Is religion useful to humanity?

A type of debate is sometimes held between atheist skeptics, sometimes between skeptics and religious people (usually Christians), whether religion is good for humanity or not, whether it has done more bad ore more good for humanity, whether humanity would have been better without any religion.

In this discussion (especially when it's held among skeptics) the premise is that religious beliefs are false, incorrect and just fantasy. That's not the debate at hand. The debate is whether this fantasy has done more good or bad for humanity, and whether it has any redeeming qualities and if it would be better if it didn't exist at all.

In order to get a better perspective on this question, one has to remember that humans are a highly social species. We have survived and thrived for millions of years by forming groups, tribes and societies that cooperate and work together. It's very hard for humans to survive on their own, and our best chances of survival have always been to live and work together in moderately-sized groups and societies.

Such a society has a much higher chance of succeeding and thriving when all of its members cooperate and work together, agree with each other, and there's very minimal disagreement, in-fighting and schisms. It, thus, helps greatly if the members of the society share a common culture, customs, traditions, beliefs, opinions. It helps when there's an underlying unifying culture and belief system which the majority of people agree on, and thus minimizes the amount of in-fighting and schisms.

From an evolutionary perspective humans have a propensity to religious and quasi-religious beliefs, even when those beliefs are objectively and demonstrably false. This may well stem from an animistic instinct, ie. attributing sentience to unexplained natural phenomena. (The core reason for this is that if you assume that a phenomenon is caused by some kind of living being, such as a predatory animal, that will induce you to be careful and eg. flee, rather than investigate and possibly get killed by the predator.)

If unknown mysterious phenomena, such as wind, thunder, the source of rain, the nature of the Sun and so on and so forth are instinctively attributed to live sentient beings, perhaps some kind of supernatural beings, it's very natural and easy for this to be taken to its natural conclusion and attribute them to some kind of superior supernatural beings that are higher in power and abilities than humans themselves (after all, humans cannot create thunderstorms, rain, sunlight and so on).

And since people living in a primitive society very easily agree with each other (because fundamental disagreements are ultimately detrimental to the very survival of the society, meaning that societies with a high degree of disagreement and distrust got naturally selected out), it's very easy and natural for religion to arise in such societies.

And it may well be that such religions have been during the millions of years that humans have been able to communicate with each other, a driving force behind cooperation and camaraderie among the members of tribes and societies. It gives the people a common set of beliefs, customs and traditions. It gives them a sense of community and belonging. When everybody engages in the same rituals and customs, it joins people together and gives them a feeling of companionship, and a desire to work together and help each other.

So it may well be that, no matter how false religious beliefs may be, it has overall helped humanity survive and thrive, and that without religious beliefs humanity would not be even nearly as advanced, or even exist, today.

Of course religion has been used innumerable times for absolutely heinous atrocities. But what hasn't? Pretty much every single societal phenomenon, every single belief system, has been abused for atrocities, to oppress people, to destroy other people seen as "enemies".

Ray Comfort is a pathological liar

Ray Comfort is one of the most famous (or, should I say, infamous) Christian preachers and proselytizers who loves to interact with skeptics and atheists, and who also loves to present such outlandish and ridiculous arguments and assertions that he has been pretty much a celebrity among skeptics and atheists for the last two or three decades (if not even longer. Indeed, his proselytizing and, especially, his completely outlandish and silly laughable arguments go back to the 1990's, if not even earlier.)

One of the most common personality traits that Comfort is very often accused of by skeptics is that he's a pathological liar. Is this just throwing random insults at a good honest humble Christian, or is there some veracity to this claim?

Honesty is one of the virtues that the vast majority if not all Christians, regardless of denomination, agree with, especially when it comes to Christians themselves: Lying and dishonesty is widely considered a sin, and honesty and openness is considered a virtue. There are many Christians who take this so much to heart that they are outright honest to a fault, being almost incapable of telling a lie, even if telling the truth would severely harm them. (It depends a lot on the individual Christian whether they would lie in order to save another person from harm, and it's one of those interesting moral and ethical dilemmas for them. Anyway, this is not here nor there.)

And most certainly if you asked Ray Comfort if he considers lying to be a sin and honesty to be one of the highest virtues that a Christian should aim for, he would wholeheartedly agree. (This can be said for certain because one of his favorite tactics when proselytizing is trying to make the other person to admit that he or she has lied in the past, which according to Comfort is a sin against God.)

Thus, if Ray Comfort himself would exhibit dishonesty, deception and lying, it would show an extraordinary degree of hypocrisy.

Most often when skeptics claim that Comfort is a liar, they often refer to him keeping repeating all the same old tired arguments (especially those against the theory of evolution), over and over, for years and decades, even though he has been explained why those arguments are clearly wrong, and he quite arguably at least at some point has understood the explanations. In other words, even though he knows that his arguments (eg. against evolution) are invalid, because he has been clearly explained the reason, he keeps repeating those same arguments again and again, implying that the arguments are valid, even though he knows they are not.

However, if you follow what Ray Comfort actually does, what he preaches and how acts when he's proselytizing, what kind of arguments and tactics he uses, and what he does when running his ministry (Living Waters), you'll quickly notice that his dishonesty and deception goes well beyond just those arguments against evolution. In fact, you could even give him the benefit of the doubt and assume that he keeps repeating those anti-evolution arguments because he doesn't actually understand the answers, and it wouldn't really change the fact that he's a profoundly dishonest person.

Dishonesty is so deeply entrenched in his psyche that he seems unable to do anything that doesn't have deception, dishonesty and trickery attached to it in one way or another.

As seen by his very own videos, when he proselytizes to people on the streets or elsewhere, his fundamental proselytizing tactic almost always entails deception and trickery of some kind: Instead of just being forthcoming and open about what he wants to say, he always wants to trick the listener by leading him or her into some argumentative trap. Most often he tries to make his listeners admit that they have committed some sin, or admit that they don't know this or don't know that, or ask them to explain something very complicated and then confuse them by responding to their overly simplistic answers (you really can't expect random people on the streets to be highly educated and experienced scientists, biologists, etc) with complicated counter-arguments to which the average person can't really come up with a proper answer in those few seconds that they have to answer.

He has made many videos and written many books on, pretty much effectively, "how to trick a random person into agreeing with your arguments" (obviously not with those words, but pretty much in essence that). It's always some kind of trickery, some kind of deception, some kind of laying an argumentative trap instead of being forthcoming and direct from the very start. He has made tons and tons of videos both demonstrating these tricks, as well as instructing others on how to do it. (Most of these argumentative tricks are extremely silly and simplistic, and any skeptic who has even a modicum of experience in conversing with Christian apologists would never fall for them, but the point is that Comfort just loves to use these tricks constantly in order to try to fool random people on the street.)

His dishonesty and deception permeates almost everything he does, no matter how small or mundane. Take for example, this video of his:

What is this? A box full of cash? As you might have guessed, those are just Christian proselytizing booklets with just a cover that looks like money.

The idea is, of course, as silly as it is deceptive: To leave these booklets laying around, fooling random passersby to think that there's a wad of cash there, who will then take it and notice that it's not actually cash, but some booklet, in the hope that the person will then read the proselytizing inside it and be moved by the Holy Spirit and something something.

In the video Comfort just gushes about these, describing how wonderful they are.

He seems completely unaware that it's, once again, showcasing his most fundamental deeply ingrained personality trait: That of dishonesty and deception. Trying to spread his message by tricking people, by lying to people, by deceiving people.

Even in such a small thing he just can't help but to lie and to be deceitful.

And he just doesn't understand his own hypocrisy in all this.