Topic: Religion in the society (Read 411 times)

Religion is simply a mechanism of social control. It probably originated millions of years ago as a way to strengthen tribal bonds, and as our tribe size grew - particularly with the establishment of permanent settlements following the agricultural revolution - and our societies became more complex, it took on more of an 'invisible policeman' role... who better to enforce good behaviour than an all-powerful all-seeing eye in the sky?

But nowadays we have electronic records, CCTV, and phone tracking, amongst other mechanisms of surveillance. And we have TV, newspapers and social media platforms run by billionaires to tweak our opinions and nudge our behaviours in the desired directions. The only value religion really has in the modern world is cultural and historical. It has been supplanted in its original purpose by more effective, modern approaches.

Religion plays an important part in society as well as individual life. No religion asks its followers to choose violence. Every religion teaches peace and humanity to its followers. Taking religion seriously should not be mixed with Extremism. While every religion teaches a lesson of peace no religion leads its followers towards extremism. If the religions are being followed in their proper sense there would be peace in the world.

In other words, religion is only a CONCEPT of set of beliefs to somehow unify the people who categorize in each religion. Nothing more, so religion must not be by any means a reason to judge or do something that will make you immune of the consequences it follows.

If we say,Religion,whatever you have , we are different,religion we need to respect each other,every country religion one of the most powerful,specially in POLITICS,can help and spread good idea to people what is going on ,in government.People can easily listen to religion if what politics we have in every country.

Exactly,religion is like an intermediary between the people of diverse groups scattered heterogenuously all over the world,to bring unity and peace between the people and make them have one belief and to be in one accord.Religion is necessory in the society also, to give way to right to freedom of worship,giving one the freedom to worship what ever God that deems you fit.
Its also important because it brings peace all over the world.

Everyone with there own believe! Don't you think every religion has there own hell and where sinners will be kept after death. I don't allow religion to confuse me because some persons choose to follow religion than to help there own neighbors which is a sign of preaching religion but misleading the potential of religion.

Since everyone has there thought when it comes to religion, then every has a role to choose cause I don't think religion had added much to the unity of the world but what it does is to cause more confusion in making decisions. The Muslims will say we are following Mohammed, while the Christians are always with Jesus...the same thing with other religions.

Yes yes... We who realize the problems with sectarian warspeace and other beauty knew from the begining that it ends like this - now we are talking about organized religion (I am sure you mean one right religion for all), some doubtful bonds between us and some central authority. As I say somewhere in another similar topic, we already had these kind of things in middleages and no, it wasn't so nice as you think.

Hope you mean this sarcastically. Sorry to say, but I don't feel safe because of law.

If you do, I am sure that you know every law of your country, including every international laws and rules in detail. And if you don't, how do you know that you do not violate some right know? Maybe you should go to jail too... You still feel safe?

Yes .. there is a verse that states if we do not obey the rules we will go to hell . I think it's the same as the law if we violate it we will go to jail. Aren't laws and rules created to make everyone feel safe?

You are right, but you didn't complete a thought. As you said people of the same religion are brothers and sisters, but others are just hateful enemies.

Which one?

They all say you will burn in hell for eternity if you don't follow their rules.

Show me one scripture that does not list penalties for not following God's commandments.

PS. All humanity will go to one version of hell (Muslim, Christian, or Jewish) or the other, lol?  Souls will be split I guess.  Muslims will go to Muslim heaven but go to Christian and Jewish hell and vice versa, all at the same time. ROFL.

In my own opinion, there are two important things that keep the world going
Football and Religion, religion makes people see those of the same religious
with them as brothers and sisters, hence contributing in making the world a
Better place.

Religion teaches us to be kind to everyone. save and love fellow human beings and the universe. not to fight each other and make riots.

In way religion has play some role in the society, there are some people who lived a kind of bad life , they got repented through religion. Religion gave them a good life

Region is very powerful and many religious people and not giving any space for people who are not in there religion to make a say when it comes to there personal life which to me looks irrational. Religion should be embraced but not in a way that affect the society with a mind set of same people doing different things which almost lead to religious conflicts. I think we need to say no to religious crisis.

I don't think you will ever understand how to think logically.  Religions are based on faith, not reason.

Why talk about logic and reason?  Because your responses are incoherent babbling, outright lies, or complete nonsense.

Why talk about logic and reason all of a sudden? They are part of essentially every religion. Or does  your ROLF mean that you don't like logic and reason? At least that would clarify, a little, why you talk the way you do.

I will make it easy for you.  Since you are craving for it.

My teacher is the reason and logic, also known as Lucifer in your circles. ROFL.

Do you have teachers in your religion who teach you to respond like that? Or is it part of your own designing?

WTF are you talking about?  Are you drunk?

But playing sports or not playing sports is part of your religion, especially if you are adamant about it.

Not playing sports is not a sport.

There is no "with religion and without it." Everybody has religion. The major difference is that some people call their religion, religion... while others don't. The bigger the stink you make about your religion not being a religion, the stronger you become with your religion of non-religion-talk.

If you can have good or bad people with religion and without it, why do you need religions? 

"With or without religion, good people can behave well and bad people can do evil;
but for good people to do evil - that takes religion." - Steven Weinberg

Religion is not responsible for the bad state the world is but those bad people who practice the religion. Every religion preach peace and love but it depends on the practitioners to do them or not. We have good and bad Christians, like we have good and bad muslim, good and bad heathens. So it is not a religion thing but people problem. If everyone keeps to the rule of their religion the world will be a better place.

Exactly,you are very correct on your opinion,religion was there from the beginning and it will still be there no matter what,all we have to do is to have tolerance.Being able to tolerate each and accommodate each other's behaviours,attitudes and different beliefs is what can make us be together,and we'll be able to live in peace.There are different religions all over,so the government should give freedom of worship so as not to force anybody against his belief.

I think the purpose of religion is to unite people, to love and understand each other and to live harmoniously. But because we have different ideas and beliefs and we are given free will that is why there are many religions created that can sometimes lead to conflict. For me, in order to achieve a better place to live in, we should just follow the golden rule and respect everybody regardless of which religion they believed.

That is correct, it's actually a fact that plenty of wars were started or had something to do with religion, like I mentioned previously. Personally, I never had the need to believe in something that can't be proved to exist. Nonetheless, I find it pointless, even in dire situations to even refer to "God", it would be a hypocrisy, can't recall doing it once in my lifetime.

What you're describing could also be a placebo effect, your faith can actually make you into believing that God actually did something, but that couldn't be further from the truth. I'm not here to argue about the existence of God, however, most situations can be scientifically explained. Science will admit if it's lacking the knowledge to explain something, while theists will simply claim that it's "God".

Many people make religion as a form of hope from life. make peace from the religious side. which I believe all religions have a concept in the name of peace. maybe their interpretation is too far and extreme that makes it like that and we have to blame the person not religion. Let people live their own beliefs.

Of course we wouldn't. But we cannot say we would be more primitive. It would be different - better in some way and worse in some other, but impossible to evaluate as a whole, because there are so many variables in a such a long time. But IMHO it would be better, because of middle ages and christian negative influence to education.


It is often possible to see so many contradictories in catholic statements. In one hand you are trying to convince us you are not fanatic and you respect other religions. But in other hand you consider existence of people who do not believe to your god as sad and you are trying to persuade them for your own religion (without any rational arguments, of course). As an atheist, I do not consider this behaviour as a respectful, not even tolerant. It is just one step to force people to one right religion.

I come from catholic family and christianity is strongly engrained in society in my country - I know christians very well. They tell you there are things with no explanation, but they didn't forget to mention that they (of course) know how to explain that things. They consider others as inferior stupid wretches and manifest themselves as superior people, predestined by their god to enlighten others. And call this as respect for other opinion.

IMHO religions that consider as a holy duty to spread around the world are fanatic somehow... by design, it is coming from their essence. But it is not surprising - all this come from ancient history when religions started to be used as a tool for spreading political power (often by using violence).

I consider myself lucky because I believe in God. I received my religious belief from home later I went to church to complete my religious education. I am Catholic and I respect all religions because they are based on one God, I can be friendly and share my beliefs with them without fanaticism.

The sad thing in my opinion are people who do not believe in God, it is difficult for them to make them understand that God exists.
There are things that happen on earth and in the universe that still have no explanation and come from God.
If someone is an atheist please believe in God because he exists, he manifests himself in many ways, you know that he is with you especially when you suffer from any disease and you leave them in his hands.

I describe it this way because once I got sick I didn't have many financial resources, just a treatment I felt very sick and I said to myself if I don't heal with this I don't know what I'm going to do, and I asked God a lot for my health and I felt the healing hand of his son Jesus.
My testimony may sound unreal but I felt my healing that way, perhaps it was the power of my faith, but I felt the presence of Jesus one night when I asked him to heal me.

Funny enough, Religion in our society brought about most development in our countries and state, civilization likewise are some of the things religion has brought to us.
Education, Lifestyle, etc
But lately religion has been a mess you know, most people use religion for their own selfish interest....life with religion is something else, Life without it we wouldn't have been at this stage of life.

This only applies if the science we are talking about is the well known "real science", but there is social science right now that makes believing in something, somehow increases the capability of a person. For some instances, it can somehow relieve someone from being alone and left-out.

Don't state it "in opinion" when history states a lot of wars and battles due to differences in beliefs/religions. It is a fact.

If we use logic, there will be no world without actual religion. There will be atleast one (1) specific religion that a "ideal world" may have. Cause religion is something about a social construct that if someone believes into something, there is this enticing force that drives us to join what he believes in, and without contradicting force, we all will be force to believe in one same thing.

.. thats like saying only immortals dont have to believe in god...
.. but then as an immortal. are they then god themselves

..
jokes aside
but rationally. its actually those that DONT have an understanding of death, that need it most to create a god to try explaining away the things they cant understand

[spoiler]
when you die. your 'essence' 'soul' does not re-manifest or become reborn
your energy does not float about into space and as a consciousness with wings and a halo
instead your energy(sugars and proteins of your corpse) rot/sit as 'potential energy' which other things(maggots, worms,bacteria) then consume to power THEIR consciousness.. your consciousness is just gone. ended. finito. zero, nada. obliterated.

i say this because if people stop thinking of an afterlife. they may actually start caring about their current life
and not think "its ok if i F**k up this life, i can just get a free reset in the next one"
EG middle eastern suicide bombers would be less likely to agree to commit suicide if they knew there were not dozens of virgins waiting for them
EG western idiots would do less crimes if they knew they only had one life

the whole rhetoric of 'forgiveness, a full reset, a new life" gets used too much to excuse idiots and let them do things thinking they can always be forgiven.

the whole point of it was not as an excuse to be an idiot, continually and repeatedly. but instead. if you done a mistake and the remorse and guilt is torturing you beyond what is expected, then you can forgive yourself to ease your mind and allow you to learn from it and then lead a good life. in the current and only life

There are different religions in the world,but their differences and indifferences have caused problem in one way or the other.
The ability to tolerate each of other's behaviour is termed religious tolerant,and it is this tolerant that had been able to make the society today be in peace with each other,even after knowing that it is not everybody that share the same religion.
But when intolerance comes in,that is when there is chaos in the society.The inability of a religion to tolerate another religion is known as religious intolerance.

I'm against religions and also an Atheist myself. They were formed in order to explain basic common knowledge, which could be proved using science. Stephen Hawking had said, that there's no way to prove that God doesn't exist, however, science makes believing in God pointless.

In my opinion, religions sparked a lot of hatred between nations (Or other religions) and were the main cause of war. (See Jihad, as a modern example, or Crusades)

The world would definitely be a better place without them.

Religion has played and still plays a huge role in society. The same as other non-religious ideologies (communism, nationalism...) it helps to shape one's view of the world, unites and separates people, affects to values and culture, and directs power. One can be religious or not, the same as he can be capitalist or not, but we can't neglect that religion and capitalism play a big role.

Religion is nothing but to form a community among humans, if there is no religions then people will be grouped under multiple things so the groups will be too high so in future the religions may come under the one religion which is humanity.

I cannot say I do not agree, but sometimes I fool around with idea that (some) religions even tighten fear of death. Then classical chicken-and-egg question comes to mind... What do you think?

Man has an understanding and fear of death. This means that most have to create or believe in a god and associated religion.

No, the world will only be a better place if every human learns to love each other and also learn how to forgive and forget cause we all make mistakes which is what makes us human.

It all has to do with personal understanding and maturity, not religion cause the last time I check almost every religion preaches love so tell me why would anyone think of having nothing to do with her neighbor because they are not of the same religion though we have a situation where some religion misled their followers and make them do that but it's still have to do with personal understanding and maturity.

No, it will be worse and chaos.

I think that religion in some point of human evolution has its specific meaning (and nowadays this meaning is often misinterpretated). Later, religions was abused for political intentions of individuals who wanted to gain power. Today, religion (in its ordinary meaning) is just a relic and has been replaced (as mentioned by Coyster) by science. Ofcourse, representative of some old-style religions do anything to survive, because the religion is a source of income for them. But religions as sources of political power will end one day (hard to say when).

Religion have contributed to the world. Everybody can't be the same in the society. There are good and bad people, religion have changed so many life. Religion teaches about correction and good life

I actually think the world would be a better place without religion, but that's not to say religion has no role to play in society or that it has not played any role previously, but presently most people hardly understand what the actual tenets of their religious beliefs is, some even go as far as given it their own interpretation and meaning, and more often than not it becomes skewed. The argument of religion v science is one very good example to talk about this, if we're to be honest we live in a world were science has solves quite a lot of problems in our contemporary society today, while science deals on pure facts, religion is more about believing without even seeing, and it just gives humans a sense of hope, thus we can more or less say 'science is our new religion'.

But even at that, most people are still adamant and have refused to adapt and grow with many of this scientific discoveries, many of them even feel science is evil in our world today, but they use vehicles, machines and other things produced out of scientific discoveries, the issue of how humans actually came on the face of the earth has actually caused heated arguments between people who believe in a supreme being and people who subscribe to scientific researches, while the former feels we were created by a supreme being, the later believes in the Darwian theory of evolution, or the big bang theory or any discovery made in the area of how humans came to be.

I think religion has to a large extent limited quite a lot of people to ask rational questions, to take bold steps into making researches, sometimes people actually doubt most of their religious beliefs, but they just lie to themselves and hide the truth from their own self, I feel many people would have contributed to the development of the world through science if there were no religion and that to a large extent continues to limit societal growth and development.

here in this section there is a guy who is very attached to religion in such a way that his brain is simply in another dimension, with the discovery of covid he turned all his attention to campaigning against vaccines, I don't know if this is also due to religion have affected him too much, I'm very surprised he hasn't commented on this thread yet, has he not seen this thread yet? but he is always active on this forum, I can give you a hint who I'm talking about:

- Is the second guy who posts the most on the forum and that incredibly he only posts in this section, with some exceptions he sometimes posts in other sections

but kidding aside, I think religion is a very complicated topic, no one can prove anything that is written in the bible, but incredibly people believe and churches are getting richer every year


even if had no religion, there will always be another cancer in the world for people to be deceived, just see that we still have politicians who are one more cancer that deceive people, there will always be something that will manipulate most people

No traditional or heavenly religion supports iniquity that is why most of the people of the world respect the scriptures as holy scriptures. The main reason for this reality is that in the country at the time in the region where religion began to infiltrate the culture social reality and education of the people in that country at that time the real position of knowledge and glory had to depend on how helpful religion was. For that reason the nation that was lagging behind in education had to face more and more difficulties in establishing religion religious rule exists in every society.

100% agree. and has always been my thought. early religion was government. the bible is the lawbook of ancient times.
as an example back before condoms. the laws stopped gay-sex, out of wedlock sex to prevend STI's/STD's

these days those old rules dont apply as technology and knowledge and stuff have taken over those barbaric laws of promoting death for having sex under those conditions.

modern religion is more psychological. for those that cannot understand nature and random events. people that become anxious/depressed over things they cannot understand. religion fills that gap by putting a face to the event. kind of like shift the blame to the special entity you cant sue.
EG if you feel guilty of something, its suppose to absolve your guilt by making your subconscious believe you should blame god instead of yourself. then you can let go of your grief/guilt and lead a happy in life, free from torturing yourself

this has then become abused to then really shift the blame.. as an excuse.  and be used by idiots to actually perform atrocities and crimes thinking they can get away with it because 'special entity in space'

i dont mind the small psychological therapy methodology to get over guilt/grief for personal growth and happiness. but when its used to the extremes of being used to cause bad crap to happen, as the excuse.. then religion has steeped too far into society

When early Homo sapiens communities were forming religions and common myths served a very important role.  They unified communities behind common goals and provided rules to govern those communities and societies.

Today, we have developed more sophisticated secular systems to govern ourselves.  And those systems are far superior to systems based on religions because they can change as more information becomes available. 

Religious systems of governance are static and in some cases illogical because they are unable to change with the modern world.

Today, religions are regressive, they try to hang on to their archaic knowledge in spite of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. 

The world would be a much better place if we abandoned these ancient myths.

A world without a religion doesn't make the world a better place. Religion plays a big role in our society. It doesn't matter if they take it too seriously or not, what you need to do is to respect them. We have our own beliefs and stuff. Having a religion can also be good to the community since people learn about the sins they commited and atone.

My point is whether there's a religion or not the world is still the same however having a religion has benefits may it be to yourself or to the environment around you. It can help you a lot.

It's the same.

Even if with religion or none, there will always be those people that wants to be at the top and they'll find a way to be there and sometimes that way is brutal.

Sometimes people do say the world be a better place without religion. Because how people take religion too serious , so if you are not of the same religion which they belong they have nothing to do you. Would the world be a better place without religion? Has region not play any role in our society.