Maybe this should be in General Questions or some other forum but, since it relates directly to a debate, I will post this question here.
In view of the recent thread on an eternal hell and the inevitable argument/debate questioning the existence of Jesus or a god at all, does any other topic in Great Debates (or anywhere else) inspire so many responses?
Given human history and the masses murdered in the name of the god du jour with no end in sight, I would guess not. I have to admit that I enjoy reading the posts, if only to see a succinct, logical argument. Or, conversely, have a laugh at some of the so-called rationale that appears. Its quite tempting to get involved in the debate but I don’t think very many people have ever been convinced to change their mind, one way or the other. So, why bother? That’s why we have to kill them. Just kidding, of course.
I would recommend that you stop for a second and think about this statement.
Was the killing in God’s name or an expression of something else that was justified by using God’s name?
It’s something I’ve noticed a lot as I’ve read history books. No matter the reason, God always supports it. It seems to me that in all the wide variety of cases that GOd is called upon to vanquish His “enemies” it’s actually a justification for something that man wanted to do in the first place.
The difference:
I want all of my neighbors’ riches, but my people aren’t feeling it. Hm. Ohhhh! God commands us to go, my people! Let’s take their stuff!
versus
God says we should kill them all. Came to me last night and told me to. (Implied as actual religious encounter and not lunacy.)
The Salem Witch Trials was another example. People were using a method that the church recognized to either wage a class warfare or get back at people who slighted them in some way (Depending who’s version of history you favor) instead of God actually going “Hey, there are witches there. We should totally torch them.”
Using His name was just the means to an end for most of history, simply because it was a unifying force. Similar uses have included things like nationalism or for the reigning king of an area.
But it was still religion that allowed it in the first place. If you can get people to believe ‘god > *’, then it’s a simple step to ‘I speak for god’. They used the belief to twist their justification, which simply wouldn’t have been possible without the whole religious framework. And religious leaders went along with it or even led the charge themselves.
Ask the Albigensians whether or not their deaths were caused by religion. Or the many victims of the Spanish Inquisition.
I hear this argument a lot, but it doesn’t impress me. It presumes that people are just as sensitive to jingoistic violence as they are religion-sanctioned violence…that they are so similar to each other that they are interchangeable. But they aren’t.
There is some overlap, to be sure. Some of the same people who’d be whipped up into a frenzy over a wrathful God probably would also get whipped up about “they” on the other side of the street, mountain, pond, etc.
But this argument fails to consider that nationalism is almost always bolstered by religion. Take away religion and MAYBE people would see the emptiness of the rhetoric being crammed down their throats. Choose any modern-day or historical conflict. Even when it’s not explicitly religion-driven, religion is often used in the propaganda. What’s the best way to dehumanize the other side? Call them godless heathens. “They have a dangerous economic system!” doesn’t even compare. I doubt the US would have gone into Vietnam, Iraq, or Afganistan if they were “Christian” countries (the last one for obvious reasons, of course).
Oppression is the same way. Capitalism was the primary force of US slavery. But social custom reinforced heavily by religion helped to keep it going for so long. And if Jesus had been a woman, or if Scripture promoted more gender equality, I doubt society would be as sexist as it is/was.
So I am not convinced we would be as warlike as we are if there was no religion.
Yes, but the Spanish Inquisition was started by a political drive to get rid of the Jews. It was common practice before the Inquisition to take out a loan from a Jewish person (Since they were restricted in their available professions and money lender was one of the ones they were allowed) get behind in payments, and then accuse the Jewish person of eating pork or some other violation of Jewish law and have that person put to death. “Coincidentally” cancelling all outstanding loans.
Someone convinced Isabella, the Spanish Queen, that there was a rampaging epidemic of being Jewish while lying to the outside world and saying you were Christian. The Spanish Inquisition was started as a way to root these persons out. Their methods of convincing people to give up the Jewish faith and convert, though, were considered inadequate by the Crown which eventually put out the Order of Alhambra that basically kicked all Jews out.
This wasn’t a “Christian” purging until it became seen as a politically expedient reason to rid the kingdom of Jewish practitioners.
Just because you believe “God > *” doesn’t mean you trust anyone who says His name. That was specifically warned about by Jesus, and yet so often people are willing to believe anything that demonizes those that don’t believe what they believe.
Some Christians consider atheists lost. Some atheists consider Christians fools. Some Democrats consider Conservatives simple idiots that need help. Some Conservatives consider Democrats are morally bankrupt power mongerers.
Which of these are related to “God”? My opinion: None. They are related to the people. God is secondary to their concern of admonishing those that don’t “belong”. He is just a tool they use to advance their very mortal interests.
Many people have an internal moral compass, which tells them that slaughtering innocents is a bad thing. But lots are uncertain of it. If they believe in God, and believe that God is the absolute arbiter of morality, and also believe that religious or civil authorities truly know what God wants, then these people have good reason to think that their inner moral compass is wrong and that not slaughtering the innocents risks eternal damnation.
It certainly works for countries also (my country right or wrong) but religious pressure is even stronger, since it mostly brooks no argument.
We don’t see it in the west in terms of slaughter any more, but we still see the “I think God is against birth control so you can’t have any” here.
No, just putting it in context as a subset of all oppression and violence.
I consider religious bigotry worse than most other forms, because it is so unanswerable. If Big Doug says, “Nobody eats shrimp any more, because I think it’s yucky,” we can all say, “Up yours, Big Doug, we like the stuff.” But when Doug the Priest says it, we can’t respond without being told, “You’re showing disrespect for God the Creator! The next house that burns down is your fault!”
By artificially tying in commandments to (inevitable) natural disasters, religion capitalizes on “post hoc ergo propter hoc” thinking, and worms its way into an unquestionable status. This is particularly dangerous.
By the way, anyone here who disputes this? Something bad will happen to them in the next five hundred days. It is the will of the FSM…
Oppression works without religion. See Stalin. Was he less brutal because he was an atheist?
And I honestly think we’d be MORE warlike. Think about it this way: If you have no religion you have nothing that will override self-centered thought. You can’t go “You don’t overthrow the king because he was chosen by god!” So, the kingship that doesn’t respond to the concerns of the populace gets overthrown. Since there isn’t a placating and/or unifying system of belief, there is no way to enforce the nationalism, which means the nation is continually in a state of getting new governments. Instead of pushing the war outside of their borders when expedient to do so, the war would be continual and inside their borders.
IIRC, within 48 hrs of Moses descending that hill with 2 tablets of 10 god inspired comandments ( one of which was "thou shall not kill "), Moses encountered people selling idols on Sunday, and following That same godly voice in his head, Moses randomly killed the people, not unlike the religious zealots in that mall in Kenya?
If we write off Moses massacre as not being divinely inspired, how do we justify honoring his 10 commandments? The ink wasn’t even dry on those 2 tablets when Mo went postal.
I wonder if the desire for a hierarchy in human existence would have made a religious institution out of a government, anyway. I mean, Milligram’s experiment shows that people are stupid and simply obey if they believe that the orders are coming from a trusted authority source.
Given that there is so much mixture of religion and government anyway - like the British monarch being head of the church - it was inevitable. King’s don’t like independent power centers - see Henry VIII. See Becket.
ETA: I just read a history of England up to the Tudors, and a common thread for the early kings was their ability to appoint Archbishops in England. Ones who got ornery, like Becket, were often dealt with. I’m sure that the first tribal chiefs made damn sure that the first priests told the people that the Gods wanted what the King wanted.
And there was the deification of the Roman Emperors too. Lots of examples.
What I’m saying is that olden-day kingdoms might have been far less stable (resulting in who-knows-what for the modern day) had they not had their gods to rally around.
And, really, the wars slowed down and ceased before we started dropping religion en mass… A lot of countries, today, are still at least in the 50/50 state of religious people versus non-religious. Ex USSR states are far more non-religious, but it’s not like there’s a shortage of those that are religious…anywhere in the world. And yet we have the fewest deaths (percentage wise) from the fewest wars in history.
To me, that speaks of an evolution of the human condition and not of religion vs non-religion. We have far less volatility in things like food production and water availability than we had in the past, where you might have to loot a few nearby kingdoms to secure supplies and, later on, wealth.
Read Joshua in the Biblical OT. It clearly records Josh hearing gods voice to murder every man, woman and child in several entire cities. One city alone the bible records Joshua divinely killing 12,000.
The Abrahamic relgions are the only ones that, historically, split the priesthood from the state as a matter of course. It’s probably why they survived so well through history. After all, not only are you more nebulous (you can practice Judaism in Rome for entire generations) but if the king falls in a war, the religion doesn’t necessarily topple with him.
The RCC was bound to the Roman emperors loosely enough that they survived the disintegration of the empire fairly intact.
Henry VIII broke this tradition purely so that he could remarry and make his wife give him a boy (ironically). It’s another example of religion being used to expedite a political desire.
You admit that there is a decline in war/violence as we have become increasingly non-religious.
While this doesn’t prove that religion predisposes societies to engage in warfare, it does indicate a compelling relationship. It certainly doesn’t make me think that humans will simply swap nationalism for religion whenever they want to get their mass killing on. So I’m wondering what you’re basing your thoughts on, if the best evidence we have contradicts what you would expect to find. It’s great you have Stalin to point to, but that’s the one guy everyone always brings up. Some others would be nice too.
If you want to convince people that religion doesn’t make us warriors, you could start by showing that religious countries and non-religious countries have similiar rates of war/internal conflict. Are there a lot of heavily atheist countries with violent skirmishes on the evening news? Or almost all of them ones where the majority of citizens are believers of some kind?
Communism is for all intents and purposes a religion, and Stalin acted like any bloodthirsty theocrat. And just because other causes of oppression exist doesn’t mean that religion isn’t especially prone to oppression.
Nonsense; religious thought is very self centered. Self interest is simply labeled “God” and deified. There’s no actual gods to give any commands; only the desires of the believers elevated to divine stature. It’s all self indulgent fantasy.
