Does Religion Make You Better?

Well, yes, the New York Times does pooh pooh the linkage of patriotism and piety as "absurd"--but might religious people love their country more? Be more willing to die for it?

There is a fascinating piece in the lefty Guardian that suggests that religious people are more likely to take the risks involved to help others:

"The Salvation Army has been given a special status as provider-in-chief of American disaster relief. But its work is being augmented by all sorts of other groups. Almost all of them have a religious origin and character.

"Notable by their absence are teams from rationalist societies, free thinkers' clubs and atheists' associations - the sort of people who not only scoff at religion's intellectual absurdity but also regard it as a positive force for evil.

"The arguments against religion are well known and persuasive. Faith schools, as they are now called, have left sectarian scars on Northern Ireland. Stem-cell research is forbidden because an imaginary God - who is not enough of a philosopher to realize that the ingenuity of a scientist is just as natural as the instinct of Rousseau's noble savage - condemns what he does not understand and the churches that follow his teaching forbid their members to pursue cures for lethal diseases.

"Yet men and women who believe that the Pope is the devil incarnate, or (conversely) regard his ex cathedra pronouncements as holy writ, are the people most likely to take the risks and make the sacrifices involved in helping others. Last week a middle-ranking officer of the Salvation Army, who gave up a well-paid job to devote his life to the poor, attempted to convince me that homosexuality is a mortal sin."

Could the phenomenon of Christian charity have something to do with the notion that you have to know evil (sin) to recognize true goodness? If God were really imaginary, would he have a beneficial impact on charitable works?

Just asking...

Many thanks to Travis McSherley of Filling Up Space for spotting this provocative article.


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