For Goodness Sake

I was, among others, recently asked the question: "is society better off with or without God?" This was my answer:

I can't think of anything wholly positive that comes from religion that can't be found in the secular world. We can cope well enough without convincing ourselves that we're wretched by default, by drawing unnecessary artificial divisions among us, arguing over who's superstitions are better, and ultimately passing the buck up to an undetectable entity. We simply do not require that baggage to function as a society. Period.

For those who may strive to make a distinction between "god" and "religion", I have no trouble with deism, which only requires one sentence. It's when you begin a second sentence based upon the first that you become demonstrably silly. If you want to use the word "God" as a substitute for the phrase "I don't know at the moment", then go ahead. If you want to use it as a name of a singularity in time & space... that moment right before the big bang, and/or the cause of said bang, then go ahead. (Maybe I'll call it "Gary") However, the bible, starting with the second sentence and onwards, is blasphemous to a deist, and rightly so.

If you're of the opinion that the world would go to hell in a hand basket if we didn't have religion, you're not actually making any observations about society, but you are making a loud and clear declaration of what sort of person you really are.

Most people don't refrain from stealing because of the threat of a hellish afterlife. They don't even do so in fear of our worldly justice systems. They don't steal because they know it's wrong, and that doing the right thing is its own reward.

Otherwise good people will, on the other hand, be willing to suspend their man-made morality for the sake of the conflicting absolute morality that comes from a divine source. The old adage still rings true. Without God, good people will still do good and evil people will still do evil. But for good people to do evil... that requires religion.

To counter this, religious people often point to "atheistic" societies, and the evils dealt against humanity by people such as Hitler and Stalin. I find it highly amusing that people will, as an apparent defence of the history and character of their organization, compare themselves to Hitler and Stalin. This illustrates how people not only suspend their sense of morality on behalf of religious dogma, but suspend their common sense as well.