Quote:
Originally Posted by Sliver
In the same way doctors go all over the world giving vaccines and condoms to the poorest people on earth, Religious Studies Departments - if they wanted to use the knowledge they have - could put boots on the ground and educate people.
As an example, in some African countries they'll kill you for being gay by using religious justifications. The scholars need to establish where in the bible that is coming from, then debunk it, then educate people on why using religious justifications to kill people is wrong.
Closer to home, they should have done the exact same thing in California when the Mormons launched their campaign to take away gay marriage from California. Instead, I didn't hear a single thing said from scholars of religious studies debunking the rationale of the religious person's voice, to the detriment of equal treatment of gay people.
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But what are they debunking? Looking at correlations between religiosity some of the closest are level of education and wealth. Those two factors reduce how religious people are. So if your goal is to reduce the impact of religion poverty reduction and general education will benefit, not a preacher.
What argument is the religious studies prof supposed to make. If I say The bible says this therefore I beleive it as long as I believe that bible is a holy book that is infallable no arguement is going to change that. The concept of faith supercedes logic so no logical scientific based argument is going to change that.