way out of the situation because they've had any intelligent thinking beaten out of them, quite literally in a lot of cases. My particular favourite is being against abortion completely yet never allowing people to wear condoms in order to prevent a pregnancy happening in the first place, gotta love that logic.

i agree but just think religion is the cause of most problems in the world.. look at me my god says this. if there really was a god i guarantee hed be pissed off at ALL the human race. a mighty being like that creates humans and all we do is fight and bitch amongst our selves. i for one dont believe in any sort of God the closest i get is when you die theres some sort of after life

Well, there's a correlation there, but I don't think the causality has been proven, in my opinion the problem is not in religion but in the education, less educated people tend to be more religious.

I'd like to see a study similar to this one but with education as a factor.

I'm not sure that I agree with this study. Read it and decide for yourself.
Societies worse off 'when they have God on their side'

RELIGIOUS belief can cause damage to a society, contributing towards high murder rates, abortion, sexual promiscuity and suicide, according to research published today.

According to the study, belief in and worship of God are not only unnecessary for a healthy society but may actually contribute to social problems.

The study counters the view of believers that religion is necessary to provide the moral and ethical foundations of a healthy society.

It compares the social peformance of relatively secular countries, such as Britain, with the US, where the majority believes in a creator rather than the theory of evolution. Many conservative evangelicals in the US consider Darwinism to be a social evil, believing that it inspires atheism and amorality.

Many liberal Christians and believers of other faiths hold that religious belief is socially beneficial, believing that it helps to lower rates of violent crime, murder, suicide, sexual promiscuity and abortion. The benefits of religious belief to a society have been described as its “spiritual capital”. But the study claims that the devotion of many in the US may actually contribute to its ills.

The paper, published in the Journal of Religion and Society, a US academic journal, reports: “Many Americans agree that their churchgoing nation is an exceptional, God-blessed, shining city on the hill that stands as an impressive example for an increasingly sceptical world.

“In general, higher rates of belief in and worship of a creator correlate with higher rates of homicide, juvenile and early adult mortality, STD infection rates, teen pregnancy and abortion in the prosperous democracies.

“The United States is almost always the most dysfunctional of the developing democracies, sometimes spectacularly so.”

Gregory Paul, the author of the study and a social scientist, used data from the International Social Survey Programme, Gallup and other research bodies to reach his conclusions.

He compared social indicators such as murder rates, abortion, suicide and teenage pregnancy.

The study concluded that the US was the world’s only prosperous democracy where murder rates were still high, and that the least devout nations were the least dysfunctional. Mr Paul said that rates of gonorrhoea in adolescents in the US were up to 300 times higher than in less devout democratic countries. The US also suffered from “ uniquely high” adolescent and adult syphilis infection rates, and adolescent abortion rates, the study suggested.

Mr Paul said: “The study shows that England, despite the social ills it has, is actually performing a good deal better than the USA in most indicators, even though it is now a much less religious nation than America.”

He said that the disparity was even greater when the US was compared with other countries, including France, Japan and the Scandinavian countries. These nations had been the most successful in reducing murder rates, early mortality, sexually transmitted diseases and abortion, he added.

Mr Paul delayed releasing the study until now because of Hurricane Katrina. He said that the evidence accumulated by a number of different studies suggested that religion might actually contribute to social ills. “I suspect that Europeans are increasingly repelled by the poor societal performance of the Christian states,” he added.

He said that most Western nations would become more religious only if the theory of evolution could be overturned and the existence of God scientifically proven. Likewise, the theory of evolution would not enjoy majority support in the US unless there was a marked decline in religious belief, Mr Paul said.

“The non-religious, proevolution democracies contradict the dictum that a society cannot enjoy good conditions unless most citizens ardently believe in a moral creator.

“The widely held fear that a Godless citizenry must experience societal disaster is therefore refuted.”

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article571206.ece