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Originally Posted by willravel
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.
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Well, I might begin by saying that you're right, it would be entirely unreasonable to believe that about Moses, because Genesis tells that story in regard to Noah. But I won't. Yes, some reason must be suspended for faith: I believe in God, not because anyone showed me logical proofs or philosophical models or laboratory evidence, but because I had spiritual experiences which I feel certain were revelatory (very nebulous, don't worry, I don't hear voices or anything). That means that I personally am comfortable saying that I have evidence to believe in God, but my evidence is not compelling for anyone but myself. Nonetheless, I might have misinterpreted that evidence or ignored it or labeled it something else altogether had I not been brought up as a practicing Jew (or, I suppose, in some other religious tradition). And that would be a shame, because living my life in relationship with God has proven joyful and fulfilling for me. Now, I don't consider this choice to be irrational, but rather, arational: it makes sense to me, and I am aware that I have chosen to believe something that is "objectively" not provable. I just don't see anything wrong with that. Your point that the suspension of reason leaves one vulnerable to those intending to manipulate religion seems to me to be either an argument against fundamentalism, but not all religion, or an excellent argument for education, both religious and secular: the more one knows, the more difficult it is to be manipulated.
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Originally Posted by willravel
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.
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This is simply unreasonable. Al-Qaeda are beyond fundamentalists. They are rabid fanatics. You can't use them as an example of what's wrong with religion in general, any more than you can look at the actions of Sudanese militias in Darfur, and decide on that basis that Africans are all bloodthirsty and violent, and they just have to go. The majority of people who practice religions are not fanatics and radicals: I really cannot see why they should be judged upon the actions of those who are.
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Originally Posted by willravel
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.
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With all due respect, people have never not been able to find causes for war and murder if they look for them. Quite a number of conflicts-- including ones that attached the name of religion to themselves for PR purposes-- have nothing whatsoever to do with religion. People fight about land, about goods, about resources, about perceived cultural biases, and about honor and perceived slights to due respect, among many other things that have nothing to do with religion. I mean no offense, but if you think that the absence of religion would lead to world peace, I believe you are deeply kidding yourself. And if you think that Hitler was interested in wiping out the Jewish people (6 million killed, btw, not 2 million) because of theology, you are wrong. This was about scapegoating the other, and to be other, one need not practice a different religion, just hold different political views, or come from a different culture, or speak a different language. If Judaism was only a culture and not a religion, he would have killed the 6 million anyway. If there were no Jews, he would have wiped out the Poles or the Slavs or focused on the communists or the gays, whom he killed far too many of as it is.
Look, I will certainly agree that there have been many times in history-- and there are plenty of times today-- when religion is abused and/or misinterpreted by the ruthless for terrible purposes. Nobody will agree to such a proposition faster than your friendly neighborhood Jew, believe me. But that, to me, does not provide a reason for why all religion should be eliminated: it provides a reason for educating people about what they are supposed to believe in, and promoting tolerance and interfaith dialogue, and encouraging religious movements to foster their traditions productively.
By your logic, we ought to eliminate science because scientific improvement has produced modern weapons like nuclear bombs, napalm, and phosphorus shells. But we don't advocate such an elimination of science, because science also brings us knowledge of the stars, the wonders of the universe; and besides, before bombs, before artillery, before the sophisticated forging of tempered steel, people still found things to use as weapons against each other. Eliminating science would not eliminate war and murder, any more than eliminating religion would do so.
Since you yourself don't believe in God, and so presumably, do not practice a religion (and presumably, if you were raised in a religion, you didn't have a very good experience of it), it is well-nigh impossible to convey to you the positive contributions that religion does give back to people. But I can tell you, it fosters community, it produces literature and art of considerable beauty, it offers people a set of moral and ethical guidelines from which to choose the rules of how they will live, and yes, it fosters spiritual awareness and the opportunity to transcend the rational. Nobody says you have to believe in those things, but for the people who do, they are deeply valuable, life-changing experiences.