Another poll suggested by jacob66. Is religion beneficial or not? Debate away!

You can submit poll ideas here
http://www.mangaupdates.com/showtopic.php?tid=3903

Previous Poll Results:
Question: If the original source chapter is split into multiple parts (e.g., 1a, 1b, etc), would you prefer the scanlator...
Choices:
Translate and release as a single chapter - votes: 2849 (65.8%)
Translate and release it in parts - votes: 1483 (34.2%)
There were 4332 total votes.
The poll ended: September 26th 2020

Scanlators, take note. The people have spoken.

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A just ruler amongst tyrants

I mean religion like many other things is used for both good and evil, depending on the priest in question... So without it the other concepts would just compensate...

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I am envoy from nowhere in nowhere. Nobody and nothing have sent me. And though it is impossible I exist. © Trimutius

I am a lifelong atheist but about the same. The US is currently living under a president who is agonistic... at best for maybe the first time and things are hardly looking up under him (outside of him also misusing religion). Russia tried to wipe away it´s religious past in the 20th century before the pendulum swung back hard. China isn´t religious at all. A population of nearly 1,4 billion lives there. A more entertaining look at this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Go_God_Go
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raised_by_Wolves_(American_ TV_series)

If anything try rethinking how societies and their markets are run. That´s where things go the wrongest.

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I also read EU/US comics and am a librarian.
Manga-Masters, My ANN-Lists + Imdb

Eh, yeah, religion isn't the problem here. People have done terrible things under the banner of atheism too. Certain people will find anything to use as an excuse to do terrible things, and if religion didn't exist, these people will simply go on to the next best thing.

Similar to what residentgrigo said, best to reconceptualize how we as a society function as a whole. Bad things stem from a whole host of interrelated issues, and simply cutting off the leaves of it won't solve the core, underlying rot.

So, yeah, about the same gets my vote.

(Now if we were talking about organized religion specifically, my answer might be a tad different...)

Even then, that still requires discussion. On the one hand, the Catholic church has been the common investor in every scientific discovery that's come put of Europe for more than the past millennia. On the other hand, Socialist countries require replacing all beliefs with the religion and worship of the state and government (I'm not exaggerating), and those countries come to a screeching halt within two decades.

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The world would be better IMO. I do acknowledge the personal strength and support that religion can provide some people, and I think to a certain extent that if people weren’t divided over religion they would find something else to be divided over (though when I hear about people being killed for eating beef I do have to shake my head). I have a big issue with teaching children from an early age to distrust science and/or believe in something that there’s no evidence for simply because an adult told them to or because it feels nice - inevitably I wonder whether the various denial movements, conspiracy theories, ready acceptance of fake news and so on are helped along by the notion of faith and encouraging kids to believe in something against all evidence.

Basically if a religious person can live in a way where they’re not negatively impacting others with their religion, I’m cool with them. If they’re pushing for intelligent design to be taught in schools, trying to bring their religion into laws that should be secular, mounting a crusade or so on, that’s when it gets annoying.

From the beginning, the problem are the religions or the people who act in the name of them? I see that almost all religions have values of solidarity and mercy, where people helps each other. A different thing is when some people distort the values of those religions to achieve their desires of power, money, destruction,...

Another thing is to look the past with the 21st century glasses. Things weren't as of today. Now you have more sources for everything, to make your decisions or think what do you believe. I'm Christian, but I don't profess it or go to church. I believe in Science and I don't use religion to defend my point of view of life. Maybe I even could be on any other religion or none, depending on my family or values or if I were born in a different moment or country.

The thing is that, from my point of view, you don't do things based on religion solely. You are influenced with many other things and people, and reducing everything to only religion is biased and far from reality.

Oh, and my vote goes to "About the same", because bad people and good people will do things because they want, whatever it is their reason.

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True, I've given up on the real world, however I haven't given up on myself. The world doesn't get to decide whether my life is boring, fun, or ordinary coz that's my decision to make. As long as I have the will nothing is impossible!

It wouldn't be relevant to the websites subject matter but it would be interesting to see what manga fans believe since, according to research, anime/manga fans, I'm the US anyway, tend to be liberal.

In saying that, I have three theories:

1) Religion was made by man to control the masses and it somehow spiraled out of control.

2) Religion started as a rumor that spread like wildfire and became most people's reality.

3) Religion started out as a piece of fiction and somehow became most people's reality.

Now people are religious because of their upbringing or because they're afraid of the idea that when the die, there's nothing. And I imagine without religion, looking at the number of wars, crimes/terrorism started due to religion, the world would probably be better. Especially considering the fact that science, which was held back by Catholics long ago, likely would've made far more and potentially better discoveries and advancements without the extreme interference of religion in the past.

I answered better because I was specifically thinking of organized religion. You raise an interesting point, but after further consideration, I feel like the only way to completely get rid of religion is to take the belief of *all* supernatural things out of society, which leads to an implication of a more rational human race in general, which makes the world better. Thus, I still think my vote is correct.

The thing is, one can make a religion out of anything supernatural. You could make a religion about ghosts. I've heard of an African culture with a religion geared primarily towards preventing zombies?

I'm not saying religion is the only irrational thing out there, I'm only saying that all irrationality can lead to religion. Therefore, unless you used magic to somehow guide irrational people away from *just* religion, the removal of religion would necessitate the removal of irrationality.

So my vote was and is that it'd make the world Better.

Doesn't the existence of Atheism negate all of that being a possibility? Rather than having a bible and supernatural world existing, the modern practice of Atheism relies upon "settled science" (A concept that is contrary to the scientific method) as "the word of god", and replaces magic with "science" (To where you have the endless jokes about how quantum physics can solve "every" problem, like time travel, when that isn't how it works).

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Absolutely the same. Even among atheists, the same kind of religious fervor, cultist dogma and holier-than-thou attitudes can be found in politics at the moment. On one side, you have the ones that truly believe that Trump is a force for good, and fighting against the new world order. On the other, you have the woke, who are constantly trying to be at the top of wokeness/goodness for a sense of moral superiority. Both sides think they're the ones who know best; both sides take any kind of criticism as proof that the person is on the complete opposite side (and thus doesn't know best). Both camps are foaming at the mouths like rabid dogs.

Change a few words in those sentences while keeping the exact same context, and you're talking about radical islam, Westboro Baptists or religion in the middle ages.

There's nothing inherently wrong with "religion" (rather, a belief in God(s)/Heaven, wanting to live by a code, etc.); the problem is much more about people in general lacking self-awareness and understanding of others.

You are mistaking Atheism and Agnostic.

Atheism = believing that there is no spiritual being ( god or otherwise)
Agnostic = believing in what science has proven and nothing that is unknown.

For myself I said worst because when you think not about modern day but a distant past, religion was the driving force for many change not every one of them was for the best but still had most religion not being there the world would maybe not be this advance or this united.

Extremely precarious equilibrium and not the best with many dissension, but in a better position than if every country was still at war for territorial expansion. Religion made a common ground to unite.

Today most religion are destructive and/or stop any social progress which would cause worst problem if not condone or heavily regulated.

So my answer is it was a good thing now not so much. It would be worst without it but we don't need religion anymore if it continue to be use has a tool for power.

hmmm I'm torn since I'm an atheist (occasionally agnostic bc it's fun thinking up concepts. Also grew up christian with veerrrryyyyy religious parents) but religion has brought so many interesting stories and mythologies into this world. Humanity's first fantasy stories. But at the same time, I know that religion has caused a lot of grief and suffering (Crusades, Human Sacrifices etc etc)

So as much as I would have liked to put "about the same" or even better, we lose a lot of our lush heritages without religion since so much of our traditions, stories, and cultures are intertwined with religion.

Oh this is gonna be a good question