Reply #31: Organized religion

[frogmarch]

has done some good things, but let’s not confuse religiosity with piety. Organized religion is big business, and big business knows that demonstrating magnanimity from time to time is good policy.

Yes, organized religion is a business, and it has a product to peddle; namely, everlasting life.

If Wal-Mart, like the church, could sell us the promise of life after death, maybe Mike Duke would be pope. Selling tickets to some conjured-up fictional afterlife is a valuable commodity. Religion remains a powerful entity because many people, rather than facing reality, cling desperately to religion’s pie-in-the-sky empty promises of a heaven.

You claim that any evil in which religion has been involved over the centuries has been motivated by religion's desire to do good. Oh, please. And Pat Boone's heart was in the right place when he was spanking the bare bottoms of his daughters, a practice he continued until his daughters were in their twenties. As regards slavery, some bishops in America during the Civil War era continued owning black slaves until abolition, when they were forced to give them up. Even Pope Pius IX proclaimed that slavery wasn't against divine law.

If you want to sing the praise of religion, please try to be at least as well informed as casual Wiki-clickies such as I.