This is a common cliché. Are there any good examples supporting this claim?
You want examples from 30.000 BC?
No, I don’t think it was *invented *for that reason. But through the ages there have been plenty of people who recognised its value as a means to better themselves.
I hear this statement often, mostly in reference to Christianity; are there any facts/observations supporting this claim?
Basically no, there aren’t. And you don’t need to be too well-versed in the history of the period to spot that the claim is a ludicrous one. Christianity began as a heretical splinter of Judaism, a religion already fairly marginalised in the Roman world. and its adherents were varioiusly mocked, persecuted, villified, derided and martyred. As a tactic for controlling the masses, inventing Christianity was singularly ill-judged.
Now, if you wanted to argue that, at a later time or times, Christianity was co-opted or exploited by those seeking to control the masses, that claim might have some legs. But, invented? Nope.
Facts?:
The ten commandments seem like generally good advice, to start.
Jesus had some generally good ideas about playing well with others.
Buddhists tend to be a largely peace loving bunch.
Invented? Not likely. Religion is old, with artifacts dating to pre-history. Religion in general most likely arose out of man’s desire to explain a world he was unable to explain scientifically in more primitive times. More advanced religions (Buddhism, Christianity, etc) arose later on in history and went beyond just explaining natural phenomena and passing along a few parable type morality plays and tried to codify some form of universal ethical behavior.
Religion can certainly be said to have been used to control the masses, but it developed organically out of the ignorance of primitive peoples. Most modern religion perpetuated because once the “what is the sun?” type questions were answered people still like to have some sort of “from on high” moral framework to aspire to, that’s why I think non-doctrinal atheism has little chance of ever totally supplanting religion. I’m too disinterested to care, but other atheists should work to promulgate areligious morality codes (basic secular humanist type stuff) if they want to replace religion totally.
So the claim is without ANY merit? that was my hunch all along
Well the claim is that a selected few came up with religion in order to control the uneducated populous. like a conspiracy. that was the main Q in my rather unlettered OP.
That’s not really a sound hypothesis if you just look at the stories in most early religions. Most were “just so” stories. “From whence man/fire/lightning”. As well as explanations such as “why do bad things happen to good people?” (And the answer depends tremendously between religions).
Now, religion seems to have at some point been used to aid people in “controlling the masses”, just see the various books of laws and census data in the Old Testament. And there is definitely evidence that the bible has been altered several times to suit certain agendas, but like most historical hypotheses that posit a shadowy cabal of people who just make random shit up to get power, it doesn’t hold much water. Besides, it’s much easier from a practical perspective to abuse what people already believe for your own ends than to get them to believe something completely and radically new.
Yeah, I’m in agreement with the “not a conspiracy” opinion. I thought you had also asked for evidence of religion having aspects of good intent and betterment, as suggested in Latro’s response.
Who said anything about conspiracy?
A great deal depends upon how one defines religion, but in general if you are talking abou the belief(s) of an individual, then it is clearly not true that every individual expression of faith is designed to control “the masses”. However, if you take it to mean “organized religion”, then a stronger case can be made. Churches and organized faiths, as a rule, are quire interested in controlling the behavior of “the masses” and exerting such influence on human behavior can be argued to be a fundamental element of an organized church,.
Of course, it can also be argued as a fundamental element of most social constructs or groupings with formally established membership. Or even of a society itself.
The one area tha organized relifions often distinguish themselves is in the pervasiveness of the sphere(s) over which they wish to exert control.
Replace ‘masses’ with ‘tribe’, and maybe it was. But I doubt it was so much invented as culturally evolved, and then used by some as a means to control others.
I come to the conclusion that it was not invented more as a control as in “slaving” people, but more as in a very convenient way to expand the monkey sphere.
Of course YMMV on how much it is an element to enslave or to help us give us our early civilizations; however, thanks to progress (where there is separation of church and state) we increase our control/emphatic reach nowadays with nation state identification, and we could look forward to eventually supersede even that “fiction”.
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Individual religions weren’t designed to control the masses, although occasionally they are developed to control a small group for the benefit of the leaders.
Spirituality seems pretty innate. But organized religion is a different story. Organized religion is, historically, not particular different than politics. While it wasn’t necessarily designed to control the masses, that is actually the functional role it plays in society. It helps cement the social hierarchy, build group cohesion, set the tone for relationships with outside communities, keep a community calendar (useful not just for celebrations, but also for farming), and otherwise organize society.
So I think it can control the masses, but not due to any conspiracy. That’s just how humans tend to organize after they reach a certain population density.
I’d agree that it wasn’t invented for doing so, but I disagree that it was “co-opted/exploited” by others for said purpose. The RCC was quite the willing cooperator/participator. One only need to look at The Vatican coffers to know that.
Well, if you’re going to co-opt something properly it’s easiest to do it from the inside…
There has been quite a chunk of the RCCs history (to take your example specifically) where various kings and emperors exerted quite a degree of influence in the selection of high-ranking churchmen (the Avignon papacy comes to mind, not to mention the “pick a pope” era of the 15th century where there were two hierarchies going at the same time, each supported by a set of European monarchs). If a given pope is really “the French King’s man in office” that sounds pretty co-opted to me.
I have a suggestion for a religion that really was probably invented to control the masses - Roman emperor divinity cults. In fact, the same thing happened with Alexander the Great I believe. Having the king/emperor worshipped as a god was seen to be good for Imperial cohesion - that’s why the Jews and early Christians got into so much trouble, they saw their objections to emperor-worship as a matter of religious integrity, the Romans saw it as disrespecting the secular hierarchy. There’s a certain amount of cynicism implicit in creating your own new useful religion, which I’m pretty sure the Roman Empire had in abundance.
Sure. And the rest of the RCC’s clergy were all sheeple.
OK
One problem is that “just so stories” often involve a moral, and this is often very cautionary. “If you say ‘Ogronk’ out loud, the Ogronk spirit will bite your head off.” So, any time anybody says “Ogronk” out loud, the medicine man will instruct the tribe to club them in the head. The “cautionary” aspect of the story becomes a “social control” mechanism.
Some of these will have sensible survival value. Not, “Those red berries are poisonous,” but “Those red berries are HATED by the GODS and if you touch them we will KILL you!” That additional leverage makes it just that much more likely that everybody will stay the hell away from the poisonous berries.
But, alas, others will have social/hierarchical manipulatory power. “A man with a big red pimple over his right eye will be the right-born leader of the tribe.” And, hey, lookie, my big brother just happens to have a big red pimple over his right eye. The gods are wise! (And I’m damned clever, and my brother will reward me by arranging my marriage to that pretty woman I’ve been drooling over…)
Religion may have had its ultimate origin in describing mysterious things in a mysterious world (like why it gets dark at night) but it didn’t take long at all before we were cutting people’s hearts out with flint knives.
If the idea is that Christianity was founded with the goal of controlling over a billion people, yeah, that’s a pretty bad tactic. On the other hand, if the idea is that Christianity was invented with the goal of controlling a couple of dozen people and keeping them enthralled to the will of a particular charismatic, then the situation you describe is ideal.
Sure, it arises from fear, superstition, awe, love, hate, and all the such things that are the nature of life but have no simple explanations. But eventually ReligionMan comes along. Religion man knows all things about the world beyond our senses and tells everyone they have to do things his way or bad things will happen. And bad things do happen, and it’s because of transgressors, and you know the rest.
Once you have the natural formation of religion within people, it’s not that hard to invent an organized religion and use it to control people. Take a look at Joseph Smith, L Ron Hubbard, and Jim Jones. Those guys pulled it off in fairly modern times.