Is religion healthy for society?

"Religious theists will commonly insist that religion generally, and their religion in parti...........e most common questions and mistakes about atheism."





by Austin Cline ( Austin Cline, Guide for the Agnosticism / Atheism Site )

No democracy is known to have combined strong religiosity and popular denial of evolution with high rates of societal health. Higher rates of non-theism and acceptance of human evolution usually correlate with lower rates of dysfunction, and the least theistic nations are usually the least dysfunctional. None of the strongly secularized, pro-evolution democracies is experiencing high levels of measurable dysfunction. In some cases the highly religious U.S. is an outlier in terms of societal dysfunction from less theistic but otherwise socially comparable secular developed democracies. In other cases, the correlations are strongly graded, sometimes outstandingly so.

Historically speaking empires collapsed with a moral degradation.

I would like to see examples of that statement.

Empires collapse because imperialism puts tremendous strain on it's citizenry.

But what you and i consider "moral degradation" might be two very different things.

I can't give you an example of something not happening, the proof is in the lack of such societies.

So you can't substantiate your thought?

I would like to see examples of that statement.

Historically speaking empires collapsed with a moral degradation.

The Maya practiced human sacrifice. In some Maya rituals people were killed by having their arms and legs held while a priest cut the person's chest open and tore out his heart as an offering. This is depicted on ancient objects such as pictorial texts, known as codices (singular: codex). It is believed that children were often offered as sacrificial victims because they were believed to be pure.

If a person who is white and from North American or Europe to go to Africa or Middle East most likely than not he will be considered Christian.
Christians are not those who call themselves Christian or live in a Christian country but who follow Christ commends. And all of Jesus commends are based on love not on destruction. It's about the source, the calling of the believe and not about the title, or a group.

It is substantiated by the fact there aren't any, if incorrect it should be easy for you to provide a single example which you would've done by now given you were capable.

You can't prove a negative, therefore the negative is always assumed and then discarded when the positive is substantiated. But of course i didn't expect you to know that.

So your answer is no.

Does it matter what they did? Does it change the fact that their entire civilization was wiped out by the Christians?

So which is it? Were they Christians taking out a cannibalistic tribe, or Non-Christians slaughtering others? You have simultaneously made an excuse for them, then booted them from the circle for which they needed said excuse.

These people were told to convert or die.

I see Christians as those who were dying for the cross and not killing others.

We all like to take about crusades and scholars estimate that the Crusades of the middle ages cost from 58,000 to 133,000 lives. In 1990 alone over 260,000 Christians were murdered.

Is religion healthy for society?, the answer is yes. You can compare with non religious system of communism that killed at least 150,000,000 people in less than 100 years period.

During exploration time everyone "was Christian" we need to remember that as we live in America, people in those days lived in Christendom. It's only after Renaissance skeptics and atheists become a sizable group.
But those guys who explored new land for their own greed, wouldn't say to their family and friend, I'm going to go rub and kill people come back in couple years rich. No, they were fighting for the faith. But the point is they didn't know the faith.

Marcus do you know what the difference between you and a crusader is? The crusader takes everything in the bible as word-for-word as literal inerrant truth. This is the same problem Muslims have today, they take their texts as literal truth, while moderate Muslims do not.