Have religions divided us or unified?

I wonder what would have our world be if there were no religions. The first and foremost thing that comes to my mind is there would have been no Hitler and Alkaida.
And there will be no killings out of fanatic religious fervors.
Religious s beliefs in many instances seem to heal so many of our social ills and there are nonviolent passions or ideas in religious thoughts. I have read Hinduism, Buddhism, the Bible, and Islam and I find that there are some ideas that helped or help mankind and there are other ideas that harm mankind like some zealous Hindu or Christian thoughts.

I cannot say exactly whether it has helped us more or harmed us more. I anticipate differing ideas yet it is exciting to discuss it. This is a classical debate and no one has the exact answer.
Speaking very honestly I like a pendulum swing between these two extremes.
I am intensely excited about reading your thoughts. Not that there are shortages of materials in texts about this question yet to discuss it on a forum like this is a different experience.

 

Atheists are less likely to be in prison than a religious person. It seems that atheists are on average just nicer people.

Religions divide more than they unify, except if you count converting by the sword as unifying.

 

Only the unfaithful or the unfocused cause division.

 

My opinion is that they unified us in the beginning. We had no other explanation for how things worked, other than at the hands of God (or Gods). However, I believe that now, they are doing more harm than good. Organized religion, I believe, is preventing serious discussion and improvement on certain issues such as Gay Rights and Stem Cell research that might be able to change lives in the future.

 

LOL.

With yourself as the model, yes?

 

Hitler was not a Christian.

He was a self-styled Satanist hiding under the cloak of Christianity.

Here:

[ame="http://www.amazon.com/Unholy-Alliance-Peter-Levenda/dp/0380777223"]Amazon.com: Unholy Alliance (978038077722: Peter Levenda: Books[/ame]


or better yet, if you want to go the cheaper route:

http://books.google.com/books?id=Dz...&resnum=5&ved=0CDYQ6AEwBA#v=onepage&q&f=false

 

errr there are more people of religions than atheists, so no (*)(*)(*)(*) sherlock.

 

Oh look, a Christian using a logical fallacy, in this case the No True Scotsman Fallacy. What a shocker.

 

Why does no one understand maths anymore?

 

lol dude half the population alone is made up of christians and muslims. thats withut adding Hindu's, Buddhists and other forms of religion.atheists are highly outnumbered. so once again no (*)(*)(*)(*) a person of religion is more likely to be in jail than a friggin atheist.

what about that fact do you not understand?

 

The chance that an atheist will be in prison compared to a religious person has nothing to do with the population size Einstein.

 

Leave him be.

He's "special."

 

ah i get it. you are talking about "per capita" type stuff. for instance it is more likely a muslim commits an act of terrorism more so than a christian.

gotcha.

 

Stalin was an athiest.

He imprisoned nearly 2 million people for political purposes.

He killed between 17 to 23 million -- "Einstein".

 

Hitler was a Roman Catholic.

Why do Stalin's numbers always change? I've seen Christians try to claim he killed 100 million of his own people.

 

For a lot of time, religion did neither, it was just a fact of life, and for most of the time, especially in the transitions between the times we recognize today, people and even individuals had two or even more religions. The concept of having only one religion mainly appeared when some of the Abrahamic religions decided that "you shall have no other Gods before me" (or similar) meant that you were not allowed to think anything but what they thought. While these several religions could exist simultaneously, no conflict existed (frankly, without democracy, it didn't matter what the people thought) and no bad really came from it.

Religion has been so fundamental in a lot of the history of mankind that should there be none, the world would look very different and Hitler and Al Qaeda would probably not be in phase with current thoughts and therefore not be relevant. I might, of course, be wrong here.

Chances are that without religion, the difference in how much harm we endure is probably less than the difference adhering from what we regard as harm.

 

It has done both, just as different cultures, ideals (outside of religion), politics, property, and races have done. I'm not sure which one has occurred more, but I've seen how it can do either outside of this forum. Long before we showed up on this continent, Native Americans fought each other on more than beliefs, as did others across the world have done.

 

Religions have further pigeon holed the human race.

 

Whatever, was religious.

The religions are a tool to enslave the human, and divide them. Are the perfect tool to control the people. Point. There are other tools, but are offtopic. Religions obviously divide.

 

It's honestly up to you, and preference in your beliefs.

I believe in God Almighty and the Lord Jesus Christ, i don't push people to believe my beliefs and i don't go door to door preaching to people.

Fighting over religion, wars and so on - i don't understand.

If you read some of the Old Testament, In the Image of God - God created man. God is not evil, he destroyed man because man became evil, if you read further God was very angry, then God said he would never curse the ground that man walks on again and his covenant with Noah.

What part of the old testament was changed no one knows exactly - or maybe they do.

It's up to the individual person to find their own faith and belief.

 

I can't imagine a world without religion. Man has believed in the supernatural since he magically made fire from sticks. It's human to believe in a greater thing to fill in the void of the unknown, especially 40,000 years ago when all was unknown.

Did you read it or just look at it? Having knowledge in many different religions gives you a moral leg up as basically all religions want the same thing- they all just go about it differently to get. Knowing many points of view allows you to be more spiritual as you can overlap the truths and collectively come up with a deeper spirituality.

I find having knowledge in Catholic, Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist and Hinduism, not to mention Native American mythos gives you a clearer perspective of universal truth- a place where you really don't have internal conflict with religion.

Here's what I found.

1. God exists and God is good. God made man in His own image: as a sentient being with the knowledge of good and evil. This is something no other thing possesses (except for other sentient life forms i.e. aliens).

2. There is an afterlife. In fact, your life is a 25-cent video game you put the quarter into and are currently playing. When the game's over you move on to something else, or try it again.

3. We came about naturally because that is how nature works, as made by God. We also truly exist- or co-exist.

4. Good actions result in good responses. Bad actions result in bad consequences. God wants us to be good because bad things tend to die out.

Apart from these simple truths, the rest is words and they don't line up across all religions. But this is enough to live a life; a moral compass.

 

Well, gee. Look at the state of this forum and you will have your answer.

Divided - without question.

 

Religions do not divide people, but some people use religions to divide people and many people fall to the trick.

Divide and concur.

Divide people of the book, divide Jews into sects, divide Christians into sects, divide Muslims into sects, etc.

Have you heard of the Illuminati, backing system, etc. or you believe it is a conspiracy theory!

Why you think there are revolutions right now in the Arab countries!

 

The Arrivals pt34 The Infiltration of Religion:

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wi-fFcCz8hs"]YouTube - The Arrivals pt34 The Infiltration of Religion[/ame]

 

Everybody who thinks unified stand over there. Divided? You guys go over there.