How does religion hurt us?

Great Debates
1

In other threads, some have said that religion imparts to them a sense of morality, a love of their neighbor, or a sense of community. Others have countered that those things can be had, sometimes better, without religion. I count myself in the latter group.

But how does religion actually hurt the believer? In what ways is it better to get those things from other sources? I’m thinking here about what harm religion may do to the individual, rather than to society. (I think that’s being done in other threads, and even asking how religion hurts the individual might be too much of an overlap.)

I’ll start by conceding that it doesn’t necessarily hurt the believer; I meet some believers who seem none the worse for their beliefs. But I do think that at a minimum, their beliefs blind them to what I consider a much clearer, better understanding of the world and of humanity. Better, in the sense of more accurate, more honest, and more humane. I would also say that it tends to make people more narrow-minded, but maybe not always.

I’m not sure this is Great Debate-worthy. I almost asked it in IMHO, but then I presumed that believers may want to counter any claims that religion harms us as individuals. Any ideas?

2

Oops. Pronoun antecedent unclear. “It” here means religion.

3

Well I presume that atheism hurts the disbeliever. Because disbelieving in something that is real generally hurts you. It, like everything else, tends to make people narrowminded.

As far as where the source of morality comes from I doubt it matters as long as it is there. Why you do something matters alot less than what you actually did.

4

Sorry, I should have clarified to begin with. I’m really interested in what harm, if any, religion does to believers, especially from the perspective of disbelievers. Of course I invite believers to add their views, but it is the secular sense that I am curious about. Any harm that may be done by disbelief might be addressed in a thread asking how atheism hurts us.

5

Originally posted by Sterra

Well, speaking as a theist turned weak atheist, you presume incorrectly. Christianity probably isn’t real, so how would believing it false hurt anyone? (Hey, if you’re going to be dogmatic, then so will I.) But I digress…

MrO, I’ll take a stab at your question, but I would first say that I don’t understand this distinction you made

**
If society is negatively impacted by religion, than most likely the individual would be negatively impacted as well, yes?

That said, I’m reading Why I Am Not a Christian, by Bertrand Russel. For those of you not familiar with him, perhaps this quote will help…

Here are some of the things he lists as bad about Jesus, religion, and Christianity:
[ul]
[li]A belief that the Second Coming is imminent has all sorts of repercussions here on Earth. One example he gives is that if the world is going to end in 6 years, environmentalism is right out the window[/li][li]When Jesus said that blasphemy against the Holy Spirit is unforgivable, he’s indirectly creating monsters who feel they cannot be forgiven, and so act as indecently as they want to[/li][li]Hell as a punishment is cruelty, and so Jesus gave the world permission and endorsement to be cruel for generations to come[/li][li]“You find as you look around the world that every single bit of progress in humane feeling, every improvement in the criminal law, every step toward the diminution of war, every step toward better treatment of the colored races, or every mitigation of slavery, every moral progress that has been in the world, has been consistently opposed by the organized churches of the world.” [emphasis added][/li][li]Morality as set up by Christianity often has very little to do with happiness. He gives a strange and unfortunately dated example of a syphilitic marriage. I’m sure you can think of better examples of this point[/li][li]Religion is based on fear, and fear is the parent of cruelty. Some of the worst injustices in the history of humanity have been done in the name of God.[/li][/ul]
I would expound on the first point above. Giving the downtrodden a belief in future justice at the expense of current suffering is nothing short of bowel-shaking cruelty.

I believe that invoking the name of God gives a person or a group of people a license to behave however the hell they want. The “Reverend” Fred Phelps can say “God hates fags,” and it’s a much stronger sentiment than “I hate fags.” Wrapping humanity’s prejudices, vileness, and hatred in a cloak of “God said this” is inordinately harmful to humanity, both as a society and as individuals.

I can’t find a strong objection to a morality based solely on the Golden Rule. Unfortunately, Christianity is not based solely on the Golden Rule, and as such, it is an inferior system of morality. To a Christian, a man who kills 12 people at a Wendy’s but accepts Jesus in prison is a “better” person than, say, Gandhi. Pardon my French, but bull-fucking-shit.

Quix

P.S. Sorry if I totally missed the mark of the OP.

6

Good point. All good points. Maybe the distinction is strictly academic. To be honest, I’m sort of thinking out loud here, and you’re helping me to focus my question. Maybe I’m hoping for anecdotal evidence, situations in which individuals are directly harmed, psychologically, intellectually, or otherwise, by their own religious beliefs. Something along the lines of “religion kept X married to an abusive husband all her life,” maybe. Does anyone have personal knowledge of such situations?

I can certainly think of examples of individuals who have suffered because of the religious beliefs of others, and I can easily see that religion has stunted the moral development of the species, which hurts us all. I guess I’m looking for examples of those who suffer because of their own religious beliefs, but it may be a false distinction.

7

Spoken as a (strong) atheist:

I don’t really want to get into the issue of ethics here, and think that my view be wildly different than average, so I’m going to take a look at some of the psycho-epitemological aspects of it.

Religion is, in essence, based in mysticism and the belief that knowledge can be gained from some source outside of the senses or reason (e.g. divine inspiration). However, no mechanism for this can be explained. The simple answer that ‘I was spoken to by god’ cannot suffice for two reasons. Firstly it sounds suspiciously like the response of many schizophrenics. Secondly and quite simply, it is not independently verifiable - anymore than spoon-bending or astrology, and has no more substantiating evidence than those. Testamonials do not count as proper evidence!!!

How then do I believe that this causes harm to the adherent?
Firstly (and this does not necessarily apply to all theists) it implies a certain intellectual laziness - if knowledge can be gained by some means other than the senses and reason, then why use them at all?
Secondly, the thesist is lead to defraud themselves about the nature of the universe. Their take on epistemology forces it, and they end up needing to evade reality in order to hang on to their beliefs - this must cause enormous cognitive and psychological damage whether the theist is aware of it or not.

On a different note, most religion also hangs on the belief in an afterlife of some sort. Without getting into debunking the existence of an afterlife, which I am sure has been done elsewhere, I think it is important to look at the reward structure.
Basically the premise seems to be this; deny yourself earthly pleasure and achieve eternal reward. Um, think I’ll take my chances here thanks. Denial of enjoyment of life seems to me to be a lousy way to spend your existence. Life surely is for living and for enjoyment, not for putting off in the hope of some vague, and unquantifiable afterlife.

Since I have more work to do I should go, else this may go on indefinitely

Yours, burning in hell

Odysseus

8

Generally speaking, religion encourages and condones the acceptance of ideas (myths) regardless of the accuracy of those ideas. Therefore, religion hurts individuals when it tells them to do things which are otherwise seen as counterproductive or dangerous.

Some imaginary examples taken from real life:
[ul]
[li] “The preacher always says, ‘God hates fags,’ and my family believes it. If I tell my parents I’m gay, they’ll go right through the roof!”[/li][li] “My church does not believe in man-made medicines, so I won’t get myself treated for cancer. If I’m going to die from cancer, it must be God’s will.”[/li][li] “I bravely volunteer to drive the truck full of explosives into the American embassy! My act of courage will assure my place in heaven!”[/li][li] “Well, Susan, if you want the Catholic Church to annul your previous marriage, it’s going to cost you $5,000…”[/li][li] “C’mon, everyone! Reveerend Jim Jones is about to speak! Here, have a cup of Kool-aid…”[/li][/ul]

Even without incidents as direct as these, religion IMO encourages people to accept whatever they’re told without question, and downplays the role of logical thinking and rational reasoning. From where I’m sitting, that’s a major form of harm, since that’s a handicap that affects everything they do in life.

9

Ok, that helps clear up my confusion. I’ll probably give some examples tomorrow, when I’m a little more rested. Right now, I probably wouldn’t change names to protect the innocent, and that could be bad.

Quix

10

Amen… I love to bring up the “gandhi test” as I call it just to hear a Christian (or muslim or whatever) tell me that they’re more deserving of heaven than Gandhi

i would say as I think somebody mentioned that religion hurts people when they think it doesn’t matter what happens to their mortal form because it’s only temporary and the afterlife is infinite… though one might say that this is of benefit as it might enable the believer to escape superficiality in some form

11

If athiesm tends to make you narrowminded, then so does any religion, correct? Because any religion that I can think of requires that you believe certain things to be unalienable and indefinitely true. That constricts your thinking just a bit, I should think.
**

As does believing in something that is a 2000 year old myth.

12

by MrO:

Back in the day when I still kinda believed in a god, a friend con-vinced me to go to his ultra-fundie youth group with him. He said the week’s topic was sex, so I thought it’d be interesting to go and see what their take on it was.

The youth pastor (a woman) came in and started things up, she had been crying and was still weepy-eyed. She started going into this spiel about how Satan had been tempting people around her all day and how she was trying to resist, etc. She knew it wasn’t the people’s fault that they were getting to her, it was just Satan trying to test/tempt her.

I’d never read much of the Bible and during her “sermon” on sex I found out that, according to their interpretation of the Bible, even thinking about sex with someone that I wasn’t married to meant I had sinned, etc. I was amazed and kept thinking about how bogus this idea was.

The moral of this story is that the youth pastor didn’t have an internal locus of control and wouldn’t hold people accountable for their actions. She would attribute bad things to Satan, and didn’t think that she had much control over things, other than by praying and hoping God would fix it. I’ve seen this a lot with religious people. Another example was when the previously mentioned friend was having problems with his girlfriend and instead of talking it out they decided to “pray for their relationship.”

When people think that some outside force is controlling their life that can cause some real bad problems. Get some bad brain chemicals going and it could be potentially disastorous (IMO).

The moral of the “thinking about sex” story is, that it can cause someone feelings of much unneeded guilt and shame for something that is normal.

13

Probably the most important and central doctrine of the Christian Church is (and has always been) that no-one, not you, me, the man who kills 12 people at a Wendy’s or Ghandi is “deserving of heaven”.

Fundamentalist Christian teaching is that the only way to get to heaven is through faith in the death and resurection on Jesus Christ. (My own beliefs are not that simple, but that’s another story…)

By this standard, the “Ghandi test” has no relevance it is not our “good deeds” on this earth that determine our fate after death, but the quality of our relationship with the eternal and almighty God.

To address the OP, I think that the distinction between “Religion” and “Faith” that has been dicussed in other threads is relevant here. One who follows a religion without faith will inevitably find themselves heading down the path of blinkered and narrow-minded thinking which not only hurts those around the believer, but the believer themselves (in an eternal sense):

On the other hand, a faith that is based on a relationship with the Living God will avoid these pitfalls, since when we see other people through their Creator’s eyes, then hating and violence is out of the question.

Gp

14

Well I would say when you make up your own standards you can make anything irrelevant… In my new church, the only you need to do for salvation is drink lemonade… just once… and that’s it… therefore unless Gandhi drank lemonade, he’s fucked… So rejoice oh lemonade drinkers, for we are the chosen people, while the rest shall perish!

15

Yes, well, that’s the point of the “Ghandi test”, isn’t it? On the one hand you’ve got this guy, let’s call him Damien, that did not live by any of the other tenets of christianity, such as loving thy neighbor, etc; and on the other you’ve got Ghandi.

So Damien is an all-around baddie who hurts people, breaks the commandments, and generally acts in ways that indicate he’s in league with Satan. Yet on his death bed he establishes “faith in the death and resurection on Jesus Christ.” Now, according to the dogma, he’s qualified for (if not deserving of) heaven.

Meanwhile, Ghandi, who does not have said faith, is unqualified for heaven, regardless of the fact that he spent a great deal of time living up to the standards set forth by christianity, only not as a christian.

Sounds like a 10-year-old boys club. As long as you know the secret knock, you’re in.

To address the OP:
As with anything else, it depends on the individual involved. Religion is not universally harmful to the believer. To many, it offers guidance through times of trouble, moral guidelines, and a sense of comfort in that religion can impart “meaning” to life.

In many cases, it introduces limitations on a believers ability to understand the world. Children are frequently taught, essentially from birth, one world view and to treat other views as “the work of the devil” or some such. As they grow older, they are unable to accept alternatives due to past conditioning. The ongoing debate on whether or not to teach evolution in public schools is a good example. Religion can act as a shield to one’s ignorance: “Jesus said it, that’s good enough for me.”

16

I think maybe all that Sterra was trying to say is that that, since the above could apply in reverse, it’s a question of defining and quantifying ‘harm’, is that possible?

As a completely unreasonable and faulty example;
Suppose some belief system says that the believer must beat his wife, but also must feed, clothe and shelter any and every homeless person he meets, the unbeliever may feel under no obligation to do either*, so which point of view does the most harm? is it possible to offset one sort of harm against another?

*(BTW I’m not implying that lack of morality is an inescapable logical outcome of unbelief)

17

The only religious beliefs so far discussed in this thread have been Theistic, or roughly “Christian." I think that is a very limited view of religion. Religion is not necessarily narrowed to obedience to a divine being. What about non-Theistic religions like Buddhism or Taoism?

Ken Wilber in *The Marriage of Sense and Soul * has a much different theory or definition of religion that, according to him, can marry Theistic and non-Theistic religions with Science. It isn’t a perfect theory, but it is interesting, because it distills religion down to its essence, essentially a Buddhist like search for enlightenment, that is independent of belief of non-belief in a divine being.

The criticism that Beelzebubba gives, that some people use religion as shied of ignorance, does not have to apply to all religions or religious beliefs. I wonder how many people use TV, music, drugs, alcohol as a shield of ignorance. “They said it on TV, that’s good enough for me.” “The Grateful Dead smoke pot, so I’ll smoke pot.” Ect ect ect.

BTW, I’m decidedly non-Theistic if anybody wants to know.

18

In all fairness, western religions and eastern ones are so vastly different that it’s often easier to just focus on one or the other in a debate… and seeing as how on this board there are more followers of western than eastern, it would only follow…

though that said, I don’t think i’ve ever seen a Buddhist and a “non-believer” go at it… I have a feeling the buddhist would just sorta smile, maybe say a couple koans or two, while the “non-believer” just sorta steams

19

Can you give me some examples of these ‘enjoyments’ that are denied?

20

admittedly i am not odysseus, but he is probably speaking of the sort of thing that a Christian might call a vice or in general look down upon… his point presumably being that there is no intrinsic reason why certain such activities necessarily be evil/tickets to hell.

as an example on my own accord… it might be said that there is no overwhelming reason that premarital sex must be avoided, and if it was not the person might live a more enjoyable life than the person who avoids all that is sensual in this world for fear of wrath