Religion: Useful or Useless?

[_moksha]

Religion in scenario 1 - useless

You are middle aged, uneducated, lacking any ambition, and live in a trailer on your parents property. You feel good about life, because social security affords you cable, a TiVo box, and enough beer, smokes and hot dogs to get you through the month. You feel good about your life.

Perhaps a feeling of failure, inadequacy, or just feeling bad about your choices would serve as a motivation to get your butt in gear.

Add to the above scenario the feel good feeling that you'll make it to heaven because you raised your hand in some church service and were "saved".

This person probably feels quite useless and depressed. You would take away the religion that perks her up? Would you smash the TiVo box and point out that soap operas aren't real as well?

Religion in scenario 2 - useless, probably dangerous

A young black man, sits hopeless inside a jail cell, wasting away.
While in jail, he reads Message to the Blackman in America and slowly begins to transform himself. He finds purpose in life, begins to educate himself, and straightens his life out. He feels good about his new found religion, and himself. He also is more inclined to think of white people as devils, and use tenets of his faith such as "The unbeliever must be stabbed through the heart" to justify violence.

Some religious messages can be quite harmful. Ones that promote violence are among them. Too bad he did not resonate with a religious book that did not promote criminal behavior and helped him straighten up.

[_Moniker]

On a related note, is feeling good useful?

I can think of a few examples of when it isn't so good to feel good:

You are middle aged, uneducated, lacking any ambition, and live in a trailer on your parents property. You feel good about life, because social security affords you cable, a TiVo box, and enough beer, smokes and hot dogs to get you through the month. You feel good about your life.

Perhaps a feeling of failure, inadequacy, or just feeling bad about your choices would serve as a motivation to get your butt in gear.

Add to the above scenario the feel good feeling that you'll make it to heaven because you raised your hand in some church service and were "saved".

Religion in scenario 1 - useless

Hey, GoodK, I'm not certain what you meant with the "Perhaps a feeling of failure, inadequacy, etc.." comment. Were you linking that to a Church community that may use shame and sin to get individuals to refrain from self destructive (whatever those may be -- not suggesting anything here) behavior? Were you suggesting that this middle aged man, perhaps, would be better off joining a Church such as LDS where he'd be asked to refrain from drinking, smoking, etc... and would be in a community (as far as my understanding) that emphasized the importance of education? Or, were you not making that link? Were you just adding religion on in the instance of raising the hand in Church?

I think a lot of sins and pressure different Church communities put on members does precisely what you suggest above. Yet, I'm not an advocate of it, necessarily. I'd rather people enjoy life (whatever way they choose) without the shame and feelings of failure -- yet, I could definitely see how the community could exert quite a bit of influence on individual believers as they strived to fit within the norms of the Church community.

[_GoodK]

Religion in scenario 1 - useless

You are middle aged, uneducated, lacking any ambition, and live in a trailer on your parents property. You feel good about life, because social security affords you cable, a TiVo box, and enough beer, smokes and hot dogs to get you through the month. You feel good about your life.

Perhaps a feeling of failure, inadequacy, or just feeling bad about your choices would serve as a motivation to get your butt in gear.

Add to the above scenario the feel good feeling that you'll make it to heaven because you raised your hand in some church service and were "saved".

This person probably feels quite useless and depressed. You would take away the religion that perks her up? Would you smash the TiVo box and point out that soap operas aren't real as well?

I didn't say anything about taking things away? I don't know how I would do that even if I could. I was just trying to come up with a scenario where religion is likely useless except in giving a false feeling of hope or contentedness.
I definitely wouldn't smash the TiVo box, are you crazy? I am human, ya know...

[_GoodK]

If it is a brain function, religion is not useful for that reason.

Brain functions such as the ability to count or tell time are extremely useful. The ability to feel thirst and hunger is even more useful. Saying that having a need for spiritual fullfillment is not useful, is merely denying that part of of the human condition that exists for many of us.

I'm not denying this, I'm trying to stick to the point of view expressed in my OP.