Is religion good for us?

I don't think we can measure good and evil reliably enough to say which way the balance swings. Does a life saved in a charity hospital cancel out a life lost in a religious war?

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Life is like a Hot Wheels car. Sometimes it goes behind the couch and you can't find it.

The phrase "getting rid of" has some scary connotations.

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Life is like a Hot Wheels car. Sometimes it goes behind the couch and you can't find it.

So how do you measure good vs. evil if not by body count?

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Life is like a Hot Wheels car. Sometimes it goes behind the couch and you can't find it.

At that point, does the end justify the means?This comes back to my original question: How do you measure good vs. evil? How evil can you be in "getting rid of" another evil? It seems to me that getting rid of things (people) is the problem, not the solution.

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Life is like a Hot Wheels car. Sometimes it goes behind the couch and you can't find it.

Most religions don't have cutting off your head as a major tenet, so you're not adding much to the discussion.What about fundamentalists who oppose gay marriage? How to you propose to "get rid of" them?

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Life is like a Hot Wheels car. Sometimes it goes behind the couch and you can't find it.

Yes. It can be. A lot of the evil that we see in the world is people pushing back against what they perceive as evil. Is it evil to kill people? Yes, often it is. Is it evil to kill people to prevent them from killing other people? That's when it starts getting gray.

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Life is like a Hot Wheels car. Sometimes it goes behind the couch and you can't find it.

I don't think displacement is the right way of looking at it. I think it's more like non-placement. The critical thinking was never there to be displaced. And I don't think the lack of critical thinking would be improved by removing religion. People would find other ways to be non-critical in their thinking.

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Life is like a Hot Wheels car. Sometimes it goes behind the couch and you can't find it.

I don't know. I think some individuals can be taught critical thinking but I'm not convinced that a net improvement can be made. I was brought up in a fundamentalist Christian environment and I was never taught critical thinking but I like to think I can do it in a pinch. I suspect that somewhere there's a mirror-image of me who was taught critical thinking but doesn't do it. I think it's a good idea to teach critical thinking and hope it takes. I also think it's a good idea to teach swimming - but I was taught to swim and I still can't swim an inch.

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Life is like a Hot Wheels car. Sometimes it goes behind the couch and you can't find it.

As I mentioned, there are also some who can think critically, to a degree, without being taught. For the most part, education refines the way a person thinks. I don't know if it can cause an actual paradigm shift.

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Life is like a Hot Wheels car. Sometimes it goes behind the couch and you can't find it.

If you include critical thinking in "life skills" , I definitely do not agree. I was almost literally born in church and I could quote Bible verses before I could read. For many people, it's much easier to memorize than to think critically. As humans, we have an innate ability to recognize patterns and books like the Bible often take advantage of that ability to make their message easier to remember. In contrast, critical thinking is always an uphill battle.But that has little to do with whether religion is "more good" or "more bad". Both memorization and critical thinking are tools which can be used for either good or bad. There's no magic wand that's all good or all bad.

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Life is like a Hot Wheels car. Sometimes it goes behind the couch and you can't find it.

Yet many people choose their cereal based on which athlete promotes it or what cartoon character is on the box. As I said, education can only refine the skill. It can't make people use the skill. Dogma of any kind should be discouraged. (Political dogma is probably more dangerous than religious dogma.) Critical thinking should be encouraged.What I've been saying from the start is that critical thinking isn't a magic solution to most problems because the people who cause the problems aren't using critical thinking in the first place. They'd have to be using critical thinking to take your advice and use critical thinking.And again, lack of critical thinking doesn't necessarily make religion "bad" any more than it makes a choice of cereal bad.

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Life is like a Hot Wheels car. Sometimes it goes behind the couch and you can't find it.

Now you're demonstrating a lack of critical thinking.Read my post. Notice the word "necessarily"? "... lack of critical thinking doesn't necessarily make religion "bad" any more than it makes a choice of cereal bad."You've deliberately contrived bad situations and ignored all of the possible benign situations and good situations. The same thing is being done with religion when people claim that it's "more bad than good".I come back to my original question: How do you determine "more"? And especially, how do you determine "more" reliably when you tout critical thinking and then don't use it yourself?Edited by ringo, : Spleling.

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Life is like a Hot Wheels car. Sometimes it goes behind the couch and you can't find it.

You seem to be assuming that critical thinking produces Standard Answers™ for everybody. Unfortunately, it doesn't, which is why I've been saying that it isn't a magic wand. You could easily have two parties using all of their critical thinking skills and both coming to the conclusion to exterminate the other. Critical thinking is good for factual matters like evolution but it's not so good for matters of opinion like who should own Alsace-Lorraine.

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Life is like a Hot Wheels car. Sometimes it goes behind the couch and you can't find it.

I'm getting it from statements like this:

quote:

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Critical thinking is BETTER than irrational thinking.

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How can it be unequivocally "better" if there's no standard? How do you measure the quality of anything without a standard? No. It's an argument against the notion that critical thinking produces "good" results and non-critical thinking produces "bad" results. It should be clear that critical thinking can produce conflicting results, which can have bad consequences. Yes. Critical thinking isn't going to help me choose a flavour of ice cream, nor is it going to determine the same "good" answer for everybody on political matters.Like any tool, the use of critical thinking should be encouraged for those areas where it is applicable. It may or may not produce a net "better" result in the world.

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Life is like a Hot Wheels car. Sometimes it goes behind the couch and you can't find it.

I think it should be encouraged because it's a useful tool, not because it's the only tool or the best tool for every application. Yes, I deliberately backspaced to change it because "irrational' has negative connotations. Insisting on calling all non-critical thinking "irrational" is probably a false dichotomy too. A hammer can produce conflicting results: fine woodworking or smashed thumbs. I encourage the use of hammers for fine woodworking. And I've been trying to say that critical thinking is only "better" in some situations. The answer is "not necessarily". Consider the example of Alsace-Lorraine that I gave. Who should it belong to? The Germans say it should belong to Germany and the French say it should belong to France. Both sides have their rational reasons, cultural, historical, etc. How is that situation any "better" than just saying that one way or the other "looks nicer" on the map? Dogma should be discouraged because it is an area where critical thinking is applicable. If the "word of God" is followed blindly without critical thought, it can result in persecuting homosexuals, etc.That doesn't necessarily imply a net improvement in the world situation. The Alsace-Lorraine example, arguably a product of critical thanking, led to two world wars - arguably a huge net loss for critical thinking.

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Life is like a Hot Wheels car. Sometimes it goes behind the couch and you can't find it.