The Good of religion

[Jeff V]

I read a post the other day that said which would you rather cure- cancer&AIDS or religion?

Would the world be better off without religion? I’ll definitely say that some horrible atrocities have been done in the name of religion. The inquisition, crusades, Sept 11th etc are horrible events no doubt. These people were definitely not “practicing what they preached”. However the argument could be made that an atheistic worldview was behind the likes of Hitler, Stalin, Lenin, and Mao Tse-tung, since they were all influenced by atheism.

Anywho.

I would say that the world is definitely better off with religion. IMO the church throughout the years has done much more good than bad. While I don’t want to diminish in any way what bad things were done I don’t think they out weigh all the good either.

Whether you believe or not, people have used their faith as reason, duty, purpose etc etc to do good things. Whether you believe or not, people that believe in a Creator, and that they can have a relationship, are loved, and will even be judged by Him drives them to do things, and try to leave this world a better place than when they got here. So many religions are deeply involved w/ helping the poor and less fortunate but tends to get overlooked somewhat.

At the beginning of October on the gulf coast when FEMA was basically gone, The Red Cross was making spotty at best appearances who was there day in and day out cleaning, rebuilding, crying, helping? Churches. Churches that were being used as shelters, distribution centers, and ware houses. There were masses of anonymous people that just wanted to help in any way they could, and 99.99% (of what I saw) were organized by churches of all denominations.

It was a sight to see- whether you believe or not.