Dear Is Mise,

Both the reformed criminal and Father Damien are examples of men who either became better human beings or devoted their lives to helping others. Maybe their religion lead them to it. Maybe not.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franz_J%C3%A4gerst%C3%A4tter tells about Franz Jägerstätter who I think is a heroic figure. He was a Catholic layman who openly opposed the Nazis. Since he was a member of the master race and belonged to no proscribed organisation the Nazis were at a loss on how to deal with him. They had various members of the clergy and others talk to him. He would not give in, and the Nazis eventually beheaded him. He found inspiration in his religion. However, if it really was his religion why was he the only one who did what he did. Austria is predominantly Catholic. If it was the religion why was he the only one?

Vinoba Bhave, an Indian holy man, advised against religious conversion. He advised a person with doubts about his or her faith to look deeper in the faith. If you can't find what you are looking for, it is probably not there. A person of conscience really didn't need any reason to oppose Nazism. However, in the Austria of that time a reason was needed. Jägerstätter appealed to his religion.

"If it was the religion why was he the only one?"

Because the rest weren't stupid?

Here's a better example of faith doing good,
"he was transferred to Auschwitz as prisoner #16670.[19]

Continuing to act as a priest, Kolbe was subjected to violent harassment, including beating and lashings, and once had to be smuggled to a prison hospital by friendly inmates.[2][16] At the end of July 1941, three prisoners disappeared from the camp, prompting SS-Hauptsturmführer Karl Fritzsch, the deputy camp commander, to pick 10 men to be starved to death in an underground bunker to deter further escape attempts. When one of the selected men, Franciszek Gajowniczek, cried out, "My wife! My children!", Kolbe volunteered to take his place.[8]

According to an eye witness, an assistant janitor at that time, in his prison cell, Kolbe led the prisoners in prayer to Our Lady. Each time the guards checked on him, he was standing or kneeling in the middle of the cell and looking calmly at those who entered. After two weeks of dehydration and starvation, only Kolbe remained alive. “The guards wanted the bunker emptied, so they gave Kolbe a lethal injection of carbolic acid. Kolbe is said to have raised his left arm and calmly waited for the deadly injection.[11] His remains were cremated on 15 August, the feast day of the Assumption of Mary.[16]"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maximilian_Kolbe

Faith exists therefore it can be an inspiration for good or evil.

Dear Is Mise,

You wrote: "Faith exists therefore it can be an inspiration for good or evil."

The power to do good or evil lies in all of us. We or other people can ascribe our acts to faith.

I don't have enough information to say whether non-believers in religion on the average behave better or worse than believers in religion. The men carrying out the atrocities in Paris were presumably inspired by their faith as were the Inquisitors and Crusaders. Father Damien, Franz Jägerstätter, the reformed criminal cited by o sung wu and Maximilian Kolbe were also presumably inspired by their faith.

Since I was a small child and heard the story of Abraham and Isaac I have been horrified by faith. I felt Abraham should have said, "No." Deeds of self-sacrifice, heroism and nobility can be motivated by faith. However, knowledge is stimulated by doubt and questioning.

Darwin, Galileo, Einstein and Newton all doubted the scientific knowledge of their time. To me they are also heroes.

Galileo, and Newton were men of Christian faith it did not seem to deter their search for reality.

David most of the examples you believe are the belief of Christians you post are not concluded by the blind faith of Christians. You constantly quote Abraham and Isaac but you fail to recognize the development in his thinking. His action to reject polytheism estranged him from his father Terah and he moved out of Ur, into the land of the Canaanites who were equally sexually promiscuous as Ur, as they worshipped Baal and sacrificed their newborn to Molech.

Our society today are equally sexually promiscuous and surgically murder their unwanted unborn children. They do not do it by following a religion but by believing atheism. They believe there is no accountability to the Creator of the Universe to abort children. Abraham was equally disgusted by infant sacrifice to appease the gods of fertility.

Dear Josephus,

You wrote: “Galileo, and Newton were men of Christian faith it did not seem to deter their search for reality.”

Your faith is equalled by your ignorance. Galileo was put under house arrest by the Inquisition for maintaining that the earth goes around the sun and spent the last years of his life under arrest.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo_Galilei tells you about Galileo.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Newton tells about Newton. He wrote religious works, but they were published after his death probably to save him from trouble if he had published them while he was alive. Since none of his scientific works challenged church dogma he was not persecuted as Galileo was. It is moot whether he accepted the Trinity.

As far as polytheism goes I refer to Thomas Jefferson. He said, “The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbour to say there are twenty gods, or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.”

Human sacrifice is now illegal, but polytheism was notably more tolerant than monotheism. I believe it would be a step forward to return to polytheism without the human sacrifice if we can’t get rid of religious superstition entirely.

Atheism is not a belief. You reject a belief in Zeus and many other gods that the imagination of man has invented. There is no more reason to believe in the god you believe in than to believe in Zeus, Baal or other human inventions. You are an atheist to all gods but the polytheistic trinity. I believe in one (or three) fewer gods than you believe in.

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I see nothing wrong in being sexually promiscuous before marriage. I think it is good for young people to experiment sexually. With proper sex education including knowledge of contraceptives and their availability abortion would be rare. A fetus is not an unborn child. It is an embryo, part of a woman’s body. You are an undead human because eventually you will be dead. However, a foetus may never develop into a baby since many pregnancies do not go to term. Most abortions are spontaneous. Calling a foetus an unborn child is an emotive and inaccurate term.

If Abraham was so disgusted by infant sacrifice why did not the stupid, evil sob say no when he was commanded to sacrifice his son. There is no way you can put a gloss on that ugly story.