medlar

I know there is alot of topics on religion in this forum and I checked on similar and informative threads here that apply to my take and question.

Recently someone was asking me what exactly I got from going to a boys' Catholic school in Uk besides putting the fear of nuns into us and suppression I'll add. I'm not a relatively religious person. I question alot of it. I rememeber the first thing we learned by rote were the ten commandments before diving into Catholicism..thou shalt not steal, commit adultry, murder.etc. I also recall learning that it was the worship of a golden calf and a resulting wild orgy that brought on the commandments and they were to be a form of "protection" from ourselves.

It doesn't hurt God if we steal, murder, cheat. It doesn't take anything away from him but it hurts everyone involved down here. You commit those act to a tangible target. So in this day as knowlege, logic and science increases and we become more of a selfish race looking out for ourselves and the governments grow bigger with influence. What started as ten relatively simple rules to go by, well, we have made so many laws and some adjustments that seem pretty leniant and enough to do my head in. The less God and faith in religoin the more crime, more laws and less freedom. Is it because God teaches us to fear him and how we should act but the less faith we have in God, the less we know how to act? Is it becoming apparent that religion became a source of cntrolling the masses, empowering a ruler, ie the Vatican, and now, I'm thinking Dawkins ( I was recommended reading it..I just don't have the attention span for it right now) so will it ulitmately mean that religions initial purpose is phasing out in this world today? Would it be a better world for mankind?

Nimetic

That's a fairly odd comment that you make make - effectively that the amount of crime is inversely proportional to the religious belief. If this is something you believe, I would suggest you find evidence and post it.

My guess is that there is no evidence to support this, and it's just something you have been told. If so, you are correct to question it, in my view.

Consider for example US vs AU. There is (it appears) much more religious faith in the US than here. However the number of people in prison in the US (per capita) is higher (I believe). This is not the same as crime rate, but anecdotally, crime rate also seems to be higher in the US than here. I'd probably need to double check these numbers.

But then consider Iraq.... there is a strong belief system there. But there's undeniably a reasonable amount of crime.

It seems much more likely that the level of crime is affected by many more factors, including but not limited to moral systems/philosophy in society, economic prosperity (if you cannot eat, you might steal), joblessnes and unemployment benefits (or lack of), drug use, police numbers, drug use, effectiveness of mental health facilities and so on.

Lets leave that aside for now. My understanding is that the level of belief in religion has been falling for a long time. Quite simply - there are alternative belief systems and they are legal whereas they were once banned by the church.

And then too - a significant part of the scientific and philosophical framework we have today arises from view that everything must be questioned, tested and debated. Oddly this seems to have been a teaching of Socrates... so it's an old concept.

But he was sentenced to death for his view... today, some people are employed in part because they take that position.