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Positive and Negative Effects of Religion

This document discusses both the positive and negative effects of religion. On the positive side, it argues that religion can promote social harmony by providing moral values and social cohesion. It also gives people a sense of purpose and belonging. However, it also notes religion can affirm social hierarchies, cause discrimination and conflicts, be used for economic exploitation, impede scientific development by rejecting facts, and has historically led to events like self-immolation and religious persecution.
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0% found this document useful (0 votes)
80 views21 pages

Positive and Negative Effects of Religion

This document discusses both the positive and negative effects of religion. On the positive side, it argues that religion can promote social harmony by providing moral values and social cohesion. It also gives people a sense of purpose and belonging. However, it also notes religion can affirm social hierarchies, cause discrimination and conflicts, be used for economic exploitation, impede scientific development by rejecting facts, and has historically led to events like self-immolation and religious persecution.
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© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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POSITIVE AND

NEGATIVE EFFECTS OF
RELIGION
POSITIVE EFFECTS
PROMOTES SOCIAL HARMONY
• Religion practices a set of rituals and ceremonious rites of passage
and intensification. It also regards religious leaders in high esteem.
These characteristics help advance social harmony by assimilating and
stabilizing cultures and nations.
• Religion provides divine authority to ethical and moral principles
which also help promote unity among people. Common participation
in rituals together with basic uniformity of beliefs help promote social
cohesiveness.
PROVIDES MORAL VALUES
• This is one of the most significant functions of religion. It provides a
systematic model of the universe, which in effect determines
organized human behavior.
• By providing moral values, one is able to distinguish right from wrong,
good from evil. It also provides a system of reward and punishment
that administers and standardizes people’s behavior in society.
• Some people believe that following rules of their religion is more
important than government rules since most people give more
importance to the reward and punishment in the afterlife.
PROVIDES SOCIAL CHANGE
• Since religion is a source of moral values, it provides social change. It
can be very effective in lobbying and campaigning for certain social
issues using its own moral teachings as the basis for argument.
• Religion has the potential to institute social change, especially in the
issues concerning poverty, reproductive health, gender equality and
religious discrimination.
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 science or reason cannot explain.
• Myths about creation abound but more importantly, religion has
provided assurances as to where spirits will go when people die,
reducing people’s fear of death as something undesirable.
• Some religions have even made death a better alternative to living in
uncertainty.
GIVES POSITIVE GOALS IN LIFE
• People were inspired by the stories of different prophets from their
own religious affiliations like that of Moses, Buddha and Muhammad.
• These people showed how ordinary people like them were given
important missions in life, and how they struggled to carry out their
respective missions.
• Their narratives (known to us because of religion) may give people a
sense of meaning in life; that they are not placed in this world without
a purpose, that each has a mission to fulfill and it is up to them to
fathom what their missions in life are.
GIVES PEOPLE A SENSE OF
BELONGING
• For some, religion provides people with personal identity as part of a
group with similar worldviews, beliefs, values, practices, and lifestyles.
• Belonging to a particular religion – whose members share the same
beliefs, practices the same rituals and worship the same god – gives
individuals a sense of being in the right place with the right people.
• It also provides them a sense of security because other people who
belong to the same group tend to support and help each other in
times of crisis. People can also rejoice with them in times of success.
NEGATIVE EFFECTS
AFFIRMS SOCIAL HIERARCHY
• Some religions often favor men and as a result, perpetuate the notions of
class or gender discrimination or oppression.
Examples:
• 1.Confucianism emphasizes the relation between the ruler and the subject,
with the ruler exercising authority over the people.
• 2. The traditional caste system in India would also reflect how religion shows
political and social structures since it propagated the idea that people had to
be subdivided into certain social classes with particular social roles and that
the attainment of moksha (union of the universal and individual soul) would
depend on how they performed their duties based on their designated class.
CAUSES DISCRIMINATION
• Religion can be a source of discrimination or the prejudicial treatment
of different categories of people or things.
• Some people do not tolerate religious ideologies different from the
one they follow. Religious fanaticism can lead to feelings of hatred,
which could lead to racism and eventually violence.
• Throughout history, religion has been used by colonizers to justify
their forcible occupation of territories.
• There are also some religions which discriminate other religions by
saying that theirs is the “right religion” and that only their followers
will be saved in the afterlife.
TRIGGERS CONFLICTS AND FIGHTS
• Wars have been fought in the name of religion.
• Numerous lives were sacrificed and lost and this phenomenon
continues up to the present time.
• For example:
• In Palestine, Jews are in conflict with the Muslims;
• In Kashmir, Muslims are against Hindus;
• In Sudan, Muslims vs Christians and animists
ECONOMIC TOOL FOR EXPLOITING
THE MASSES
• Karl Marx said “Religion is the opium of the masses.” he believes that
religion maintains social inequality by propagating a worldview that
justifies oppression.
• People will not complain of being poor or being in the lower ranks
because “the kingdom of Heaven is waiting for them”.
IMPEDES SCIENTIFIC SUCCESS AND
DEVELOPMENT
• Catholic church claimed that the earth was flat and that it is the center of
the solar system and so when Copernicus stated his theory that the sun is
the center of the solar system, he was banned from the church and his book
was banned for more than 200 years.
• Some religions have rituals that impede scientific success. Some are even
unsanitary which may cause more danger to people.
• For example:
• During the cholera outbreak in the Philippines, the catholic practice of
having the dead body of cholera victims be brought to church for a Mass
was seen as one reason why the cholera epidemic continued to spread
rapidly.
OBSTRUCTS THE USE OF REASON
• Many question the sustainability of religious doctrines to the needs of
the present and future generations. Ancient religious beliefs and
practices which have proven to be inhuman should be replaced with
sensible ones.
For example:
• Trepanning or boring of holes in the skull, a surgical procedure
performed on epileptics and the mentally ill, with the beliefs that
through the hole, the evil spirit will leave the person
HISTORICAL EVENTS CAUSED BY
RELIGION
Self-Immolation of Buddhist Monk in
Vietnam
• Thich Quang Duc was a Vietnamese Mahayana Buddhist monk who
immolated himself on 11 June 1963. He was protesting against the
persecution of Buddhists by the South Vietnamese government led by
Ngo Dinh Diem. The immolation was considered to be an act of
defiance against a corrupt government. 
Widow burning among Hindus in India
• Sati (Su-thi or Suttee) is the traditional Indian (Hindu) practice of a
widow immolating herself on her husband's funeral pyre. The sati
tradition was prevalent among certain sects of the society in ancient
India, who either took the vow or deemed it a great honor to die on
the funeral pyres of their husbands. 
The Inquisition
• The Inquisition was a powerful office set up within the Catholic
Church to root out and punish heresy throughout Europe and the
Americas. Beginning in the 12th century and continuing for hundreds
of years, the Inquisition is infamous for the severity of its tortures and
its persecution of Jews and Muslims.
The Godhra train incident in India in 2002
• The Godhra Train Burning was an incident that occurred on the
morning of 27 February 2002, in which 59 Hindu pilgrims and 
karsevaks returning from Ayodhya, were killed in a fire inside the 
Sabarmati Express train near the Godhra railway station in the Indian
state of Gujarat.

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