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human
CMV: Religions are unfairly blamed for social ills

I want to preface this by saying that I am someone who grew up staunchly Orthodox Christian, but is now spiritual, but not religious. 

Every time I see something about why religions are bad, it always seems to be the same issue: 1) that they are often outdated and discriminatory, and 2) they are often used as an excuse for people to do really bad things. I don’t argue with that, but I find these to be really simplistic arguments. 

From what I’ve experienced of religion, religion is a reflection of society and how it sees the world. And because society is flawed, so religions are flawed as well. But I feel that focusing on the bad ignores the good that religion does as well, whether it comes to giving to the poor and those without much, or having a sense of community love of their neighbor and generally working towards a better world. The people who I know as religious are the best and most caring people, and I do not believe that their religion didn’t have an impact on who they turned out to be. 

As for the second argument, of course there are people who use it for bad things. It’s an unfortunate part of life, but bad people will always warp religion to follow whatever viewpoint that they believe. As an example, I would never say that Ted Bundy represents atheism, even if his quotes show that he warped the ideas of atheism to justify his actions. Similarly, I don’t think it is fair to put all of the actions of a few radical sects at the feet of an entire religion.
gpt
I don't think it's so much that people are blaming the religions themselves but organized religion and religious political leaders which have caused many terrible events all throughout history, and even to this day. Religion at it's core tends to be a guideline of how to live a good life and interact favorably with others, but all throughout history people have abused the faith of others to exploit them and do wrong. The particular religion doesn't really matter, there have even been Buddhist terrorists groups, as absurd as that may sound.  

In a majority of cases where religion has caused significant harm to others on a large scale it is because of leaders of a religious organization promoting hatred, prejudice, and violence. In addition, many political leaders often use religion as an excuse to enact laws that favor ingroups and negatively impact outgroups.

So when people blame religions for social ills, what they are more specifically blaming are the actions of organized religion. When people disparage an entire religion rather than just a religious organization they are typically either not educated enough to realize that not all religious people belong to a religious organization and subscribe to the same way of thinking, or are simply prejudiced against people who have views that differ from their own.