Religion Poisons Everything Or Does It?

In the August first edition of The Harvard Gazette[i] an article appeared entitled “Gods in the Details” in which Prof. Joseph Henrich demonstrates that faith and religion is more than a bunch of taboos and superstitions as propounded by most atheist.

His study seems to be indicating that religion was one of the key factors in unifying people in large civilizations and in building a base for their morality. Of course, it has been known for a long time by historians that whenever a civilization stopped believing in their gods they soon sunk into depravity and ceased to exist. It seems now that this has been verified by evolutionary psychology that many in the atheistic community will have to change their rhetoric that religion is worthless and poisons everything.

This study seems to support the idea that religion has contributed to the creation of morality and unity in large civilizations. This, at least on the surface seems, to be indicating that the atheist position that reason alone can create morality and ethics is simply an oversimplification of religion and morality.

[i] The Harvard Gazette is a free on-line newsletter.