Argument: Religious organisations are by far the largest providers of charity in the world

Whether sending food support in famine zones, providing education, hospices or a vast range of other charitable activities, religious organisations are streets ahead. In addition they frequently are the only organisations willing to go into certain high risk areas throughout the world.

I addition in many sociogeographic areas, especially those of urban poverty, priests may be the only professional that many hundreds of people can access. Churches and mosques are frequently the only place of sanctuary and peace.

In addition religious organisations have historically been the first to provide education and healthcare with nation states following their example.

Candidate 1: "The simple reality is that religious organisations in most of the world are all too willing to involve themselves in ecumenical politics and issue declarations on economic matters. Equally, presenting the absurd and grotesque wealth and power of the world’s major religions as having anything to do with quiet spiritualism is, frankly, absurd.

In some circumstances, major religions can provide international perspective but, all too often, that simply means importing the most reactionary position available – African Anglicans on gay ordination in the US; the mediaeval views from Islam in the Middle East into discussions on the rights of women in European migrant communities. Generally this brand of internationalism simply reopens social battles that were settled a century and more ago in the West"
Candidate 2: "It is an interesting defence of a position to note that people only really turn to it when they are emotionally vulnerable and their mental faculties are at their weakest. It’s scarcely a clarion defence of the benefits or religious observance or practice.

It is no doubt true that when we need an explanation for the apparently inexplicable- the death of a child, say- there is more comfort to be found in the ministrations of a cleric than that of a statistician. However that in no way makes the cleric, or their creed, right.

The cold hard truth is that personal and national tragedies do have logical explanations, it just happens that we may not want to hear them at the time. However, any other credo which used other peoples emotional weaknesses to push their view of the world and the universe would be treated with contempt. For some reason, religion gets a pass."
Candidate 3: "Religious education frequently has more to do with indoctrination than anything else, as is seen in so-called schools where reciting the Koran or Talmud passes for education or in privately funded education in the UK and US where evolution is taught as ‘just another theory’.

In terms of tackling poverty, there is no doubt that many religious organisations- especially the Catholic Church- provide enormous quantities of relief to the poverty directly caused by their policies in the first place.

No single cause of poverty, especially among women, is greater than denying women access to contraception, closely followed by denying them access to education. As the woman is frequently the primary care giver, their poverty affects their children."

Religious education frequently has more to do with indoctrination than anything else, as is seen in so-called schools where reciting the Koran or Talmud passes for education or in privately funded education in the UK and US where evolution is taught as ‘just another theory’.

In terms of tackling poverty, there is no doubt that many religious organisations- especially the Catholic Church- provide enormous quantities of relief to the poverty directly caused by their policies in the first place.

No single cause of poverty, especially among women, is greater than denying women access to contraception, closely followed by denying them access to education. As the woman is frequently the primary care giver, their poverty affects their children.
