Inspired by this thread.
How do you define the true character of a religion? Specifically, how do you ascertain how morally virtuous it is? Do you use the scriptures? Or do you judge its nature by the actions of its followers?
For example, there’s an ancient and venerable, but little known, religion called ‘Dalyism’ which is totally legit and 100% not made up. It goes a bit like this:
The Commandments of Dalyism
- Don’t eat trans-fats.
- Don’t give away any spoilers for Game of Thrones.
- Kill a left-handed woman every second Thursday of the month.
- Don’t put squirrels down your pants for the purposes of gambling.
- Don’t kill anybody.
Now, you might notice that there’s a slight contradiction between commandments 3 and 5. Well, Dalyists worldwide have struggled with this for millennia. The vast majority of them, probably about 99.9% simply ignore rule 3. They argue that rule 5 supersedes it, or that whatever cultural relevance rule 3 may have once had is lost to the ages. However, a small minority of people take the reverse position. They argue that, obviously, rule 5 doesn’t apply to left-handed women, otherwise why have rule 3 at all? Also, rule 3 is higher up the list, so it’s got to be more important.
It seems like a stalemate. So how do we judge this religion? Do we look at the behaviour of the vast majority of its adherents? Or do we look at what the text actually says?
I personally think that the best way to determine the ‘true’ nature (and by ‘true nature’ I mean moral character; since all religions are, at their core, ethical guides) of a religion as intended by its creators is to look at the scripture. If a religion contains bad ideas (like rule 3), and it can be reasonably argued that God wants its follows to adhere to these bad ideas, then the religion is, to the extent that these bad ideas have the capacity to cause harm, a bad religion. The actions of the majority don’t matter if the actions of the minority can be reasonably justified using scripture.
In the case of Dalyism, it can be argued that it is the violent minority who are incorrect (as per rule 5), but it can never possibly be established as a matter of fact. It can only ever be a matter of interpretation. Dalyism is, therefore, a bad religion, no matter what the majority of its followers do, because its scriptures allow for an interpretation which is immoral and harmful.
The parallels with modern religions are, I hope, obvious. Christianity, for example, contains moral and immoral ideas. On the one hand Jesus said “Judge not lest ye be judged” and “Let he who is without sin etc…”. On the other hand, God clearly does (forgive my bluntness) actually “hate fags”. He really does. God has a beef with gay people and there’s no two ways about it. Leviticus 18:22, Deuteronomy 23:17, Kings 14:24, Romans 1:26-28, and Timothy 1:10 to name but a few. all condemn homosexuality. It can therefore be fairly argued that Jesus didn’t have gay people in mind when he was going about preaching love and forgiveness and QED, a “true” Christian ought to be homophobic.
One can do a similar thing with Islam. The number of verses mocking, cursing, condemning, and excoriating unbelievers is so high that it’s hardly possible to list them all. As such, violence against unbelievers is easily justified.
Therefore, to the extent that bad ideas proliferate in those scriptures, and to the extent that these bad ideas have the capacity to motivate people to cause harm, those religions are bad religions, no matter what their followers actually do.
P.S. - One might well make the opposite case; that a religion is good to the extent that it contains good ideas. However, I don’t think that argument holds water because it presupposes that we can’t be good without God, which is obviously not true.