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#4 Re: Is my shotgun harmful? Posted by simonw (212.24.xx.xx) on Fri 14 Mar 2008 at 18:03 In modern western societies Doctors are one of the leading causes of death (they come after cancer and heart disease in the UK by some estimates) but we don't eschew modern medicine as harmful. So I don't think you can just say "it is religion what done it" and leave it at that. Sure religious authority figures have led crusades and massacres, but so have secular authority figures, the outcome of that is questioning what it is about these organizations that leads to the massacres (I doubt belief in a prophet who carves god's words as "thou shalt not kill" on stone tablets is clearly causative in these cases). Don't get me wrong, I'd went in on the "religion is harmful" side in the debate, but I had questions for both sides - which is I guess the point of a public debate. I believe that holding irrational, faith based, and/or wrong, ideas as true will generally leads to suboptimal decision making, which is thus harmful. Although I'd accept that some wrong or irrational ideas might sometimes lead to behaviour that is beneficial this isn't likely to offset the negative effects unless such ideas are strongly selected for. Similarly I'm not sure all religion are the same, there are strands of eastern religions that are non-theistics, and some religions that encourage development of critical thinking, still others discourage hierarchy and encourage individuals in their personal development. So perhaps the title should have been "Is your religion harmful?".

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