BOULDER – It's a question that provokes passionate answers: Is religion good or bad for society? And there were plenty of opinions on the topic offered Wednesday night at the University of Colorado-Boulder.
A debate sponsored by the Aquinas Institute for Catholic Thought featured a CU-Boulder professor who argued that religion interferes with human progress and a professor from Ohio who argued the opposite.
"Religion is not just good, it is essential to society, and to you," Professor James Gaston, an associate professor of history at the Franciscan University of Steubenville [Ohio], said. "Religion is that kind of general agreement regarding the important things in life. And when people can acknowledge them and give reasonably good consent to most of them, you can have a good life."
Professor Michael Huemer -- who teaches ethics and philosophy courses at CU-Boulder -- argued that over time religion slows intellectual progress, often because it distracts attention from pursuing scientific answers about how the world works. He points to the biblical story of Adam and Eve, who fall out of favor with God by eating fruit from the Tree of Knowledge.
Huemer also cited a number of biblical references as evidence that religion can be a problem, like a verse from Leviticus that prescribes death to men who engage in homosexuality (Leviticus 20:13) and another that instructs women to submit to their husbands (Ephesians 5:22).
"Maybe we shouldn't rely on [the Bible] if it says things that are crazy," Huemer said. "People look to this book for moral advice and I think it's a completely unreliable source."
The Aquinas Institute at CU hosts lectures and debates every year about Catholic issues. It's named for St. Thomas Aquinas, a 13th century Italian priest and philosopher, famous for being one of the church's leading thinkers.
The debate between Gaston and Huemer included comparisons of religion to other philosophies, like fascism and communism. Professor Gaston pointed out that political systems in the Soviet Union and China cost millions of lives in the 20th century, which were based on materialistic belief systems.
"I think that Marxism is worse than Christianity," Huemer said in response. "But that doesn't mean that religion isn't harmful."
As for the future, the two men agree that technology will continue to play an increasing role in the lives of people at the same time their outlook toward religion changes, but they don't agree about whether that's a good thing.
"I think it's going to be more and more of a life of technology," Gaston said. "Our lives will be constructed and moved about by technological advance. And we'll lose our freedom in order to slide into some kind of efficient, material-goaled structure."
"I think we're going to have more freedom. Everything is going to be better," Huemer said.
The discussion continued into the night and isn't likely to be settled in this lifetime, even of the CU students in the audience.
(© 2016 KUSA)
