The evidence shows that religious people - defined by regular attendance at a place of worship - actually do make better neighbors.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
Frequent worshippers are also significantly more active citizens. They are more likely to belong to community organizations, especially those concerned with young people, health, arts and leisure, neighborhood and civic groups and professional associations.
Religion creates community, community creates altruism and altruism turns us away from self and towards the common good... There is something about the tenor of relationships within a religious community that makes it the best tutorial in citizenship and good neighborliness.
Houses of worship can be the heart of a community. They can be the cradle of a family. They can be places where our children go to learn, not just faith, but to make friends. They build connections. They are essential to a healthy America. And every community deserves the right to have those houses of worship operate in safety and peace.
The supreme satisfaction is to be able to despise one's neighbor and this fact goes far to account for religious intolerance. It is evidently consoling to reflect that the people next door are headed for hell.
Religion has a good place and it has its good people.
A sure indicator of true religion is a concern for the poor of the earth.
The fact that 35 percent of all American giving went to religious organizations in 2010 reflects how closely bound many of us are with our place of worship.
I think people often come to the synagogue, mosque, the church looking for God, and what we give them is religion.
The problem is that religion tends to give people bad reasons to be good.
Religion can make it worse. Are you supposing that if people were encouraged to believe in a transcendent reality, and to be encouraged by grand rituals and music and preaching, to love their neighbors, then they would put jealousy and frustration aside?