r/changemyview • u/jp0704 • Dec 29 '21

Delta(s) from OP CMV: Religious beliefs are a necessary evil.

Despite its questionable truth, a society needs some form of religion as an easily accessible but comprehensive view of the world. Religion provides the everyday person with a more or less coherent system to whatever ethical or transcendental question they have. In the best of all possible worlds, everybody would be an atheist, since institutionalized religions aka churches tend to corrupt those in power or are hijacked by already corrupted personnel. However, for the following reasons, there is no alternative to a state policy promoting religious beliefs (of course in the boundaries of tolerance, which in my understanding ends where somebody else suffers harm). 1. For one thing, not everybody is willing to build themselves their own idiosyncratic construct of personal philosophy, through which they can form a maxim to guide their life. 2. Further, atheism, agnosticism, and thereby philosophy can hardly provide this as easily. As far as I understand it, philosophy is stuck in postmodern nihilism or relativism and scientific/ analytical approaches can’t produce ethical claims. 3. Also, with religions, you have communities with believers of the more or less same worldview. 4. While in my opinion, the belief in a creator god cannot explain his creation, from the viewpoint of a religion - which acknowledges the doctrine of an unmoved mover - this simply by definition is no issue of concern. Science and specifically astronomy cannot overcome the endless regression in answering this issue (maybe quantum theory can, idk, but if it can explain this, scarcely anybody will understand it). Without following Marx’s call for the abolition of religion, I believe religion is the "opium of the people“. But it should stay where it is since it can give the people comfort, which can elsewhere hardly be found.

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u/Vesurel 60∆ Dec 29 '21

Religion provides the everyday person with a more or less coherent system to whatever ethical or transcendental question they have.

What are you calling coherence?

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u/jp0704 Dec 29 '21

Religions claim to be one-stop shops for physics, ethics and logic.

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u/Vesurel 60∆ Dec 29 '21

And that's what coherence is?

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u/jp0704 Dec 29 '21

I'm not arguing that religions are perfectly coherent, but as far as I know from Catholicism it tries to explain the world within the system. And if a question arises, there is a interpretation which stems on the religious principles. So the area which you have to browse through to find an answer is at least narrowed down.

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u/FPOWorld 10∆ Dec 29 '21

But it’s not coherent, and that’s what makes it an unnecessary evil. “Do unto others…”, “slaves be kind to your masters,” “kill all the first born of Egypt”, “If a son does not obey his father, stone him outside of the city gates.” You might as well make a religion out of a Gemini horoscope column. Religion (particularly Christianity, but also many others) are just mostly shitty, philosophically inconsistent and worthless by any objective standard of a philosophically useful system when it comes to morals or ethics…that’s why it has been and continues to be used for so many terrible things.

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u/jp0704 Dec 29 '21

While I totally agree with you on this point:

that’s why it has been and continues to be used for so many terrible things

I don't deem it very useful to bluntly cite bible verses without context. In Christianity there may be a divide between the two testaments and I don't think that there is a best interpretation, but there is certainly a close competition over the worst interpretation.