How does religion hurt us?

Great Debates
21

I did not mean to imply that religion was exclusive in providing said shield. Actually, I was attempting to say that my POV does not apply broadly to all beliefs or all people of a specific belief, but that fundamentalism can be installed into a person to the degree that they are unable to question their belief system, at which point it has become harmful. The point I’m trying to make in relation to the question “how does religion actually hurt the believer?” is that not all believers are harmed, not all beliefs are harmful. The problem is that the answer is terribly subjective, depending on the point of view of the person answering the question.

I’ll be the first to admit that I know almost nothing of non-theistic religions. In fact, I’m woefully ignorant of most every religion except a few flavors of christianity, with a dash of mormonism and islam. So, if you wish, please read my use of the word “religion” to mean “christianity”. Again, I’m not applying this to all christians, but a subset. Fred Phelps is an example of a belief system taken too far. He’s attempting to instill his belief system into his grandchildren, and this is harmful to them. However, while I say that Rev. Phelps ministry is harmful to his followers, children, neighbors, and society in general, he says the same of me. I imagine any belief system can be carried to the extreme, where it becomes destructive and harmful.

There is no 100% accurate answer with which everyone agrees. One could argue that religion is never harmful to the believer, from the believers point of view. Even in such circumstances as being put to death for your beliefs, the believer may see it as taking one for the team, becoming a martyr, or securing a place in heaven and thus not harmful.

My answer is that religion becomes harmful to the believer once it comes between them and knowledge of the world, and when it is instilled from such an early age, and with such force, that it can not be questioned. However, the believer may argue that their religion provides adequate knowledge of the world, and there is no need to question when one has faith.

Then, of course, there’s scientology…

22

hey now lets not jump on the scientologists…they may have the right idea afterall… I mean… if we live in such a greedy, petty, and vindictive world, why can’t our God be greedy, petty, and vindictive?

23

Well, western religions tend to be of the Judeo-Christian-Muslem root, which focuses largely on salvation and forgiveness. Eastern religions, on the other hand, are more philosophically-oriented, and as such don’t really object much to the things which drive western religious fundamentalists in an uproar.

(Vast oversimplification and potential mangling of religious beliefs ahead – it’s been years since I studied this stuff)

Offhand, I don’t remember any Buddhist teachings that say you can’t study the origin of the universe or the evolution of man, for instance. There’s nothing contradictory about being a Buddhist who’s an expert on biological evolution, for instance – as long as you’re working on renouncing desire and reducing your personal suffering, what you teach and study is no big deal. Similarly, I can’t imagine any Shinto followers or Taoists who would get into a major huff if you told them they evolved from lemurs millions of years ago, because their beliefs don’t preclude discussions about our origins.

Actually, now I have to wonder – is it only Judeo-Christian-Muslem religions that make such a big deal about origin stories? How would a follower of Native American or ancient Aztec religions feel if confronted with “controversial” ideas like the Big Bang or the Evolution of Man? Anyone care to venture a guess?

24

I’m a little rusty on my Eastern Religions, but I’ll try to at least sketch why non-Western religions can be harmful.

Mahayana Buddhism: It’s almost eerie how much certain flavors of MB start to resemble “Fundie” Christianity. In Pure Land Buddhism, if you have faith in Amida Buddha, then when you die, you will be resurrected in The Pure Land. The Pure Land is sort of like Buddhist Heaven, but remember, Heaven isn’t the goal of Buddhism; Nirvana is. So the benefit of Pure Land is that it’s so perfect, you can live a fantastic life there, and when you die, you’ll achieve Nirvana.

Nichiren Buddhism attributes merit to saying (translated into English) “I have faith in the Lotus Sutra” over and over and over again. There are a lot of flavors of MB that attribute special merit to repeating some phrase or another. Sometimes invoking a certain Buddha’s name 1,000,000 times wins you a miracle (or maybe it was a giant novelty comb, which you can later trade up for a miracle; I forget). Remember Jet Li in Lethal Weapon 4 and how he had a rosary? He was maybe ticking off the number of times he said “Namu Amida Butsu” or, and the spelling will be atrocious here, “Namu Horen Genkyo.” (Actually, those are Japanese, and his character is Chinese). Isn’t one of the most common gripes about Catholicism is how it’s empty of Spirit and heavy on ritual?

So, in MB, we have people who think that repeating a silly phrase a million times is a virtuous action, even if it comes at the expense of “better” actions. There’s also a flavor of future salvation, which can lead to the same evils as it does in Christianity. Also, some sects of MB believe that women cannot attain Nirvana, and so they are lesser beings, and their best hope is to be reincarnated as a man. That’s gotta be harmful.

Theravada (aka Hinayana) Buddhism : I know much less about the flavors of TB simply because, in the opinion of my professors, they’re far less interesting. In Mahayana, you get scads and scads of Buddhas, an seemingly infinite number of Buddhas-in-training (bodhisattvas), and universes full of different planets and belief systems. In TB, you get Siddhartha Gautama. Still, the most revered person in TB is the arhat. His job is to sit around all day and meditate. So, the goal of a Theravadan Buddhist is not to feed the hungry, not to shelter the homeless, etc. No, his goal is to sit around all day achieving his own inner peace. You’ve gotta love selfishness made into a virtue. And need I mention that, AFAIK, every TB believes that women can’t become arhats?

Taoism: Taoism always got shoved to the end of the semester, and so it was treated in passing (dammit). But I do know that the ideal figure in Taoism is an enlightened hermit, living in peace with nature but shunning society. William James in The Varieties of Religious Experience does a pretty good job of tearing into hermits and ascetics in Western Traditions. In short, such individuals are worthless to society, and not deserving of praise. How can a hermit be happy when he knows that society is flawed? Only by being selfish.

I think in the West we view Eastern religions as enlightened, tranquil, and on the whole better. While to some extent Eastern religions can be better, they’re not without flaws. And, lamentably, their flaws are the same as the flaws of Christianity. Sexism, racism, classism (hoo boy, I didn’t even mention Hinduism’s caste system), internecine clashes… Ugh.

Quix

25

I’m an atheist, but I have to object to this. It is, at the very least, a gross generalization.

On the point of “accepting without question”, a whole mess of religions don’t follow that. Hell, the whole point of Protestantism was that each individual has his/her own relationship with God, the parameters of which are between God and that individual.
The Catholics dislike the “unexamined faith”, while the Quakers look to the individual and how the spirit moves him/her to be the definition of right and wrong. Etc., etc.

As for the logical thinking points, BS. JW Marriott, a devout Mormon, was logical enough to found a vast hotel and hospitality empire. Rockefeller, who (in inflation-adjusted terms) was the richest man ever, seemed to have no logical problems caused by his almost fanatic Baptist beliefs. (And, on the other side of the coin, would he have committed so much of his wealth to philanthropy without those beliefs?) Hell, my own brother is a committed Catholic, but it doesn’t seem to have impeded his logical abilities - he holds a Ph.D in Chemical Engineering and is a professor at MIT.

Anyhow - with limited exceptions, IMO religious belief doesn’t harm the individual. What harm is caused by religion comes from the attempt to foist beliefs on others.

Sua

26

One could nitpick some of quixotic78’s descriptions–Mahayana is hardly composed entirely of the Amida and Nichiren flavors–but that’s all it would be. I’m in full agreement with the above, though.

To adapt a pithy slogan, religious belief doesn’t harm people, people harm people. Beliefs are just one of the bludgeons they use.

27

Alternately, religion made me drop a tag, which results in harmful pain to the eyes from overbolding.

28

To a degree, yes – but when you get down to the brass tacks, every religion has some fundamental tenets that they want the followers to accept “on faith”. You can examine your relationship with God all you like, but actually questioning the existence of God (to the point where you conclude He doesn’t really exist) is a no-no.

(Or, at least, I haven’t heard of any Catholic priests who have publically stated, “So, you concluded God doesn’t exist and you want to leave the church? Good for you!” :slight_smile: )

Yeah, the original message was an oversimplification, but that’s inevitable with a discussion like this, unless we want each response to be a five-thousand-word essay so there’s room for detailed elaborations…

No disagreement from me here – people can believe whatever they want, and it’s no skin off my nose. It’s when they pester me on the weekend about it and try to get laws passed sanctioning their myths that gets my dander up.

29

Society is full to the brim with bullshit… There’s nothing wrong with getting away from that and coming to your own conclusions about things… I know plenty of Christians or members of other religions who don’t feed the hungry or shelter the homeless… should we tear into them as well?

In my book the ideal would be something like Nietzsche’s Zarathustra… a hermit of sorts for a while… but eventually comes down off his mountain and tries to share his conclusions with people… this said, I still think meditating hermits aren’t unworthy of praise… humans aren’t only capable of feeding the hungry and sheltering the homeless… they can do bad things too, so being removed from society isn’t only removing the possibility of good. An ascetic isn’t a burden on us so let em be… it’s sorta on par with religious freedom… let people think whatever they want if it doesn’t harm you

and leme just say that when i said what i did about eastern and western religions having significant differences that make it easier to deal with them one at a time, i said this because some people were saying “you are only saying how CHRISTIANS are harmful” as if to somehow make the statements against Christians invalid… I wasn’t suggesting that there was nothing wrong with eastern religions and i’m grateful for quix for pointing out the problems in eastern religions as well…

I used to think taht only Christianity had problems… and not just in its doctrine, but in how many of its followers just kinda “go through the motions” without a whole lot of devotion or passion…I mean… in a predominately Christian country such as this people who practice other religions often do so because they desire this devotion or passion, so it was hard to tell…but I have a friend at school from Burma which is overwhelmingly Buddhist and he explained that people there often treat Buddhism the same way

30

I am not religious having lost the ability to believe in it at a young age, so I do not have a lot of personal experience to go by. My opinion is, however, that religious people live their lives according to rules that those of us that are not religious do not worry about. So I would say it could hurt them by not allowing them to do something they would like to do or causing them to do something that they do not want to do because of these rules.

31

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

I didn’t really get much of an explanation. Kaje simply said that pre-marital sex was not allowed. Odysseus didn’t clarify. Now Libby seems to be saying something similar.

What are these things/enjoyments that religion prevents you from doing?

32

Now that i’m not trying to guess what somebody else might be saying (as I was when trying to expand on Odysseus’s comment), I can be a little more free about this

pre-marital sex: as I said before…a definate nono

drugs/alcohol: Maybe there are verses in the bible that say you can’t do these, i’m not sure, but I would say that one evident “extrapolation” of the Bible’s teachings has been God’s disapproval of drugs. Occasionally this same extrapolation has been applied by various fundamentalists who abstain from anaesthetics or pharmaceuticals as well. This is not to say there are no other biological or psychological reasons to stay away from these, but without the pressing dogma of the church bearing down on a drug user (who is often doing his thing to spite authority), he would have at least one less worry in his life

homosexual activities: If someone is gay, whether its because he chose it or was that way from birth doesn’t matter in this case, he’s obviously being enjoyment by being told that he can’t do the things he’s inclined to do

beef: if you’re a hindu that is… and i mean hey… steak tastes GOOD

I’m sure i’ll think of others later… but this is a start

33

Abstention from pre-marital sex, while it is an obvious denial of pleasure, could also be argued to be protecting the individual from harm though.

34

That’s irrelevant. The religion isn’t saying, “Don’t have sex before marriage because of STDs or because you’re too young to handle it or to avoid pregnancy.” It says, “Deny yourself the pleasure of sex, even safe® sex between two mature consenting adults, because God Says So.” Moreover, some misguided religionists seek to prevent the dissemination of information, birth control, and protection from STDs, which has been demonstrated to do more harm (in the form of unwanted pregnancies and the spread of STDs) than good (in delaying the age when kids choose to have sex).

As far as pleasures denied, thinking historically and cross-culturally, there are plenty of examples (dancing, cards, certain foods, mastrubation, etc.) Harder to put a finger on examples in modern, mainstream Christianity, but I did have to give up the pleasure of sleeping in or playing many a Sunday in my youth, in exchange for sitting on hard benches in scratchy clothes.

Now, myself, I think that unreasonable expectations of lifelong monogamy do a great deal of harm, but those are so e imbedded in our society that I’m not sure I can hang all the blame on religion.

In my mind, some of the obvious harm to the individual by religion (in order of decreasing severity) are:

  • Submitting yourself to manipulation. Chanting prayers, singing hymns, sitting in a big room with a bunch of people who all agree with you, talking about how much you all agree . . . All these things manipuate the human need to belong to give you a warm fuzzy feeling that your religion is right–without the uncomfortable process of subjecting your beliefs to harsh questioning to be certain that they hold up.

  • Believing something that isn’t true (hey, you asked for the atheist PoV), and growing accustomed to forcing yourself though all sorts of mental gymnastics to justify your the tenets of your belief to yourself in light of contradictory evidence (if any) or what your own gut tells you.

  • Trying to change your own thinking to bring it into accord with what your religion says you should think and feel, how it says you should react to the world around you. Sometimes the outcome is beneficial (love your neighbor, etc.), but hell, if that way of thinking is so great, couldn’t you come to it on your own terms, rather than having it dictated to you?

The points above relate to what I consider the greatest sin: intellectual dishonesty. You start with a conclusion, and then try to trick yourself into believing it. From time to time, I find myself starting with what I want to believe is true and trying to justify it, but if I notice what I’m doing, I give myself a swift mental kick in the pants and start over. Religion, on the other hand, pretty much requires that you believe God’s Word first, and understand it later. On to a few more harmless harms–spritual skins of the knee:

  • Time wasted doing things that just perpetuate the church: volunteering to mow the church lawn, teach Sunday school, organize (or attend) a potluck, etc. Fellowship’s a fine thing, but you’re wasting your time just bolstering a lie, and seeking to draw others into it (from my PoV, once again) when you could be doing something of greater benefit to the community, or hang around with people you want to hang around with, or just do something that you enjoy yourself.

  • Time wasted sitting on your butt in church. Hey, if religion’s your bag, it’s great to spend time thinking about God and joyfully worshipping God, but I have to wonder what fraction of parishoners are doing that, and what fraction are wishing they were home doing something pleasant.

35

I’m not sure that it is irrelevant, the OP doesn’t seem to be asking about the underlying motives of religious behaviour, rather their effect when put into practice.

36

Mangetout, I think you’re right, “irrelevant” was the wrong word. What I meant to say was that the number of people who were saved from STDs and pregnancy by a religious edict against premarital sex is small compared to the number of people who were frustrated and guilt-ridden because of the edict, not to mention the number who were even worse off because they had a moment of weakness, and got “caught” because they weren’t educated, or because they weren’t prepared because they didn’t have access to protection and/or because they thought they weren’t going to have sex.

It’s a blanket injunction that in the end does more harm than good. It says, don’t make decisions for yourself; follow this rigid rule.

37

while abstaining from premarital sex could protect you from getting certain stds, that is no reason to embrace religion per se. most people are aware enough of the aids epidemic to avoid unprotected sex, and those who aren’t suffer not for their “sin” but for their lapse in judgement.
there’s a world of difference between being smart and being moral. if i believed in the mythology, i imagine the devil would be a fucking genius - who wouldn’t be after all this time? but that wouldn’t make him a nice guy.
my point is, you don’t need to be religious to be careful out there. you just need to be smart, and safe sex is the only smart way to do it.

38

sorry, forgot to delete the quote above.

39

Its them damn pews that hurt especially the ones without pads. :eek:

40

Speaking from my own experiences as an ex-fundamentalist Christian…

  • A normal and healthy sexuality. Fundamentalist Christianity is notorious for its perversion of human sexuality, forbidding masturbation and even sexual fantasies.

  • Freedom from fear. If you think God will send people to an unending eternity of unimaginable torment with no hope of reprieve, sorting people out on the most arbitrary of criteria, it’s a little hard to be happy. Let’s not forget the famously ambiguous “sin against the Holy Spirit”- you could be damned to hell right now, without even knowing what you did wrong!

  • Freedom to think for yourself. When I was in high school we were told that any scholar who disagreed, even indirectly or implicitly, with what our fundie handlers taught us was secretly a pawn of the devil, deliberately setting out to destroy Christianity through the most subtle of means. (Incidentally, I later found that this wasn’t the only FC mind control technique which Jim Jones used on his followers. While I obviously didn’t experience that level of abuse, the techniques were surprisingly the same.)

  • Freedom to think at all. Remember, the thought is as bad as the deed. If you’re trying to figure out what to do and you contemplate the wrong course of action, you’ve already sinned. Since a good FC wants to avoid sin, you have to learn to avoid even thinking about certain things.

  • A coherent, rational, and meaningful morality. If morality is just doing what God wants, you end up having to second-guess God, which is oftentimes impossible. I remember reading about a FC couple in which the woman had become pregnant with a dangerously large number of fetuses. They had to choose whether to abort all but two or three of them, or try to carry all of them to term. They were hopelessly handicapped in trying to figure out what to do: was God testing them to see whether they, as stewards of the fetuses, would responsibly try to save as many as possible through a pregnancy reduction? Or did God give them the extra fetuses to compensate for an earlier miscarriage?

There’s a lot of synergy here, too. For example, we were taught that the only acceptable way to find meaning in life was to find meaning in carrying out God’s commands. The problem is, that one-size-fits-all philosophy didn’t fit me. Loving my neighbor was inherently meaningful to me, but the fundies determinedly tore that down, declaring that the finiteness of human existence made good deeds meaningful not because they helped people, but because God ordered us to do it. In the end, Christianity failed to provide the kind of meaning which my own atheistic religion can. Of course, I was stuck with that bleak Christian worldview for a long time, since obviously Christianity was true- anyone who said otherwise was secretly an agent of Satan. I might have seen through that faster, if I weren’t afraid that I’d go to hell over an honest mistake of religious opinion.
Bear in mind that we’ve only scratched the surface of how fundamentalism hurts people. Apparently there are FC self-help books which tell people that if you don’t know what to do (for example, in medical treatment, in choosing a mortgage, etc.,) just choose the exact opposite of whatever looks like a good idea. Why? Because you’re a sinful worm, so whatever looks good to you is the opposite of what God wants.

-Ben