Except that I said as much in my post.
Religions have a long history of fostering community, education, charity, and other good works. That’s not to say that religion always results in these things, or that religion is necessary to result in these things, but they’re certainly markedly prevalent among religious populations.
Whether or not you find a particular religion’s arguments about theology or metaphysics convincing, the fact of the matter is that the existance of organized religions results in massive social structures with incredible potentials for positive impact on the world. You don’t have to like a religion to understand that it can be a supremely useful resource.
Logic and Rationality are laudible qualities, but they are not the be-all and end-all of the human condition - nor should they be. While they are potent tools for helping us to manage ourselves and our world, they have limits and there are some things they simply cannot do.
We humans are not purely logical creatures. We are emotional creatures. Even the most logical among us are still regularly swayed by our feelings and our beliefs. Even the most rational of us acts irrationally, most of the time with no ill effect, and some of the time even to our benefits.
Is a logical, rational system - like governmental aide and social welfare and all that - a good thing to have and to maintain? Sure it is! Absolutely, 100%!
Does it always work? Well… no, it turns out it doesn’t. Why not? That’s a difficult question to answer, but part of the problem is that you can’t build a failproof system if it doesn’t take into account human emotion and irrationality.
There are no shortage of examples of otherwise logical, rational people who - for one reason or another - fail to act utterly rationally in all circumstances, or even just most circumstances. Economics is full of theories that sound good on paper, but that fall apart once they encounter the human element, because they make the mistake of basing all their assumptions on the idea that people are going to act as logically as possible, from a position of enlightened self interest. People are rarely enlightened, and surprisingly often not self interested.
So are secular, rational social structures good? Yes, of course they are. But are they perfect? No, not remotely. There are gaps in places, and despite the best intentions of the most logical people and societal systems, people still fall into the cracks and the system breaks down a little.
Hence why striving to make positive use of the already extant massive potential of religious communities makes sense. We already have these social structures, why not put them to use reinforcing our secular structures? Redundancy is good, right?
“But Religions are bad and cause problems! They’re susceptible to corruption and stupidity and oppression and cults of personality and bullheadedness and petty squabbling and all sort of terrible abuses of power and trust and all sorts of stuff!”
…yesss… but… so are all social structures, including ostensibly “rational” secular governments. The problem isn’t unique to - or even just innate to - religion. The problem is with human failings, in all their forms, in all the places they take root, and both Atheists and Theists alike fall prey to such evils.
Full disclosure, I quite like and value Logic. I consider myself a Rationalist and a Logician (although certainly an imperfect one in both cases), and I will readily champion the promotion of Logic and Rational Thought to people everywhere. But at the same time, I also believe that there is a place for Faith and for Emotion - that these are things which, when properly cultivated, are not only healthy and natural to possess, but which can also enrich life in the most profound ways.
Faith doesn’t mean a rejection of Logic, and Logic doesn’t mean a rejection of Faith. They can and do coexist, because they each provide us with different resources that enrich our lives in different ways.
Logic can help us to temper our negative emotions, and to find wisdom and fairness in rational thought. Logic helps us solve practical problems, it helps us to maintain Order and keeps us from falling prey to our destructive tendencies, and minimizes our personal flaws.
But at the same time, if taken to an extreme, logic can also harm us, by depriving us of positive emotions as well. Logic does not do very well in handling matters which are abstract instead of concrete, or subjective rather than objective.
Some things are beyond measurement, or beyond quanitification, or even just beyond expresssion. There is little of logic in a painting, or in the beauty of a flower. Rational analysis will only help you so much to understand dreams, or laughter, or wonder, or love, or joy. There are countless aspects of the human condition that can barely be properly expressed in symbols or language, much less evaluated in light of rational thought.
Can Logic and Rationality add to these more emphemeral aspects of the human experience? Certainly they can. There’s a great deal to be said for the joys of studying things, of understanding things, and of making intelligent, rational, reasonable insights into the natures of things, even emphemeral and very “human” things. But that doesn’t tell you everything about such things, and anyone who tried to go through life being only purely and utterly logical and rational would (if such a thing were even possible, which I highly doubt) they would miss out on so very much of what we as human value in our lives.
There is nothing inherently wrong with religion, and there is nothing inherently right about logic. The two are not opposites, nor even rivals. There is no reason they cannot coexist, with the best of each quality being cultivated to enrich the different parts of our human lives.
