Millions of Christians devote their lives to fighting poverty, hunger, disease and slavery. I do not need evidence to prove this obvious point. This may not happen in such a large scale without Christianity.

Heres a quote from Michael Shermer, President of the Skeptics Sopciety. "For every one of these grand tragedies there are ten thousand acts of personal kindness and social good that go unreported...Religion, like all social institutions of such historical depth and cultural impact, cannot be reduced to an unambiguous good or evil." 

No, that is not what I am saying. The question was something unique. Neither Christianity nor atheism offers anything unique at a world scale. Christianity may provide something to the individua, but not the the world as a whole.

As for your second point, I disagree. Christians can be rational too. 

Randallord, that is a very ignorant point that Christianity provides nothing to people while they're alive. If you actually study most religions, they bring lots of good to people while they are on earth. Take for example, Mother Theresa, Ghandi, MLK, Thich Nhat Hanh, Elie Wiesel, The Dalai Lama, CS Lewis, Anne LaMott, Albert Pujols (he spent last offseason serving the poor in the Dominican Republic). I could keep going.....

Christos,

The question is not "What does religion contruibute to humanity". The question is "what does Christianity uniquely offer?" 

atheism doesn't contribute anything either. Christians can be rational too.

So I don't really see the point here. 

I brought up atheism because I thought you were going to argue 'Why keep Christianity if it contributes nothing?'

I brought up rationallity ibecause Randallord brought it up.

Atheism is not a religion. It could not possibly contribute anything as it is not a belief system either.

As for Christianity, if one is to support the continued existence and proliferation of an unevidenced belief system that carries with it an unparrelled potential for abuse you would think there would be some unique benefit this system offered that they saw as worth the inherent risk. Otherwise it is all potential for catastrophe with nothing to offer.

Exactly. What we do know is that there are plenty of good non-religious people who do good things. Knowing this I can't see why I should assume that these good people would be other than good were they non religious. Or, I see no reason to assume that religion is the reason they are good people. Maybe it is. But then should I blame religion for all the bad people who are religious or is it then just the nature of the person?

In lots of ways, Christianity has promoted peace and equality. Anti-violence and pacifism can be drawn directly from the pages fo the gospels.  Just becasue that is not unique does not make it any less beneficial.

One could argue that those were also for political power. Many people tried to conquer the world. Christians are not unique in this either.  

Gah!

Stop reading things into my question!

Perhaps unique in the sense that it is the most violent religion, historically, but that would still be a difference in degree, not kind, and I was specifically asking for something 'good.'

Thanks, though

I've noticed that you use this argument a lot.

And it still has absolutely nothing to do with my question.

Notice that I also told the previous poster that I was looking for something good that Christianity had done.

I'm trying to let Christians defend their religion!  

What puzzles me is how not a single Christian has responded.

(Am I remembering right, or are you Christian, Pineapple?)

In any case, Pineapple, can I put you down under:

"Christianity has contributed nothing unique to the good of mankind"?

Here you are defining 'good' outside of religion. "I am doing this good thing because I am x". So it would have a plausible secualr motive. (case in point Hambydammits original question)

I do think religion causes some people to do good things that they otherwise would not have done though.

I would speculate that this occurs as many theists zeaslously uphold a view that religion is a good thing and causes good things. Besides the often asserted misnomer that theists have the higher moral ground. Results in perhaps and over eagerness to show the contradictory case.

Personally I find it does both good and bad, yet I dislike how religion imposes on its takers and in part is imposed upon the masses.

 [Edit to add:]

In my earlier (slightly tongue and cheek post) I was not commending violence as was perhaps inferred. Christianity has replaced many religions some relatively peaceably. I do not define this as bad nor do I consider the fact that it is hard to be a Christian and a Muslim bad.

But the word of the xtian god was used to rationalize this behavior, so wouldn't that be xtianity?

An agreeable post Cpt_pineapple. I must say I tend to be in accord with the theists in the replies to this post. The original question is valid yet if Christianity can find no unique good contributions I do not find this to belittle Christianity. Nor should Christianity warrant unique accomplishments.

Replaces my 'causes' with motivates and we can both be happy

I find this perfectly fair. I stated 'over eager' as I too feel this to be a shallow stomping ground of many confrontational atheists. Why walk a beaten track when there are far richer pastors ...er pastures to get your teeth into.

I am going to repost what I posted in another thread.. which was related to this but no one responded to.  Perhaps that's because it makes no sense! But, perhaps not.  So here we go:

Are you saying that you think religion contributes something unique that could not be accomplished without religion, that is so good that it offsets the bad that religion often creates?  Please, tell me what it is!  I have been thinking on this for years, and haven't come up with anything.

1) Religion contributes nothing unique.

2) Religion enables those who would do harm.

3) Therefore, we should allow religion to stay.

Huh?

Something doesn't follow.

I got into this argument before.. perhaps one of the firsts threads I started.  The problem is one of conflation.

If we mean "unique," as in, a general contribution which nothing else could have accomplished:

Then.. we should have the same response of "Huh?" to positing whether automobiles should stay around.

1.) Automobiles contribute nothing unique. (Bikes and Horses transport).

2.) Automobiles enable great harm. (by enable do we mean justify? or allow? eitherway.. it would still apply.  Whether one justifies X amount of deaths because of the "importance of automobiles" or one states that autombiles allow for X amount of deaths-- all the same to me)

3.) Therefore, we should allow automobiles to stay.

Huh? 

 The other way of using unique in this sentence is to imply(that I found out after about 70 posts with this individual) a comparatively better contribution.

For instance, the fact that a car can get me to point A to point B faster than a horse can, is "unique."

If this is what we mean.. then I feel that the statement "Religion offers nothing unique" to be a lot harder position to support.

In essence what you are saying is "Religion offers nothing which is comparatively better in what it does then anything else."

To prove how difficult it would be to support, I would suggest that religion gives some "hope," "peace," or perhaps a sense of "communal responsibility."

How would you go about arguing this? I am not saying that people without religion do not have these things, or even that all people that have religion are better served by religion to get these things then they would have been without it-- but that just shows the difficulty of it.  To undercut the statement one would have to give evidence that:

1.) People can get these things without religion.

2.) All these people, irregardless of the person's attributes, would get to it faster and to the same degree without religion.

Difficult.. in my opinion.

p.s. Conflation.. I don't like the word.  Who knows even if I used it correctly.

I'll ignore the non-sequitur (Religious people fight poverty, therefore, I'm bad for not being in a third world country) and the second non-sequitur (since there are good people in religion, religion made it easier to fight poverty) and the implied non-sequitur (since I'm not fighting poverty, I'm a hypocrite for fighting religion) and deal with the crux of your question.

I don't mean to be rude, but you have no idea what I do or don't do. There are those of us in the world who fight our battles quietly because we don't care to be recognized. We just want to do good.

There are those of us who are afraid to be identified with our causes because we're afraid the Christians will boycott our businesses because our causes don't line up with their idea of a perfect world.

Furthermore, if I wanted to be rude, I'd want to know why you're not out there, since religion is so good at inspiring altruism in its adherents. Why are you here bitching at someone you don't know anything about because his belief is different than yours?

Spare me the condescension. I have more important things to do than justify myself to you.

Quote You:

Quote Myself:

Quote You:

In general yes-- but since we are speaking of comparatively better.. you can't just assume that you "can get the same things you can get anywhere else."

It would be to beg the question in this discussion.

What does the bad these things have brought to the world have anything to do with the good they have? Even if we assume that the burden of proof would be on the entity that has objectively brought a lot of bad... how would you go about comparing the the good with the bad to see which outweighs what?

If you can't measure this attribute:

That christianity offers "comfort," "peace," etc.

How can you compare it to it's bad?

Of course you have to justify.. history documents do nothing-- for they do not speak.

or.. in the same sense, "Historical documents speak that all forms of centralized governments shouldn't exist either. I don't need to justify it. History does well enough."

..yay centralized governments. Don't spy on me.

Actually I am out there right now. I'm probably going to Africa after college.

You don't need to get so offended Hamby. If you want to keep what you do to yourself, thats totally fine.  

*Sigh*

Mass exterminations and bloody conflicts are hardly exclusive to Christianity or, indeed, and religion.

As for, Christianity, it is doubtful that we woud have the artistic, scientific and cultural heritage that we have without the church.

The religious rites and rituals brought about by Christianity are interesting enough that I merit them with being positive contributions. Granted, most (all) of them were stolen from somewhere else, but the stealing and remanufacturing is just as interesting, and therefore, I think, just as positive of a contribution.

They also contributed the New Testament, which is a fun read. Arguably, of course, the New Testament might have came around even without Christianity.

So I guess your question is a difficult one to answer, in that it is difficult to argue that something could only be brought about by Christianity. 

Feh.

If I hadn't already had this same discussion with all you folks before, I'd be more interested.  As it is, it's just covering new ground.

I was hoping some new folks would want to jump in.

Hope you don't take my lack of answering as implicit agreement.  I still don't understand why this is so hard for you guys to understand, but I don't have any other ways of saying it right now, and I honestly don't have the time.  My real work has suffered from too much RRS.

Catch you guys on the next topic.

(P.S. Christos, seriously, that argument is condescending, and logically unsound.  You should drop it.)

I'm not sure I follow.  Can you clarify?  Oh and that second quote isn't mine. 

I'm sorry.  Yes, I will try to clarify.

I know that the second comment wasn't yours.. it was the comment you were objecting to when you said this: 

What I was meaning to point out was that when you said this:

I was felt that you were making the same sort of generalization for which you accused an earlier post of-- of being "condescending."

Granted.. I'm assuming you felt it was "condescending" because he was generalizing all "non-religious" people into one group with a negative characteristic.

In the same way.. I felt your comment may be construed as "condescending" because it generalizes all Christians into one group with a negative characteristic (that they can't treat or relate to woman (or people with different beliefs than them) as equals).

It may be true for some.. certainly not all.. even if one could establish that it is most.