That man Dawkins

Oh and why I think that it wouldn't make much difference if God did/did not exist is that sometimes Christians do good in the world, sometimes they do bad. Presumably if there were no Christians the loss of both the good and bad would cancel each other out leaving the world approximately unchanged overall.

petallus Presumably the cancelling each other out theory applies to believers in other gods too. However, it does presuppose that believers do equal amounts of good and bad.

Yes absentgrana I'm generalizing wildly.

I used to be very hostile to Christianity but then mellowed after a lot of reading and thinking.

Everyone knows the awful things done in the name of Christianity and how narrow minded and controlling some Christians are. However, whilst lounging in bed this morning with a cup of tea I listed all the good things I could think of which come from the Christian religion:

Lovely churches
Organisations which help the poor and needy
Lovely music and other art
A basic philosophy of life which is based on love and compassion and plenty of advice on how to live a happy and fulfilled life.
Good schools (ha! tongue in cheek on this one)
Providing the idea of safety, protection and comfort in life which some people really do need to get them through.
Interesting ancient writing in The Bible.
Love, the psalms.

I don't see any contradiction in holding these views with being an atheist.

Petallus - I don't think anybody has denied that some Christian churches do a lot of good works. However, my principal anger is directed at the rules that cause so much misery and so many deaths - i.e. those against contraception, abortion, divorce and homosexuality. The failure to report sexual abuse or to take any action against abusers did not come as a surprise to me.

petallus, I like your list, and indeed the idea of a list of positives. However, I would 'take issue' (in the spirit of discussion) with the idea that christianity actually generated wonderful music. I'm thinking of people like JS Bach and Handel: they produced exceptionally wonderful music for the church, outstandingly beautiful music. However, the church was one of the very few patrons of music at the time, and that's why the music they produced was often for the church. Nowadays, should such composers happen again (if only!), their patrons/sponsors would be far less likely to be associated with a church, and so the music, which would be just as good, would not be called church music and its inspiration would not be ascribed to christianity. People as talented as those two in my example would produce exceptional music for whoever paid them.

That said, at least the church had the funds to pay such talented people, for which we can be thankful. The aristocracy was the other main patron of the arts. So really, cutting to the quick, it depends where the money is

In short, I don't think Bach's most esoteric music was inspired by christianity; I think he was just a genius. His music is often mathematical (e.g Art of Fugue, Goldberg Variations, many cantatas), so ultimately I think the numeric quality of sound is what inspired his amazing brain.

I would say that though, wouldn't I, preferring a scientific explanantion for everything?

Same applies to much of the art produced by Michelangelo. The church paid him so he had to do what it wanted, thus the religious themes.

petallus Psalms haven't come from Christianity, they are Old Testament.

Kind David and King Solomon led merry, merry lives,
With many, many concubines and many, many wives,
But when old age came over them with many, many qualms,
Solomon wrote the proverbs and King David wrote thr psalms.

Oh yes I agree about the church having a stranglehold on the arts in those days. You've only got to walk around the National Gallery to get bored with all those religious themes. Ditto all those upper class portraits, though I do like a good portrait!

I hadn't thought of the old testament as being entirely separate from Christianity. It is often quoted in church services and by Christians in general.

I think the old testament is the most interesting bit to read. I can't help smiling at Job; he's so dramatic, all that wailing and over the top language.

Agree about all the negatives of Christianity although I like to differentiate between Christians and Christianity.

What was it C S Lewis said? Something about why it took him so long to become a Christian was the Christians!

No offence to the Christians on this thread.

petallus Poor old Job being patient – give him a break. If I had to sit on a dunghill scraping my plague of boils with a potsherd, I should probably wail too.

Was it Ghandi (sp?) who, when asked what he thought of christians, replied: "I like your christianity; not so sure about your christians" ?

Bags I think it was. He was also the man who when asked what he thought about Western civilisation, said, "I think it would be a good idea."

I do not often find myself at odds with anything Ghandi said but in this instance I feel the exact opposite. I hate organised religion but have no quarrel with the huge majority of believers. I simply think they are wrong.
I don't have the statistics but I am willing to bet there is not much difference in people's behaviour according to their religous beliefs (except where such beliefs lead them to injurious practices.)

I feel the same, G, but I think Ghandi's point was that there Is a lot of nastiness in the world (has been, at any rate, and still is in some places) which is enacted by people who call themselves christians. Mind you, the same can be said of any group, I would have thought. Just shows how silly labels are.

I'm sure someone somewhere has done extensive research into the effects of religious beliefs on ethical behaviour - in fact, I know that body of research exists but I'm too idle busy to look up the references. So I'll fall back on theorising on an inadequate data basis. . There is plenty of well-known evidence of important liberation and social improvement movements which arose from the Christian beliefs of the prime movers. Although, interestingly, it is possible nowadays to read an article or see or hear a programme about some great philanthropist (Nightingale, Wilberforce, Beecher Stowe and Shaftesbury spring to mind as recent examples) with hardly, if any mention of their Christian motivation.

That's because nowadays it is recognised that they would have done the good deeds even without a religious spur. Morality is inbuilt into social species because it's part of survival strategy.

Sorry. Morality is the wrong word. More like 'helpfulness'. there is another word commonly used, but it escapes me right now, and anyway, it's not quite right either. The simple point is that people don't need religion to do good for others.

The corollary of 'Christians do good things because of their faith' is 'Christians do and have done very terrible things because of their faith'.
You can't logically have one without the other.
Can we not just accept that a person's belief or unbelief usually has little influence on behaviour.

Bags! They certainly thought they were motivated by their faith! You can't say 'they would have done it anyway' because there is no evidence to that effect and lots to the contrary. Greatnan I think people's beliefs do affect their behaviour and I accept that organisations like the Inquisition and situations like the tribal wars in Ulster do arise from misinterpretations by fallible people of the right action for Christians, just as suicide bombers misinterpret the teaching of the Prophet. I don't accept that the abuse of children by priests arises from their beliefs, nor that the attempts at cover-ups have anything to do with Christianity - very much the opposite. People do bad things and good things whatever their beliefs, I think we can all agree on that.

You seem to be agreeing with me, Lilygran - thank you.

Actually, I think there's plenty of evidence that people do good things regardless of religion. Just look around at all the non-religious people nowadays.

Works the other way too. Proportionally, agnostics and atheists are under-represented in prisons.

Religion is irrelevant to goodness.

Here's a very local-to-me example: of the six people running the scout group in our area (scouts, cubs, beavers), only two have religious faith. So two-thirds of that admittedly very small sample of people are doing something good for their community just because they want to be helpful. And that's in an organisation that tries to exclude people with no religious faith!

Altruism Bags?

How do you define goodness other than from the Judeo-Christian belief system which is the basis of western laws Bags? I do accept that one does not have to be an adherent to any one faith but surely our understanding of morality and goodness comes from that?

Yes, that's the word that was eluding me, absent. Thanks.

No, I don't agree, gaga, that out sense of rightness and goodness comes from the judeo-christian theological belief system. Other social animals (i.e. not humans) have moral systems as well, so clearly it has evolved as a survival strategy, like everything else.