A religion's contributions: what counts?

[dauer]

When trying to understand what a religion has contributed to society, what counts?

Can I claim that Judaism brought the world the theory of relativity and Freudian psychoanalysis or is this merely the contribution of individual Jews?

If a religion repeats the teaching of another religion, is this the religion's contribution? What if it states it in a different way? What if it changes the meaning of the teaching a little bit?

If a member of a religion says something related to religion, but it does not mesh with the way the religion historically is run, is this a contribution of the religion or of the individual?

Do the negative actions of a religion ever cancel out contributions or are the two very separate?

For the negative actions, what counts?

Do the negative actions of individuals count? Do these actions if they are in the name of God count? If they are sanctioned by clergy do they count? Does the level of severity matter as to whether or not they should count? Does frequency matter as to whether they should count? Does ability to validate opinion with scripture matter? What negative actions count as negative actions of the religion?

Dauer

[Abogado del Diablo]

Originally Posted by dauer

Can I claim that Judaism brought the world the theory of relativity and Freudian psychoanalysis or is this merely the contribution of individual Jews?

In part, sure. But the source of ideas is always a lot more complicated than ascribing them to a certain religion or ideology because the first person to discover the idea (or at least the first person to write it down) was of that particular faith. It's hard to fathom either Freudian psychoanalysis or Relative Physics without Francis Bacon, Issac Newton, Copernicus, Aristotle, Augustine, Aquinas or Descartes (among many others).

[dauer]

Right. I suppose I shouldn't have used a particular example but that goes into one of my other questions which was whether it's still considered the religion's contribution if it's stated differently. I'm really more interested in a general way to approach the issue of attributing contribution and general actions. Could it be said that there are no contributions from any religions, or that no religions independantly have made a contribution to the world?