For some, religion is the universal motivator. For others, like perhaps the Islamic terrorist groups, it is the universal excuse. It is gasoline for the flame of hate.
I realize that some people claim that it doesn’t have to be, but I liken it to leaving a box of dynomite on a park bench. Sure, some altruistic person could take that dynomite and use it to destroy some tree stumps that his neighbor wants removed, or use it to move the path of a river to irrigate crops. That doesn’t prevent me from feeling that that box should be under lock and key, carefully monitored.
Well. My response here is going to be short, because I have no desire to either take this to the Pit or start a new thread there.
Religion is not evil. Extremism can be evil, and often is, and of course extremism is commonly associated with religion, but to use religious fanatics (who often aren’t really following their religion in the first place) to condemn religion as a whole is so narrow minded that it boggles my mind that such sentiments can float around here on a board dedicated to fighting ignorance.
Religion is like a hammer: it can fix your house or bash your skull in. Just a tool for whatever ends people (not God) use it for.
You should turn on Pat Robertson. Blaming internet porn and movies and “luscivious acts”…that we “corrupted the rest of the world.”
When it comes right down to it, religion has nothing to do with terrorism. People use it as an excuse, to justify their actions, but it all comes down to one thing in the end. Political power. It is all an attempt to force their will on others, which has nothing to do with any religion I am familiar with.
And I said as much in the OP. I know that these actions can be supported by scriptures only by a warped and labored reading of them,said I.
So you dispute that Religion is often a source, if not the greatest source, of extremism? It is not “narrow-minded” to have a negative thought about religion. It is not “narrow-minded” to bring that thought up in a discussion forum such as this. What is narrow-minded is to shout down any opinon with which you disagree. What is narrow-minded to dismiss another person’s concern without even attempting to understand the point of view.
I think Czarcasm put into words the feeling I was trying to express
I am not saying that God, by any name or gender you choose to use, is evil. However it seems to be a distressingly short step from devout believer to extremist.
Good point. You pointed out that several of the notorious dictators of the 20th Century were not religious men. However, even they used the religious prejudices of their minions for evil pursuits.
Why do you think that religion is so easily used by selfish, greedy and petty madmen? I think the answer is that religion is such a powerful way to control uneducated, unthinking reactionary masses.
“Religion trumps reason”
Why is this true?
Love, patriotism and innovation are also potentially dangerous. Should we distrust them as well?
It seems to me that the mere potential for danger is a piss-poor reason to distrust anything.
Of course not. As I said “religion is often associated with extremism.”
No, it’s not. But you’ll note that that’s not my point. My point is that to make a blanket condemnation of any world view, political system, philosophical system, ethnicity, etc etc etc on the basis of its extremists IS narrow-minded. Would you say that it’s okay to say “Palestinians are evil” because some terrorists happen to be Palestinian? I fail to see why it’s broad-minded to suppose that religion is evil because some small minority of the people who claim to have it use it to justify atrocity.
And what’s also narrow-minded is to use the excesses of the few to make blanket statements about the body as a whole.
This I’m not so sure about it. I consider myself a religious person, and you’ll never see me blowing up airplanes or abortion clinics or any such thing.
I believe you are correct here. How does the fact that religion can be misapplied make it evil?
Is it true? Religion can and often does trump reason, but surely not always. If my God were telling me to go off and slaughter innocents, then reason would trump religion for me, and I’d choose another faith, if any at all. Blaming the institution for the excesses of some tiny fraction of people who cynically use it to justify evil strikes me as being completely untenable. Obviously, YMMV.
This is the part that troubles me so much. Why does this happen? I don’t doubt that you would follow reason as you state. But why do so many willingly allow their religion to blind them to logic and reason.
BTW, please note that I phrased the thread title as a question, not a statement. I am not a religious person. I am agnostic, though I have had personal experiences that lead me to think there may be a “spiritual” side of existence that we can’t objectively measure. (Mythos vs Logos)
However with my tenuous belief in spirituality, events like those of Sept. 11 and some of the bitter, hateful responses I’ve heard from “Christians” (IRL and on this board) have got me questioning the validity and goodness of religion. If religion can’t give us the wisdom to see that we are all human and deserve respect, then what use is it?
I understand your protestations that I am perhaps allowing the actions of a few misguided individuals to taint my view of religion. But the ease by which an organized religion can be used for evil is still unsettling. How can it be avoided?
I don’t think Hitler was an atheist. At least he claimed not to be.
pukey
Let’s suppose(against evidence to the contrary) that all of them were atheists. Did they use Atheism as a rallying point and battle cry to destroy large groups of people?
Why can religion trump reason? I suppose it’s because religion provides a framework around which a person’s moral and ethical thinking can be organized and which doesn’t obviously require reason. Paying lip service to religion is easy; it allows a person to disclaim responsibility for his or her own actions because “the devil made me do it,” or “God told me to do it,” or whatever.
Also, of course, society is at least partially organized around it. Were I brought up in a Buddhist community, I would quite possibly be Buddhist, I’m sure. People are exposed to religion at an early age, and surrounded by it, and they assume it right and correct. It can be very hard to question your faith, and when you add this to the things I mentioned earlier, you get something that can often trump reason. Hopefully, someone who knows more about the psychological and sociological aspects of this topic than I will be able to shed more light on it.
How can the use of religion for evil be avoided? There, I admit that I just don’t know. Most religions that I know of would unilaterally condemn such actions as we saw yesterday (I’m not arguing that Islamic extremists are at fault for yesterday’s atrocity, merely that such an action does, as far as I understand it, run roundly counter to the tenets of Islam). What we require is that people think rationally, and actually FOLLOW the tenets of their own religion. I don’t know how you can force a person to be rational, of course. And when people are caught up in strong emotions in any event, an appeal to commonalities such as religion can have enormous impact. That religion can be used to justify evil is unsettling, and I really don’t know how to stop it.
As to what uses religion has… Here, I suspect, it depends from person to person. It provides comfort, it provides a social structure, etc etc (I strongly suspect there are threads on this very message board as to the uses of religion). Surely this matters for something. It also doubtless informs our morality; while there are many bitter, hateful responses from “Christians,” I would note that such responses are intrinsically un-Christian.
Personal anecdote: after the initial shock and disbelief wore off, the strongest emotion I felt yesterday was blinding fury. But in part due to my Christian morality (as informed also, of course, by reason), I was able (I hope) to avoid falling into the same bitter hatefulness that we’ve seen from others. I had to spend some time wrestling with the inner ugliness that I’m sure we all have, and religion helped me do that (I also had to spend time wrestling with my faith in general).
Am I trying to hold myself up as a paragon of humanity and religious virtue? Of course not; I’m not even a particularly religious person anymore. But I mention it to show that religion can “give us the wisdom to see that we are all human and deserve respect,” and I’m sure there are many many other people who would say the same thing. That religion does not give us said wisdom infallibly is terribly unfortunate, but hardly surprising; people and religion both are fallible, after all.
(BTW: I noted the question mark in the thread title; my problem is that there are people in the world who would answer the question with a resounding yes, and disturbingly it seems like there are people here at the SDMB who would make that claim.)
You forget that I explained I was speaking from an atheist point of view. The difference between love and innovation on one hand, and religion on the other, is that the latter serves no purpose (and in my opinion is at the very least counter-productive).
Once again, if a belief you think makes no sense (say, the ET are controlling the government) was leading some people to kill thousands, wouldn’t you think you have some duty to fight the said belief?
I let patriotism apart since I think that this feeling too can be misleading and dangerous.
The emotion that can cause reactions such as the ones the OP spoke of is Fear. In this case it is probably some deeply emotionally hidden fear, but deep down I believe it is fear. I think all hate is driven by fear.
Erek
I don’t think that the thing that strikes so much terror for us is that Osama Bin Laden doesn’t think for himself, it’s that he does.
Erek
I’d like to add to this also. Hitler and Stalin both persecuted people in the name of religion. Religion was more or less banned in the Soviet Union. Hitler believed in occultism to a very large degree. I don’t know much about Mussolini. Also killing jews because of their religion counts as atrocity in the name of religion whether you have a particular religion or not. I think most of our problems are spawned by religion. I think religion is evil. It is the ultimate self-serving bias to give yourself more credit in the world than you actually warrant. I do believe in god, but god DID NOT create you or I or any group of your friends above other people. As was posted in the Zionism=Racism thread…“God created Adam and Eve so that all of mankind would share a common source” (this is paraphrased and whether you are religious or not, I think the parable works.)
Erek
EXTREME religion is evil.
Not your true religious, good hearted people like Jimmy Carter, or Martin Luther King.
Religion and Patriotism are one in the same IMO. Everything is potentially dangerous. However it’s the level of danger that they present that is the issue. Everything that ever was, was justified using these as guide posts.
Erek
Oh piffle. I would readily concede that to an atheist, religion serves no rational purpose; this hardly means that it serves no purpose whatsoever. It may serve no purpose that you accept or acknowledge, but if there is truly no purpose behind religion, why are there so many religious people?
No, I would have some duty to fight those who are killing thousands. If the belief itself also stated that we should kill thousands, then and only then would I advocate fighting the belief. Until a belief advocates evil, people should be perfectly free to follow it or not as they see fit. Once again, and with feeling: condemning the whole for the failings of some tiny fraction who twist its message is wrong.
Yes, but the thing that worries us is that he can pervert a perfectly worthy religion and use it to convince people who no doubt already have reason to listen to him as additional incentive. As far as religion goes, though, while he may be thinking for himself, he’s obviously not thinking honestly from Islam, and inasmuch as he sincerely believes that Islam commands him to slaughter innocents by the thousands (and I don’t know that he DOES sincerely believe this), he’s wrong.
Let me get this straight. “Stalin… persecuted people in the name of religion. Religion was more or less banned in the Soviet Union.” So what you’re saying is that because Stalin persecuted religious people, religion is evil? Or was there some subtle logical point that went about 6000 miles over my head?
Do what? Hitler slaughtering Jews by the millions is a crime of religion? Please, explain how this reflects ill on religion and not on Hitler.
That’s an interesting take on religion. I never saw it, and I still don’t see it, as an attempt to give myself more credit in the world. I certainly don’t see it as being responsible for racism, sexism, terrorism, crime, or many of the other problems of our times. Whether you like Christianity or not, for example, if everyone followed the golden rule of doing unto others as we would have them do unto us, the world would be a happier place. And that’s exactly what my religion tells me I should do, in addition to my common sense and my morality.
Guin, I almost agree with you, but I think maybe a better way of saying it is that extreme perversions of perfectly worthy religions are evil. If someone was an extremely good Christian or Jew or Muslim and followed all the good and righteous teachings of his or her religion, I would probably be in awe of their moral fiber. I suspect the same holds true of people who follow the tenets of many other major religions zealously.
Interesting take on things. I’m not saying I agree, but it’s interesting. I’m happy to discover that the great evils of history were truly motivated on religious and patriotic grounds, rather than on economic or other such grounds. Let’s all take note of this: it wasn’t the convenience of having a large pool of inexpensive labor that led to slavery, it was the deep seated and honest religious conviction that Christ commanded us to enslave the Africans that caused slavery!
Certainly religion has been used to justify great evil, and it will probably always be used to justify great evil. Religion provides a convenient excuse. But for the umpteenth time, if a religion commands its followers to do good, the religion is not evil. Since many religions are like this, there are many religions that are not evil. That there are also many people out there who find religion a convenient tool to control other people STILL doesn’t make religion evil, it makes the people who misapply it evil.
Let me put it this way: science has led to all sorts of horrible things. Why, if there were no science, we wouldn’t have the ability to fly planes into skyscrapers because we wouldn’t have planes (or skyscrapers, for that matter)! We wouldn’t have missiles, we wouldn’t have guns, and so forth. Conclusion: science is evil because people have used it to facilitate evil things. Nevermind the fact that science as properly understood has no intrinic moral value whatsoever, nevermind the fact that when morally used, science leads to great good. No, because science can be misused, it is evil.
Do I believe this? Certainly not. Does it follow from the same reasoning as the reasoning used to indict religion as evil? No, but it follows a similar and equally faulty line of thought (viz, that because x can be used to facilitate evil, x must be evil itself).
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by g8rguy *
**
The main purposes for religion are IMO :
-Providing a moral frame and an authority to back it. We can have a moral frame without religion (for instance : human rights)
-Providing an explanation for customs and giving them an authority (the ancestors spirits will be angried if we don’t…). Take for example the many minor rules in the bible about food, clothes, etc…We don’t accept anymore an ultimate authorities for such minor things.
-Providing an explanation for the world. Science has answered many of the questions we had. We don’t need to sacrifice to Thor to avoid thunder anymore. Jumping on old irrational beliefs for the questions which are still unanswered (and possibly unanswerable) when quite all the other answers given by religions have proven wrong makes no sense to me.
-Comforting people who face death, calamities, sorrow. It’s difficult to face such things, but I would still prefer that people face the reality instead of expecting that justice will be done in a supposed future life or that someone suffer because he did something wrong in a supposed previous life (I heard both)
So, I believe that the real purposes of religion are less and less relevant. And to answer your question, about why so much people are religious : because they have been brought up that way, been told it was true, are surrounded by people who share their beliefs. It seems quite obvious. Though (whatever some can believe) religions are extremely different, the fact is that very few people choose a religion which doesn’t fit to their cultural background.Also, unfortunately, people are often subjected to a lot of peer pressure, which is something else I dislike a lot. Also related the fact that religion appeal to guts feeling, and quite never to reason (religious people have no problem “swallowing” all sorts of obvious contradictions). Which is certainly not satisfying and also dangerous.
So, you never have an argument with people having other opinions, never try to convince them, never try to fight the influence of other people who you believe are misleading them, or even are lying to them?
And I feel free to fight it.Do you believe that religious people don’t fight atheism?
I condemn the whole belief because I’m convinced it is false. I fight those who advocate it, because they’re misleading people. Since I think the belief has a zero value in itself, and can have dangerous consequences, I condemn it. Finally you are thinking these people “twist” the message. These people think you misread it. Since it’s a religious matter, how can you assess they’re wrong. Why should “the true religion” agree with your moral beliefs?
YOUR religion, exactly. The one you made up to fit your beliefs, convictions and moral values. The extremists you’re criticizing find their beliefs in the same sacred book you do. They can back their hate by quotes as easily as you can do. In both the bible and the Kuran, I can find a lot of fuel to support their views, and justify every crime committed in the name of religion.
Following the golden rule? Are you joking? This message is stressed upon now, because society has changed his values. No thanks for religion for that. This evolution took place despite religion, not thanks to it. Your values are modern humanist values. When slavery was OK, people backed it with sacred texts. When homosexuality was a crime, religious people backed it (and still do) with their sacred texts. When slaughtering someone was ok, religious people backed it with their sacred texts.
Your argument would be valid if a religion actually and clearly supported the “golden rule” you’re talking about. But at least christian and muslim ones don’t and never did. It’s only your interpretation of it. A modern interpretation. An interpretation which fits your ideals. Ideals you owe to people who fought religion in the past, and often died or had miserable life for that exact reason.
You should consider it again. You’re drawing a line between people who follow the “true” religion (understand : how you interpret it) and falling people who “twist” the message (understand : follow the part of scriptures you discard). These people have actually the same religion you have. They refer to the same texts you do. To the same historical figures you do. The only difference is that they don’t share your values and views. The danger is that their religious feelings fuel their hate, appease their minds (or plainly prevent them from thinking)and help them commiting dreadful acts.
If your religious texts were only stating this “golden rule” and saying that everybody following it would go to some paradise, I would probably still find it funny, but I would have no problem with it. But it’s not the case. The books don’t state that, the preachers don’t read that, the followers don’t act according to that. For centuries religion has fuelled hate, caused incredible pains and sufferings. And if you think that things have changed, how can you have any confidence in a belief that has been so wrong for so long a time? And anyway, things haven’t changed that much, as we all can see.
That why I’m not satisfied with only ignoring religion, why I believe I have to stand against it.