Positive & Negative Effects of Religion HUMSS 1 Source: https://www.slideshare.net/PerfektoPotato/positive-negativeeffects-of-religion

Positive & Negative Effects of Religion • Religion has become a very important aspect in development of civilizations and cultures. In fact, most ancient societies based their worldviews on religion, and it has been proven to be beneficial to the attainment and maintenance of social stability and cohesiveness.

Positive & Negative Effects of Religion

RELIGION

POSITIVE EFFECTS

NEGATIVE EFFECTS

Positive Effects of Religion • There is no doubt that religion has an important role in society. In fact, it has become so closely intertwined with other institutions such as political and economic systems that religious beliefs sometimes became the basis of the political legitimacy.

POSITIVE EFFECTS • Promotes Social Harmony – Religion believes in supernatural beings and powers. – It practices a set of rituals and ceremonious rites of age of intensification. – It also regards religious leaders such as priests, priestesses and shamans in high esteem. – These characteristics help advance social harmony by assimilating and stabilizing cultures and nations.

POSITIVE EFFECTS • Religion Provides Moral Values – Perhaps one of the most significant functions of religion is that it encourages moral values. – It provides a systematic model of the universe, which effect determines organized human behavior. – By providing moral values, one is able to distinguish right from wrong, good or evil. – It also provides a systems of reward and punishment that isters and standardizes people behavior in society

POSITIVE EFFECTS • Religion Provides Social Change – Since religion is a source of moral values, religion provides social change. – It can be very effective in lobbying and campaigning for certain social issues using its own moral teachings as the basis of argument. – For example, the Church in the US has been active in the campaign for civil liberties as well as the antislavery movement.

POSITIVE EFFECTS • Religion Reduces Fear of the Unknown – Religion was developed from man’s need to have a sense of origin and destination; to discover where they came from and where they are bound to go when they die. – Religion provides answers for phenomena and questions that the science or reason cannot explain.

POSITIVE EFFECTS • Religion Gives Positive Goal in Life – People were inspired by the story of different prophets from their own religious affiliations, like that Moses, Siddharta Gautama, and Muhammad. – The people showed how ordinary people them were given important missions in life, and how they struggled to carry out their respective missions.

POSITIVE EFFECTS • Religion Gives People a Sense of Belonging – Just as family, ethnicity, or nationality give people a sense of belonging, so does religion. – For some, religion provides people with personal identify as part of a group with similar worldviews, beliefs, values, practices, and lifestyles. – t provides communities with prospects to recognize and offer vital action and service to provide the needs of the larger community.

Positive Effects of Religion Promotes Social Harmony

Provides Moral Values

Provides Social Change

Explain the Unknown

Gives Positive Goal in Life

Give People a Sense of Belonging

Negative Effects of Religion • Religion has often been named as the culprit behind divisiveness and conflicts among people. There is also beliefs that religion can be dangerous to society when used to advance the interests of a people at the expense of other people especially those with different religious beliefs.

NEGATIVE EFFECTS • Religion Affirms Social Hierarchy – Some religions affirm social hierarchy often favoring men as and result, perpetuate the notions of class and gender discrimination and oppression. – Another example of religion reflecting the hierarchy of political structures would be the Confucians emphasis on the relations between the ruler and the subjects, with the former exercising the authority over the latter

NEGATIVE EFFECTS • Religion Causes Discrimination – There are some who say that religion, after turning people against themselves, turn people against each other. – This happens when people do not tolerate religious ideologies different from the one they follow. – Religion can also be a source of discrimination, or the prejudicial treatment of different categories of people or things especially on the basis of race, religion, age and sex.

NEGATIVE EFFECTS • Religion Triggers Conflicts and Fights – Religion also has some aspects which make it susceptible to be a source of conflict and war. – History witnessed numerous lives sacrificed and lost in the name of religion. – Wars have been fought in the name of religion, and this phenomenon continues up to the present time.

NEGATIVE EFFECTS • Religion As An Economic Tool for Exploiting The Masses – According to the German philosopher Karl Marx, “religion is the opium of the masses.” – This is in relation to his critical approach to religion in which he proposed that the bourgeoisie keep the proletariat in control through religion.

NEGATIVE EFFECTS • Religion Impedes Scientific Success and Development – Throughout history, religion has proven to impede scientific development. – For example, it has often been said that the Catholic Church used to teach that the world is flat and warned people against going to faraway places if they do not wish to fall off the edge of the earth.

NEGATIVE EFFECTS • Religion Obstructs the Use of Reason – Many question the suitability of religious doctrine to the needs of the present and the future generations. – In order to put these dogma to practice, religion should, therefore, evolve and learn to adapt to the ever changing world.

Negative Effects of Religion Affirms Social Hierarchy

Causes Discrimination

Triggers Conflicts and Fights

Serves as an Economic Tool for Controlling the Masses

Impedes Scientific Success and Development

Obstructs the Use of Reason

Historical Events Caused By Religion • In some regions in the world, religion has become very influential in almost every aspect of human activity-from personal routines to diplomatic relations. • Furthermore, in each country there are majority and minority religious groups ad sometimes the power struggle between these two groups escalate into historical developments which oftentimes shock the world.

Historical Events Caused By Religion • Self-Immolation of a Buddhist Monk in Vietnam – Self-Immolation, or the killing of oneself as a form of sacrifice, originally referred to as the act of setting oneself on fire. – But now it refers to as much wider range of suicidal choices such as leaping off a cliff, starvation, or ritual removing of the guts (also know as seppuku). – It is used as a form of political protest or martyrdom.

Historical Events Caused By Religion • Widows Burning Among the Hindus in India – Sati, or the practice of self-immolation of a widow on her husband’s funeral pyre, is said to have originated 700 years ago in India, when the rajput women burnt themselves to death after their men were defeated in battles to avoid being taken by the conquerors.

Historical Events Caused By Religion • The Inquisition – Inquisition refers to the Roman Catholic Church groups charged subduing heresy from around 1184, which includes the Episcopal Inquisition (1184- 1230’s) and the Papal Inquisition (1230’s). – The Inquisition was a response to large popular movements in Europe considered heretical or profane to Christianity, particularly Catharism (a Christian dualist movement which espoused the idea of two gods, one being good and the other evil).

Historical Events Caused By Religion • The Godhra Train Incident in 2002 – In February 2002, a train was set on fire in which 59 people, including 25 women and 15 children, were killed. – The fire happened inside the Sabarmati Express train near the Godhra railway station in the Indian state of Gujarat. – Those who died inside the train were mostly Hindu pilgrims and activists returning from the holy city of Ayodha after a religious ceremony at the disputed Babri Masjid site.