9. Without religion and belief in God the world would be an anarchy.
An interesting and commonly expressed idea, this. The argument in itself contains its own refutation, for it implies that religion functions as a tool of social control. The inhumanity of this attitude was well condemned by Albert Einstein, so I shall use his words:
"A man's ethical behaviour should be based effectively on sympathy, education and social ties; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death."
Religious compassion, if it is motivated purely for the above reasons, is merely a hypocritical form of pious selfishness. Obviously, this is not usually case. Mother Teresa, for example, clearly had a genuine concern for the suffering of those she and her Sisters in the "Missionaries of Charity" helped in Calcutta. But it is precisely this genuine concern that makes her a considerate, caring human being. Not her Catholicism.
How many people have been killed in the name of religion?
The notion that a Godless society is an evil society is naïve and patronising. To care for another human, to care for all other humans, simply because of their humanity - purely out of compassion is surely the greater good.
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"God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we, the murderers of all murderers, console ourselves? That which was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet possessed has bled to death under our knives - who will wipe this blood off us? With what water could we purify ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we need to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must not we ourselves become gods simply to seem worth of it? There has never been a greater deed - and whoever shall be born after us, for the sake of this deed he shall be part of a higher history than all history hitherto."
