INTRODUCTION TO WORLD

RELIGION
LESSON 3
Positive & Negative
Effects of Religion
• analyze the influences of religion to culture
and society;
• identify the effects of religion: positive and
negative;
• provide evidence that religion brought
about an event in history; and
• explain that religion can have positive or
negative effects on society.
 Positive & Negative Effects of Religion

• Religion has become a very important

aspect in development of civilizations and
cultures. In fact, most ancient societies
based their worldviews on religion, and it
has been proven to be beneficial to the
attainment and maintenance of social
stability and cohesiveness.
 Positive & Negative Effects of
Religion

POSITIVE NEGATIVE
RELIGION
EFFECTS EFFECTS
 POSITIVE
Promotes EFFECTS
Provides Gives Positive
Social Social Goal
in Life
Harmony Change
Provides Explain Give People a
Sense
Moral the of Belonging
Values Unknown
 Positive Effects of Religion
There is no doubt that religion has an important
role in society. In fact, it has become so closely
intertwined with other institutions such as political
and economic systems that religious beliefs
sometimes became the basis of the political
legitimacy.
 1. Religion Promotes Social
Harmony
• Religion believes in supernatural beings and
powers. It practices a set of rituals and
ceremonious rites of passage of intensification.
It also regards religious leaders such as priests,
priestesses and shamans in high esteem. These
characteristics help advance social harmony by
assimilating and stabilizing cultures and nations.
 Equally important is the belief in religious
leaders whose function was to mediate between
the deities and people. In ancient Philippine
society for example, spiritual leaders were
called babaylanes or catalones whose function
was to intercede between the deities and the
people; they act as healers and cultural leaders of
the community.
 2. Religion Provides Moral values
• Perhaps one of the most significant functions of
religion is that encourages moral values. It provides a
systematic model of the universe, which effect
determines organized human behavior. By providing
moral values, one is able to distinguish right from
wrong, good or evil. it also provides a systems of
reward and punishment that administers and
standardizes people behavior in society.
 3. Religion Provides Social Change
• Since religions is a source of moral values, religion
provides social change. It can be very effective in
lobbying and campaigning for certain social
issues using its own moral teachings as the
basis of argument. For example, the church in the
Us has been active in the campaign for civil
liberties as well as the antislavery movement.
Since religion is a source of moral values,
religion provides social change. In the
Philippines much credit has been given the
Catholic Church for the success of the
People Power Revolution in 1986 when
Archbishop Cardinal Sin urged the people to
join the protest rally to oust the dictator,
former president Ferdinand Marcos.
 Another example would be Gandhi’s
satyagraha or passive resistance, which paved
the way for India’s independence from the
British in the 20th century. Satyagraha
advocates the belief that nonviolence of the
mind can lead to the realization of the real nature
of an evil situation and that by refusing to
cooperate with evil, truth can be asserted.
 4. Religion Reduces Fear of the Unknown

• Religions was developed form man’s need

to have a sense of origin and destination;
to discover where they came from and where
they are bound to go when they die. Religion
provides answer for phenomena and
questions that the science or reason cannot
explain.
 The belief in the afterlife has become very
important in most religions because it has
become the basis for their daily conduct or how they
live their lives. The Hindus for example, regarding
how they follow their dharma (moral and social
obligation) determines what will happen to them
in the afterlife as long as they follow their
dharma, they will reap good karma (karma refers
to moral consequences of one’s act).
 5. Religion Gives Positive Goals in Life

• People were inspired by the story if

different prophets form their own religious
affi liations, like that Moses, Siddharta Gautama,
and Muhammad. The people showed how
ordinary people them were given important
missions in life, and how they struggled to
carry out their respective missions.
 Moses was ordered to liberate the Hebrews from slavery
in Egypt and lead them to the promised land;
Muhammad was chosen to challenge the supremacy of
the ruling class in the desert by preaching equality and
founding the Islamic religion while Siddhartha Gautama
gave up his wealth and power to find the solution for
sickness, poverty, old age and death. Their narratives give
people a sense of meaning in life; that they are not
placed in this world without a purpose.
 6. Religion Gives People a Sense of
Belonging
• Just as family , ethnicity , or nationality give people
a sense of belonging, so does religion. For some ,
religion provides people with personal identity as part
of a group with similar worldviews, beliefs, values,
practices, and lifestyles. It provides communities
with prospects to recognize and offer vital action
and service to provide the needs of the larger
community.
 Members of a religious community can
have the assurance that they can rely
on other people’s help in times of
need. They can also expect to have
people rejoice with them in times of
success. Religion can provide a sense of
personal identity and belonging.
 NEGATIVE
Affirms Social EFFECTS
Triggers Impedes Scientific
Hierarchy Conflicts Success and
and Fights Development
Causes Serves as an Obstructs the
Discrimination Economic Tool Use of Reason
for Controlling
the Masses
 Negative Effects of
Religion
Religion has often been named as the culprit behind
divisiveness and conflicts among people. There is also
beliefs that religion can be dangerous to society when used
to advance the interests of a people at the expense
of other people especially those with different
religious beliefs.
 1. Religion Affirms Social Hierarchy

Some religions affirm social hierarchy often favoring

men as and result, perpetuate the notions of class and
gender discrimination and oppression. Another example
of religion reflecting the hierarchy of political structures
would be the Confucians emphasis on the
relations between the ruler and the subjects, with
the former exercising the authority over the latter.
The traditional caste system in India
would also reflect how religion
reflects political and social
structures since it propagated the
idea that people had to be
subdivided into certain social
classes with particular social roles.
 2. Religion Causes Discrimination

There are some who say that religion, after turning

people against themselves, turn people against
each other. This happens when people do not
tolerate religious ideologies different from the one
they follow. Religion can also be a source of
discrimination, or the prejudicial treatment of different
categories of people or things especially on the basis of
race, religion, age and sex.
 In Islam, the practice of wearing the hijab ( a head
covering worn in public by Muslim women) and burqa (a
covering of the whole body from the top of the head to the
ground) is considered by many critics as a form of
suppression against Muslim women. Women have to
cover their body, from head to toe, so as not to
attract the attention of men- perpetuating the
notion that women are temptations that men
should avoid.
 3. Religion Triggers Conflicts and Fights

• Religion also has some aspects which

make it susceptible to be a source of conflict and
war. History witnessed numerous lives
sacrificed and lost in the name of religion.
Wars have been fought in the name of religion,
and this phenomenon continues up to the
present time.
 In Palestine, the Jews are in conflict with the
Muslims; in Kashmir, it is the Muslims against
Hindus; in Sudan, it is the Muslims opposite
Christians and animists; in Indonesia, it is Muslims
against Timorese Christians. These are only
some of so many wars being fought in the
name of religion, which means that so many
resources are being wasted and millions of
lives are being lost.
 4. Religion As An Economic Tool for Exploiting
The Masses

According to the German philosopher Karl

Marx, "religion is the opium of the masses."
This is in relation to his critical approach
to religion in which he proposed that the
bourgeoisie keep the proletariat in control
through religion.
 According to Marx, it maintains social inequality by
propagating a worldview that justifies oppression. Whether
one is a Christian, Jewish or Muslim, religious teachings
justifying one’s acceptance of oppression as a normal
part of life on earth as a means to get an everlasting
reward in the afterlife can be seen as a bourgeois tactic to
maintain the status quo where they reap more
resources and power in society. Thus, in Marx’s conflict
theory, the abolition of religion is needed to liberate the
masses from their oppressive state.
 5. Religion Impedes Scientific Success and
Development
• Throughout history, religion has proven to
impede scientific development. For example,
it has often been said that the Catholic Church
used to teach that the world is flat and warned
people against going to faraway places if they do
not wish to fall off the edge of the earth.
 Another example would be the claim
that the earth is the center of the solar
system also known as Ptolemaic theory.
Aristarchus, and later on Nicolas
Copernicus proved that the sun is the
center of the solar system and all other
planets move around it, hence
advancing the heliocentric model.
Religion-based mortuary practices can also be
detrimental to public health and
sanitation. For example, during the cholera
outbreak in the Philippines in the 19th century,
the Catholic practice of having the dead
body of cholera victims be brought first to
the church for a Mass was seen as one
reason why the cholera epidemic spread
rapidly.
Liberal-minded people at that time
believed that it would be much
safer and hygienic to bury the
dead immediately instead of
exposing the dead bodies by
observing religious practices.
 6. Religion Obstructs the Use of Reason

Many question the suitability of religious

doctrine to the needs of the present and
the future generations. In order to put
these dogma to practice, religion should,
therefore, evolve and learn to adapt to the ever
changing world.
 Ancient religious beliefs and practices which have
proven to be inhumane should be replaced with
sensible ones. Take for example, the case of
trepanning or the ancient practice of boring holes in the
human skull, a surgical procedure performed on
epileptics and the mentally ill, with the belief that
through the hole the evil spirit will leave the
person. During those days they regard it as an
attempt at exorcism, but at present the procedure is
just unthinkable.
Historical Events
Caused By
Religion
 Historical Events Caused By Religion
In some regions in the world, religion has
become very influential in almost every aspect
of human activity-from personal routines to
diplomatic relations. Furthermore, in each
country there are majority and minority
religious groups ad sometimes the power
struggle between these two groups escalate into
historical developments which oftentimes shock
the world.
 Historical Events Caused By Religion

• Self-Immolation of a Buddhist Monk

in Vietnam Widows Burning Among
the Hindus in India
• The Inquisition
• The Godhra Train Incident in 2002
 Self-Immolation of a Buddhist Monk in
Vietnam
• Self-Immolation, or the killing of oneself as a
form of sacrifice, originally referred to as the
act of setting oneself on fire. But now it refers
to as much wider range of suicidal choices such
as leaping off a cliff, starvation, or ritual
removing of the guts (also know as seppuku). It
is used as a form of political protest or
martyrdom.
 Widows Burning Among the Hindus in India

• Sati, or the practice of self-immolation of a

widow on her husband's funeral pyre, is said
to have originated 700 years ago in India, when
the raj put women burnt themselves to death
after their men were defeated in battles to
avoid being taken by the conquerors.
 The Inquisition

• Inquisition refers to the Roman Catholic Church groups

charged subduing heresy from around 1184, which
includes the Episcopal Inquisition (1184- 1230's) and the
Papal Inquisition (1230's). The Inquisition was a response to
large popular movements in Europe considered heretical or
profane to Christianity, particularly Catharism (a Christian
dualist movement which espoused the idea of two gods, one
being good and the other evil).
 The Godhra Train Incident in 2002

• In February 2002, a train was set on fire in which 59

people, including 25 women and 15 children, were
killed. The fire happened inside the Sabarmati Express
train near the Godhra railway station in the Indian state of
Gujarat. Those who died inside the train were mostly
Hindu pilgrims and activists returning from the holy
city of Ayodha after a religious ceremony at the
disputed Babri Masjid site.