Is Religion Literally Evil?

All these points are supported on this page.

*Christianity - The Roots of Anti-Semitism

With the wrath of an Old Testament prophet, historian Dagobert Runes (whose mother was killed by the Nazis) blamed the Christian church for the Holocaust.

He wrote:
"'Everything Hitler did to the Jews, all the horribly unspeakable misdeeds, had already been done to the smitten people before by the Christian churches.... The isolation of Jews into ghetto camps, the wearing of the yellow spot, the burning of Jewish books, and finally the burning of the people--Hitler learned it all from the church. However, the church burned Jewish women and children alive, while Hitler granted them a quicker death, choking them first with gas.'

Source:Is Religion A Force Of Good Or Evil?

It is a good article but im not so sure i agree with it.

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[edit on 10/25/07 by FredT]

Well... with some religions, that's kinda the point.

Anyway, it's not the religion that's evil, but the people in it.

Of course, there may be good people who have been indoctrinated or 'brainwashed' if you will, and as such they are wholly innocent despite the place they are in.

reply to post by Throbber


You took the words right out of my mouth. Religion is not in and of itself evil. Most religions Islam, Christian, Jewish have tolerance etc as part of a core belief system. However, humans can, do, and have twisted the words to thier own ends.

ya but i think if the world was religionless it would be alot easier. but then there might be another substitute or reason to hate each other...

I would say by definition no religion can ever be evil, except by another religion's standards. Evil is a religious concept, it denotes deviation from righteousness, i.e., the correct way of living as prescribed by a religion.

Atheism/skepticism/agnosticism may say religion is ignorant, maladaptive, or dangerous (although they would be incorrect if they did) but they cannot, by definition, say it is evil.

reply to post by zakd619


Indeed...don't you know how much Communist China and Russia hated eachother at one point?

Getting rid of religion solves no problems and creates many more.

reply to post by zakd619


I think something else would take its place. Politics? or anyother thing could also be a substitute

reply to post by zakd619


I'm sorry, how would it be easier, exactly?

People actually go to the effort of not declaring wars on one another because of religion, infact recently there have been no mention of religion in the conflicts of nowadays.

EDIT: Apart from Osama and his calling on muslims to fight the west, but that isn't a religious dispute.

[edit on 25-10-2007 by Throbber]

reply to post by FredT


I believe any claimed attempt to destroy religion is in fact an excuse to create a new one. Don't you think Dawkins has quite an established cult of personality going?

Originally posted by zakd619
It is a good article but im not so sure i agree with it.

Religion itself isn't necessarily evil, but it does act to define evil as a counterpoint to good. In many cultures not so influenced by Western religious models, the world is not split up into such an obvious duality, where the evil or good is an inherent quality of the thing or person in question. A tiger, for instance, might eat your baby, but it's not necessarily evil, since it is just doing what it does naturally. People do things, but whether what they do is defined as evil or good depends on the circumstances. If they kill the King, it's bad, unless the King is bad, then it's good. Nobody is all good or all evil, unless maybe they're insane and slaughter their whole family in a fit or something, and then they're killed. But even then, it's to protect the community, and they might not necessarily be labelled as "evil," just sick.

And it does no good to hate somebody because they're sick. You have chicken pox, therefore I hate you.

In a world where good and evil are not so absolute, it's difficult to hate someone or something. Hate requires a kind of perspective that sees the other person as inherently evil, and someone who needs to be eliminated. Understanding that the person or thing is simply responding to its natural tendencies makes it more difficult to hate them. Also to justify killing them in the name of a concept like a "good" God.

[edit on 25-10-2007 by Nohup]

reply to post by zakd619


Before you come to this conclusion please examine the recorded history of overtly atheist societies. You might start with Stalinist Russia, check out Robespierre's revolutionary France, visit Mao's China, Pol Pot's Cambodia and Kim Il Jung's N. Korea. These societies made Hitler look like a boy scout. There are hundreds of millions dead because of atheist cleansing programs.

Moreover what religious group joined the Jews in the concentration camps? Christian fundamentalists who opposed the treatment of Jews. From those ranks you'll find truly amazing stories of courage like Corrie Ten Boom and Martin Niemoller.

Certain large accepted religions value earthly power over God and are no better than death cults. The catholic church and the muslim religion are among such entities. Most of the Jewish pogroms were catholic policy along with murdering other heretics. Muslims of course, following Muhammeds example, call for the genocide of jews and forced conversion or the death of infidels.

How I really wish people were born without emotions, only love.

With emotions, we cannot control ourselves to hate, to lust, to greed, to kill, to murder, to lie, to envy, to steal. These emotions are automatic in us and we can't control it, only supress it up to a certain degree. Nobody is good. We can only pretend or up to a certain period on the outside to be good, but all of us are inherently evil inside because we cannot help it, because we are born with this congenital defect.

We need to overcome this, otherwise we will destroy ourselves.

Religion is just a man made concept for a venue for the very few elect to indulge the evilness within them to their hearts content.

In the beginning, there was no religion at all. There was only a relationship with God.

[edit on 26-10-2007 by amitheone]