The Catholic Church gave their support to the Nazis in pre-war Germany. The Pope turned a blind eye to the roundup of Jews in Italy.

The Catholic priest is required to tell a father that the life of his child is more important than that of his wife in difficult labors.

Catholic opposition to condoms has  helped spread AIDS in many places.

The Christian churches in the US supported slavery in the antebellum South, finding justification for it in the Bible.

Priests destroyed all but four books of the Mayans, nearly eradicating an ancient culture. The Church benefited from the slavery of South and Central Americans as the Spanish went looking for gold.

                          Chinas'  Taiping rebellion of 1850 to 1864 ;  The taipings were christian zelots who rebelled against the Qing dynasty and non-christian locals.  The death toll was estimated at 20 million people all in the name of heavenly peace and christian vertue.

                        http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/taiping_rebellion  

                      And don't forget David Koresh   and   Jim Jones.

     Hahahaha, too funny Rednef. I love it. I think I will say screw the paper and just borrow that Idea and make an "epic fail" poster. 

@ the mod's comment, causality is a great idea to consider. I'm sure I can work it in.  I've got about 20 pages now, so why not a few amendments to point that out.

Thanks for the suggestions so far everyone.   The China situation is of great interest to me, that one I definitely missed.

oh yah, Double Spaced, definitely double spaced.

I don't agree with your thesis-- sure, you can cite cases were theists have committed atrocities, but the critique is not unique to theism.

Hopefully a professor could recognize a sampling bias when he sees one....

Hmm. Considering the past two posts, I might have to make a decision on whether or not to approach this from a different angle. I stand firm that religion in general is the cause of many of these atrocities. The emotional reaction that it instigates within most theists affects them on such an irrational level that, throughout the ages, many awful crimes have been committed in the name of ___________ <=====insert particular theism. I can also see, that religion could be practiced so long as the human element was taken out of it.

However, I put religion on the same scales as I do everything else. Religion has simply caused more harm, a lot more harm to the human race than it has ever achieved peacefully. I can readily admit, that not all theist are blood thirsty murderers and rapists, but there is the crime of the mind to be taken into consideration. If someone can be convinced into believing anything, then the hard part is over. The mind can now be controlled to whatever end. That scares me the most.

The main point is that religion technically cannot commit a crime, only a sick, sadistic individual acting out of hatred and intolerance is capable of taking something to an extreme, however righteous the intention.

I had to sit and listen to the "good" religion does allready, for over an hour......eww. So, now, its time for some harsh, calculating logic, and the peanut gallery can make up their own minds on whether or not religion is a force of peace, or of destruction.

Thanks to mr extremist and mr anyone., to argue a good point, I will have to have better knowledge of both sides.

Mr. O.

@ubuntoanyone...

What you say is true, no doubt, it is not specific to theism.  However, it is a grad-school philosophy class, and the assignment given was specifically this " Your next assignment is to prepare a term paper to be read in class, its purpose, to debate whether or not religion has had a positive or negative effect on humanity.  You may only present one side, and references must be precise to substantiate your claims."      He is counting on bias.  That is why he is letting us choose, so that we don't argue half assed because we got the wrong side assigned to us.

I do wish deep down that I could broaden the spectrum a little bit, but doing so goes outside of the task given to me.  The focus is on theism for now.

I rarely get to deconstruct religion without interuption, or an audience for that matter. I'm happy to have this chance.  There will be plenty others who will submit the exact opposite, out of a class of 50, I am one of 3 who chose the "dark side",  so, to remedy your "bias" ignorance, I am dutifully outnumbered, and most of my words will fall on deaf ears, and half of the heads between those deaf ears will most likely be hungover.....its college.  A perfect place for a hypocrite theist to preach to me in that class, while getting into drunken shennanigans the night before. 

While the critique is not unique to theism, it just happens to be limited to theism...not my choice.

"Hopfully a prefessor could recognize a sampling bias when he sees one...."       Wow, a smug, sarcastic comment made before any real knowledge about the

actual premise of the assignment.  You know who else makes assumptions about things they know nothing about? Theists.     Wierd huh?

no thanks,

Mr. O.

Here's a great source for the 'psychological' effects that are uniquely particular to religious ideals.

Sam Harris.

He always puts a very fine point on the 'mentality' of theists.

This is a great lecture by him.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sTKf5cCm-9g

Don't make an enumeration war out of the debate. You can cite sources saying religious people did bad, they cite sources saying non-religious people did bad (Paul Pot, Stalin). Half the debate will be about Hitler, and his beliefs.
Instead, describe how religion, by its very nature makes people do bad things, not because the people ARE bad, but because they can't discern between right and wrong. If you were to base your moral standards on something that you don't have proof for that it works, you're guessing. When you guess, you can't discern between what is just and what is not.

I would also add a small sections saying "Most likely my opponent will cite a dozen sources saying atheists did bad things. I can enumerate a couple, too, but this isn't relevant. Those people committed bad acts because they WERE bad, not because their convictions MADE them bad, per se. What I'm going to show, though, is how religion changes peoples morals, in a way that isn't based on anything substantial."

Well, if I had to write your paper my issue would be, "Positive or negative, compared to what?".

We're talking about biological imperatives that seem to result in religion, where the only way to escape it seems to be very high levels of modern education *or* strict indoctrination that simply replaces the standard themes of religion with secular themes but uses the same methods with the same results.  Religion just is, I'm honestly not sure how you could possibly sort out the positive or negative implications of it because to remove it from our history would be to change the nature of the human race.

If the question is specifically about the modern period then it still comes down to, 'compared to what'.  Some secular systems seem to hold up better than most religions and some religions hold up better than some secular systems.  Both theistic and non-theistic ideologies have brought horror and bliss in equal measure.

Plus, what is your goal?  What constitutes, 'best'?  I can formulate religious systems that are almost entirely beneficial to whatever moral axiom I happen to value, and  could do the same (probably with more difficulty) with secular systems.

I agree with ubuntu, I think it is a stupid question and I don't think I could answer it honestly on either side.

But since you have to answer a specific thing...besides pointing out atrocities linked to religion I think your best tactic is to focus on the fact that religion usually relies on appeals to absolute authority, the traditional resistance to individuality, the simple path to abuse of authority in those situations, the traditionalism that stunts progress, the way it attacks the ego of the individual to make a place for itself, the way religions force adherents to adopt systems of thought that make it impossible to discern reality from fantasy, and the conflicts those methods of thought must, by definition, lead to.

So my attack wouldn't be on the specifics of what religion has done, although you need to use those, but I would focus on the negative philosophical implications of religion.

I think the biggest objective argument the other side can make is that religion gives the masses an objective source of morality and a reason to strive in the face of dispair due to the afterlife concept.  I think those ideas can potentially be attacked by pointing out that objective morality leads to tyranny and contrast modern crime rates in secular vs. religious societies, and the afterlife concept...well, that's tough.  Reality isn't as warm and fuzzy as a comforting lie.

@ mellestad

The more I'm reading each post, the more I am slowly coming to believe that I have missed the entire point of the lesson trying to be taught.  Focusing our efforts on one side or another gives no room for a middle ground.  "Relative to what" indeed.  "Things" cannot be bad. Only "people".  A telephone, or an ink pen (as things) could be no more bad that "religion". 

   Good and evil has a very different meaning to nearly everyone I come in contact with in the world.  I feel like I need to relate this to my writing.  We can disguise "good and evil" as "positive and negative", but there is not a specified source of reference with which to judge what good and evil actually is. 

Is our sun evil because in a few billion years it will become a red giant and swallow our planet up before collapsing in on itself???

There simply is no established premise on which to base a thesis upon with this assignment.  Methinks this is the whole purpose.  Considering that religions include moral codes, and define in their own ways the difference between good and evil, it cannot be approached subjectively...or maybe it can...

I see too many variables to truly take on side or another.  Damnit.

A revision is in the works now.  I hate to manipulate the project, but while it states what we must do explicitly, it does not specify what I am not allowed to do.     I just hope that it works.

@ ubuntuanyone

Apologies to you, sorry for being an asshat in the earlier post.

Philosophy as it is define is the pursuit of wisdom, pertaining more to speculation instead of observation.

That being so, going with the norm and joining my classmates basing our intellectual debate through historical observation would directly contradict what philosophy really is.

So, it is time to let them look like idiots, and make a speculation....."Relative to What?"   Now that is a question to ponder on.

Thanks for the much needed input.  It is greatly appreciated.

Mr. O.

yea, good luck lol