 And now they're not just seeing every movement that you make, they're also inside your head. This is how people are. You can just get more and more paranoid. It's called a useful fiction, right? Because my point here was that things don't need to be true to help people. You can have useful fictions that help people, that save their lives. I'm sure someone will note my obvious disadvantage in this debate, that being my association with the Satanic Temple, a religion that actually does more good than harm. So to avoid any accusation of hypocrisy, I must point out a couple things there. One, I paid $25 for a membership to the Satanic Temple where I hold no position or title, and having membership technically does make me a Satanist. But I paid for an ordination with the Universal Life Church, and I simultaneously have another ordination with the Church of the Subgenius, also known as the Church of Bob. And I have a third ordination with the Church of the Latter-day Dude, which makes me a dutist priest, man. Satanism doesn't have any beliefs apart from an agreement with the seven tenets, which only amount to a very short list of social ethics, not any declaration of faith. As a matter of fact, one of the seven tenets specifically condemns faith, saying that beliefs should conform to one's best scientific understanding of the world, and that one should never take care, never to distort scientific facts to fit one's beliefs. In that sense, Satanism is basically humanism in goth drag. Satanism is recognized as a religion by the United States government only because the Supreme Court justice once expressed the not legally binding opinion that he thinks ethical culture should qualify as a religion, and he thinks that includes humanism. If so, then that would logically have to include Satanism too. I have a different opinion. I think it's hilarious when believers in traditional religions try to project their own faults onto me by falsely accusing me of scientism, where they say that the rejection of religion is a religion, and that evolutionism is a religion, but those same people say that Satanism is not a religion because they don't have a consistent definition of what a religion is, and the US government doesn't either, but I do. As I understand it, every concept that is commonly accepted as a religion by both its adherence and its critics is a doctrine of ritual traditions, ceremonies, mythology, and the associated dogma of faith-based belief systems, which all posit the notion that a supernatural essence of self, be it a soul or a consciousness, memories, etc., may in some way transcend the death of the physical body to continue on in some other form. That is the definition I will adhere to in this debate. It applies to every traditional religion and only to religion, but not to any of the positions I hold, nor to any of the organizations to which I belong, because pastafarians don't really believe in the flying spaghetti monster, just like the sub-geni don't really believe in the slackmaster J.R. Bob Dobs, and no one really believes in the invisible pink unicorn, and Satanists don't believe in Satan, like Christians and Muslims do. Otherwise, Satanism might be the only religion that does more good than harm, but they cannot compete with the long and bloody history of racism, nationalism, sexism, holy wars, interdenominational conflict, stoic opposition to progress of any kind, but especially on social issues, and the oppression of dissension that we've seen rampant in Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Judaism, and most other religions as well. Groups who tend to treat heresy, blasphemy, and apostasy as capital crimes and in denial of one of our most fundamental rights, the right to free thought, the right to think and believe whatever we do for whatever reason makes sense to us. Religion would deny us even that. I find it amusing that T-Jump wants to debate whether religion does more harm than good. The question allows that we both understand a long list of horrors. We both understand the long list of horrors that have historically been and currently still are being done in the name of every faith, and we can both accept that maybe there's some placebo effect in believing allegedly harmless white lies for whatever that's worth. Nor do I feel the need to bring everybody down by listing myriad atrocities done in the name of some religion or another popping up in the news of any given week, and I honestly think we've heard enough of that and we don't need to hear about it anymore, and wouldn't that be nice if we didn't have to hear about any of the persistent evils of religious faith anymore? But it never ends. And I'll admit that modern religion has had to adopt some kind of public relations. It's not like it used to be where they used to be the ultimate authority and were totally criminally corrupt, and consequently some churches really do donate to charities sometimes. Although in Dallas where I live we have scammers like Kenneth Copeland and we had Reverend Bobby Tilt who took in tens of millions of dollars for an orphanage in Haiti until it was discovered that that orphanage never existed. Catholics really do have orphanages around the world and only sometimes do they rape little boys and very rarely do they murder all their Indigenous students and bury them in secret. And some religions like Jehovah's Witnesses only offer charity to their own and Mormons only help those who are on the rolls for paying tithe. My mother is one of those who typically pays 10% of her gross and the more desperate her situation becomes the more she pays because she thinks she's buying blessings when really all she's doing is keeping herself accursed. The LDS helped her out with a few bags of groceries every so often and I appreciate that, although what they gave her at groceries during the hard times were less than what she usually paid in tithing. That and the Church of Latter-day Saints is one of the smaller and newer religions yet they are also reportedly already the richest religion on the planet. Richard even then the long-established and global Catholic Church so how the LDS managed their charity is clearly not doing as well and we're doing as much good as they could or should. And it's an incident when believers will pay more than they can afford in order to be healed by some fraud who never had that ability or worse when the mentally ill are abused by some idiot who actually thinks he's exercising demons. The question isn't whether any religious person has done more harm than good nor whether most religious people have caused more harm than good it's whether religion as a whole is doing more harm than good. And whenever I argue religion with believers I have to ask what is the advantage or benefit of being completely convinced of things that are not evidently nor even possibly true because there's never been any support for anything supernatural and no support for mind-body dualism either in neuroscience or even in philosophy but all religions depend on that. Even Christian scientists admit that the story of Adam and Eve is genetically impossible and is only mythology adopted from elder neighboring polytheism. Anthropologists know that the Tower of Babel never happened archaeologists know that the Exodus never happened and that Moses never existed and many different fields of science can all prove that the global flood never happened. All religion is a denial of reality to some degree to believe in things that are not supported by anything. The difference between moderate faith and religious extremism is just how much of reality is being denied or ignored. Whenever this comes up believers ask me what harm there is in believing things that are not true and repeating baseless assertions as if they are true. The question always comes down to what's wrong with lying. The first thing wrong with that is that somebody might believe it. Belief informs actions and misinformation is misleading often to horrific ends. Lest we forget that the Bible and the Quran and Hindu scriptures too include commands that unbelievers should be killed even if they're close family and friends. And we know that earlier pagan religions did the same. Each of these religions also endorsed the suppression of women and encouraged behaviors that are irrational, illogical and objectively immoral and that people should pursue these awful behaviors with unreasonable conviction and righteous zeal. For example, later today we're going to have a debate over child marriage because the Bible and the Quran both support that. I have also seen a number of studies showing that mere intrinsic religiosity still has mentally debilitating effects. There is a detriment to your ability to reason if you've been conditioned by the threat of a fate worse than death that you have to make believe impossible absurdities even when all the evidence says otherwise. One study shows that non-religious children are more capable of distinguishing facts from fiction than religious children who are more susceptible to deceptive fantasy. Another study showed from the Journal of Religion shows that students' performance on reading, math and science tests were all recognizably hampered by several forms of parental religiosity even when it is merely intrinsic. Another study shows that nothing fails like prayer. Not only do prayers not make anything better, they actually make things worse. Even in health related situations, such that prayer fails even in the instance where it should have had a placebo effect. Yet another study shows that religious people mistake mental health to be a spiritual problem and will seek spiritual guidance from clergy who don't know any better rather than seek psychiatric health which they've been conditioned to distrust. And one more study, funded by the Global Center for Religious Research found that a third of Americans have experienced religious trauma. Some of the symptoms are nightmares, shame, depression, fear, stress and anxiety. 90% of us know someone like this. So does any institution that is traumatized, at least a third of the US, count as mostly bad or good? Look at it this way. If a medication left 30% of the recipients mentally ill, would it be seen as mostly good medication? Now extrapolate that back to traumatizing 30% of America. And also, that is leaving out the percentage of people who are causing religious trauma with physical and mental abuse which I'm sure we'll talk about shortly. All for a belief in an indefensible absurdity with no truth in it. Thank you. Thank you very much for that opening, Aaron. We'll switch it over to Tom for his opening as well. Thanks for being with us, Tom. The floor is all yours. Thank you, James. Thank you, Aaron. Appreciate the opportunity to be here. Thank you to the audience for coming. Thanks for the support. We need you guys to be able to keep these things going. So thank you. Likes and comments are subscribed to me and James, mostly me. Tom, today, does religion cause more harm than good? The harm caused by religion, there is a lot of it. I agree with the vast majority of what Aaron said. Religion has caused 7% of the wars and 11% of the deadly atrocities according to the encyclopedia of wars. These wars would not have happened if there was no religion. Religion does cause bigotry. It holds back scientific progress. For example, the Islam of the 1200s famously outlawed math and trade, which set them back thousands of years. Newton famously argued that the orbits of the planets could only be explained by a god, famously debunked by an applause. It holds back moral progress, women's rights, Indian slavery, workers' rights, animals' rights, racism, guilt, manipulation of children, ethnocentrism, homophobia, militarism, all the things are elicited. It does do that for some people. So does religion increase violence and bigotry behavior in some people? Yes, but the question isn't does it increase it in some people. The question is does it increase it overall? The question is does it also decrease violent behavior in people as well? And does it do that more than it does the increase? So the good cause by religion, there is also a lot of it. This is a metadata study on the religion's effects, rates of theft, robbery, assault, murder and drug use. The result showing decrease of about 3% to 5% in these rates over people in general. So are there studies that disagree? Are there some studies that show that there is a negative correlation to religion? That's true. There are. But the vast majority of studies are positive. This is a metadata study of 270 studies, 244 of which show a positive correlation to religion, two of which show a negative and nine of which show nothing. The vast majority of the academic consensus is that religion does hold a majority positive impact. Does it have a negative impact? There are some studies that show a negative impact. This is a positive impact by a significant margin. Does religion, to use an example, does religion kill or save more lives each year? Homicides, according to the UNO DC, about 464,000 people are killed via homicides in 2017, whereas about 90,000 were killed in our Encompliance. So if we take the number of 7% of wars increased by religion, that's about 6,000 lives lost each year due to religion. And if we take the 3-5% of lives saved by religion and apply that to the homicide number, we get about 23,000 lives saved. So this religion addition to a society will save 23,000 lives and kill 6,000 lives. Overall, that's a net saving of 17,000 lives. Given this example of just murder, religion clearly does more good than harm. And the same is true for drug use and selling, domestic violence crimes, suicide and mental health, murder, depression and prison inmate satisfaction, decreasing in violence and lower recidivism rates. So all of these have about the same effect of about a 5% decrease and across 100 billion people who are religion, this is a massive, massive positive influence that religion causes. This also causes a faster recovery rate from emotional and physical ailments. Like holding a rabbit's foot, believing in false hope of a magical being who cares about you can lower your stress level and cortisol level and release dopamine allowing your immune system to function more effectively. This will improve enough to move forward and heal faster. If you have a society who can heal faster from mental and physical anguish from going to the hospital, that will definitely be a benefit to the society than one who takes longer for the people to heal. Recovering from religious emotion, there's in a cosmic skeptic recent interview within Reason podcast he mentions that the religious people can wear scraps around the Bible to the, around their neck. To prevent getting invaded lowers their stress level helps them to move forward in life and he also mentions another study that during the Lebanese Israeli war would pray daily and those that did had a lower sense of terror and a lower stress level and this effect was magnified the closer to the front of the war that it took place. This is an example of how religious belief can lower your stress level and help you to function and move forward in life in very difficult situations that is much harder to gain from a secular worldview. And so in difficult situations having a religious ideology can help people to function and grow the economy and live and promote life much faster than a non-religious ideology in many cases. Priming, religion also provides an effective priming. Priming is when you tell someone about the Bible or moral things before they take a test or do some kind of work and there's tons of studies that show when people are primed with moral primers they do better. They don't cheat as much they don't steal as much, they are more charitable there's all kinds of studies on this and so having a kind of religious belief like Jesus or whatever that causes you to think about moralizing things that I'm all throughout the day will cause this primate effects to you far more often than someone who does not have some kind of a moralizing ideology that causes them to be primed throughout the day. So for each person, religion causes to be bad it causes a thousand to do good millions have used their religion as inspiration to discover and many have lost their faith because of it many people who have been on the forefront of abolishing slavery, advocating for women's rights and workers' rights, even though religion has caused delays in these things there's also caused many people to fight for these things many more people have fought for these things that have fought against them if we remember correctly the English were the first ones to abolish slavery over Christians and they used the Bible as justification to end slavery the same thing applies to like Newton who famously used his idea of a God as requirement to explain the orbits of the planet. He also used religion as an inspiration for him discovering things about the universe. He wrote more about religion than any other field for every predator priest there are thousands of priests who are good people just trying to help everyone around them for every person who is indoctrinated and guilt-ridden and depressed and spends thousands of dollars of their excess money that they don't have to try to feel better there are thousands more who are given hope and comfort and guidance and find meaning and value and so I agree religion does do a lot of bad things but it does a lot more good things and so let's play Civilization 5 you can add religion to your society so there's 117 billion people all of which get minus 5% crime minus 5% drug rate minus 5% suicide plus 5% mental health plus 5% crime to do good things plus 5% criminal recidivism lowering recidivism rate minus 5% domestic violence plus 5% charity the detriments of religion the bad things minus 1% of all those things which is 1% increases the amount of bad things people do by 1% decreases it by 5% and it also increases wars by about 7% overall the effects of religion is positive because the tons and tons of 100 billion people who are affected by minus 5% crime rate save significantly more lives than the increased lives lost from wars and atrocities and the benefit to all of these aspects is many many orders of magnitude greater than the detriment caused to the minority as Ari mentioned there is a very rarely do Christians do really bad things in churches like eliminating all of the people it's just terrible but the vast majority of them are good people just trying to do good things and build a community and help others so I agree, religion does tons and tons of bad things it does even more good things so even though I'm an atheist I must follow the evidence where ever leads even if it leads to a conclusion that is uncomfortable so religion has caused more good does religion cause negative violence and big headache? yes but it causes significantly more to do good if we have an atheist society like Sweden Norway Denmark they don't they have lower rates of crime, lower rates of violence that's a valid point but the benefit of religion is that in stressful situations next to wars, next to poverty religion can help cope with those things and help you to move forward which is much more difficult under a secular world secular world views are more challenging intellectually more difficult to cope with more difficult to find meaning you have to really think about these things and have the energy to do that so religion can provide a buffer for the emotional way to be able to cope that secular world views don't as much provide so to be a consistent skeptic because I acknowledge that there's value to religion I think we atheists should create a religion to provide the same values, the same benefits to the demographic of society who this is useful for it's not useful for everybody as I and Aaron are both atheists I really find these benefits we were in the demographic that were on the negatively affected side but for many people that do provide these benefits atheism should offer an alternative to them which is why I think we should start with atheism religion, join the atheists church I'll be the pope of atheism, thank you and I conclude there thank you very much for that opening as well Tom we actually only have one mic so for the open dialogue I just need you guys to project your voice a little bit louder fortunately it's a good narrow pathway in terms of the venue but with that we're going to kick it over to you gentlemen the floor is all yours and Mike, I'll grab that mic from you Tom to take it off your hands thank you very much alright gentlemen we're ready for you alright so you're going to take both of the mics yes we must yell well he's holding two mics yes okay he's the back alright so Tom's data contradicts the findings of the clergy project which was started by Daniel Dennett it was an organization for preachers who are professional preachers they've been doing this for a while and they realize that they no longer believe what they're selling to their congregations and what do you do when you're 40 years old and you realize that you've been doing this all your life and you don't have any other skills except maybe you could go out and become a used car salesman at this point so they turned to this network which is the clergy project who for people to find solace and maybe employment or some kind of support Mike elsewhere what's that James James we need the mic well let me just rethink this I'll do this a little better I don't know if you can hear me this way okay Tom's data contradicts the findings of the clergy project which found that preachers okay I wasn't starting to have fun with that like old timey church anyway what these preachers have noticed what the clergy project had noticed was that a trend in all of these preachers that gave up religion they were lifelong believers and when they gave up their religion they found that they were less prejudiced they were more tolerant they were more liberal they were more forgiving and so they would definitely would often go back to school learning science and things that lamenting the things that they've never learned before in some of my videos I've shown reports of a negative statistical correlation between religiosity and what we typically think of as moral behavior where we notice that the factions of dominant religions statistically have the highest crime rate with special emphasis on hate crimes religious people have been shown to be more likely to condone the killing or torture of prisoners where non-religious people are more likely to consider that morally wrong but it gets worse because the most religious countries also have the highest murder rate and the same is true for the most religious areas of the United States the higher the religiosity of a given populace the higher the murder rate nations that are more secular show the opposite tendency where the less religious they are the more peaceful they tend to be and here in the United States evangelical Christians have the highest divorce rate and the highest rates of teen pregnancy and abortions also which isn't surprising in areas that teach abstinence only instead of offering sex education here in Texas we had consistent links when we were teaching abstinence only we had consistently had the highest rates of repeat teen pregnancies although I did read a newspaper article that actually said that teen pregnancies decline after they turn 20 when they're no longer teens yeah but it gets worse still students in private religious schools where evolution is not taught are statistically more likely to get an abortion than their peers in public schools where evolution is taught and this is a testament to the hypocrisy and shows what a colossal failure the policies of the religious right have already been but it gets even worse than that child protective services and other agencies report that a significant majority of child abusers and molesters identify as very religious the more religious they are the worse offenders they are with younger and more victims and for some of us all that matters is whatever is really true only accurate information has practical applications and we want to know what is true and not be fooled into believing things that are not true so I agree that religion does cause harm cause many people to do more harm but the question is it doesn't cause more people to do good so what about do you disagree that it causes more people to do good are there more pastors out there who are actually helping you who are trying to find homes who are giving their time to comfort people to give emotional support especially in needs in hospitals why would the fact that it causes some people to do harm negate the fact that it does the most people or more people to do good you're assuming that religion you're assuming you're concluding that religion mostly does good that most people are trying to help people by telling them comfortable lies yes so I went to children's hospital in Dallas and I had a meeting with their what do they call it their chaplains there and they wanted to know from an atheist how to help parents because they're having more and more atheist parents with children in the cancer works and they said to me that one of the things that they would say to believers the things that would say believers to make them more comfortable you know she's an angel God just needed another angel and she's in a better place all of that and they said that what they noticed was not only would these things not comforted to atheists they said that it actually enraged them like well yeah that's no surprise and they wanted to talk to me and I had a room of like 8 or 10 of these chaplains asking me well how would we help atheist parents well that's a great thing and I'll concede to you these chaplains want to help atheist parents not just people in their own congregations that's great but I said here's the challenge the lies won't cut it we need to see your empathy maybe a hug maybe a tear just something to acknowledge that you understand what we're going to because there is no lie that will help us I had a friend who's a genuinely good guy who's a southern Baptist preacher who told me when my own daughter died in children's hospital cancer not my daughter, my granddaughter sorry when she died in children's hospital when she had her second relapse leukemia and we knew where that's going he comes up to me puts his hand on my shoulder very solemnly he says I'll pray for you so I said to the guy you know imagine you've got a 4 year old girl comes up to you she realizes you have a terrible problem you need to deal with she's going to write a letter to Santa to get you the help that you need and you know she believes it does that give you comfort? no imagine she's a 14 year old fucking man and she's telling you the same stupid shit so that's the problem it's still a lie it may be comfortable, it may be a white lie it made people like this guy was a good guy and he became a Christian because he thought that good equals God and godliness is good so he's got this association going on but it's not he was a good guy anyway if he was an atheist he'd still be a good guy his religion isn't causing him to do anything he's just naturally inclined to do that well just to jump in there so if he did that to a Christian would it make him feel better? apparently some people like being lied to and lots of people are Christian so if he goes up to say 100 people in a hospital one of them is you which obviously would hurt you, hurt me because we are insulted by that we are ex-religious, we don't think it's a valid ideology but for the 90 other people I don't want to say hurt or insulted it's obviously irritating the point is that the 90 other people he went to that day, he helped he made them feel better, he made them feel comforted he allowed them to emotionally cope with the situation and move forward in life which is not the right word but the majority of the work he did that day was positive he helped more people by a significant margin ok so you're saying it's ok to tell white lies to people who might be lied to they already believe in lies has your wife ever asked you if she looks fat in these jeans would you like to plead the fifth? we've had very interesting conversations about that because I'm not going to lie I'm just not but I will make sure that she understands you are a beautiful deer she knows I mean it but that's like a more difficult conversation that takes a lot more effort you have to stay through, you have to be very careful with your words that's a difficult thing and for people who have to work 20 hours a day that's a more challenging thing to do they just say nope you do not look fat in those jeans honey let's go to work that's not for your example I understand what you're saying I will tell you I said this with some pride I have never lied to my wife we've been married for we're going on a 14th year I've never lied to her it's cool, appreciate it but do you think that doing that does help many many people cope in relationships and many people who are not you and your wife do appreciate those kinds of white lies well you don't but do most people do most people appreciate one if you're saying that it's okay to lie to tell the harmless white lies to most people because most people like to be lied to in our current situation then I will agree most people like to be lied to and they don't see the harm in being lied to relatively few of us do but we're a growing percentage we represent like a third of the populace global a third of the world population now are unassociated with any religion they don't have any faith I myself identify as a activist I think that the faith is the most dishonest position it's possible to have just a note on that I agree that a third of people in the world are no longer religious but most of them are still spiritual I think it's like 60% of atheists are still spiritual but what does that mean? it means they like the white lies some of them do my own journey out of that was I'm sorry to say that I didn't just wake up and say hey this is stupid and just go to this even more skeptical view most of us had to do a walk and I did mine through Leo Pagan occultism I wanted to do trans and devil meditation I thought that there was scientific evidence for the paranormal I want to experience that leaving your body and doing things like this that was going to be the way of getting first hand experience to know the truth of the matter I tried that for years even pulled myself through faith for a little bit to imagine things that weren't really there which is what faith is doing and I eventually came out of that I wish that I could have just put down the book and said this is stupid and just be completely skeptical and lost your breath but that's a walk for most of us well so I agree that you can get to the point where emotionally they don't help you and they can hurt you white lies but vast majority of people are benefited by that there are several studies that show white lies make you feel better it releases dopamine, it helps you to cope and these effects of releasing dopamine lower in cortisol have massive effects on your body it increases the rate of your immune system being able to function so you will get better from sickness faster so yes I agree that or I think we should lie to people if it'll lower their cortisol level it will help cure them of a disease faster yes absolutely we should lie to them to help them function better in society I don't care as much about the truth as I do about people's happiness and lives in well-being and if lying can improve people's happiness lives in well-being we should absolutely do it yes I'm going to have to disagree I'm just not going to lie to people and I don't care if it makes them feel more comfortable I'm going to find another way around that and they don't have no clue the way that you've made this debate where we can just using the same type of arguments we can argue whether alcohol is the cause of or solution to all the world's problems I don't quite follow never mind you're saying it's okay because most people enjoy it right? well I'm saying it's okay because they enjoy it and it actually has demonstrably positive effects in society we can say that about alcohol like what? that there are positive benefits that most people enjoy it does make people feel better it goes well with your food the beer makes the food taste better the food makes the beer taste better the wine every day has some kind of positive benefit I didn't bring studies for that debate we're not going to do that one today but you've got a very similar thing going on here well if alcohol helps you get better from being in the hospital if it helps your mental health if it helps you to have a lower sedative rate when you've got a prison if it helps you recover from cancer better if alcohol did all of those things yes I don't think alcohol does do any of those things but it did I'm not sure how alcohol can help you cure your liver disease but we can try it okay so I don't know what else to say I think we're done with that well do you agree that it helps more people in society than it puts do I agree that most people the majority of people like to be lied to get enjoyment out of being lied to and do you agree that that has a significant effect on their mental and physical health I don't know how it could especially given the type of misinformation that I quoted here and that it's still playing people that are believing in you you still have misinformation you still have a degree in reality denial you are still being completely convinced of things that are not true or at least not evidently true well why does that matter to helping people like you don't need to know the truth to help people there it is when I talk to believers it always comes down to why can't I believe it if it's not true well no my question is why does it have to be true to help people because like there's a famous thing in evolution called type 1 and type 2 errors here Russell and the bushes think it's a lion, run away, everybody runs away who survives, people who think I'm going to be skeptical and wait for more evidence get eaten a little bit more and so believing the fairy tale that there's a ghost or whatever in the bushes saves more lives even though it's false so I don't understand the analogy isn't really the ghost in the bushes what it really comes down to because we are social animals we expect that even when we're alone if we think someone might be able to see it so we're careful about what we're doing how we dress all that but when you get into the mindset of thinking that someone might be watching you and might be reporting on you well then you start acting like well they are somebody's always watching you and now they're not just seeing every movement they can make, they're also inside your head this is how people are I think it's called a useful fiction because my point here is that things don't need to be true to help people you can have useful fictions that help people that save their lives by them thinking it's a ghost in the bushes and running away the same thing can apply in this situation it doesn't matter whether or not it's true or corresponds to reality what matters is having this belief help you to be healthier recover faster, lower crime rates whatever which contradicts the study I was citing before well I agreed, so I looked at the studies the studies I listed are metadata studies of 200, 300, 800 different studies so I agree there are some studies that go against the data in the single digits so there's hundreds and hundreds of studies that show a positive correlation a couple dozen that show a negative correlation because that's how studies work so there are studies that go against this but the vast majority go towards the fact that religion has a positive impact in society at that moment I was talking about the ones about prayer and how useful is that? if you have it doesn't even have the placebo effect it actually makes things worse well that part I would disagree with because I know there are some studies that show prayer doesn't have a placebo effect but there's a lot that show it massively does specifically for people who are in cancer when a priest goes up and prays with them it reduces their a lot of stress and helps them recover faster which is one of the studies I listed so your argument is that it's okay to lie 100% there's nothing wrong with lying I don't have a problem with lying I'm going to have to make a moral decision are there Jews in the basement? Nazi comes up to your doors are there Jews in the basement? is it okay to lie? my position on things like that in these types of moral plans is lies and violence are in the same category and both should be like last resort and maybe an excuse even in cases of self-doubt maybe in extinct soil well I'm not sure what you mean by a last resort so like if this will cause desperate situations just to clarify I got that part the question is where you define a desperate situation if someone is in the hospital and they can recover faster by like days, weeks, months 5% or whatever by telling them a lie that seems to count as a desperate situation because if you apply that to millions of people who can all get faster 5% better and go back into the workforce and function in their lives if you can save 5% of lives that's desperation that seems like it's a completely justified reason to lie at this point okay so you're saying it's okay to lie because most people like to be lied to? because it saves lives, yes 5% faster according to the number of studies no, that's not saving lives 5% of 100 is 5 lives saved we've probably said 5% faster in their recovery right, so that was one of the reasons it's just somehow they're estimating that it's happening 5% later the faster the people who believe the lies so I was also mentioned murder rates it decreases by 3% to 5% and I also mentioned how we have all these reported studies about how these decrimerates are higher and worse in the most religious areas and the child molesters are the worst when they're the most religious those are also included in the studies so as I mentioned it does increase violence in some parts and the reason murder rates are higher in more religious societies because more religious societies also have more poverty and more poverty causes more crime so that's all accounted for in the studies I mentioned which is why the vast majority of them show a positive correlation and also in the cases of people who do the prayer right, they're talking to some they're talking to themselves imagining that they're talking to somebody who can read their minds and it doesn't matter who you're talking to it doesn't matter who you're talking to it doesn't matter who you're talking to if you're talking to the ghosts of your ancestors you can talk to a bloody handprint on a volleyball and eventually they'll start talking back this is a mental condition that should be avoided I think a mental condition is something that leads to negative side effects it leads to positive side effects it's no longer a mental condition you're reporting there are positive side effects and you're accepting that there are also negative side effects absolutely these are lifelong these people have these most important beliefs they are misguided their entire lives so that's a problem and they also turn away from real medical help because of their religious belief they deny medical help because they want to be healed or because of religion for basement for this or because some of them majority of them don't so I do agree there are people who are like anti-vaxxers but that's the vast minority of religious people there are a lot of negative side effects of religion to a small percentage but the positive side effects are far more so I agree it does cause some people to be anti-science like young earth creationists most Christians aren't young earth creationists so the fact that you keep listing these negative side effects but you're not contrasting them to the positive side effects from people who are benefited by these things so I agree if you always look at the bad things because I can't see it as a positive side effect when you have these people like to be lied to that's not a positive side effect ok they feel better because they like to be lied to because they like to be lied to that's probably needs to be fixed well if they live longer and recover faster and do more things because of that I see that as a benefit like if I'm comparing two societies they like to be lied to but have less crime and less murder I'm like that's a better society I don't care about the lying part who cares about that I want this live saved there's a whole lot more to you want to argue the society well I don't think so because it seems like if we adopt religion into a society which is a group of people and the effects on that society are mostly positive tell them all the same life well any religion in this context I'm not specifically picking one religion but are we going to have different people believing different lives and the different lives tell them that I'm better than you because we're going to be judged by what we believe what we do what we believe sure and that causes the positive impacts that I demonstrated in my slides even though it can cause an extra 7% of wars an extra 11% of atrocities it saves vastly more lives than it costs even with the level of derision between religions okay I'm going to concede at least that most people unfortunately like to be lied to thank you I'll take that I think we're done you got it thank you very much gentlemen we'll actually start a Q&A line right in this aisle here so anyone who has a question if you can stand on this gray piece of tape that way we can get you in the video feed we'll welcome you up to the Q&A thank you hey how's it going guys do you think that the same contrast needs to be made about the amount of good religion provides in society right now versus the amount of hypothetical good it would potentially be made in the future had we gotten rid of it in other words would we be better or worse off without it did you hear that question so he asked if we should contrast religion and the effects it had to the day as opposed to if you replaced it early on a different ideology what effects would that have I agree that religion is not the most effective ideology and there are other ideologies that are better and so if we just went back in history replaced religion with our secular humanism or something they would have far less of the bad things and far more of the good things so I agree with that completely I don't think religion is the best ideology but the position I'm advocating for isn't that religion is the best or that is the thing that we should implement at all times I'm only arguing that it has done more good than harm so I'm a full agreement that there are better ideologies like secular humanism that don't entail a lot of the bad things and have more of the good things this question is for Tom you said in your opening statement that the number of deaths attributed to religion was about 6,000 do you really 6,000 per year do you really think that number holds up to scrutiny when you consider stuff like the Islamic state which are hundreds of thousands of people and that's just one organization yes so like as I mentioned before the number of wars and atrocities from the source I mentioned is an additional 7 to 11% so they cause an 11% more atrocity so those numbers are actually included in that data for 2017 this is a 2017 and so yes that even including the Islamic state the amount of murders increased on average is that number I think what we'll do is if you guys are okay with handing one of the mics off and then we'll have one mic down here that way the audience can hear the asker thanks guys thanks for your flexibility okay so I don't remember your name you're the guy with the little shirt with the little pipe in it Aaron so my question basically is when it comes to lying in the sense of trying to make somebody feel better so I'm going to use my own experience in this so these past couple of years I have struggled heavily when it comes to just sadness and depression and early on this year my mother passed away after you know just a lot of failing health and I'm not trying to make you feel bad or anything so I just wanted to fill that out but my question comes in had I not had I not had God you know he's a lie or he's real I probably would have killed myself so I'm just curious as to what what is your view when it comes to people like me when it comes to people who haven't saved from being tipped over the edge by religion I don't have any way of relating to I don't want to speak to depression because I know that there's different causes for that and I don't have any personal experience where it works but he's in an L I can't understand or I can't really accept that you would have killed yourself if you didn't believe this lie I just don't see that I think people find a reason to keep going and you just if that was the one you found that's the one you're going to do for it that was a pretty good answer actually did you want to comment on that a little bit so I also had major depression and I tried all the different things to try to make me feel better I think it was physical relationships with very attractive people would help me feel better so and so the things that can cure people for depression are very, very, very diverse everyone's unique, everyone's a different person and so what can help them is distinct to the individual and so I fully acknowledge the fact that religion helps many people to get over to depression David Wood who I don't know if you've seen her in the audience today was helped by religion more and more a person this happens all the time and so I think that it's a weakness of our position that you can't acknowledge that because it is absolutely the case that religion can help people and inspire them in ways that can definitely save their lives and so I'm very sympathetic to your position and I hope that you're feeling better I appreciate both of you answering thank you I thought your speech was really funny and awesome and I came to realize that absolutely there's this stagism where your religion is a religion according to your definition which I think is what you're arguing and I was wondering according to that religion of yours how have you personally seen it affect your family and the people in your life in a positive way for you I just want to say an example because I wanted to support the events of the First Amendment to fight a fire but for fire I'm using religion against religion in order to preserve secularism which is the only way to preserve freedom of religion the greatest threat to religious freedom is religious extremism it is the religious nationalism I've been an activist for almost 20 years and the enemy on every issue every attack against truth against education against the Constitution has always only ever come for religious decertifices they're on the wrong side of every issue and so I belong to an organization that promotes or defends the First Amendment and that's the way it doesn't change anything about my family we already dress like we were in the Adam's family so so basically if I hear you right that your religion has helped you fight other religions more effectively your religion I love joining the Satan your fight your fight against religion which is your religion has helped you better fight other religions again as I said it doesn't fit my definition of a religion I paid $25 for a membership to an activist organization that's how I see it and I paid similarly for an organization to this religion and they don't believe this guy either awesome thank you and then we'll also have question askers move up to this first grade line actually do you mind if I comment on that one quick so I think your question was what are the positive benefits of secular religions like Satanism and Satanism has lots of positive benefits they do lots of charity work they do lots of help, there's the universal the utilitarians provide housing the church I'm starting provides housing secular organizations do tons to help people essentially the same thing as any regular churches do so secular organizations, secular churches do this as much if not more good to help people as religious organizations as Ari mentioned in this opening now I do not argue that there's a downside to the community I can get from religions that like you said these secular organizations but these secular organizations as I said they don't have a faith based requirement they don't have a requirement to believe some they're not a belief system then they're not a religion it's the doctrine that makes it do it but faith is also the problem because it means that you are being completely unreasonable about your position well so I agree that's important, yeah I agree that's an important aspect to religion and I base my religion off my belief in objective morality so I agree with your definition there I don't see it as a problem I don't think faith is an issue I think believing what makes you happy is more important than believing what's true about reality and you should only focus on reality if that's what's important to you both of you can address my can you hear me first of all I am surprised to hear from an atheist kind of support for some positive nor some religion now I would like to touch a little bit on religious extremism I would like to you both to touch a little bit on religious extremism there is no Baptist terrorist organization there is no Methodist terrorist organization but we do have Baptist terrorist organization can you name one the names escape me right now but there are I think in time I'm going to have a moment on the internet I can show you that most of the terrorist activities have been identified as such by the definition have actually been done in the United States in the last 10 or 20 years they've been by right wing Christian organizations I think one name comes to mind the Christian identity which was the organization that was the name of the ones that blew up the murder building in Oklahoma City in the 1990s so that they're one and then I wish I could remember the other names the more recent groups but there are a few of them and there was another one that took over a burnt sanctuary and I forget what state that was but yeah some people died or that and there are others but they've been holding armed conflicts with police and federal officers so yeah they do happen and we do have them they just in American news they tended not to identify white Christians as terrorists regardless of the definition or not so you'll name two so there are terrorist organizations in pretty much every religion other than Jainism Jainism is the only one I know that doesn't have that even like Shinto Buddhism which is the second most pacifistic religion on the planet has terrorist organizations in it and so there is a small minority of people who can become extremists in pretty much any religion even the most pacifistic ones there's only one exception I know about which is Jainism and that's it and Shikism is also very very pacifistic but what is it do you have a specific question about the extremist organizations because most people in those religions are extreme pacifists so there's extremists on both ends my question my point was we see one particular religion that is really doing extremism we don't see I don't see any Christian organization or any Christian religion with any kind of religious affinity I don't see that I will thank you the Western society has pushed most people in western progress society to become more moral but back in the day there were crusades, witch hunts, mass murders, genocides, all kinds of things done by Christians luckily most western society where Christians are predominant have progressed past that but it was, they were the most terroristic in the world at one point one is for the stream and one is for the speakers yes hi my question is for T. John so it seemed that you were hinting at northern countries like much less religious than I think our country here lower crime, more peaceful overall better health outcomes in our healthcare situation here when you had your slide about with the civilization game it was like four or something like that why wouldn't you run that as everyone's the northern countries not there's religion that goes back to the original question so my argument here is that religion is the best ideology, there are other better ideologies and secularism once you get rid of all the poverty and war and stuff is significantly better at everything but the argument is that religion has done more good than harm overall, not that religion has done the best so if I had a choice of any ideology obviously I'd pick my own because mine's probably the best one ever but I'm not arguing that we should implement religion above all other options my argument is only that religion has caused more good than harm overall okay thank you just declaring that northern countries it's not true of all the northern countries and it isn't just exclusively northern countries in Japan, Taiwan they're both kind of in there too we stand right here right here hi there this is mainly for T jump but one thing, I mean seeing there thinking of how to word this so excuse me but one thing that the studies I field is the long term effects like if someone is given a bunch of white lies about religion if later on they come out of religion through some means they have rough relationships with people who told them their white lies I mean that would be hard to do a study on but I think that should be a factor and I'm surprised you didn't bring that up Aaron because I think that's a very devastating effect and why organizations like the Religion Foundation exist is due to those so I'm wondering what your thoughts are on that oh yeah absolutely there are many cultures where leaving the religion can get you ostracized by your entire community lose your job, lose your family but again that's the minority that's like bible belt sections of religion mostly most like I think a large percentage of Christians in this nation are not like that it's a minority thing that you hear about in the news but most today are not like that the vast majority are kind of pretty accepting and most people who leave the faith like in college, their parents don't disown them they keep talking, they continue to be families and so a feature of the news is that we focus on the hyper negative aspects and we don't put that into contrast with the total aspects and so I agree that that is a problem in a negative aspect but it's the same with the other data I presented it's like a negative 1% but like a plus 4% on the people who are accepting and so overall it has more of a positive acceptance rate than a negative acceptance rate my question is if you believe it does more harm than good that without religion, morality tends to become relative and not as predictable and fixed no, so there's a two surveys, no there's a survey done on professional philosophers 72% of professional philosophers are atheists no guy, then they take the hard position God does not exist but 65% believe in objective morality so it's a belief among public of the public that you can't have objective morality without God but that's totally false there are tons of objective morality about God like there are religious positions like Buddhism where you have like a field, a comic field you don't need morality without a God that's pretty much a symptom of the fact that in our culture we're told that God is the only possible basis of objective morality but it's just false, there are lots of models of objective morality without God I have one and so it's just not to you agree with them? first I want to say let's make you hold the mic do all the work first I want to say that Erin's your hair is fantastic and also that someone left their I don't know if it's a hotel car something but there's someone who wants to look for it it's probably yours, gotcha you got it alright, my question is so there are people so on Tom's case some people are having benefits in religion but both claim that it is false the thing is that it is a personal experience so when it comes to direct acquaintance with the facts of reality which is the basis for how we know things epistemologically can you guys tell us how do you guys know that they are not experiencing because they are the ones experiencing it so if they got direct acquaintance with those experiences they are the ones that are acquainted and you guys wouldn't be acquainted with that so I just want to know how do you guys actually psychologize the other people that claim to have those experiences true so I'm also an atheist so I'm a hard atheist God does not exist because all the evidence goes against him so it's kind of off the topic of the debate but I would say that if you have no way to differentiate imagination from reality all of the evidence points to is probably imaginary because we have human brains who make up a lot of imaginary things so your personal experience in law in history is not sufficient evidence to justify anything that lacks an empirical basis so if you bring like miracles, magic, mythical creatures per almost supernatural UFOs in the courtroom it gets thrown out so personal experience does not count as evidence for anything that lacks an empirical basis the thing is just that justification and when it comes to classical foundationalism, direct acquaintance is already justified because it is something that you're experiencing in reality and how it relates is that so you're saying it is well just to jump in there, that's why we don't use that in courtrooms or history or most of science because that fundamental epistemology just doesn't work when it comes to accurately assessing the vulnerabilities of personal intuition and personal experience which is why we don't use them in the hard sciences is that an objective case of why it doesn't work? intuition fails the vast majority of the time when trying to assess reality it's a failed methodology which is why science rules it out and so when you're trying to make up what does work, what gives us justification that's a really good reason to think intuition is probably wrong whenever you're using it we're talking about agents agents are very unpredictable so it is odd to try to find predictability when if it's another agent I mean it's not like we can predict everything that an agent can do because we're talking about miracles here so don't you think it's a wrong methodology? No, if the agent is equally as predictable as random chance then the difference between that agent doing it and it happening by random chance is zero so there's no difference between the agent and nothing I did say random chance but we're talking about like just millions and millions of things happening so it's just a very very complex way of actually getting into truth with that so it can just be so complicated that it's very hard for you to actually do an an experiment where it's like consistent natures on that so it's just very hard to find that consistency that's what I'm saying All of the data shows there's no difference between a God or a conscious agent doing and random chance and nothing existing doing it so what's the difference between a God who does nothing and doesn't exist, there isn't one so that's why science does not accept any of this personal experience it's terrible evidence, we've proven it's terrible we know psychologically it's terrible it is not a good reason to believe something is true Okay, yeah, so for example the last question I gave you then we gotta move on Yeah, no, alright that's fine Thank you guys Erin, your hair is great, again This is for Tom for clarity on some of your Yeah, so all of those were controls in the studies the study was specifically done contrasting the control group of non-religious non-believers and the belief of believers and praying and those kinds of experiences and beliefs in the Supernatural Awesome, thank you We'll take just a minute in case there are any last questions Otherwise Awesome, great If you can stand right in front of the gray line there Awesome, thank you Awesome, thank you Awesome, great I can stand right in front of the gray line there Basically, I understand what both of you are saying So my whole my whole thing, what I'm thinking is Is it Oh, there we go, okay I was thinking that in the short term as religion might do more good than harm I'm thinking that in the long term you're spreading like logic that you're having more people fall into weaker arguments and you're spreading that and in the long run I think that you're not really how do I say it you're not like worsening or you're not bettering the issue but you're still keeping that would there be, is there a way to utilize that that would effectively in the long run reduce bigotry atrocities like be a religion that makes sense Yes, that is why I'm starting an atheist religion based on my morality to try to do exactly that so yes, I think that as atheists we should provide a kind of religion that helps people who are benefited by those kinds of beliefs to move in a more moral direction instead of letting the less moral religions take over and influence their beliefs Why would you start an atheist religion I already belong to four of them Mine's better Mine is the true religion Mine is the one true religion Thanks so much, let's give our speakers one last round of applause