Religion is another tool in the hands of men. In the wrong hands it can be a weapon. As it is today. Religion isnt about god, its about influence. They tell u what is sin and what is good... Anyway.. Holiness is in right action, and courage on behalf of those who cannot defend themselves, and goodness. What god desires is here [points to head] and here [points to heart] and what you decide to do every day, you will be a good man - or not.

This my first time listening to Kwame Anthony Appiah and I have to say I'm not blown away.

"Hitchens wrote a book called 'God is Great'" Oh, TED'X, you never disappoint. Keep on being the pinnacle of well-informed discussion and insightful presentations that you've always been. I can't wait for the Flat Earth Society's presentation.

Christopher Hitchen's book is called 'God is Not Great', not 'God is Great'. Please do your research

The actual topic of this talk is:"how to evade a question wih an infantile word game."

Interesting to watch people get uncomfortable when he mentioned the actual history of Christianity.

I think fighting stupidity, ignorance, and false generalizations and simplifications of large topics with stupidity, ignorance, and false generalizations is possibly the largest reason for the flame war in the comment section here. The topic can be religion, or politics, or whatever, but it is not the root of the larger problem. It's like destroying a contested item, which will end a feud of course, but you don't realize that the methods of interaction is the thing that lead to the problem. With this type of behaviour you can eradicate religions all together, and still be faced with the same type of behaviour on other topics.

I did not understand this. Was the point that religions are not clearly definable and therefore cannot be said to be good or bad? Surely that's facetious.

Pretending that there's no such thing as religion in order to declare religion an unlawful target... that's a rather shameful tactic. The content is also highly anti-intellectual, equating science to religion as a tradition of intellectual authority.

Religion is a product of intense fear and feeling powerless. Fear and feeling powerless makes people delusional, in where a rational person would simply be so depressed, he would not be able to continue living on or look for a way out. It's this hopeless survival mechanism that defies reality to construct a new path of survival with an entire change of morality and purpose that is being called 'religion'. The more hopeless the situation, the fear and feeling powerless, the stronger the belief and the more radical the actions. It's an evolutionary survival mechanism that is now becoming more and more useless in the eye of science, because extreme hopelessness should be fixed by fixing the hopeless situation. It should be because now humanity mostly can. But yeah, now everyone sees religion as delusional and somewhat psychotic (it actually is), when most religious people are simply feeling hopeless and powerless.

It's easy to ignore all the devils of religion and simply say that religion and science are just the same thing---that is when you're having a soliloquy.

Blind faith, lack of education can be bad; religion can be good.

I found this to be very reductive. So there are fringe exceptions to definitions of 'religion'... so there are societies where religion is less rigidly defined... so what? Wittgenstein's family resemblance theory demonstrates that exceptions do not automatically invalidate broadly defined concepts, especially with something so vast as religion. Nor do exceptions to general global religious norms suggest that that religion 'doesn't exist'. It's like saying art doesn't exist because some examples of artistic endeavours blur the line between art and other concepts, like machinery or games. Generalisations are just that - a claim about the nature of something *in general*. It is possible to talk about something with reference to how it generally exists, and critiques of religion don't automatically disintegrate just because they don't apply to every conceivable case. Perhaps I'm misunderstanding Appiah's point, but all I got from this was 'religion isn't just one thing'... ...well duhhhh.

"Religion has actually convinced people that there's an invisible man... living in the sky.. who watches everything you do, every minute, of every day. And the invisible man has a special list of ten things he does not want you to do. And if you do any of these ten things, he has a special place full of fire and smoke, and burning and torture and anguish, where he will send you to live and suffer and burn and choke and scream and cry for ever and ever until the end of time.... ..but he loves you." - George Carlin *Religion is bad.*

My only contact with Anthony Appiah was over 30 years ago when as a young undergraduate student I was assigned in a temp job to do receptionist work in his office. I was young, blond and from the southern US. He asked me where I was from and proceeded to question me and talk to me in a condescending manner. That was an impression that has stayed with me since then. I was there only very briefly to do the most basic office work and I will always remember how he made what should have been a simple day-long job into a confusing and rude experience.

atheism is just as much of a religion as silence is a sound

I had to read one of his essays back in college and do a critique. I'd the hardest time understanding what he was talking about and why, but as we discussed in class later, there was an almost hidden agenda in the writings. While it was difficult for me to follow him on this video yet again, I suspect the main theme of saying 'there is no such thing as religion' has strong downstream effects - I just don't know what. Anyone care to explain the motive. Thanks.

internet atheists are gonna show up, and right after, internet theists, and they're going to have a debate of "yes it is, not it isn't, yes it is, no it isn't...ad infinitum".

Time to stop listening to Bronze Age creation myths and imagined sky daddies. It's time to embrace the 21st century and all the wonders and social advances we have.

It is critical that we come to understand our religious nature, because of its tremendous influence on fast-moving events, globally and locally. Pseudo-intellectuals who try to persuade us that there is nothing to talk about are doing a disservice to civilization, humanity, and the earth. Contrary to the fatuous theme of the talk, we CAN have a coherent conversation about religion (an important subset of most society's culturally evolved traditions) and religiosity (the package of genetically evolved, contingently expressed instincts, carried by humans cross-culturally, that reliably drive us to create religions). The key starting point, obviously, is to DECIDE on a clear definition of religion that demonstrably describes the essence of many things we call religions. Then we proceed to analyze its functional design or lack thereof, and its psychosocial and biological fitness effects. Myriad such effects clearly exist. Ask the guy who is getting crucified for not believing in the religious claims of the powerful. Ask the person who is getting away with murder or other heinous crimes because of the protection provided to him by his religion, via his partnership with powerful religious leaders. Ask an atheist or seriously agnostic U.S. presidential candidate, strictly off the record of course, whether he or she would have ANY chance of winning were they to reveal their lack of (culturally appropriate) religious convictions and beliefs. If you find a cultural practice that does not fit your definition of religion, that's cool, Then it simply is not what you are talking about. That non-conforming practice might require a different analysis to understand its origins and its various costs and benefits. But clearly, almost anything we call religion makes supernatural claims with moral implications. Generally, religious behavior entails accepting the supernatural and systematically unverifiable claims of others, claims that almost invariably dictate or at least recommend how we should behave toward other humans and sometimes other sentient life forms. I am not sure, but I'd bet that even the Dali Lama beleives in some forms of important non-material "stuff," supernatural processes like Karma that underlie cause and effect, souls, etc. Religion and its underlying religiosity instincts are an absolutely fascinating biological phenomenon. Like any of the other wildly diverse traits and behaviors of organisms, it can be studied. Don't let talks like this turn off your brain. Paul J. Watson Department of Biology University of New Mexico biology.unm.edu/biology/pwatson/public_html/pjw_cv.htm

What a weak argument. It is the equivalent of me saying that culture is relative, ergo, culture as "a thing" does not exist.

I get the point that religion is inextricably interwoven into culture (for some cultures more than others) such that they can't be understood without each other. But going that extra step and saying that therefore religion doesnt really exist was just a fallacious argument in my view.

This talk is a red herring... Indeed it is practically impossible to find a single all-encompassing definition of what religion precisely is (or does). However, focusing on that is a deliberate distraction. In the debate on religion being good or bad, people are generally not referring to religion in such (almost philosophical) way. What people critical of religions often claim is that organized religion, i.e. religious institutions and power structures, are always harmful (especially if their “wisdom” is about 2000 years behind on our current day knowledge). Organized religion is a very real and demonstrable thing, and is per definition based on dogma and not on ever changing views based on new discoveries. Not every religion is as dogmatic as the next one and even science isn't completely void of dogma either. That said, it's pretty demonstrable that organized religions always have been used to exert power and authority over people. Never based on demonstrable truths, but always on dogmatic storytelling. People should believe whatever they want and should never be persecuted for their believes, no matter how dumb these might be. That doesn't mean that people who like to believe in centuries-old dogmatic customs being acceptable to practice today, have any right to demand to be taken serious by people more in tune with modern reality. Freedom of religion protects people against persecution; it is not some kind of license to poison humanities advancement with retarded old customs.

The video says you can't generalize and literally every single comment is a generalization. Gg.

The word "religion" is not a thing just like "science" isn't a thing. It's a general non- specific term to categorize belief systems dictated by a nonhuman invisible spirit higher power through a human who claims to be a "godly" or spokesperson for such. Whether it's good or bad overall for society in general is a question that can be answered, but it does not mean that blanket conclusion can be applied to all specific beliefs(religions) just like the scientific study of atoms is good but atomic fission for bombs is not. Religion is a tool used to control peoples behavior and morals so whether it's good or bad is dependent on it's form and it's implementation.

Please, watch the video (the whole thing) or don't comment.

Interesting. I wish I had learnt of this long before. I like his Ghanaian example for a society that has not completely separated religion and science. It was baffling and I was so worried to learned as a science teacher that my fellow science teachers still held assumptions about nature according to our traditional beliefs, phenomenon they can still explain scientifically.

"Non-existent" and "intangible" are not interchangeable terms. Religion is intangible but its irrational effects on the mind result in irrational behaviors.

Interesting, although functionally we find that virtually anything that can be labeled as religion (however loosely) is not found on the "better" side of the spectrum: if it involves a deity, you are surrendering your intellect; if it involves an attempt at a positive aspect of life, such as community or morality - it is usually xenophobic or generally harmful, and one can find better substitutes.

There is a clear failure here in saying the particular definition given by a dictionary fails to define religion and a definition of religion therefor cannot exist. If that idea is one of the foundational points of his argument it cannot stand. *Religion is not difficult to define. Religion is the belief in, study of, and/or attempt to influence spiritual agency.* There, was that so hard?

I still can't find a clear distinction between morality and religion. Both claim things that can't be proven. Both make us harm or help others in the name of something intangible/spiritual/intuitive (take your pick). Most atheists think that we shouldn't act according to claims that are impossible to prove scientifically, i.e. by religion. So why don't they claim we shouldn't act on claims made by our moral intuitions? Although I'm not religious myself, I admit that I'll always try to act according to my morality, but not because it's THE TRUTH, but because I feel like it, it's my default setting, I'm happy with it. Take your pick :)

Exactly what is his point here? Someone help me. I got lost somewhere. Forgive my ignorance. Btw, I'm a non-believer.

Religion is good, people are not

He is trying to solve a problem by pretending it doesn't exist. Yet again another 15 minutes of time wasted.

Wow, I'd love to listen in on conversations he has with Ghanaians on religion.

Religion is neither good nor bad - just as long as you keep it to yourself - completely...

How people commonly use the word "religion," in my experience, is to describe beliefs that are believed without evidence or against the preponderance of evidence (i.e. belief on faith/blind faith). For example, I often hear people, who do not believe that anthropogenic global warming exists, calling it a religion, and I often hear theists calling atheism a religion. So, I think that belief on faith/blind faith is the defining characteristic of "religion," since it seems to me to be common among all things that people call religion whether or not that religion is theistic or atheistic. Using that definition of "religion," which I think is reasonable and useful, religion is a bad thing, much like a loose cannon, since anything can be believed on faith (Santa Claus, witches, goblins, the tooth fairy, etc.), and the direction that they go is merely up to the way that the weather happens to be causing the deck to be pitching at the moment.

Religion is believing things without evidence. It may not be a proper noun but it is a gerund and it certainly exists. People obviously behave better when their actions are based on reality than fantasy.

He started in a topic, and finished in another one.

*HE JUST SPENT 14 MIN SAYING ABSOLUTELY NOTHING!*

Misquoting the title of Hitchens' book, one wonders if Mr. Appiah read it. This talk obfuscates or broadens the definition of religion, which is fine. Mr. Appiah may be confusing tradition and culture with the belief in the supernatural. It is not tradition or ritual that atheists necessarily object, but the belief in the supernatural without evidence and reason. Whatever Mr. Appiah calls it, it was Agamemnon's human sacrifice of his daughter to the supernatural that Lucretius denounced. Whatever the social status, whatever else one may believe, it is beliefs in things like the physical presence of one's dead mother that cracks the door open to irrationality, which impacts one's decisions in life. From there, it's only a short stroll onto imagining desires and commands from the unseen ones and the dogmatic enforcement of the will of these spirits on themselves and the rest of us.

My philosophy professor at 14:13. Life is complete.

Just because a few people are religious but don't believe in god, it doesn't mean other people of the same branch accept that person as being part of their religion. So that part of the definition still holds for some (most) people.

Not reading the below comments of pseudo-intellectuals is a form of self care. They prompted me to watch the entire video which I thoroughly enjoyed!

I liked what he had to say. There is no definition for religion but it is more objective. I don't believe in God but I have my own belief system based on principals I've created from my own experience, so in a way I have my own religion.

Hitchen's excellent book was "god is NOT great" Kwame would do well to read it.

Ugh, more disgusting dribble confusing the issue to seem non-offensive. Religion is defined as the belief in anything supernatural. That still includes supposedly "atheist" branches of whatever religion you want to talk about. It's bad, it's destructive, because by definition it's belief without any evidence.

Christofer Hitchens book title is "God is not great" and not "God is great"

Good theme. "Should the lamp of religion be obscured, chaos and confusion will ensue, and the lights of fairness and justice, of tranquillity and peace cease to shine." ~Baha'i Faith

tl;dr "Hey guys if I redefine the meaning of a word, I can make it mean anything I want!" The pretension is nigh-tangible, what an utterly disengenuous person.

Okay I will make this clear, for all you people who think that religion is bad because your weighing all of the genocides against the supposed good religion has done, I would like to say that the benefits of religion are much harder to measure because they are generally on a personal level. Religion provides a closure and peace to an individual when placed in a hostile environment, it gives us meaning to live and comfort in death. Also you don't look wider, how many people have done bad things without claiming religion?(a lot) this is why religion comes off as bad because that's the only part of its pros and cons that we can point to.

I'm tired of being thrust into a paradigm which the Bible doesn't actually teach. Moses was not intending to do science in Genesis. Science and religion are two separate things, there was no deal struck between them in the 18th century, only a deal between some Literalists and Natural Philosophers (scientists). Science learns about the mechanisms whilst religion seeks the agency behind them; the Bible is not a science textbook but a means of learning about God (the creating Agent).

This is probably the least coherent talks I've seen on TED. First he emphasize on the importance of defining religion before commenting on it. He then asserts that no definition encloses all religions, gives some specific examples of how one definition does not apply to some religions, then concludes all critique aimed at religion is invalid and should be overlooked. Same argument could be made about just about any umbrella term. There's no definition of nazism that encloses all nazists, hence all critique about nazism is invalid and should be overlooked. I know this will seam alien to you but... *how about listening to critique when it does apply to you, and ignore it when it does not!* That the critique does not apply to some religions does not make it less valid where it applies.

It'll never be easy to define a religion scientifically, in a sense that science and religion are intuitively mutually exclusive.

It's odd how someone goes off and talk religion as a whole, but and in the comment section people attack Christians and Muslims specifically, and generalize them as if those are all religion has. Please make things fair... don't forget Buddhism, Hinduism, Animism...

TL;DR: "I'm a philosopher and I define religion to not exist, therefore it is neither good nor bad." Waste of 14 minutes of my life...

There are beliefs that are false, there are beliefs that are true, and there are beliefs whose truth/falsity has yet to be (fully) determined. Now between religious (theistic) claims and modern scientific claims, is there any doubt as to which camp has a firmer grasp of reality, and can actually provide evidence for them?

On the first example regarding Judaism: The conclusion to be reached here is not that Judaism isn't a religion. The conclusion is that "rabbi" is a job title, and that "Jewish" is a cultural identity, meaning that one can be a Jewish rabbi without being religious. That says nothing about Judaism itself. On the second example regarding Hinduism: Hinduism isn't a monolithic religion, as many of the other great world religions are. It is a broad name applied to a very complex set of philosophies, some of which are indeed atheistic. But that doesn't mean religion doesn't exist, just that Hinduism cannot be classified universally as a religion. Regarding the Dalai Lama: Here we get to an interesting discussion point. Dan Dennett addressed it in "Breaking the Spell". There are certain systems of social organization, including some forms of Buddhism, which are indeed not religions, but serve much the same purpose in society. They can be considered "honorary religions", and treated as though they were religions for certain purposes. Again, this doesn't mean that there's no such thing as religion, merely that the Dalai Lama's particular form of Buddhism isn't a religion. Your point is that it's hard to generalize about religion. That's true. But that doesn't mean there aren't similarities. It doesn't mean we can't talk about how dangerous faith is. Yes, modern people who are not disconnected from a technological society can still believe in the presence of spiritual entities and the power of prayer. But you don't have to go to a distant place and a unique culture to find those people, you can just go to the United States. It's full of them.

Belief in god is a symptom of religion.

There are two things that any religion I can think of _do_ in fact include. That is, belief in a soul and superstitions.

This is perhaps the best bait for a flamewar that I've ever seen anywhere.

Dear Kwame Anthony Appiah, I have always had the feeling that you defend freedom and that you support those in need. Today I would like to ask you to say some sentences in public demanding the release of Julian Assange. Assange has been fighting for free information and bringing war crimes to the eyes of the public. He is a journalist and helps all of us the understand what´s going on. Thus reducing wars and the possibilities of successful `war lies´. Thank you for your understanding and all the best. Michael Haas

This is just a continuum fallacy. From Wikipedia: The fallacy appears to demonstrate that two states or conditions cannot be considered distinct (or do not exist at all) because between them there exists a continuum of states. According to the fallacy, differences in quality cannot result from differences in quantity. There are clearly reasonable and clearly unreasonable cases in which objects either belong or do not belong to a particular group of objects based on their properties. We are able to take them case by case and designate them as such even in the case of properties which may be vaguely defined. The existence of hard or controversial cases does not preclude our ability to designate members of particular kinds of groups.

the question wasn't if religion is true or false, the question was if it was good or bad.

Do the haters even watch the video? I mean his conclusion is obviously wrong, but he has some rather interesting points. It shows that our ancient definitions of religion and similar are not working anymore in our globalised world. No dislike from me!

My personal definition of religion is something a person does to cope with the fact that life has no meaning.

The way I see religion is a way to describe and explain happenings around us, just like science. In more ways than one, religions are just different sciences.

This talk is neither good not bad

Hes waffling on,But will not dismiss.The existence of a Devine creator of the the Universe. 🤔🙏❤✝️ 🇬🇧

Plenty of good things are done by good people and wrongly attributed to being in the name of religion.

If religion taught that there is only one place to go in an afterlife, and it is a divine place, where every soul is treated with the utmost kindness, and nothing but love ... even though I am not any longer religious, I would think that the story couldn't do any harm. But the story doesn't end there. It goes on to state (as literal truth) that most souls will go to a very bad place in the hereafter,

I'm wondering if Mr. Appiah has ever read Nietzsche? Granted Nietzsche can be hard to understand what he meant, but overall his works do contribute another view to the whole religion debacle.

Appiah is explaining that "religion" was contrived by westerners themselves. All cultures have practices that we would consider "spiritual" or "supernatural". However, because Christians were so obsessed with the orthodoxy of their own dogma, they inappropriately prioritized these beliefs. Fundamentalists made the conversation about trivial "religious" beliefs the primary lense through which we see alien cultures. If you talk to a Hindu about Jesus, they'll say, "Oh, you mean Vishnu." They won't deny Christ's existence, they will simply make a connection to a symbol they already understand. Christian fundamentalists refuse to accept this, and force a false contrast between cultures when it comes to the "supernatural". These same fundamentalists even did this to scientists before they accepted the divide between the supernatural and natural (as pointed out in the video). Don't let the fundamentalists win by talking about people's "religions" rather than their actual cultural traditions and values. Appiah's argument is solid and the fedora enthusiasts disliking this video are embarrassing.

So his argument consists of saying that religion doesn't exist as we know it... Yeah...

We shouldn't say "All religion is bad" in such a blanket statement since there are so many different religions. Take Buddhism for example, what real criticism or complaint can one realistically gripe about? Yet I think it is valid to call out certain specific religions that HAVE committed numerous atrocities throughout history such as Christianity (namely the Roman Catholic Church) and Islam. So we shouldn't generalize and lump ALL indigenous religions into one category but pinpoint exactly the faults of each one honestly. Basically I see Western Abrahamic religions as "bad indoctrination" compared to Eastern Buddhist/Hindu religions which emphasize "good practice" over superstitious, dogmatic beliefs.

Why do people keep thinking that buddhism is a religion

I'm all for not making sweeping generalizations. He's saying there is no such thing as religion because there are outliers that don't seem to conform to the common definition of religion. I have a simple solution. Let's call those things that do not fit the common definition of religion (like the Buddhism example he gave) something else. The outliers have been addressed. Now we can use the word religion to refer to the vast majority of views that do fit the commonly understood definition. There the outliers have been addressed, the problem has been solved.

my definition of religion... Religion: A person or people groups specific worldview as it pertains to the supernatural. (that includes atheism)

God is not the only spiritual agency in Judaism. Oh well, go on.

We all know that there's no such thing as religion as things in the bible for example doesn't make sense. But having religion provides them satisfaction, reassurance, happiness that there's an afterlife. Even though it does not exist, at least having religion will keep them mentally healthy

I don't understand why people never seem to understand the truth behind the morality of religion. Humans are the committers, religion is the excuse/outlet. You could take a religion that condones slavery, racism, sexism, rape, violence, child molestation, and every horrible thing you can think of and someone, somewhere, will use that religion to do something good. When asked why they did this deed, they refer to the religion as the source of their goodness. If someone of that same religion does something bad, they will refer to their religious text as an excuse for them to be a murderous, sadistic rapist. Religion is the excuse for behavior. The behaviors themselves are to be blamed on the human. Blaming religion for the actions of others is like blaming the knife for a murder instead of the murderer or thanking the money for saving the lives of sick children instead of the donator.

From what I've seen about Kwame Anthony he doesn't believe anything exists. Race, religion etc... That is not the reality we live in, just because you don't know how to define something it doesn't mean it doesn't exist. I don't have enough knowledge to understand how I can see, that doesn't mean I'm blind.

You cant say nazis were a bad thing, as this is a label and no two nazis are the same. Would this be a correct analogy of his argument?

Love trumps all.

There is no such thing as religion. The only consistent thought I have about those things we tend to call religion is, that in my book, they are all very wrong descriptions and explanations of the way reality works. What I believe in isn't religion, it's science. The problem with me is that I really don't bother to investigate them all and I am probably completely unaware of more than half of the so called religions that do exist. Those things I call religion are where I don't look for descriptions of reality and explanations. Science is where I look. So, at the slightest hint that some way of describing reality is goofy, I throw it in the religion bucket and forget about it. My time on this planet is too short to bother with them.

Religion is like all things: Neutral until someone uses it to do either something good or something bad.

Much of what he's talking about is culture and customs. But the worship of a deity in any form IS a form of worship and by definition is religion. Religion as a form includes a system of religious attitudes, beliefs, and practices; these may be personal, or they may be advocated by an organization. Usually religion involves belief in God or in a number of gods; or it treats humans, objects, desires, or forces as objects of worship. Case in point, for many people worldwide soccer/football/fútbol is treated as a religion. But the bible also teaches there is a true religion and many false religions. Jesus used an illustration to contrast true religion against false religion in this way. He stated "Go in through the narrow gate, because broad is the gate and spacious is the road leading off into destruction, and many are going in through it; whereas narrow is the gate and cramped the road leading off into life, and few are finding it." (Matthew 7:13,14) The Bible also states, "Look out that no one takes you captive by means of the philosophy and empty deception according to human tradition, according to the elementary things of the world and not according to Christ." (Colossians 2:8) Most of the things taught in the world's religions today are based on human traditions that have no divine origins. They are empty deceptions and meaningless in their philosophy. For example: Christmas is not a Christian practice. Nowhere in the bible is the birth of Jesus mentioned. However the account of his death even down to the hour was chronicled in great detail by four different witnesses. If God REALLY wanted people to know his son's birth this event would have been given the same level of treatment as his death. Why is not in the bible? Quite simply because for many Jews in the first century -- of whom Jesus and his apostles (and for that matter most of the first century Christians) were also Jewish -- the practice of celebrating one's birth was viewed as a pagan custom that the pagan gentiles engaged in. In other words it was against Jewish custom to celebrate birth dates. The celebration of someone's birth was only mentioned twice in the bible at Genesis 40:20-22 and Mark 6:21-29. In both cases the event was hosted by wicked, pagan rulers and ended in the murder of someone. This shows the custom of celebrating a birth day is is not supporting by Jehovah God. The author of the Bible, Jehovah God (Psalm 83:18; Isaiah 42:8; Hebrews 3:4) is not a God of death, destruction and murder. He IS love. (1 John 4:8) In fact the greatest act of love he offered to mankind was his son precious son Jesus Christ as a ransom sacrifice in place of Adam's sin. (Exodus 34:6, 7; John 3:16) He lovingly warns people about the coming end of this system of things and then gives them the choice of how they will respond. (Matthew 24:14; Revelation 22:17; 2 Peter 3:9) He doesn't force anyone to serve him. Contrast Jehovah God's personality with people in the Middle East who murder men, women and children if they simply belong to another faith or speak another language. This is NOT Jehovah God's personality. ALL problems in the world can be traced to a single source. The bible identifies that source numerous times. (1 John 5:19) the whole world is lying in the power of the wicked one. (Luke 4:6) Then the Devil said to [Jesus]: "I will give you all this authority and their glory, because it has been handed over to me, and I give it to whomever I wish." (2 Corinthians 4:3, 4) If, in fact, the good news we declare is veiled, it is veiled among those who are perishing, among whom the god of this system of things has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, so that the illumination of the glorious good news about the Christ, who is the image of God, might not shine through.

Definition - Religion: a set of traditions or beliefs relating to an idea of metaphysics or the supernatural. Religion is bad.

Yes, not all religions are the same, but this is definitely NOT a trick question. Religion, at its best, is redundant. At its worst, it is harmful.

Religion is one of those things that exists because people think it exists, like culture. This talk was a bit confusing in that regard. And religion is neither good nor bad, because any positive or negative results could be attributed to malpractice

Religion is a collection of ideas combined with a level of conviction that will hold up despite evidence contrary to the ideas' factuality relative to the observable world. Wordy I know, but this allows you to put every single world "religion" into the same category as well as state religions, sport religions, cults, and even some fanbases.

I feel as if this argument leans too much into the Thatcherite "there is no society" claim. Religion and society are two very tangible things, and are incredibly easy to observe in action assuming you're not working in a strictly empirical sense. However, I agree that broad, sweeping statements are a detriment to greater discourse. That said, I would also argue that to say that there is no such thing as religion would be a broad, sweeping statement which simply seeks to ignore or somehow avoid the complexities in and great variety of religious constructs and the comparisons of same.

its clearly bad because its untrue. the truth shall set you free

Ghana!!

0:19 the title is actually, "God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything." Kwame left out the "Not."

With no religion ( so far) able to prove the claims of the religion, ALL places of worship should be taxed at the same level as all the other businesses. And ALL places of worship should be required to have this sign ( paraphrased from a psychic hotline disclaimer) prominently placed outside their building: By law, we must state that this is for entertainment purposes only. You must be 18 years or older to use any religious services provided. All religious guidance is subject to your own interpretation. By attending a religious sermon or class you are agreeing that any information/guidance provided does not constitute or substitute for legal, psychological, financial, medical, or business advice. You claim full responsibility for the choices and/or actions taken based on the content of any sermon, class, or advice you receive.

I didnt understand what the point was..was he trying to say religion is so diverse and much of it dont make sense..and most of us live in beliefs and doubts that we really don't wish to encounter or question may that be in religion or science..yes thats a true state of human society..and every scientist whether it was Einstein or Darwin, they had a a specific beleif that led them to interpret the observations they saw according to their visions..which to a great extend was right and to some extend led to flawed interpretation..but it was compensated by opposing opinions by other scientists ..so all we need is an open society with out taboos ..where opinions can flaw freely..and in that way an open religion where with out inhibition we can discuss the philosophical part of our existence will also strengthen humanity

hm.. although i loved his main point, i wish he had a little more tangible substance to this. something about if religion doesn't really exist, then what is it really in the first place? just culture or something along those lines?

Mr. Appiah flubs his opening statement by not knowing the actual title of Hitchen's book. That said, I'm reminded of Aquinas' comment: "Unbelievers are in ignorance of things that are of faith, for neither do they see or know them in themselves, nor do they know them to be credible. The faithful, on the other hand, know them, not as by demonstration, but by the light of faith, which makes them see that they ought to believe them ." There is a certain irrationality in Mr. Appiah's attempt to rationally deny the idea of an incorporeal realm.

Good or bad is relative. Religion makes people more positive, more appreciative. But if youre in a religion but you're not religious and everyone is religious then... Youll feel guilty. I find religion as a good thing, it's the power of suggestion, the power of your own brain. You could be happy as an atheist. And you could be happy being atheist and spiritual, like maybe follow (study) philosophy.