Do the benefits of religion outweigh the problems and why?

Answer 1

OpinionThe benefits of religion probably do not outweigh the problems caused by religion.

The benefits of religion are said to include greater social morality, although there is no evidence for this. Several studies have shown that, in fact, atheists are under-represented in our prisons, compared to members of the other major religions. Another benefit could be the work that most religions do to help in disaster relief, to help the poor, and to provide hospitals and education where that is unavailable. Against this, the churches have sometimes in the past opposed the provision of secular education by newly ermeging states. At a more personal level, religions do provide comfort in times of need.

Some of the problems caused by religion include actual religious conflicts, such as the Christian attacks on the Bosnian Muslims and the Muslim attacks on the United States. In neither case did the supreme religious authorities condone those attacks, but they were nevertheless the result of religious tensions. Had there been no religion, we can be sure that this conflict would not have occurred.

A more ambiguous case occurred in Rwanda in 1994, where the deaths of an estimated 800,000 people resulted from ethnic rather than religious tensions, but the Church facilitated the massacres. The Church authorities in Rwanda certainly failed to condemn the genocide at the time, and some in the Church's hierarchy have been tried and convicted by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, as a result of their participation. Kevin Ward (A World History of Christianity, Africa) says, "The Church's witness in Africa, in common with all places and times, is rarely unambiguous." From a lay point of view, the arrival of Christianity did not help prevent the massacre: Ward points out that most of the perpetrators must have been baptised and have had a Christian upbringing.

While history may not repeat itself, we can also look to the past and see the witchhunts of medieval times and even more recently, and the widespread and absolute persecution of non-Christians from the fourth century onwards.