Empirically speaking, there are memes which mainstream/popular religions have taught that are objectively harmful to the flourishing of homo sapien life.
THere are also memes spread by mainstream religions that have been beneficial to the flourishing of homo sapien life.
List the meme (idea), and your hypothesis on why it is beneficial/detrimental to the flourishing (used here to mean quality measured by sociological stats, ie per capita income, median education, life expectancy)
of the human race.
Ill start with:
-The idea that birth control methods are immoral, propogated most notably by the Roman Catholic Church.
Widespread ignorance and rejection of various birth control methods seems to do little in the way of discouraging sex.
Overpopulation is mainly found in poverty-stricken, highly religious areas.
Overpopulation generally leads to social instability and widespread poverty.
Absence of birth control also encourages STD propagation.
STD’s degrade quality of life, and shorten life-expectancy at times.
My professor dicussed a reason for the poor to have more children then the wealthy back durring the 19th century. He stated that since health and mortality rates were so poor in the lower classes it made sense for them to have a lot of children. The idea being that some of them would defy the odds and survive thus being able to take care of the family when they got older. Can this argument be used today?
Since jobs are so scarce and it is very tough to earn a living in these areas the family has a bigger chance to procure ends meat by having more children rather then less.
You are forgetting about the primarily Muslim region of North Africa which has the lowest occurances of AIDS. Whereas the Sub-Saharan region of Africa, where the predominant belief systems are animism and not organized religions like Catholicism.
I’m making the point that belief systems based on fidility in sexual relationships can be beneficial to preventing STDs and unwanted pregnancies. The biggest cause of the spread of STDs however, i think, is lack of education, which is something the Roman Catholic Church supports. The sexual education program in the local school districts may be on the chopping block if certain right-wing christy-types get their way.
Religious groups, like the Catholic Church, have, and still do contribute to the well being of the general population by encouraging charity and organizing charity drives. The problem with this is that indoctrination always seems to follow their acts of kindness.
But in answer to your originall question i think that the memes that are most detrimental to human life are those that carry a “one-true-path” clause.
I do not entirely agree with the statement you’ve put. Indeed some religiontells people to breed. Yes, religions are outdated. But to pose religion as harmfull instution, goes a step further which I can’t follow. I would agree the religions should be modernized. But that is almost impossible, because religions are based on century old beliefs, which can’t be thrown away easily.
This concept of God the dictator leads to followers switching off their own judgement and following the ancient ideas from a barbaric time thousands of years ago. Not only that but it completely circumvents the basic morality people usually have creating an army of zealous sociopaths.
“It can be moral to kill people”
The same christians who condemn violent movies display God as the ultimate paragon of virtue, the same God who repeatedly kills thousands upon thousands of people throughout the bible. Often as a whim or for being deceived by one of his own lying followers.
Okay, so perhaps sometimes it is necessary to kill to save lives but it should be something treated as the ultimate last resort and never more than a grey zone.
“Another life is more important than this one”
People waste their entire lives away on the fear of an imaginary afterlife, meaning they may has well have never existed at all.