Judging a Religion

[dybmh]

How do you judge a religion as to whether it is good or bad, beneficial or malevolent, helpful or useless, harmless or harmful, fine or problematic?

How do I? I read the scripture and Ignore what people are doing with it.

 

[dybmh]

I like that way of judging a practice.

Is the practice faithful the intentions of the founder? If not, the practice is not a good metric for evaluating the religion.

I have mentioned this before, here on RF, and the anti-religious thug whom I was conversing with had kittens.

Definition of HAVE KITTENS

to become very nervous or upset about something… See the full definition

www.merriam-webster.com

 

[dybmh]

I see a religion as the sum of its members and judge it by their actions.

There it is. Complete negligence of the founder's intentions or what is written in the founding documents.

 

[bobhikes]

How do you judge a religion as to whether it is good or bad, beneficial or malevolent, helpful or useless, harmless or harmful, fine or problematic? I don’t mean all of these pairs, just one at least (for instance, ‘harmless or harmful’).

For some people, the criteria is the words and actions of the adherents of the religion. For others, it is the scriptural or official teachings of the religion. Others might use some combination or perhaps something else entirely.

When judging a religion as to whether it is beneficial or malevolent, for instance, I don’t mean whether that it is orthodox or heretical or has true teachings or false teachings. What is meant is how the religion affects or is meant to affect human beings, other beings, and the world.

If you wish to participate in this thread, I humbly ask that no religion is singled out and attacked. It would be appreciated greatly if you could simply share with me how you judge religions in general.

Thank you.

Same way I judge people by their actions. For religion it would be by its actions throughout the area's it exists.

 

[dybmh]

I'm not aware of any religions in and of themselves that are bad, malevolent, useless, harmful, or problematic.

I hope you never encounter them. It's not fun.

ETA: however, it's true they do have usefulness as negative role-models.

 

[LuisDantas]

How do I? I read the scripture and Ignore what people are doing with it.

There are limits to how relevant a doctrine can be if we have to ignore what it actually inspires, though.

 

[Revoltingest]

How do you judge a religion as to whether it is good or bad, beneficial or malevolent, helpful or useless, harmless or harmful, fine or problematic?

I judge it by what its adherents do.

 

[beenherebeforeagain]

How do I judge? It's not that I don't, but I force myself to remember that in any group (and not in individuals, who can be evaluated separately, although in a related manner) there is a range. Just because SOME members of a religion (or political party, or social club...etc) engage in bad behaviors does not mean that the group overall is bad, or good, or whatever.

But some telltale signs: does the group impose strict hierarchy, giving benefits to a few while impoverishing the majority? Does the group highlight differences between people based on sex, gender, age, color, nationality, education and etc., with resultant differences in benefits they may receive? Are outsiders shunned, persecuted, treated as less-than-human?

 

[Jimmy]

If it’s a religion that doesn’t see a singular god in the flesh who walked or walks the earth it ain’t for me.

 

[PureX]

In the end it will always come down to whether or not the practice of a religious ideology works for us in our lives according to whatever criteria we determine 'working successfully' to be. So really, the more important question maybe ought to be what is my criteria for successful religiosity? Is it that I become a better person? Better than what? Better by what measure? Is it that humankind become a better collective entity? Again, better than what, and by what measure? Is it that I should get 'closer to God'? Closer how? And for what purpose? Is it to increase my 'righteousness'. But by whose estimation? And to what end?

And so on.

I think religions and aspects of religion are designed to scratch many of these different kinds of itches. And we have to decide for ourselves what itch we want or need to scratch, and whether or not this religion or that one, or this aspect of religion or that one is successfully scratching our particular itch. And of course this all changes over time, so that success rate will change, too. Leading perhaps to a different religion, or at least a very different aspect of the religion we hold.

 

[CG Didymus]

How do you judge a religion as to whether it is good or bad, beneficial or malevolent, helpful or useless, harmless or harmful, fine or problematic? I don’t mean all of these pairs, just one at least (for instance, ‘harmless or harmful’).

For some people, the criteria is the words and actions of the adherents of the religion. For others, it is the scriptural or official teachings of the religion. Others might use some combination or perhaps something else entirely.

When judging a religion as to whether it is beneficial or malevolent, for instance, I don’t mean whether that it is orthodox or heretical or has true teachings or false teachings. What is meant is how the religion affects or is meant to affect human beings, other beings, and the world.

If you wish to participate in this thread, I humbly ask that no religion is singled out and attacked. It would be appreciated greatly if you could simply share with me how you judge religions in general.

Thank you.

Fundamentalist versions of any religion can become dangerous to others. They are the only ones that are right, and everybody else is wrong and maybe even evil and must be stopped or destroyed.

To themselves, they are the only hope for saving the world.

Then there's religions that because of their beliefs, they create a large number of nominal believers. To me that's dangerous because they don't really do much, yet they say they "believe" but pretty much live worldly, meaning not spiritual, lives.

But most all religions have good and bad effects. To get people to be better more loving and more kind? To get them to be more spiritual? Good.

To get them to believe all sorts of strange things as being literally true? Can be very bad. If, in fact, those things aren't true, but it gets people hating and rejecting others that believe differently.

And it seems like all religions have some belief that people in another religion believe to be false and reject.

 

[mangalavara]

How do I? I read the scripture and Ignore what people are doing with it.

This is basically my approach. When I was 18 or 19 years old, I became interested in world religions and began reading a few religious texts. At the time, the media that my parents listened to was all 'Islam is bad; Muslims are suspicious; Islam hates us,' and naturally I heard a lot of stuff from them about Islam being a violent religion and that Muslims want Westerners to either convert or die. As an individual who read the Qur'an more than once, read a collection of ahadith, heard much about the personal character of Muhammad, and read some Sufi poetry, I saw Islam as something very, very different from what I was hearing from my parents and the media that they followed. I concluded that the terroristic sorts were not following Islam as it is meant to be followed. So, I had to judge those sorts as bad people, not the religion.

 

[Heyo]

There it is. Complete negligence of the founder's intentions or what is written in the founding documents.

I'm usually pretty arrogant, but not arrogant enough to think that I can interpret religious texts better than those who practise that religion.

 

[JustGeorge]

I'm usually pretty arrogant, but not arrogant enough to think that I can interpret religious texts better than those who practise that religion.

I find that sometimes(not always, by any means) people born into a religion never actually look at the texts; they just kinda go by what Ma or Pa said/did. Or, they just use it as a cultural label and assume whatever their culture pushes is what the religion pushes(I think you see a lot of that in the US).

 

[Mock Turtle]

Have you read any of these religious texts yourself? And if so, did you find anything at all that appealed to you? Just curious...

I have - quite a bit of the Bible since it was the default religion here, and I have looked into other religious texts too, but can't say I have read them through, given they often seem to make the same claims, and it would take a lot more work than I would want to put in to study them properly - with perhaps not being any the wiser at the end. And I have read various works comparing the religions. The one belief system I came away from having quite some agreement was Buddhism, since much seemed to make sense to me.

 

[Link]

I don't judge religions and their affect on people. I simply assess their truth values and arguments. Since it would be circular to rely on judgment and a frame of reference to judge a religion when religion is supposed to guide you to a frame of reference and judgment.

I remember the days I was obsessed with condemning Islam and Christianity for their belief in hell as judgmental, hateful, and problem inducing.

My methodology is to assess the truth through proofs and insights. This includes the political situation.

Terrorism is an ambiguous word these days and used to manipulate the political situation.

A helpful thing for me was political science concepts such as realism. Idealism vs realism will help people assess the truth as well.

 

[PearlSeeker]

How do you judge a religion as to whether it is good or bad, beneficial or malevolent, helpful or useless, harmless or harmful, fine or problematic? I don’t mean all of these pairs, just one at least (for instance, ‘harmless or harmful’).

For some people, the criteria is the words and actions of the adherents of the religion. For others, it is the scriptural or official teachings of the religion. Others might use some combination or perhaps something else entirely.

When judging a religion as to whether it is beneficial or malevolent, for instance, I don’t mean whether that it is orthodox or heretical or has true teachings or false teachings. What is meant is how the religion affects or is meant to affect human beings, other beings, and the world.

If you wish to participate in this thread, I humbly ask that no religion is singled out and attacked. It would be appreciated greatly if you could simply share with me how you judge religions in general.

Thank you.

I think it's hard to judge a whole religion. Things aren't black and white. I am most familiar with Christianity. Many people have benefited and many were harmed because of it in the last two millenia. Also the Bible itself (containing also the Hebrew Bible) contains some violent parts... Religion is not the problem but it can be problematic.

 

[Heyo]

I find that sometimes(not always, by any means) people born into a religion never actually look at the texts; they just kinda go by what Ma or Pa said/did. Or, they just use it as a cultural label and assume whatever their culture pushes is what the religion pushes(I think you see a lot of that in the US).

I agree, but that also tells me something about the religion. It says that most of its followers are OK with it being a cultural label and the scriptures are worth little for the actual adherents. And it tells me something about the scriptures, namely that they aren't very convincing to the majority.

 

[muhammad_isa]

Fundamentalist versions of any religion can become dangerous to others. They are the only ones that are right, and everybody else is wrong and maybe even evil and must be stopped or destroyed..

Yes .. the same as in politics, extreme ideologies are evil, whilst those who adhere to them
believe they are "whiter-than-white".

 

[CG Didymus]

Yes .. the same as in politics, extreme ideologies are evil, whilst those who adhere to them
believe they are "whiter-than-white".

Yes, there's going to be a little bit of Christian fundamentalism involved in our next election here in the U.S. Great for them. If their guy wins. Bad for a lot of other people.