Forgive me.  I'm not going to answer this here, and I'd like it if nobody else sidetracked the thread.

I'll be happy to address this in another thread if you like.

I'm simply interested in someone presenting empirical evidence that religion has contributed something positive to the world that could not have been contributed without religion.

So far, the most convincing (and completely unsubstantiated!) claim seems to be:

"Religious people might be motivated to be somewhat more moral by their religion, and might not be as motivated without it."

First, this is simply saying that religion potentially has a positive affect on an already existing morality.  This is not something unique contributed by religion.  Clearly, both atheists and theists are moral, to some degree or another.  The lack of any substantial difference between the two is telling.  (Seriously, if there was any good data pointing to religious people being more moral, don't you think it'd be all over the 700 Club?)

Secondly, there is good data suggesting that people in religious countries are not as moral as those in secular countries. 

Even if it's true, it's pretty weak evidence for the amazing superpowers of the most intelligent being in the universe, don't you think?

As to the prison population, there is no data I'm aware of that could answer your question directly.  I don't intend to use the prison population as a pillar of my argument.  It is simply evidence that could well support my position, but does nothing to support the opposing side. 

Here's a good place to start looking.  Each stat has the source listed.

Nice theory.  No backing data.  Anyway, you're suggesting that because people believe that god thinks they're worth something, then they think their life has purpose?

How do you explain the fact that atheists, by and large, feel a sense of purpose in life?  If atheists felt purposeless, you would expect very high rates of suicide and depression.  This is not the case.

Why would you think that the expectation of worshipping god for eternity would positively affect believers' actions on earth, when they are taught that their actions are meaningless -- only belief in Jesus determines their eternal destination?

Once again, this is an unsubstantiated claim that contradicts itself.  Atheists, by default, believe that this is the one chance at life.  Why would they risk bringing harm to themselves, or prison, or social stigma, by being immoral?  If you go to jail, that's it.  Nothing to look forward to in the afterlife to make up for your mistakes here.

This idea is dangerously close to deflecting from the original topic.  I want some evidence that religion has contributed something to humanity that could not have been gained without it.

Your belief that Christians might be more moral than atheists does not fit the criteria.  First, it's an unsubstantiated belief.  Second, atheists have morals, and many of them are, in fact, quite philanthropic -- so, neither morality nor philanthropy are unique to religion.  Third, there are less atheists in prison than theists, by population, which contradicts your theory.

and?

Where'd you get this idea?  Total non-sequitur.  There are plenty of reasons to get up in the morning, and plenty of reasons to want to stay alive, and plenty of reasons to help your fellow man.  Funny thing, only theists think atheists have no purpose.  We atheists, on the other hand, know that we do.

Sorry.  Unless you can demonstrate that atheists feel purposeless, and have no sense of self worth, you can't make this claim.

The Church modes. Specifically: dorian, and mixolydian.

Actually, you've hit on my area of expertise, here. The Church Modes were not, in fact, invented by the church. The four authentic modes, Dorian, Phrygian, Lydian, and Mixolydian, were codified in the 9th century (by the church) and Pope Gregory was given credit for inventing them.  This is simply not true.  Gregory had been dead for quite a while, and did not invent the authentic modes.  In fact, plainsong had been around since the Greeks codified it.  Boethius had written about it, but the scribes who named the "Church Modes" didn't read Latin so well, so they fudged the naming up.  The Church Modes don't resemble the Greek Modes of the same name.  They're just mutts, basically.  The church, however, launched a propaganda campaign, and gave Gregory credit.  The rumors persist to this day.

While the plagal modes were codified by the church,  there's no reason to think they weren't also borrowed from elsewhere.  In fact, the guy who finished inventing the church modes, Heinrich Glarean, was a Swiss Humanist.  (This was several centuries later, and brought the total number of modes up to 12.)

In any case, calling anything musical and religious a "contribution" is sort of a misnomer, because for close to half a century, the church had a nasty habit of excommunicating, banishing, or outright killing musicians whose work didn't live up to papal standards, which were, to say the least, a bit behind the times.

The one constant in church music has been an extreme reluctance to allow anything new. All you have to do is turn on a Christian radio station to hear that it's still true today!

For centuries, the interval of a diminished fifth was avoided like the devil. Actually, they thought it was the devil! Well, not exactly, but trust me. Really bad things would happen to your eternal soul if you didn't treat that interval properly. Literally centuries of music were tainted by the bizarre rules of avoiding the diminished fifth in all but the 'purest' of circumstances.

So, thanks for the contribution, but...

Survey Says!!!

PPPPPPPPTTTTTTTTTHHHHHHHHHH!

Look, Hamby, its not that atheists are not moral, responsible, people.  Many are.  What I am saying is that the average person is more likely to do a philanthropic action when he has religion because he now has more reasons to do so. 

The problem I have with Mr. Paul's study is that it actually raises more questions than it answers. The raw numbers tell us that STDs, violent crimes, etc are higher in the US and he can draw a statistical correlation to religious ideas. But I'm willing to be that if you looked at per capita consumption of Big Macs you would find the U.S. at the high end and Japan and Scandanavia at the low end. And we all know how France feels about McDonalds. It is plausible that consumption of hormone fed beef causes increased agression and libido. This is the type of study that invites further study. I would consider it interesting , maybe even compelling, but would not lean on it as proof of anything.

Of course Gregory didn't invent the modes. But the Church ensured their survival up until the Baroque era. A decent job, if I may say so. Sure, there was secular music back then, but that was mostly just the troubadours (the French started on the path to secularism quite early... hopefully the US won't take as long to get there, eh?) and some motets.

It's not very accurate to say that he "finished inventing" diatonic modes. All of the diatonic modes were built from the diatonic scale. One of the modes which is credited to him is the Ionian mode, which was the most popularly used mode at the time (according to Glarean himself), and still is very widely used today, as the major scale. To say that he invented it would be about as accurate as saying that Gregory invented plainchant.

Kinda makes me wish they were still running the business so they could "take care" of Fergie.

Actually, contemporary Christian music, like most other forms of "pop" music, emphasizes columnic chord changes, whereas the earlier church music (at least up until the Baroque period) focused more on intertwining melodies.

They didn't avoid it just because they thought it was the devil. They avoided it because they thought it was the most terrifically awful thing they had ever heard. The whole reason it got associated with the devil in the first place was because it sounded so bad. So if it hadn't been called the "Devil's interval," and avoided like the plague, it probably would have been called the "Horrendously ugly interval" and avoided like the plague. Of course, this is overlooking the fact that earlier on, the Church had been against polyphony altogether.

I'd expect nothing else but such a response in light of such a tongue-in-cheek suggestion. As I've said before, I don't measure religion by its contributions, be they positive or negative.

Oh, and my signature translates (roughly) to "Against stupidity the gods themselves contend in vain." The quotation comes from the play "Die Jungfrau von Orleans."

How about the incentives that religion offers?  Life after death in paradise forever.  Rewards for good things done here on earth.  I'll give an analogy.  Some people will take out the trash at their house willingly.  But if you gave them $100 every time they did it, they would definitely do it every week (i.e. when the trash guy comes to pick it up).  People who believe that god will reward them for good works are more likely to do good.  It's common reason.

The fundies I encountered were very unlikely to help the poor.  In fact, they always blamed the poor for their problems. The religious right tends to put all tithes back into the church.  The Catholic Church isn't much better.  In fact, I've never seen a church that helped the poor with no strings attached.

Obviously this is anecdotal and I'm sure there are churches that aren't as disgustingly tight-fisted as the churches I've encountered. 

Personally, I've donated much more to charity since I became an atheist. I got rid of the right-wing agenda and religion.

And your evidence for such a claim? Seems to me that people are philantrhropic with and without religion, in about equal amounts if not more without.   

And they only do it in Belgium (and 1 in the Netherlands.)