Is the Internet defeating religion?

Of the 10 commandments that were given to us, which one of them do you feel is not necessary?

That’s the question John Curley posed to co-host Tom Tangney on
KIRO Radio’s Tom and Curley Show.

Tangney paused for a second, in thought.

“Personally, ‘taking the name of the Lord thy God in vain,'” Tangney said.

Curley responded that some who have studied the commandments argue that the order doesn’t have anything to do with swearing, and rather, more to do with claiming to take actions in the name of God.

“It’s the idea of ‘I will do this in the name of God,’ ‘I will cut your throat in the name of God,'” Curley said. “It’s not the spoken word. It’s not as simple as that, it’s a much bigger use.”

The question was part of the hosts’ conversation over a recent Wall Street Journal column by Professor Daniel C. Dennett stating that the Internet will cause the future of religion to be bleak.

“He says that the conditions for religious belief, or membership in a religion, has to be a couple of things,” Tangney paraphrases the column. “One is being misery and fear. He says that if people are miserable or fearful, they will look toward religion as a way to reassure them that life is worth living even though this is terrible.”

Curley chimed in and noted that after 9/11, more and more people attended church, as an example.

“The second thing that has really helped push religion off of the map for a lot of people is that technology is now so pervasive in terms of the Internet especially … now that you have so much access to information, you now can understand [for example] ‘how does the Mormon church really work?'”

Curley posed yet another question: Would we be a better society with people being more religious or less religious?

Tangney, who grew up Catholic, said that question is an old argument between him and his brother.

“I tend to argue that it is a better place,” Tangney said.

“People who don’t believe in God certainly can have a sense of personal ethics and societal ethics,” Tangney said. “The question is, ‘do people do more good in the name of religion, or more harm?'”

Which led to Curley prodding his co-host with even more tough questions. What harm have Christians caused in the last 300 hundred years? Fifty years?