In a poll conducted by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation in the United Kingdom, faith — defined here not as limited to extremism but rather in the broadest possible terms — was considered to be tantamount to “intolerance, irrational behaviour and the basis for justifying persecution”.
Many of those polled not only believed that faith was divisive but also that it brought about irrational educational and other policies.
As an Orthodox Jew respectful to all faiths, including those who do not believe in any organised religion or in any religion at all, I was a bit taken aback by all of this. When I was growing up, religion was perceived to be the light guiding the path of the individual in his or her quest to attain a well-rounded and beneficial existence. Now it is being seen as some form of moral lassitude.
Yet it did occur to me that, amid the hubris and commercialism of modern-day religion and in particular the conduct of many of the leaders of the various faiths, there lies a compelling argument against organised religion. Setting aside the fact that many of the ongoing wars or conflicts, prejudices and even criminal activities are finding a home in religion, what many have forgotten is that the underlying sine qua non to faith is trust.
Unlike science, where tangible evidence is at hand, a belief system or religion — to a greater or lesser degree — relies on people having faith in something they cannot see or touch. This means that their assessment will, in the main, be guided by those things they can get a handle on — such as the behaviour of a religious group, rabbi, imam or priest — and it is here where many organised religions are coming up woefully short.
In terms of actual wars, which is not the debate we’re primarily concerned with here, religion often plays a part in occasioning the conflict and, in many instances, the intransigence in ending it. This can be due to an interpretation visited by some religious leaders or groups on the principles of their faith — hardly justifiable when humanity looks at the death toll that this occasions. This lends credence to those who want to see an end to organised religion.
Yet most British people who were polled were not concerned with conflict. They were thinking more along the lines of the ways in which religions and their followers affect them on a day-to-day basis.
For example, Terry Sanderson, in his column for the Guardian, asks why the British government continues to praise religion to the skies when half of those surveyed do not believe in God.
His article deals with the way the government goes about its business without giving consideration to the fact that half of the population isn’t interested in religion. Why should they still have to complete documents relating to religious issues?
If this surprises the more religious among us, then consideration must be given to the fact that many prejudices find a home in religion. A good example being the issue of gay and lesbian rights. There is no question that many of the major religions do discriminate against members of this community.
In my case I make no bones about calling this an irrational hatred with no place in modern society. Yet in religion, including my own, it encounters hatred and resentment where people should know better. On this blog we have even looked at the gay Iranian teenager who is facing the death penalty for having sex with another gay boy.
Hardly surprising, then, that these communities see organised religion as their natural enemy.
The women of Saudi Arabia apparently legally belong to their men — this being the strictest interpretation of sharia law within the Muslim world.
Jewish women, in the Orthodox community, are required to sit apart from their men at shul and follow several other rituals peculiar to them. In this regard we view a woman’s role as different rather than inferior.
In the case of Muslim women, I have quoted the Pakistani women who believe that sharia law offers them a buffer from the chaos and violence of modernity.
Having said that, many women the world over believe that religion is misogynistic and treats them as inferior. This in turn alienates a vast number of them from pursuing a religion — or rather an organised religion. Indeed, as mothers bringing up children, it may lead them and their offspring away from it.
Of course, another issue that would be of concern to many is the amount of crime being committed using the guise of religion. In this regard, Pope Benedict XVI was forced to confront the sexual-abuse scandal currently rocking the Catholic Church during his recent visit to the United States.
As many Jews will recall, we recently had the example of one of our Orthodox rabbis who was bust chasing after a member of his congregation’s wife.
This does not sit well with those who are considering the merits or demerits of religion. Again I must state that religion is based in faith, not science. Trust plays a major role in people’s decision whether to follow or abandon this path.
If we consider the prejudice, intolerance and disgusting behaviour of some members of the various religions, it is hardly surprising that people are turning their backs on organised religion.
In China, it is not easy to follow Christianity despite the size of the community. This also puts pressure on Christians either to abandon their faith or to go underground. This entails great sacrifice on their part and begs the question: How much longer will people keep doing this while the religious hierarchy lets them down so abysmally?
In Paraguay, we have a former bishop leaving the Catholic Church in order to make inroads into the devastating poverty afflicting his countrymen. His decision was based on effectiveness rather than persecution. How much more will this contribute to a decrease of church numbers in years to come? Will people regard the church as a hindrance to achieving social and political reform and other goals?
Belief is being perceived to be the preserve of the nutcases and local yokels.
Of course the attacks on atheists by religious observers does not do the cause any favours either.
Religion has to be sold as logically as science, even if the main element requires blind faith. To rant and rave as described in the article by Sue Blackmore sends the message that you have lost the argument, so you’ll batter your opponent into submission. (The Mugabe theory on debating?)
My belief in my own faith remains unshaken, but I believe that religious leaders across the board need to take stock urgently. If they continue to believe that they can carry on regardless — insensitive to other people’s views and concerns — then organised religion is going to come under ever-increasing pressure from the age of information.
People are quickly informed about the conduct of those who are teaching love, tolerance and redemption, while their behaviour suggests otherwise.
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17 Responses to “Is religion the new social evil? Pope on the slippery slope?”
Good post.
In my opinion, religious leaders have a lot to answer for. I am a Catholic, though a rather lackadaisical one, and while I respect the longevity and some of the traditions and beliefs in the RC church I am also dismayed and disgusted with some of its practices. Prejudice against gays and lesbians, opposition to contraception, opposition to female priests and the generally subservient role of women in the church, the financial inequalities within the church (a hugely wealthy Vatican while poor parishes desperately try to serve their communities), the Church’s support of the Nazis during WWII, the numerous child abuse cases…the list continues.
Sometimes I question why I still call myself a Catholic.
Catholicism is not the only religion that draws my ire though. I look at the “independent” churches, whose leaders live in luxury, supported by their mostly poor flock. Disgusting.
Religion should be a source of peace, compassion and love, a source of strength especially when times are hard. Sadly, it rarely is. Instead people have perverted religion to justify their own prejudices and agendas.
This is an interesting post, Traps. I remember an old joke (largely circulate amongst Black people) that the missionaries taught people to close their eyes and pray so that they could steal their land and plunder their wealth without interruption!!! But seriously, it is things like that when examined closely make thinking people very skeptical of religion as it were.
Although I am agnostic myself, it is with a great deal of awe and admiration that I sometimes observe what a great service religion delivers to people who have no immediate answers to the chaos happening around them. Without this belief that a superior being out there is responsible for all things that happen, these people would be broken indeed.
So it with this service in mind that I absolutely endorse the notion that religion has to find ways of fitting in to modern life and somehow be sufficiently ‘progressive’ in order to remain relevant. Without actively doing this, the negatives would at some point accumulate beyond a tipping point; it would cease to be seen as an option at all.
How they can do this is probably through scholarly research into a sort of modern interpretation of the sacred texts etc. Modern research methods such as marketing could be employed to figure out some of the combinations to be incorporated into the ‘new and modern’ messages.
I am starting to believe that organised religion is becoming outdated and that the spiritual evolution of humanity is calling for something more meaningful. Of course, I could be totally wrong and on bad days I think that humanity is actually regressing, but I try to stay optimistic.
I’d be interested to hear what you think about eckhart tolle.
I am originally Catholic and I have rejected the church almost entirely, not least of all because I have yet to find someone who can give me a reasonable explanation for why women cannot become priests. (And the same goes for why women can’t be rabbis). I’m just fed up with the marginalisation of women within virtually every organised religion. The argument that womens’ roles are “different rather than inferior” just doesn’t hold water.
I wish that people would give up flogging this horse. It’s so unnecessary. (a)Theism is so pop these days that almost everyone believes they are capable of venturing an informed opinion on the idea while either being largely ignorant or vastly underestimating the depth of the philosophical pond they’re paddling in (including myself, probably, but regardless, here goes)…
Metaphysical questions (whether there’s a God/Ultimate Reality/etc., whether we have an immortal soul) are, by and large, completely unanswerable. In fact, as I want to show, they are even in the most real sense, unaskable. The ability of our language to talk truthfully about even about the simplest and most concrete of phenomena is deeply questionable (a “stone”, for instance, being at first a sense impression, then a nerve impulse, then a mental concept, and finally a noise: the word “stone” - so many metaphors, each involving a level of REMOVAL, i.e falsification, from the original and wholly unique phenomenon to which our concept of the stone, which is what we use to talk about it, owes its origin). Given this state of affairs, how can we trust that the language we’d use to ask metaphysical questions obtains in any satisfactory way to describe reality? How could we assume that God/Ultimate Reality could fit neatly into ideas like “existence / nonexistence”?
Once we appreciate the thorough contingency of our language (that it aims not at truth, but at convenience) and the arbitrariness of our concepts, we realise that If any ultimate reality is to be imagined, it is WHOLLY BEYOND all of our concepts. So getting worked up about God’s existence is utterly futile. The faithful (who would hold steadfastly that “God exists”) and the atheists (”God does not exist”) are equally guilty of this futility.
“Wouldst thou be perfect, do not yelp about God.”
- Meister Ekhart
All these unanswerable (and perhaps unaskable) metaphysical questions don’t count a whit compared to your state of being, right here, right now.
Traps
In many ways the organized churches have let us down, that is obvious. However much of what is wrong with the world is not the result of organized religion at all. The problem of inequality between rich and poor is a direct result of unbridled capitalist greed. No-one is saying you should not be allowed to work hard and make a profit but when you consider teh way in which industry simply ignores the externalitis you have to wonder. Look at Tiger brands now the pharmaceutical and tyre manufacturers are also involved in price fixing, so driving up inflation and distorting markets. This occurs on a global scale and results in human trafficking as people flee the underdeveloped world to go to the developed world where they are easy prey for all this. Now why is this being lumped on organized religion. Perhaps you are right about homophobia the Churches cannot accept that and that may be contributing to suffering but the whole total morass we are in surely not. In my view it is the loss of God which is responsible for all this. If we do not see God in our fellow human beings then we are often quite happy to exploit them and not worry about thier suffering. Secular society is looking for someone to blame and choses organized religion.
Please do not blame religion for this and that evil, or for this and that prejudice. Please do not blame faith, either. If anyone believes in evolution, for example, then that belief is not possible without exercising faith in the theory itself and the findings of the so-called non biased scientists.
Evils are committed not by religious beliefs or by faith, but by people, and if the majority of people are not religious, then the question we need to ask is: What percentage of evil acts can we attribute to the religious set and what percentage to the non-religious set?
We also need to draw a distinction between those people who are “nominally” religious, and those who are committed believers, motivated by nothing else except a desire to serve God and by a genuine love for their fellow human beings. Attending religious meetings, even regularly and faithfully, doe not make a person a genuine, peace loving follower of that faith, any more than sitting in a garage at regular intervals will make that person a motor car.
Also, please do not judge religious people by the sins/wrongs committed by their so-called leaders. A leader can be ill chosen, or a smooth talker who is abitious for leadership and the power that goes with it, without being a committed believer.
What I share here are my thoughts/understanding as a Christian. In my opinion, one of the most inacccurate terms that is used is “homophobic.” If an individual states and believes that stealing is wrong, then is that person kleptophobic? It is not a Christian’s personal prejudice that says, “Adultery is a willful transgression of God’s law as revealed in the Scriptures, and it is therefore wrong.” It is simply the revealed standard as set by the Scriptures, and no one forces anyone else to believe or reject that standard. Christians, for example, who accept God’s will as revealed in the Scriptures choose for themselves to agree with God and accept that adultery is wrong, because God says it is wrong. That does not mean that they hate the one who commits adultery. The adulterer is welcome in Church. A similar argument can be put forward for the thief, the one who disrespects his or her parents, or the one who practices homosexuality, etc. If these people are “hated” then you can be certain that the one who is doing the hating is not a Christian. A genuine Christian can only hate sin, which is a behaviour, as defined in the Scriptures, whether this sin is in his or her own life, or in anyone else’s, but they certainly do not hate the sinner. If anyone says that Christians hate the sinner, then I believe that they need to go back to the drawing board, and find out for themselves what a true Christian really is.
An individual is not a Christian because that person was baptized as an infant, or later on in life, or because he or she goes to church, or because parents or friends are Christians. The Scriptures reveal to me that we are Christians only if, when old enough to understand, we recognize that our lives reflect selfish self will, and we become convicted in our heart that we are living a life in opposition to God’s laws. We then confess this fact, repent, and allow God to lead and guide us.
God’s laws wish no harm on any individual. God’s laws require you to love, respect and serve others as you love yourself and as you expect others to treat you with respect and dignity. God’s laws expect you to forgive someone who has wronged you, unconditionally. Is God’s law therefore any threat to anyone else’s way of life? God has given us all freedom of choice. The only things we cannot choose are the consequences of the choices that we freely make. I cannot grumble and get annoyed if I choose to plant one small tomato seed, and then find out that in the fullness of time, I must reap kilograms of tomatoes. It was my choice to plant the tomato seed. I cannot then expect to reap carrots. So it is with the universe in which we live. There is cause and effect. We either believe God’s laws or we do not. No one forces us. If we do not believe, that will not alter the consequences we will have to face one day, in God’s timing. Leave rational arguments and scientific proof out of the picture. God is not limited by the scientific model.
What about the individual who dies before he or she is old enough to make up their minds? That is God’s business.
As a contribution to what is ultimately the most important debate of all (despite Paddy 11’s good post to the contrary) we have the language to deal with this seemingly intractable argument.
There are many ways of understanding God, namely deism, pantheism, monotheism and theism.
In deism God wound up the universe/world and left it to its own devices: in a way He is (just)the Big Bang.
Pantheism presumes there is no distinction between God and the universe: in a way He is the Big Whimper.
Monotheism asserts there is only one caring/just God (often the Father)who is greater than the Universe and He is Mine: in a way He is Us meaning in the end He is Me for I am the one who thinks of Him (and what else can be in my mind but me?).
Theists (which Paddy 11 seems to misunderstand) recognise that this infinitely great God of all appears to mankind in as many ways as there are minds to think of Him and that this resultant collective is the source of time and the Universe. I think Traps is indicating this.
If you think about it it can be clear that all the others are selective aberrations of theism.
Monotheism is the Great Criminal here. In truth the Universe is intimate to us and any man who claims it is more intimate to himself than others is a pervert, with Jews Christians and Islamic peoples being clearly excessively guilty of this perversion. Between them they have dedicated their time to killing God for centuries: refer to the wars amongst the plethora of other things. Perhaps the crassly stupid greed of such as America and Israel now will be seen as the absurdity it is to shame all monotheists into confessing and recanting, but I doubt it, after all those who believed in Apartheid, which is from the same source, have by and large not recanted: they are just quiet.
I don’t think that religion is a new social evil - it is a very old social evil. If you need any convincing you could read a book which I have recently read about the Catholic Church (Double Cross: The Code of the Ctaholic Church by David Ranan.) It is very well researched and extremely well written.
Benedict XVI is not at all an image of God nor does he resemble Christ one iota. Did Christ speak Latin? So how can the Vicar of Christ make Latin the “official language” of the Mystical Body of Christ? When did Christ ever wear red expensive shoes, don on ornate ceremonial albs, be surrounded and protected by a private army, be a political head of state, write Ph.D books no one can understand except himself and by a few men, oppress those who work with and for the poor like Jon Sobrino in El Salvador? If Christ were to visit Rome today, what would he say about the worse sins of pedophile priests seething beneath the Vatican archives (Crimen Sollicitationis)- tolerated and covered-up by Benedict for 27 years - which are worse than the sins at the Temple of Solomon? http://pope-ratz.blogspot.com/2008/04/opus-dei-pope-2-benedict-xvi-red-shoes.html Benedict XVI -Ratzinger: God’s Rottweiler
Would Christ recognize the Peter-the-Rock clones residing at the grand palace of the Vatican rivaling the palace of the Ceasars of Rome? Christ would gag at his ostentious “Vicar of Christ” when they meet for the first time, they’d be like the Prince and the Pauper, the Pope being (and dressed as) the Prince! http://pope-ratz.blogspot.com/ Benedict XVI -Ratzinger: God’s Rottweiler
Justice does not reside within the Catholic Church but rather within the secular world (which Benedict keeps preaching against). It was secular lawyers that got some justice for the countless American victims of clergy sexual abuse. It was always Benedict XVI then Cardinal Ratzinger and John Paul II and the Opus Dei (controls papacy) who for more than 27 years covered-up this most heinous crime against American children in the 20th century. http://pope-ratz.blogspot.com/ Benedict XVI -Ratzinger: God’s Rottweiler
USA Priest Pedophilia - 12,000 victims - 5,448 pedophile priests - John Paul II + Benedict XVI + Opus Dei http://pope-ratz.blogspot.com/ Benedict XVI -Ratzinger: God’s Rottweiler
Thank you for your article, it depicts, sadly, the nowadays situation in the world with its prejudices, exclusive truth and even political intricacies of “religions”.
One of the emerging religions is the baha’i faith, second most wide spread religion in the world, that promotes the unity of God, the unity of the religions and the unity of mankind with teachings like equality between men and women, the elimination of prejudices of all race, color, creed, etc., the essential harmony between science and religion and spiritual solutions to economical problems among its basic principles.
Though it is a religion with laws and teachings, it doesn’t have any clergy. Though baha’is share their teachings, it is forbidden for them to proselytize and they also have the clear teaching of “it is better to be killed than to kill” that cannot possibly be interpreted in a different opposite way.
I wish you would have presented this new religion in your article as it can kind of give a balance in our world that is so disturbed nowadays…
Thank you also everyone for your comments on the topic, it is very insightful!
With respect Paris ‘Justice does not reside within the Catholic Church but rather within the secular world’ is lazy thinking. As is pointed out by bloggers above and elsewhere, the structure of a society is founded on its language, which in turn rests on a perspective of belief forged in reality; in short, our history. The monotheist perspective underpins not only the secular but even the atheist in the culture of the West.
The absurdity of the monotheist religions is one side of the coin expressing the value of the socio-economic reality that has been built up around it, meaning that Current affairs in the West are not disconnected from this matter of religion. George W Bush (a pitiful Captain Hook) and his fellow pirates/pushers are not an accident: they are the best we have. (Read the American news about the primaries–Bugs Bunny in reality. Listen to Western politicians pretending that what is going on in America is valid.)
Once upon a time the West was the best we had, and thanks to it, but its time has come and it has to be dispensed with. The authority it abrogates is no longer of value. GWB and the Americans have done us a service by effectively ridiculing Western ideas of democracy, justice, value and the very concept of the nation state.
I repeat it is not the Western and middle eastern monotheist religions that are solely to blame.
Watch the West continue to steal and kill in the name of Jesus/Justice/Democracy/’God’/Profit/McDonalds/Other Flavours Of The Day, because ‘I’m worth it’ as it has for hundreds of years. Watch them do it until its back is broken.
It would be better if we in the West were to wipe the egg off our face as Ivan so gently suggests. We have to learn to accept and respect other cultural insights as equal and often superior to our own.
We must realise (understand and ensure the acceptance) that all conceptions of the ultimate (God if you like—I don’t) are regional to the extreme of the individual concerned and that this is a factor of disunity only for the lazy thinker.
This is ‘the way’ in Taoism.
The astonishing childishness of the West has to stop.
when all things around us are amazing and unexplainable, like they are to very young children people were very superstitious. all things around us had a spirit, big things like the sun and moon had or were gods. some bright sparks around the world found that it was easy to govern people through superstition, then became easier to cahrge taxes. we have government now and no longer need the church to impose laws or to uphold them or to punish us. most holy books are written on a similar theme, dont nick stuff, dont screw around, be nice to people etc and for that the mainstream religions did a fair job but now we have laws.
religions have done a lot to form and bind communities but then so have wars. this lack of regular church attendance and the lack of a home front war are part of why we need something new. hopefully not another religion that relies on blind faith, and certainly not a home front war.
Thanks for a thought provoking article.
When the pope says condoms should be banned and do not help against Aids it puts him in the same category as jehova’s witnesses who are prepared to let their childrin die because their FAITH won’t allow blood transfusions. This faith is based entirely on imagination with no factual evidence whatsoever …..its no wonder that intelligent people are questioning it and the number of non believers is growing exponentially. I’m one of them. (I understand that in Sweden more than 80% of the population is classed as non believer’)
“Once we appreciate the thorough contingency of our language (that it aims not at truth, but at convenience) and the arbitrariness of our concepts, we realise that If any ultimate reality is to be imagined, it is WHOLLY BEYOND all of our concepts. So getting worked up about God’s existence is utterly futile. The faithful (who would hold steadfastly that “God exists”) and the atheists (”God does not exist”) are equally guilty of this futility.”
I am an atheist & I do not believe in your strawman ie “God does not exist”. There is no evidence yet, evidence that would suffice in any other field - medicine, law , science, even relationships - that suffices as evidence for this deity that people claim exists. Thus i do not have a belief in a deity the same I would for unicorns, hobgoblins etc.
I agree that language is a tool to describe reality but the atheists that I know, & myself included, criticise exactly the “language” that theists use to describe this deity & implement “his” will.
If these theists would not use this “poetic language & metaphor” to try & strengthen & enforce their claims (homosexuality, death for muslim apostates, stem cell research, abortion, condom use, threat of hellfire etc etc) on the rest of society there would be no need for atheists to question this “language we use to ask metaphysical questions”.
@Paddy II
Interestingly though, I think all this talk of “poetic language, “metaphors” & “metaphysical questions” is just an excuse to shield theists from the very physical answers they propose. Because when it comes down to the social applications & policy, we have seen how some of these religious oerate (including the disgusting bits their texts advocate).
When it comes to matters of law, relationships,etc people dont go “oh well what do you mean by “bed” “A bed just contains atoms which themselves consist of large spaces between them so your claim that I shared a ‘bed’ with your best friend last night is totally unsophisticated & bizarre”.
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Good post.
In my opinion, religious leaders have a lot to answer for. I am a Catholic, though a rather lackadaisical one, and while I respect the longevity and some of the traditions and beliefs in the RC church I am also dismayed and disgusted with some of its practices. Prejudice against gays and lesbians, opposition to contraception, opposition to female priests and the generally subservient role of women in the church, the financial inequalities within the church (a hugely wealthy Vatican while poor parishes desperately try to serve their communities), the Church’s support of the Nazis during WWII, the numerous child abuse cases…the list continues.
Sometimes I question why I still call myself a Catholic.
Catholicism is not the only religion that draws my ire though. I look at the “independent” churches, whose leaders live in luxury, supported by their mostly poor flock. Disgusting.
Religion should be a source of peace, compassion and love, a source of strength especially when times are hard. Sadly, it rarely is. Instead people have perverted religion to justify their own prejudices and agendas.
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