Religion is Evil on Earth

Fallen Seraph

Scofflaw wrote:

The missing part of that thesis is "what's in it for them"? I can understand people using religion as an excuse for violence, social control of breeding resources, and demarcation of in-group and out-group, but I don't see what organised religion gets out of it.

I think you're missing the point of the thread; you see religion is pure unadulterated, unmitiged evil. It takes pleasure in the pain of others and is the consort of satan. It eats the flesh of infants.


... the worst part is I don't think my sarcasm is coming across...

Scofflaw

Fallen Seraph wrote:

I think you're missing the point of the thread; you see religion is pure unadulterated, unmitiged evil. It takes pleasure in the pain of others and is the consort of satan. It eats the flesh of infants.

Blast. I knew I'd forgotten something.

Fallen Seraph wrote:

... the worst part is I don't think my sarcasm is coming across...

Er, no, I think I got that bit, actually.

I tend to see the whole "religion is eeeeevillll" thing as being part of the general human willingness to ascribe to active agency what is equally well explained by chance and stupidity....hmmm.

cordially,
Scofflaw

Dades

Religion doesn't kill people, people kill people. :eek:

PDN

So, let's get this straight. People who belong to one religion commit a brutal and horrible act, therefore all religion is evil?

By the same logic, the police force of one city stood by and did nothing. Therefore all police everywhere are evil.

An Irishman planted a bomb that killed innocent people in England. Therefore all Irish people are evil.

What is this silliness?

Scofflaw

PDN wrote:

So, let's get this straight. People who belong to one religion commit a brutal and horrible act, therefore all religion is evil?

By the same logic, the police force of one city stood by and did nothing. Therefore all police everywhere are evil.

An Irishman planted a bomb that killed innocent people in England. Therefore all Irish people are evil.

What is this silliness?

Hush, hush - it's just "atheists are eeeevvillll" played the other way round. It is, as you can see, equally silly whichever way one plays the game.

cordially,
Scofflaw

rockbeer

PDN wrote:

So, let's get this straight. People who belong to one religion commit a brutal and horrible act, therefore all religion is evil?

By the same logic, the police force of one city stood by and did nothing. Therefore all police everywhere are evil.

An Irishman planted a bomb that killed innocent people in England. Therefore all Irish people are evil.

What is this silliness?

You persistently confuse principles with people - I've noticed this tendency of yours in other threads too.

Religion itself is a malign influence. Particularly monotheistic religion. I wouldn't go so far as to say evil because concepts like that are the preserve of theists. But monotheistic religions are inherently and demonstrably intolerant and divisive.

That does not mean all religious people are malign, not by any stretch, in the same way that not all people who supported the German Nazis were malign, or every Iraqi Ba'athist to cite a more recent example. (These are transparent examples, while the malign nature of religion is more disguised). Many 'good' people subscribed to these philosophies/organizations, for all manner of reasons: failure of education or understanding, social pressure, fear, ignorance, simply being mistaken about what they really stood for, even the desire to do good. And I'm sure many otherwise 'good' people did indefensible things once given permission by their leaders - as is the point of robindch's reference to those psychology experiments.

So don't take it personally. Throughout history intelligent and well-meaning but misguided people have subscribed to malign philosophies, not understanding the true nature of that in which they participate.

PDN

rockbeer wrote:

You persistently confuse principles with people - I've noticed this tendency of yours in other threads too.

Religion itself is a malign influence. Particularly monotheistic religion. I wouldn't go so far as to say evil because concepts like that are the preserve of theists. But monotheistic religions are inherently and demonstrably intolerant and divisive.

That does not mean all religious people are malign, not by any stretch, in the same way that not all people who supported the German Nazis were malign, or every Iraqi Ba'athist to cite a more recent example. (These are transparent examples, while the malign nature of religion is more disguised). Many 'good' people subscribed to these philosophies/organizations, for all manner of reasons: failure of education or understanding, social pressure, fear, ignorance, simply being mistaken about what they really stood for, even the desire to do good. And I'm sure many otherwise 'good' people did indefensible things once given permission by their leaders - as is the point of robindch's reference to those psychology experiments.

So don't take it personally. Throughout history intelligent and well-meaning but misguided people have subscribed to malign philosophies, not understanding the true nature of that in which they participate.

The logic works the same whether you apply it to people or principles. OK, let's keep it to principles:

1 People who belong to one religion commit a brutal and horrible act, therefore all religion is evil.

2. Paramilitaries who belonged to a particular political party/viewpoint used to shoot children through the kneecaps, therefore all political parties/viewpoints are evil.

3. Stalin who held to to a particular atheistic philosophy committed many brutal and horrible acts, therefore all atheism is evil.

All three statements are equally silly.

robindch

Scofflaw wrote:

OK - any evidence for that?

Nope, other than that the 1,000 men reported in a regional newspaper here to have turned up were presumably not waiting for her by chance and had to have been organized. Possibly her family did, but I would imagine it's more likely that one disaffected family member leaked it to the mullahs who organized the reception committee. Am willing to be corrected if anybody can come up with a better cause.

Scofflaw wrote:

The missing part of that thesis is "what's in it for them"? I can understand people using religion as an excuse for violence, social control of breeding resources, and demarcation of in-group and out-group, but I don't see what organised religion gets out of it.

With this kind of show, the mullahs can send the unmistakable message that they control the society and not the state's administration, and therefore, the state had better look after the mullahs and their needs. Remember that the cops and army were reported to have done nothing -- that's a powerful message for an administrator to receive.

BTW, if I'd had time last night, I would have mentioned that, as I was writing the previous post, I was in the business lounge in Dubai airport, and just out of the corner of my eye, I could see to muslim women trying to eat their soup while wearing Niqābs -- pieces of black cloth around ten inches square which hang from just underneath the eyes. Usually in the Middle East, guys can't see women eating because the women must eat in separate "family" sections they can take off the veil, niqab or whatever. But in this case, there was no family section and there were men around, so the niqabs had to stay on. Imagine, if you will, using your left hand to lift up a huge handkerchief stuck to your face and have your right hand maneuver a dribbling spoonful of noodle soup into your mouth which you can't see. It didn't make for tidy eating and didn't do much to convince me, in its own tiny way, that religion, in many parts of the world, is about anything other than control.

rockbeer

PDN wrote:

1 People who belong to one religion commit a brutal and horrible act, therefore all religion is evil.

That's obviously false. But there is much more compelling evidence that monotheism is malign (I personally try to avoid the word evil).

PDN wrote:

2. Paramilitaries who belonged to a particular political party/viewpoint used to shoot children through the kneecaps, therefore all political parties/viewpoints are evil.

And again, I agree entirely that is silly. A philosophy must be judged both on the content of its articles and on its effect. Monotheism generally disguises its malign influence and beliefs behind apparently benign values.

PDN wrote:

3. Stalin who held to to a particular atheistic philosophy committed many brutal and horrible acts, therefore all atheism is evil.

Back to Stalin! I knew we wouldn't be able to keep away from him for long

PDN wrote:

All three statements are equally silly.

Yep.

robindch

PDN wrote:

So, let's get this straight. People who belong to one religion commit a brutal and horrible act, therefore all religion is evil?

Please read my message again, as I didn't say anything of the kind. I explicitly said that I was referring to "authoritarian religion", the kind that exists alongside military and state administrations to lend irrefutable, but conditional, legitimation to both, in return for access to things like schools, a cut of the tax take, general access to the levers of state power and the like.

I also mentioned that experiments show that people are quite easy to control and that religion has evolved to does this very well -- do you disagree with this?

Zombrex

PDN wrote:

The logic works the same whether you apply it to people or principles. OK, let's keep it to principles:

1 People who belong to one religion commit a brutal and horrible act, therefore all religion is evil.

No

Religion creates a belief system in a population that makes the population easy to manipulate by the few and also allows justification of immoral actions in the name of said religion.

As Steven Weinburg put it

"Religion is an insult to human dignity. With or without it, you'd have good people doing good things and evil people doing bad things, but for good people to do bad things, it takes religion."

Religion is, put simply, a bad idea and should be avoided as a social system.

Can other things produce similar results? Of course they can. Communism is the one that springs to mind, where the idea of the "State" is put ahead of individual rights and freedoms. But then these ideas should be avoided as well.

Religion is a social system that allows very bad things to happen much more easily than if it wasn't there.

PDN wrote:

2. Paramilitaries who belonged to a particular political party/viewpoint used to shoot children through the kneecaps, therefore all political parties/viewpoints are evil.

All political parties that hold to a philosophy that justifies shooting of children are.

For example extreme nationalism, such as what is seen in the North. The idea that because the country is "occupied" by a foreign power any and all acts of violence against said foreign power is justified and legitimate. Such an idea is immoral, but that doesn't stop a large number of good people holding to it.

How does this relate back to religion?

It relates back to religion because religion does the same thing, justifies the immoral in the name of a greater cause. Any and all acts of violence can be justified through a religion.

You only need to see how people on the Christian forum respond to comments made about the Old Testament to see this in action. I've met very few on the forum who will say out right "No, what the Israelites did in the Old Testament was wrong and immoral"

No one does this because it is part of their religion to believe that acts such as these carried out by true followers of the religion cannot be wrong or immoral no matter what they are, since what is wrong or immoral is decided by their god in the first place.

This illustrates how easy it is for good honest people to suddenly be justifying acts of mass genocide, simply because they are carried out under the banner of the religion, and they are taught through the religion that they were justified.

PDN wrote:

3. Stalin who held to to a particular atheistic philosophy committed many brutal and horrible acts, therefore all atheism is evil.

No, therefore Communism is evil (or "a bad idea" as I would put it)

Stalin was one man. The system that allowed him to carry out these brutal and horrible acts, or more specifically, that got generally good honest people to carry out these brutal and horrible acts, was the system of extreme Communism that had grown up in the USSR.

The idea that the State was more important than an one individual was used as justification of horrifically immoral acts towards the Russian people.

The idea that Stalin was working the interests of the "greater good", in the interests of the State, created a smoke screen around what he did.

Stalin is still considered one of Russia's most popular leaders by many Russian people. How is this exampled? Are the 80% of Russians who rate him within the top 5 greatest leaders of Russia all evil themselves? Of course not.

What is going on here is the manipulation of the standards of morality by a particular social system under the banner of belief.

Russians were officially atheists, but they followed the "religion" of total faith and trust in the State. Total faith and trust in anything, be it a religion or a particular philosophy, is dangerous.

PDN

robindch wrote:

Please read my message again, as I didn't say anything of the kind. I explicitly said that I was referring to "authoritarian religion", the kind that exists alongside military and state administrations to lend irrefutable, but conditional, legitimation to both, in return for access to things like schools, a cut of the tax take, general access to the levers of state power and the like.

I also mentioned that experiments show that people are quite easy to control and that religion has evolved to does this very well -- do you disagree with this?

No need to read your message again, since I didn't read it a first time. I wasn't responding to your message. I was responding to the OP.

Actually, I would agree wholeheartedly with what you say about religion legitimising military & state administrations, receiving any income via taxation, or having access to the levers of state power. I have repeatedly, both here and on the Christianity board, expressed my opposition to such practices. However, that is pretty irrelevant to the OP since the violence in question was committed by adherents of an extremely tiny minority religion that have none of that power.

karen3212

Is it not the case though that moderates cannot believe that people pick some passages from their book, and use that to justify what they do to others. Just because we don't understand it, doesn't mean it's not true.

Anyway 40% of people in the US actually believe Jesus is coming back, and they are eagerly awaiting the rapture, does mean they are also eagerly awaiting the war and chaos that comes before it.

Scofflaw

A bit of research showing that sexual harrassment is not motivated by attraction, but by a desire to 'put women in their place'.

This sort of thing, the beating to death of a girl for 'fraternisation', rape as a weapon of war, and religion's frequent enforcement of 'traditional' gender roles would all seem to me to stem from the same thing. I don't think 'authoritarian religion' is the root cause of this kind of violence, I think it's an effect of the same root cause.

cordially,
Scofflaw

yub-chagi

Well I think that when rivalry develops between some people they flock together in groups and develop a sudden pride in a uniting factor to convince themselves theyre in the right. I've seen an american commenting on YouTube who took great pride in his patriotism only when arguing with a non-american. If there was no religion people would simply group together over another similarity against opposition. That's the way religion works, and i've heard argued that it is an evolutionary trait to encourage cavemen to group together under a druid or witch doctor, giving the group a better chance of survival. I think that theory holds water.

Dades

A well made point there, Mr yub-chagi.

robindch

yub-chagi wrote:

some people they flock together in groups and develop a sudden pride in a uniting factor

This is pretty similar to 'groupthink' and the Wikipedia page on it is worth a read.

pH

We definitely like in and out groups, and as English soccer fans (used to?) show any form of tribal colours can create an "us and them" situation that people will fight for.

However, in context most of these groups will be happy with some ritual combat or combat substitute. Most Irish folks are extremely happy at the thought of say beating England in football but only a tiny minority would start killing them because they're English.

Same in the the soccer hooliganism context, as horrific as the violence was, very very few people were deliberately killed, and certainly no Chelsea fan strapped a bomb around themselves and blew themselves up in the middle of opposing fans.

I suppose the point I'm making is that when religion takes these basic us and them situations and then adds religious faith: 'They're evil ungodly people' - 'We have god on our side' - 'Killing these people isn't a sin - it's your duty to God' then we have an extremely potent and dangerous mix.