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Originally Posted by levite
What is the purpose to this?
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All due respect, but I would think this is somewhat obvious.
In order to be religious one must allow some reason to be suspended in order to allow for faith. It's not reasonable to believe that Moses managed to get billions of species of animals onto a boat that he built with his bare hands in order to save them from a global flood, therefore a religious person would take that on faith. This capability to suspend reason in order to accommodate faith is easily exploitable by people who wish to use religion to their own end.
I will give you an example to illustrate my point: The al Qaeda. This is a group of religious extremists who have twisted the context of their holy book, the Qur'an, to fit in with their war on Western influence on the Middle East. They teach that certain sects are blasphemous and thus are deserving of death simply because of a difference of opinion regarding the linage of the religion following Muhammad. I'm sure as a religious individual you're familiar with the teachings of the Qur'an: they teach that Jihad is not a battle against others but is rather a battle with the darker parts of one's self in order to become a better person. Also, there is no mention of virgins waiting for martyrs. Unfortunately, leaders such as Osama Bin Laden have been able to take advantage of faith and have sown seeds of murderous hatred in the minds of people who may otherwise be simply following the word of the Qur'an.
So what would happen if these people were not religious? How would one convince a man to martyr himself if there was no heaven? No virgins? No glory, but rather simply killing many innocent people?
If people have nothing to worship, nothing to love or hate beyond reason, why would they commit great acts of destruction?
I would put fourth that without religion billions of lives across the history of our planet would likely have not been lost. Imagine a world in which 2 million jews were not executed. Imagine a world in which there were no crusades. Imagine a world where the Middle East is a peaceful region.