So seriously, what good has organized religion ever done?

I watched the Magdalene Sisters movie recently and once again I have to ask, when the state places religion as equal with the law, how is anyone's life aided (other than the lining of pockets and ballot boxes)?

have to think some on what else.

For some reason, best known only to you guys, you insist on placing enormous stress on religion as equal to the law. But the law (originally) was part of religion... So it really doesn't make sense. Plus isn't religion best considered a set of guidlines, a set of ideals with which to consider life?

Ach, when it comes to religion, if you've got a belief you're in trouble, if you've got an idea you're laughing.

The Magdalene Sisters is about events in Ireland, not the U.S.

And I'm one of those who sees little but evil in organized religion. Although the Unitarians seem to be overall a good group, as are the Quakers.

--George Carlin

(I take issue with this - Christian rock blows)

There is other music besides rock -- and most rock (like most popular culture of all kinds) is crap anyway.

Gospel, however, is powerful stuff, and many of the most important pieces in classical music, wonderful stuff, was written for the church.

While we are at it -- art and architecture, too.

good.

Or "Carmen", or....
Oh, hell, you get the idea. I wish christian "musicians" would get the idea that music in a minor key is depressing...

"Carman," not "Carmen." :-)

He's so bad he's almost good enough to be an invention of Landover Baptist Church--except he's for real.

could've been worse, I could've called him "Cartman"...:evilgrin:

then it's so funny you will blow pop out your nose...

The Seventh Day Adventists run some fine hospitals

I have known some wonderful and compassionate Nuns (I'm Protestant, so the religion thing wasn't hanging over the relationships)

The Methodists run fine non-profit Elder Care facilities in Gaithersburg, MD.

It gives a lot of people some sort of social life.



Otherwise, I can't really think of anything.

Sometimes organized religion is in opposition. Or just separate. All the organized religions have done good things & bad things. I can't recommend a movie or a website to explain most of human history. Ever read a book? This topic might require reading several.

But too intimate a relation between religion & government is generally bad.

that it was a good way to control the anti-social urges of the people. Thou shalt not kill, thou shalt not steal, thou shalt not commit adultery, etc.

I don't buy into it myself but I do believe that some people are so prone to evil that brainwashing them with religion is the only way to control their natural urges.

But unforunately it's overshadowed by the right-wing fundies that make religion look bad.

It's also a small group of people that make the rest look crappy!

:cry:

By the way, your Evita looks like my Coleman, except he is not a bat killer!

and they're FREE!

and if you're REALLY lucky they'll have a hymn sing right after.


oh lord how did we get so lucky.

(sarcasm off)

named Martin Luther King?

The marches and the laws were only half the story. The civil rights movement was born in the churches and spread through the pulpits before it hit the news and became a movement.

That's just for starters, I could go on.

Organized religion is a human institution, as opposed to personal spirituality, and is prone to the same errors as any other institution. That its abuses due to human failure are well publicized does not negate the positive influences that are not all that well publicized.

For one thing, every society needs a moral compass to be guided by, and religion provides an ethical framework for the society to live by. It doesn't have to be religion, secular philosphy can do as well, but all religions are pretty well in line on most things ethical, and very conveniently provide an off-the-shelf ethos that is usually fairly agreeable.

While most people believe that there should be a definite separation between church and state, throughout history religion has always been more or less intertwined with government. It's only recently that Europe and Japan have become so secular, and before them, the Communist countries.

The Europeans and Japan seem to be doing quite well just letting religion recede into the background, so far, and time will tell how well it works. The Communist experiment in state-enforced atheism appears to have been a complete disaster-- replacing a state relilgion with a state non-religion

Having religions RUN the government, as in pre-Enlightenment Europe, some present Muslim countries, or what some people want here, means unmitigated disaster. Around the time of the Renaissance, the Catholic church was losing its hold on regimes, and that allowed intellect and creativity to flower. At the same time, the Four Doctors declared all Islamic questions answered, and the extraordinary Arab civilization went into almost immediate decline. Until then, Islam and the Turkish and Arabic empires were the centers of learning, tolerance, science, and trade.

Sure, the people who built those cathedrals lived in turf hovels while they slaved away for rich overlords. But they sure are pretty.

It brings a lot of comfort to a lot of people

a lot of good charitable work is being done through organized religion - churches organizing free meals for homeless, Habitat for Humanity type efforts, etc

alcohol and drug counseling

a social life for singles, teens, and seniors

missionary work supporting literacy, etc


btw, I am agnostic and, obviously, not a member of any church


Let's not be hypocritical - there is a lot of good among the bad. A few zealots get the press.

which required an ability to read to participate in the service and also be a full member of the congregation. It was the beginning of the idea that reading is for everyone.

During the dark ages the Roman Catholic Church kept academia alive.

The Uniate church ( aka Byzantine Catholics) was a cornerstone of Ukranians asserting an identity distinct from Russia, if one cares to call that good.

Because of the nature of an evolving society though it had to give in to pressures and only then did it allow the people to begin to learn. Once the change in society increased the literacy rate, only then did some sects embrace this.

The natural position of a dogmatic sect is to control the flow of information. It has to not only control the doctrine but also the interpretation of it. It is for this reason that the bible was a banned book in the hands of the common person for so long. It was not until questions of interpretation came about due to Luther's little memo that the people's interest in reading the thing came into light.

Maybe for disorganized religion, but for organized religion literacy is a fundamental necessity.

A religion that teaches a catechism needs literacy like cars need motors

edit: typo

I am addressing the core intent of what a dogmatic religion wishes. It is an added expenditure to have to deal with countless followers questioning the doctrine because they have access to it. It is far easier to restrict their ability to access it and control it by feeding them only that which you wish to.

It is for this reason that the Church started out restricting access and only when the dams broke did they have to embrace it. It was not a matter of choice. It was a matter of the people overriding the church's position. Once the society had changed the church had to catch up and own the new society. To this end they then championed literacy.

Stained glass windows are how they used to convey such things as the catechism. Pictographs and other representational forms were the mode of instruction.

What about Cyril & Methodius who invented an alphabet for the slavs?

And all the Jesuit missionaries who made up alphabets? The Vietnamese comes to mind, but there are many others.

You know about them, but history is so dull....

You're throwing out the baby with the bathwater, here. Luther translated the Bible into German because he believed that everybody should have access to scripture and should understand it, not just accept the dogma of the priest class. While a "dogmatic sect" might attempt to control the flow of information, other sects actually encourage people to learn scripture and think for themselves.

The actions of Luther would have been far less likely to have occurred if the society had not advanced already of its own accord. It was because there was a growing clamor for such knowledge that the question even arose. The dogma attempts to control the society. It is not always succesful and must adapt when change arrives. Once the dam broke it had to embrace literacy of the population or be driven out by revolt.

it was with the intention of enabling everyone to read the Bible that the Puritans established the first public school systems in the New World (or perhaps anywhere else in the world) in the seventeenth century. Massachusetts Bay Colony required all communities of ten or more households to fund an elementary school and all communities of one hundred or more households to fund a secondary school.

and a few others tried getting the Bible into common hands, too. Luther wass not the first, but he was one of the more successful.

Judaism is an organized religion, and it has always required literacy. Studying Torah is basic to religious Jews. Some of them even rtead other things. Encouraged to, even.

Early Islam was partial to literacy and education.

That the Roman church of 500 years ago was using illiteracy as a control mechanism when the population had no incentive or means to literacy anyway is a bit incongruous.

Think of it as fire. Controled and working for the people it can be a useful tool. But when it gains the upper hand it can go out of control and destroy a great deal.

To be specific it is dogmatic authoratative religions that pose the biggest problem. They posit that they alone posses the truth. Any that disagree with them are evil. Thus when they gain control of a system they seek to purge any other system in the society. This need not be a theistic system. Any system that proclaims itself to be the absolute arbiter of truth will run afoul of this.

It would be better to ask what benefits insite into our own human nature have brought us. For this is the area where religion has managed to bring about benefit in our society. Whether the claims within the doctrine are true or not the inspiration that the various beliefs have brought about have enabled great works of art. It could be argued that the source is our own human nature and religion merely provided a context in which to express it. But inspiration lends itself to creative works. Many of which communicate the very powerful connectivity we have with each other.

The first hospitals and orphanages.

Among most European pagans, including the Greeks and Romans and Vikings, unwanted children were simply abandoned in the wilderness. (The story of Hansel and Gretel harks back to that era, as does the story of Oedipus.)

Most of the universities in Europe and most of the private colleges were founded by religious organizations, including Oxford, Cambridge, the Sorbonne, Harvard, Yale, etc.

The poster who said that Lutheranism is the reason for the historically higher rate of literacy in northern than in southern Europe is correct. One of the cornerstones of both Lutheran and Calvinist theology was that ordinary people could access God directly, without having to go through intermediaries, so they needed to learn to read the Bible. This was facilitated by the spread of printing, but not caused by it, since southern Europe had the same printing technology in a few years.

Almost all the scientific discoveries of the early modern period occurred at the religoiusly oriented universities. Isaac Newton was a clergyman, as were many other northern European scientists of the period.

Inspiration for art, music, and literature throughout the world, not just in Christian areas. Go to Japan or China, and you'll find that the greatest art and architecture are inspired by Buddhism.

Charitable work even now. In Minneapolis, the downtown churches serve no-strings-attached meals for the poor and homeless. (I'm too new in the area to know what's happening outside the downtown area, where my own parish is located.) They also cooperate to organize Habitat for Humanity teams, provide clothes for poor people who need work clothes, sponsor refugees, collect school supplies and winter coats for inner city children, give free meeting space to 12-step groups and other self-help and community organizations, and provide tutoring for illiterate adults and ESL for immigrants. Experienced parents volunteer to mentor single teen parents in coping with their children. The youth groups do major volunteer social service projects in the summer.

In Portland, there was a newspaper by and for the homeless known as Street Roots, and each issue contained a list of where people could get essential services. By far the vast majority of these efforts were headquartered at churches, and most of them placed no religious obligations on participants.

In the Twin Cities they go to the state capitol to lobby for increased funding for social services and education and to demonstrate against torture of prisoners in Iraq. These efforts either receive no publicity at all or are covered on the back page of the B section of the paper.

In addition, most mainstream churches give their clergy discretionary funds that have to be used to help individuals in need and have to be reported to the governing body of the parish. For example, my priest in Portland once used his discretionary fund when he found one of the men who frequented the free lunch program sitting at the table crying. It turned out that the man's mother was dying, and he had no money to go see her. After verifying the man's story, the priest bought him a bus ticket so he could go see her one last time.

They also provide free after-school programs for latchkey children, and the African-American churches in Portland (I don't know about here) organized Saturday tutoring sessions for children who were struggling in school.

Do you know who always shows up on the scene whenever there's a natural disaster or a movement of refugees anywhere in the world? Catholic Charities, Lutheran World Relief, Episcopal Relief and Development, and other mainstream Christian groups are there with food, clothing, and medical treatment, all without placing any religious demands on the recipients. (Fundamentalists believe that people who provide aid without trying to "save souls" will go to hell.)

During the colonial era in the Third World, the missionaries may have had ulterior motives in starting schools, but they were the ONLY group that even thought of teaching the indigenous people to read and write. (They also exerted pressure on colonial authorities in India to the practice of burning widows alive on their husband's funeral pyre.) Through their schools, they inadvertently trained the first generation of advocates for independence.

I saw a documentary about the Magdalene Sisters in Ireland, and the problem there was that the state allowed a religious group unsupervised total control over individuals who had broken the community's rigid moral code. In the modern U.S., that kind of institution would be open to charges of kidnapping and slavery. The charitable efforts of mainstream churches today bear no resemblance to what happened in Ireland thirty years ago.

There are a lot of snide, militant atheists (as opposed to the live and let live atheists) on DU, but I would like to ask them what atheist organizations are doing that match these efforts. There was an atheists' organization in Portland, and as far as I could see, all they did was run a cable access show where they sat around and bitched about how awful religion was and how superior they were for not being involved in it.

Militant atheists might think it would be the greatest thing in the world if all the churches disappeared overnight. But you'd notice the effects on society--and not in a good way.

several years ago bought two little houses that are on the corner just across the street from the church. It's called Clara's Corner (named for a member of the congregation, I believe) and it provides temporary housing for homeless persons.

They just started a new ministry called Kate's Cupboard that provides formula and other infant supplies to new mothers in financial distress.

And there are thousands of congregations just like us everywhere.

Since it was assumed that their faith was right, determining a means of ascertaining the truth seemed a natural course to take. Thus there were large efforts promoting science and understanding of the world around us initiated by the Church. It was not until they began turning up information that contradicted the doctrine that trouble arose. But for a very long time the Church was the primary sponsor of science.

all but the fundamentalist varieties of religion have come around to accepting modern science.

This was true even when I was growing up as a young Lutheran in a Minnesota town where I'd say at least 90% of the people, if not more, had a religious affiliation.

We learned evolution in biology class and the Big Bang theory in ninth grade physical science class, and the only objection I ever saw came from a kid who was a Jehovah's Witness.

There are huge numbers of individuals (not just Christians) that in the name of their beliefs reject science as it currently stands. Those that do not reject it often exist is a curious twilight of accepting both the scientific explanations for the universe and the doctrinal explanations. This does not mean that they believe they match up. Just that they do not have the impetus to actively compare the explanations. They place faith in science for matters of the mundane world and faith in their religion for matters of the spiritual world.

The trouble here is one of acceptance. Society and science advance faster than religion. In fact religion strongly resists change. This is where the friction comes from in our society. As our understanding of morality changes because of our increasingly sophisticated means of determining ethics we dismantle old moral standards at a rapid pace. Religion in attempting to define morality finds itself playing a difficult game of standing still while trying to keep up.

Remember the very premise of dogmatic religion is that they hold the truth. If we go and discover that some aspect of the universe or moral code in the doctrine does not match reality there is trouble.

I consider religion as a major barrier to world peace and global humanitarianism because it always sets one group of people(believers) against all of the rest.
The only religion I have found that is more inclusive is Unitarian Universalists.

DemEx

The abolition of slavery? The preservation of Greek and Roman classics while Europe was in the Dark Ages? All sorts of advances in boozemaking? Western Civilization? Eastern Civilization? The Pyramids? Mathematics? Education?

:shrug:

I'm not part of any organized religion, but at least I'm able to acknowledge what they've given us. Yes, they've also been responsible for war, oppression, all sorts of bad shit -- just like any other human institution.

remember that they date back to early christian times -
infirmaries were a way of living out Paul's mandate to
church members to care for one another.

Kills vampires. Rosaries are pretty neat. Also, the pope's hat.

Other than that, nothing.

While it usually gets a lot of criticism for killing non-believers, in its first millenium, it was a progressive force in Europe.

Europe was heavily Pagan, but that Paganism wasn't at all like what we call "neo-Pagan". No enchanted forests, circles of life, magical cats, vorpal swords, drawing down the moon or Goddess worship -- this was kick-ass, masculine, skull-cracking Indo-European Paganism, and they were a bloodthirsty lot. And the recently-beatified Celts were the worst of them.

There was a lot of human sacrifice practiced, women were considered to be the equals of dogs, and there was a good chance that after you died, the gods would send you to the underworld forever, where you would be tortured mercilessly for all time. Life was hard, and the afterlife was hell.

The idea that Jesus Christ could save you from all that misery was a radical change, and was one of the reasons why Christianity spread so rapidly.

Of course, as soon as the Church established itself as a power, it absorbed most of the fearmongering and blood-lust of the pagans.

Now, before the Indo-Europeans invaded, there was a PREVIOUS pagan society in Europe; THAT one was a lot nicer than the later pagan society. Remnants of it remain in Eastern Europe, Basque Country, Finland, the Caucasus mountains, and among the Kurds. I think that is what Marija Gimbutas is studying.

--bkl

told me that the old pagans in the east Baltic area (which was Christianized relatively late) didn't want any "weakling" children, so when they were five years old, they would put them through a series of potentially fatal physical tests. If they died, they obviously weren't fit to be a member of the tribe. When a chieftain died, they would pick a young girl to "accompany" him into the afterlife.

Then there are the Tocharians, an Indo-European people whose accidentally mummified (due to the dry climate) bodies were found in the Xinjiang deserts of China. If you saw the Nova program about the mummies, you may have been haunted by the baby--not a newborn, but several months old--who had been buried alive. You could see that it had died screaming.

Indo-European paganism was no innocent romp in the meadows.

In most parts of Europe, the arrival of Christianity actually improved the lot of women and children.

I've also known a number of religious groups that make a point of helping people without any fire and brimstone lectures. Homeless people, the unemployed, needy children, battered women, those who are hungry and lonely have been helped by organized religious groups who wish to practice their religion through service to others.

Got me through some hard times, I tell ya.

in the third world is provided by religious organizations