Religion - More harm than good? Religion has been with us since the beginning of recorded history and undoubtedly even before that. The reason it continues to remain with us is because as humans, we have a natural fear of death, and religion claims to offer us eternal life. All known current religions claim to be peaceful, but I am going to explain why I believe religion does more harm than good.

People are seperated by religion. For example, a devoted Christian may not associate with an Atheist, a Catholic may not associate with a Jehovah's Witness and a Muslim may not associate with any of the above. Religion causes an unnecessary seperation of people which in turn causes tension. This seperation also causes problems in politics. Imagine for example, a man running for presidency in the USA, a country with a high percentage of religious citizens, was to announce on live TV that he is an Atheist. It is unlikely that the religious voters would vote for a man of no religion and in their eyes "immoral", and this goes against the basic principals of democracy. Perhaps the leaders of religious countries use religion to gain more votes from the religious voters...

Children are more affected by religion than anybody else. From the earliest age, religious families drill their beliefs into the heads of their children. The message they give is: "Believe what we believe or god will punish you by sending you to hell where you will burn for all eternity". The threatened use of violence is a form of terrorism. It is illegal to physically punish a child if he/she does something wrong, should it not also be illegal to mentally terrorize them?

Heavily religious politicians have been numerous in every country since organized government has existed, and this has led to various different laws which are in place because of the beliefs of certain religions. The problem of religious law is more serious in the east than in the west. In the USA, it is illegal in some states to buy or sell alcohol on a Sunday. The roots of this law lie in religion, and there are many laws similar to it which, although very small and largely not worth bothering about are still an infringement upon our freedom. In the east where there is no seperation of church and state, this problem is significantly worse. For example, in some middle-eastern countries you can be put to death for drinking alcohol, having sex out of marriage or even if you are a homosexual, all because these things go against the religion of Islam.

The last and most important point I would like to make is the violence, wars and tortures past and present that have been committed in the name of religion and god. To name a few: The Inquisitions, in which anybody who would not accept christianity as their religion was tortured and murdered. The crusades, in which millions of innocent civilians were tortured and murdered because they were not Christian, and the Jihad's, in which thousands of people were tortured and murdered for not being Islamic. All these attrocities were committed by religious people in the name of their religion and their god. A little extreme, considering there is no evidence to prove that any gods actually exist, and this is why i believe that religion does more harm than good.  (Edit = Removed the rough sketch from the first post and added the final version into this one) 

Hey Dayve, I can give you some brief feedback on this essay as an assignment:

Topic: perfectly legitimate topic.  It's very broad, though, and might be hard to cover all of religion in 500 words, so consider either narrowing it (e.g. "Judeo-Christian-Islamic Religion: more harm than good?&quot or specifying in your introduction that you're only going to talk about Judeo-Christian-Islamic religion, since that's what you actually do.

Paragraph 1: every sentence makes a broad, sweeping claim that would no be possible to support in the space allowed.  Luckily, you don't really need to make these claims for the purposes of your argument. I mean think about it: in order to argue that religion does more harm than good, do you really need to prove that religion continues because humans fear death?  Narrow down the introduction and remove all the broad claims.  For this type of essay, a brief presentation of the problem (why religion is bad) is a good way to start.

Paragraph 2: Again, I think you can start off with the claim that religion causes separations without having to claim that Christians are prevented from associating with atheists (which is not necessarily true).  Then that opens the path to explain why separation is bad.

Paragraph 3 & 4  make claims that are true, but they are not linked back to the essay's topic.  These paragraphs can be retooled to say something more like "another of the negative effects of religion is on children," and "religion also limits how non-religous people live their lives," but make it clear how it connects to the main topic.

The info in the last paragraph might work better earlier in the essay, like maybe in the introduction?

Overall I have to say that this essay does a better job of supporting its points than most U.S. first-year college students do in their essays, and that the language skills here are also stronger.  It's mostly an issue of limiting the scope of your claims to things that are supportable in an essay this small, and remembering to show how your claims relate to the main topic. 

How bizzare this idea seems to the U.S. education approach. Here it's not unusual to encourage students to get feedback from other sources (writing tutors, peers, friends) on a writing assignment before turning it in.  As long as a student actually does the writing him/herself, it's not cheating.  It's much more like the way that actual professional writers work, where nearly every document is collaborative (or at least edited).

Interesting to know. 

Welcome to the forums, Dayve!

While I agree with Textom's thoughts, I'm still impressed with your essay.  This from someone trying to catch-up???  Wow!

I hope you stick around the forums.  This place is pretty educational all by itself!