Positive & Negative

Effects of Religion
HUMSS 1

Source: https://www.slideshare.net/PerfektoPotato/positive-negative-
effects-of-religion
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

RELIGION

POSITIVE NEGATIVE
EFFECTS EFFECTS
 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.
 POSITIVE EFFECTS
• 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.
 POSITIVE EFFECTS
• Religion Provides Moral Values
– Perhaps one of the most significant functions of
religion is that it 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
 POSITIVE EFFECTS
• Religion Provides Social Change
– Since religion 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.
 POSITIVE EFFECTS
• Religion Reduces Fear of the Unknown
– Religion was developed from 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 answers for phenomena and
questions that the science or reason cannot
explain.
 POSITIVE EFFECTS
• Religion Gives Positive Goal in Life
– People were inspired by the story of different
prophets from their own religious affiliations, 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.
 POSITIVE EFFECTS
• 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
identify as part of a group with similar worldviews,
beliefs, values, practices, and lifestyles.
– t provides communities with prospects to
recognize and offer vital action and service to
provide the needs of the larger community.
 Positive Effects of Religion

Promotes Social Provides Moral

Harmony Values

Provides Social Explain the

Change Unknown

Gives Positive Give People a Sense

Goal in Life of Belonging
 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.
 NEGATIVE EFFECTS
• 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
 NEGATIVE EFFECTS
• 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.
 NEGATIVE EFFECTS
• 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.
 NEGATIVE EFFECTS
• 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.
 NEGATIVE EFFECTS
• 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.
 NEGATIVE EFFECTS
• 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.
 Negative Effects of
Religion
Affirms Social Causes
Hierarchy Discrimination

Serves as an Economic
Triggers Conflicts
Tool for Controlling the
and Fights Masses

Impedes Scientific
Obstructs the Use of
Success and
Development Reason
 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
– 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.
 Historical Events Caused By Religion
• 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 rajput
women burnt themselves to death after their men
were defeated in battles to avoid being taken by
the conquerors.
 Historical Events Caused By Religion
• 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).
 Historical Events Caused By Religion
• 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.