GraceAbounds
Well-Known Member
Religion is Good for Society
According to Newsbusters,
Bill Maher, host of HBO’s "Real Time," appeared on the April 16 edition of "The View" to voice his opposition to all religion. Maher asserted that "pretty much all religion" is bad and all religion is "childish destructive nonsense." Co-host, Joy Behar inquired "What about people who just like to go to church, you know, the old ladies in my neighborhood who used to go and light a candle?" Maher responded likewise. "They are certainly better than people who fly planes into buildings, yes. But they are enablers for some thing that is worldwide and winds up killing more people, distracting us from more good works." According to Maher’s logic, the Salvation Army, Father Joe’s Villages, and church going conservatives who donate more to charity than secular liberals, are all distracted from more good works (qtd. in McCarthy).
Bill Maher is not the only person in society that believes religion is a driving force for evil. There are a number of other people and articles that agree with him. The majority lack a full understanding of the religions they write about and don’t take into account the number of people that merely say they are religious, but are not sincerely practicing their said faith. Many do not take into account the length of time a person has been practicing their faith, which makes a difference as to the amount of knowledge and maturing a believer has done spiritually. They also seem to lack the concept that just because there may be a correlation between two variables that does not mean there is a cause and effect relationship between them.
While people are busy accusing religion of all evil in the world, there are thousands of religious organizations fighting for social justice, peace and compassion. Religious organizations all over the world reach out to help feed, cloth, and shelter people. They have a passion to love their neighbors as themselves. Yet many in our society continue to only focus on a small faction of fanatics. Religious organizations are a force of good in society and should never be compared to a fanatical group that clearly only claims to be religious, but clearly is not. As Christianity says you can tell a tree by the fruit it bears.
Charity without question is another force of good in our world. According to a recent study from Syracuse University, ninety-one percent of regular church attendees give to charity each year, compared with sixty-six percent of those who said they do not have a religion. That is a huge difference in giving. “Religious people give four times more money per year than their secular counterparts”, according to Brooks who wrote Who Really Cares: The Surprising Truth About Compassionate Conservatism. Brooks states that “religious people also donate twice as much blood” (Zylstra). Charity begins and ends with the individual. Surely if there was no religion people would still give. But what makes religious people give more? An important value of many religions is the importance of giving.
The Department of Psychology at the University of Alabama did a study that explored the relation between religious faith, spirituality, and mental health in the outcomes of 236 individuals recovering from substance abuse. They found that recovering individuals tended to report high levels of religious faith and affiliation. The results also indicated that among recovering individuals, higher levels of religious faith were associated with a more optimistic life orientation, greater perceived social support, higher resilience to stress, and lower levels of anxiety (U.S. National Library of Medicine). 45% of participants in a religious treatment program for opium addiction were still drug-free one year later, compared to only 5% of participants in a nonreligious public health hospital treatment program (Desmond and Maddux, 1981). For every person that turns away from drugs that is one less evil in our society.
According to Dr. Dixon of Churchill College of Cambridge, “religion may have been the occasion for various social and political wrongs, but it is not the cause”. If anything, man wrongly uses religion as an excuse for their own wrongs. If religion was done away with, people would still identify themselves with some other group and go to war over territory, political conflict or some other issue. Man’s injustice to one another like elitism and bigotry are sadly a part of human nature with or without religion (Dixon).
Religious traditions provide us with a common set of morals and values in an age where relativism reigns. With relativism there is not a clear cut definition of truth because the relativist believes that right and wrong is relative to circumstance. This means that, according to relativism, right and wrong is constantly changing. Society needs the moral insight of religious traditions, which have been past down from many generations of spiritual wisdom to guide us regarding ethical matters. We need to recognize that not only does spirituality have many benefits for the individual, but it has many benefits for society as well. Religion helps people work toward a common good for all of mankind. Dr. Dixon stated, “Religion, when practiced seriously and sincerely, is a force for good in the world promoting humility, morality, wisdom, equality, and social justice”. I couldn’t agree more.
Works Cited
"ethics." Encyclopædia Britannica. 2007. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. 30 Apr. 2007
<http://www.search.eb.com/eb/article-252516>
McCarthy, Justin. Home>>blogs. 16 April 2007. NewBusters: Exposing and
Combating Liberal Media Bias. 18 April 2007. <Bill Maher's 'View': Church Going Old Ladies 'Enablers' to Religious Violence | NewsBusters.org>
Zylstra, Sarah Eekhoff. “Compassionate Conservatives.” Christianity Today Feburary
2007. April 2007. <Compassionate Conservatives | Christianity Today | A Magazine of Evangelical Conviction>
U.S. National Library of Medicine. PubMed. Dec 2000. National Center for
Biotechnology. April 2007.
<Entrez PubMed
_uids=11166499&d>
Desmond DP, Maddux JF (1981), Religious programs and careers of chronic heroin
users. Am J Drug Alcohol Abuse 8(1):71-83
Religious Belief. Dr. Thomas Dixon. 2000 Nov 17. The Open Society Institute. 2007
April. <http://www.idebate.org/debatabase/topic_details.php?topicID=111>
