If 'human flourishing' is the goal, take a look at some of the hindrances, caused by religion:
- no condoms, which result in disease.
- no blood transfusions with some, which result in death.
- women < men
- slavery
- homosexuality = sin
- The teaching of incorrect science, which may cause many of our brightest not to innovate
This is off the top of my head...
If you are off the top of your head, you should probably see a psychiatrist.
In the meantime:
- no condoms is a Catholic only doctrine and it also accompanied by a doctrine of abstinence. Those countries where both are taken seriously actually have less STD than those that adopt only one. Madagascar was the example I remember. Additionally, since the lack of condoms is likely to result in more births, it is also going to end up resulting in human flourishing, whereas condoms by their nature are going to result in suppression!
- no blood transfusions is from a minority cult which has defined its own ideas (that are not in the Bible). Bear in mind that blood transfusions came about because Christian Groups encouraged hospitals. One could make an argument that this group should win a Darwin Award.
- Women < Men hasn't stopped women flourishing and while it is atrocious, arguing that it prevented human flourishing is a very difficult thing... because humans did flourish and had more flourishing when Christianity was the dominant religion than when say the Roman gods were at the fore. You only have to look at China where religion is not a huge factor and see the huge numbers of girls that were abandoned to see that religion has very little to do with it.
- slavery. In some cases slavery has been a good thing - for starters it has caused the spread of ethnicity to the extent that most people have DNA from those who have been forcibly removed recfrom their own countries. On top of that it was Christian groups that planted the seeds of abolition as far back as the 5th century (that's an educated guess, I seem to recall reading one of the great early leaders making the point that Christians really shouldn't have slaves). The abolitionists in the UK were all motivated by their Christian faith (see the movie Amazing Grace for example). I'm not sure about the situation in USA, but I generally get the impression that it was Christian groups that opposed it there too.
- homosexuality = sin is true, so one can argue this one both ways - in other words those that opposed homosexual behaviour contributed to human flourishing.
- the teaching of incorrect science wasn't made by religious groups, it was made by scientists. 150 years ago scientists were still teaching that there were four elements. In fact any survey of science will see that both Islamic and Christian scientists were at the forefront of defying the scientific conventions many of which came from the time of Aristotle.
In order to make a case for religion preventing human flourishing you have to be extremely selective - picking only those items that support your view and conveniently ignoring anything that would disagree.
We might try to make a case for secularism and atheism preventing human flourishing (e.g. the Killing Fields of Cambodia, or the imposition of Communism on China). The best example of this would be Albania which declared itself an atheist state in 1967 and by the time this was overthrown in the 1990s, it was almost medieval in its living conditions. Following this Christianity grew phenomenally with one former atheist saying something along the lines of 'we tried atheism and it didn't work'.
Whether religion is better or worse is always going to be a matter of speculation, however the track record of atheistic countries isn't going to win over anyone who compares it with the flourishing of Christian countries, particularly after the Reformation/Enlightenment.
I would think, since you have followed me so intently over these past couple of years, you would at least get my name-handle right?
