Is religious faith beneficial or harmful?

[Copernicus]

Do you consider religious faith a net benefit or detriment to human society? This is a question about religious faith in general, not any particular faith. I mean "benefit" in the sense of being good for human society. "Detriment" means being harmful in some way to society. I'll give you a five point scale to get a sense of how firm your opinion is. You can elaborate further on your reasons in following commentary.

 

[Draka]

Religious faith, in and of itself, is benign. It is neither good nor bad. Neither beneficial nor harmful. It's the doctrines of particular religions and what particular people do with them that can be either beneficial or harmful. Faith and practice of one religion can be extremely beneficial while faith and practice in another may be harmful. Therefore, it is impossible to say that religious faith, in general, is either.

 

[Orbital]

If by religious faith you mean belief without evidence, then it is entirely unnecessary. One might gain some emotional benefits from this belief, but that can also be obtained from reality, without faith.

 

[Comicaze247]

There's no choice for just "It's not harmful." I wouldn't say it's beneficial either.

Religious faith itself isn't harmful. It's the people who practice it and what they do with it.

 

[MissAlice]

I see it harmful with the way it's been used in wars and politics. On the otherhand I don't know exactly the benefits people get from religion. So as of now I'm of the opinion that it can be harmful when used as a means for control....which has almost always been the case. However I know many people who find "inner peace" from it that do good but I don't necessarily connect the good they do with their religion. As for "inner peace" it's a subject I can't grasp. It seems to be a drive or need in most of us.

 

[Falvlun]

I'm of the neutral persuasion. Religion can be and has been used for good and ill, and it's pretty much impossible to claim it's net worth lies on one side of the fence or the other.

Religion must have provided some survival advantage-- or else it is a naturally arising derivative from other properties that provided some survival advantage-- otherwise, it would not be so prevalent or have persisted for so long. This does not tell us anything about it's innate goodness or badness, unless you believe survival of a group of humans to be the ultimate good regardless of cost.

History is littered with incidences of religion gone wrong-- the Inquisition, the Crusades, human sacrifice, 9/11, overzealous missionaries, etc.

But we would have to be blind to ignore the good that religion has provided-- charities, educational opportunities, health-care, a built-in community network, motivation for people to change their lives for the better, etc.

In addition, religion affects individuals differently. Some people become extreme fundamentalists (which most people would consider to be a bad thing); for others, it softens their more violent tendencies (which most people would consider to be a good thing).

With so many variables that tip the scales from one side to the other, how could you ever say with certainty that religion as a whole always falls to one side?

 

[Copernicus]

There's no choice for just "It's not harmful." I wouldn't say it's beneficial either.

Religious faith itself isn't harmful. It's the people who practice it and what they do with it.

I intended the middle option to represent neutral or mixed feelings.

 

[doppelganger]

It depends on what it is being used for and by whom. For many people, it serves some very important psychological and social functions.

 

[doppelganger]

That's operating on the assumption that "religious faith" = "religious belief". I don't otherwise equate faith with belief. I might even go so far as to say they are opposites.

 

[jarofthoughts]

I am (currently) the only one who voted that I see religion as being Very Harmful, and it is not due to suicide bombings, female circumcision, paedophile priests or holy wars, although those do of course help.
Rather it is because I consider myself an empiricist and a curious person.
I love learning new things and I love inspiring that sense of curiosity in my pupils.
Personally I accept nothing into my view of reality that is not backed up with evidence.

Religious faith is anathema to all that.

It has no empirical basis for any of its claims, and yet people are indoctrinated to accept it blindly.
It stops any form of inquiry and it prevents the asking of questions because it claims that it already has all the answers, or worse, that we must simply accept being ignorant.
It is the wish to be a serf and a slave and commands you to accept others as authorities to rule over you without any justification.
It tells you that you are special, safe and that you have no real responsibility or ability to take charge over your own life.
It asks people to believe not just despite the lack of evidence, but even in the face of refuting evidence.

And when I find that the natural world is stranger, more beautiful and more cruel than the any that has ever been dreamt up by any religion, it baffles me that anyone would want to be a part of this nonsense.

PS: I am no longer the only one...

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

Do you consider religious faith a net benefit or detriment to human society? This is a question about religious faith in general, not any particular faith. I mean "benefit" in the sense of being good for human society. "Detriment" means being harmful in some way to society. I'll give you a five point scale to get a sense of how firm your opinion is. You can elaborate further on your reasons in following commentary.

I wonder how many people think that their own religion is very beneficial while the rest are generally harmful.

 

[Penumbra]

Do you consider religious faith a net benefit or detriment to human society? This is a question about religious faith in general, not any particular faith. I mean "benefit" in the sense of being good for human society. "Detriment" means being harmful in some way to society. I'll give you a five point scale to get a sense of how firm your opinion is. You can elaborate further on your reasons in following commentary.

I think that the scope is so broad, and the variables are so numerous, and the effect on culture so long, that this is basically unanswerable.

 

[Oneatatime]

I have differing views of religion becase they do not all take the same form and therefore cannot all be judged as the same. Those religions directly relevent to my are the Abrahamic religions which in my opinion are very harmful because they have and continue to impede the progress of morality and science.

They impede the progression of morality by instilling the belief in people that this life is little more than a period of our existance where our conduct is judged in order to determine whether or not our supposed immortal soul be admitted into an imagined heaven. Therefore Christian, Muslim or Jewish morals are not based on a desire to simply be good for the benefit of our fellow humans and the individual but is intead tainted by the desire of reward or avoidence of punishment. Not only that but the arbitrary labelling of things as sins results in individuals engaging in self-destructive behaviours when they feel the need to or actually partake in prohibited activities when really there is nothing immoral about these behaviours. Other concepts such as the belief that humans are special creationists that are favoured by God resulted in the belief that life must be protected regardless of the circumstances resulting in disguisting conclusions such as its better that some is kept alive and in agony than allowed to die, or that its ok for a women to be raped because it results in the production of another human which must be good because it equates to another of Gods creations existing.

Science is impeded because it finds itself coming into conflict with arbitrary religious rules as mentioned above, and also in conflict with supernatural and ultimately ignorant explanations for the world around us.

 

[Riverwolf]

Do you consider religious faith a net benefit or detriment to human society? This is a question about religious faith in general, not any particular faith. I mean "benefit" in the sense of being good for human society. "Detriment" means being harmful in some way to society. I'll give you a five point scale to get a sense of how firm your opinion is. You can elaborate further on your reasons in following commentary.

You forgot an option: situational.

Religious faith can be both helpful and harmful, depending on how it's used.

If it's used in politics, it's most certainly far more harmful than helpful. On the other hand, religion, properly used, can help societies on a more subtle level.

 

[waitasec]

Do you consider religious faith a net benefit or detriment to human society? This is a question about religious faith in general, not any particular faith. I mean "benefit" in the sense of being good for human society. "Detriment" means being harmful in some way to society. I'll give you a five point scale to get a sense of how firm your opinion is. You can elaborate further on your reasons in following commentary.

i voted more harmful.
the human condition, without any religious motivation, would allow for empathy anyway...
religion seems to distort this by implying only certain things are allowable and others are not...such as the use of birth control. mother theresa is a great example of her doing the "right thing" by saying birth control is just as bad as murder (equating it to abortion) therefore allowing needless suffering which could have been avoided had she accepted the use of birth control.

 

[Copernicus]

I'm curious about people's attitudes to religious belief in general, not any specific religion. In principle, one could believe that one's own religion is maximally beneficial but still think that religious belief as a phenomenon does more harm than good. This question is being asked in a "General Religious Debate" forum, and I am well aware that the logic choppers who hang out here have very long knives. Quite often the more interesting discussion is in the explanations of how people answered rather than in the survey results themselves.

 

[Copernicus]

You forgot an option: situational.

Religious faith can be both helpful and harmful, depending on how it's used.

If it's used in politics, it's most certainly far more harmful than helpful. On the other hand, religion, properly used, can help societies on a more subtle level.

I'm asking you to step back and make a generalization. If you feel that the question requires too complex an explanation, then you might consider voting for the "mixed feelings" category. I actually was torn between that choice and the one I went for: "More harm than good".

 

[Copernicus]

That's operating on the assumption that "religious faith" = "religious belief". I don't otherwise equate faith with belief. I might even go so far as to say they are opposites.

That's a fair point. I think I would prefer the expression "religious belief" over "religious faith" here, but I did use the expressions synonymously in the OP. The terms "faith" and "belief" have been bruised up pretty badly in RF, and I'm not looking to put too fine a point on the distinction.

 

[waitasec]

i also think religion sort of makes motivation fall on the ambiguous side of things.
as i stated before, religion is not needed to do good but once good is done in the name of religion then the motive is blurred, same when bad things happen in the name of religion. if religion wasn't a motivating factor people would have a clearer picture.

 

[Copernicus]

i also think religion sort of makes motivation fall on the ambiguous side of things.
as i stated before, religion is not needed to do good but once good is done in the name of religion then the motive is blurred, same when bad things happen in the name of religion. if religion wasn't a motivating factor people would have a clearer picture.

I don't think that there is a simple way to judge religious belief, but what tipped me to the "more harm" side was the main argument made by Sam Harris in The End of Faith. His argument was that we have reached an era in which weapons of mass destruction render deranged, deluded, or angry individuals far more dangerous than they ever were in the past. A relatively small group of fanatics can gain enough destructive force to commit acts of barbarism that were extremely difficult to carry out on such a large scale in earlier eras. While religious belief is in no sense a mental disorder or abnormal for our species, it does promote authoritarian moral codes that sometimes go viral in populations that are under pressure. So I see the potential danger from extremist and factionalized religious beliefs beginning to outweigh whatever benefits it brings to society as a whole.

What are its benefits? I think that religion has always been woven into the fabric of a culture. It has quite often been the social welfare system for societies. However, secular governments have come to replace some of the religious infrastructure for social welfare with more reliable systems. Government cannot fully replace all of the important ceremonial functions that religions support--e.g. funerals, marriages, births, rites of passage...