Does your religion make you a better person?

[Eric Arthur]

Interesting chat in the pub last night where our religious friend insisted that religion makes you a better person. I disagree that it makes somebody a better person in any possible way. That said, she did get a round in.

[sutty27]

Interesting chat in the pub last night where our religious friend insisted that religion makes you a better person. I disagree that it makes somebody a better person in any possible way. That said, she did get a round in.

 

That depends, they might actually dislike you to the point they want to kill you but their religious beliefs mean they have to be nice to you.

[Eric Arthur]

That depends, they might actually dislike you to the point they want to kill you but their religious beliefs mean they have to be nice to you.

 

Were you sat at the next table because my religious friend said something very similar. My other friend said something along the lines that a bad person would be much nicer after a course of psychotherapy instead of confessing sins to a preacher.

 

We sort of agreed that most people were basically quite nice, but she insisted that her religion made her even better.

[RootsBooster]

Interesting chat in the pub last night where our religious friend insisted that religion makes you a better person. I disagree that it makes somebody a better person in any possible way. That said, she did get a round in.

 

Did she give any reasons as to why it would make you a better person?

[sutty27]

Were you sat at the next table because my religious friend said something very similar. My other friend said something along the lines that a bad person would be much nicer after a course of psychotherapy instead of confessing sins to a preacher.

 

We sort of agreed that most people were basically quite nice, but she insisted that her religion made her even better.

 

I was sat at the same table.

[Eric Arthur]

Did she give any reasons as to why it would make you a better person?

 

It was a bit fuzzy, but you must give us the benefit of the doubt since we were in the pub, not the Oxford Union.

 

Things about generally being nice to people, food banks, taking poor children on holiday, respecting family. That sort of thing. She wasn't saying that I and my other friend were worse people specifically, but she might have been being polite, being a better person.

[RootsBooster]

It was a bit fuzzy, but you must give us the benefit of the doubt since we were in the pub, not the Oxford Union.

 

Things about generally being nice to people, food banks, taking poor children on holiday, respecting family. That sort of thing. She wasn't saying that I and my other friend were worse people specifically, but she might have been being polite, being a better person.

 

Yeah but they're things that plenty of people do, regardless of religion (or absence of). There's also plenty of religious people who don't do those things.

 

Did she give any reasons that are specific/exclusive to the religious?

[dutch]

Interesting chat in the pub last night where our religious friend insisted that religion makes you a better person. I disagree that it makes somebody a better person in any possible way. That said, she did get a round in.

 

An organised religion cannot make a person well or better. No matter how hard or forcefully they hammer that religion at themselves. It will make them sicker, frightened, angry, upset.

 

True religiousness is a personal experience. It comes from experiences that wake you up and bring awareness and consciousness to your presence.

 

A person needs to be religious to become well again (better is a stupid word for true conscious non organised religiousness).

What I call religious here is only a drive towards witnessing a growth of awareness and consciousness.

[alchresearch]

I've often heard of good, polite driving being known as "Christian Motoring", and the phrase "it was the Christian thing to do". Do Christians follow the ten commandments more than a non believer?

 

Its a very open ended question, because you could say that someone who is religious could be like Ned Flanders. But then I've known some elderly churchgoers who have been full of bile at unmarried couples and gay ones.

[sgtkate]

An organised religion cannot make a person well or better. No matter how hard or forcefully they hammer that religion at themselves. It will make them sicker, frightened, angry, upset.

 

True religiousness is a personal experience. It comes from experiences that wake you up and bring awareness and consciousness to your presence.

 

A person needs to be religious to become well again (better is a stupid word for true conscious non organised religiousness).

What I call religious here is only a drive towards witnessing a growth of awareness and consciousness.

 

I was going to post something similar, in that I suppose you could argue that 'faith' might make you a better person (playing devil's advocate here to be honest) but I can't see how a set of rules completely made up by a human could ever make you better person. If anything it has the possibility of making you act with less compassion or understanding because all you are doing is doing as you've been told without trying to help others on their terms. Hope that makes sense as I'm struggling to think how to word it.

 

How would your friend explain ISIS? I don't want to turn this into yet another muslim bashing thread or a discussion into whether they are religious or not, they believe they are so in this context and based on your friend's point surely she's effective trying to say that the members of ISIS are better people because of it? Interesting point if so.