Find out all the good it does, all the bad it does, then see in real time if what it does good for the world outweighs what it does bad to the world.

One problems with this would be just gathering the tally of deeds, another problem would be objectivity. The latter could be resolved with a subjective scale. Here's an example to start: anything taking life is a -10 anything 'saving life' is a +10 then we work from there to zero.

If we here at createdebate wanted to do this, we could do some kind of web search for all news pertaining to religion, all compiling random information, both positive and negative, then we begin to make the tally marks.

One would first have to establish what constitutes harm and good. Arguably, that should favor criteria that can be evaluated by predominantly objective means rather than subjective ones. From there it would be a matter of gathering available data and/or conducting the research to obtain that information.

The difficulty in determining this is that religious people tend to use their religion to support innate preconceptions and natural tendencies. They attribute to their religion actions that a person not of that religion would nevertheless also do. An example of this attributing their own moral compass to a desire to follow God.

So the most sound way of judging the the hard and benefit of religion is by comparing religious people to people not of the religion, then trying to disregard differences that arise that aren't attributable to religious differences.

But sometimes you can look at the actual doctrines of religion and access their net impact on society. For instance, one of the differences between Christianity and Judaism is that Christians have an imperative to spread the Christian faith. This imperative can be attributed as causal to all the work of every missionary ever, and so in judging Christianity you might judge whether missionaries have historically done more harm or benefit aside from their primary mission of saving people's souls.

Or we can just be adults and come to a general consensus to what harmful and good defines..

Christianity like many religions thrives off fear. It unites a certain people and gives them a common enemy..inevitably.. Conquer and divide gos back very far and is not a useful tool towards humanity. Besides many points like sepperating each other, forcing to pick sides, raising an arrogance level, an ignorance towards science and common sense.. Physically religion in general has killed how many people? Go watch fox news and listen to the pompous rich white american christian talk cra about Islam and beat the war drums. Burning whitches..

And what good has christianity caused? The ten commandments? It changes peoples lives? No that's harmful because it takes the power from the person. Its my decision to be a good person, its my decision to choose my actions. I don't do it our of fear of some god or with the hand of some god.

Sharia Law calls for the execution of homosexuals, so, any religion affiliated with Sharia Law is doing harm.