[jimkleiber]

I wonder if it's like any technology and trade offs between helping/hurting people. If religions help 95% of people be more loving and 5% be more hateful, would it be a net benefit? Does it depend what those 5% do with the hate or the 95% with the love? What if the percentages were different?

Obviously an overly simplistic thought experiment, yet I wonder if we have any way, that isn't arbitrary, to say if a tool is net beneficial.

Side note...I've often played with the idea in the past of what I called the case for moral superposition: nothing is good or bad, everything is good AND bad, but thinking makes it good OR bad.

[mordae]

It's more like 50/50, though. So in practice it mostly just amplifies authoritarians telling us to either submit or go to hell. The other (loving) half gets so non confrontational we never hear of them again.

[jimkleiber]

I think the "loving" half is often not fully loving but other-loving and self-hating.

"I feel annoyed that this person is doing this thing. But if I say something, they may feel angry, so I won't say something... And then will fight against myself instead."

[watwut]

Religious people are not more loving then the rest.

[em-bee]

If a religion be the cause of hatred and disharmony, it would be better for it not to exist

Any religion which is not a cause of love and unity is no religion.