I just came up with a variant of this in a random discussion somewhere else:
“In his native state, man may be a brutish and bloodthirsty creature, but it is when man is imbued with the notion that he is doing God’s Work does he truly become a monster.”
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[Embiggen]
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(THE GRAPEVINE
Sure religion can be corrupting, but it can also be edifying. Is it more corrupting than edifying? Possibly, but I think the balance is difficult to quantify and more a matter of perception.
So I dislike religion not for this reason, but because it is irrational and difficult to work with.
yes, religion can be corrupting as well as edifying. my ultimately unprovable thesis (on which I've always wanted to write a book*) is that the sum total of the evil caused by religion throughout history far outweighs the good. i'm not only talking about the big evils (e.g., inquisition, jihad, crusades, etc.) or even the subtle evils (e.g., casting gay children out of the home), it's also the bulk of the meta-evils that overlay much of our development as a species (e.g., the retardation of the rational faculty caused by the unquestioning acceptance of irrationality as truth, which restrains our ability to evolve the human condition beyond its crude bloodthirsty roots)
* I even wrote a blog for a while devoted exclusively to the topic at http://religiousevilcompendium.blogspot.com . Unfortunately, the topic proved too myopic for me to maintain a sustained interest in regular posting.
I agree that the irrationality of religion makes us more animal-like, because the ability to reason is what distinguishes us from animals.
But I wouldn't call this effect corrupting--it's more like being on opiates, as Marx put it.
i can see how the "corruption" could be viewed as "being on opiates" if you were looking at mankind as a fully realized organism that has some kind of a destructive addiction/parasite that has attached to the organism to sap its nourishment and vitality. however, i also view religion as more fundamentally corrupting, in the sense that i view religion as a constant lifeforce-sucking parasite that has been a timeframe-independent inhibitor of our nascent potentiality since the dawn of our existence.
You can used the word 'corruption' that first way, sure. But in the context of religion being 'evil' and making us 'monsters' , that is not what you were doing.
Do you also call drugs and alcohol 'corrupting' ? Let's be consistent. There are well-adjusted people who consume those to greater effect than other people practice a religion. So we can't argue that religion is necessarily a 'constant lifeforce-sucking parasite', unless we feel the same way about drugs.
It seems to me that with your religion-is-evil project you are focusing on those who take it to excess--which is akin to a prohibitionist focusing on substance abusers.
Numerous things are harmful in excess--but in moderation, benign and of hedonic value to users.
actually, one primary point in my thesis is that moderated religion is even more damaging to the potential of the human condition than is extremism. some of this got talked about in this post <a href="http://religiousevilcompendium.blogspot.com/2008/…” target=”_blank”>http://religiousevilcompendium.blogspot.com/2008/…
in my thesis, the vast silent moderate majority of religious believers are the ones who, most impactfully, shut off their rational faculties in the service of religious dogma. sure, they don't blow up buildings or wage righteous jihad but the slow strangling of human reason by a thousand, much more subtle, cuts is even more damaging. More importantly, they have perpetually squelched the potentiality of the human condition by routinely tamping down the embers of rational, exuberant rationalism that are always trying to rise to the surface of the human mind.
P.S. If you're looking for a mass audience analogue to my views on religious moderation, you can find them in a lot of Sam Harris' writing (e.g., http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnis… )
I think the key is that nothing else can match the sort of corruption that can result from religion. Neither money nor power can accomplish what religion does -- elevating things to the plane where one becomes convinced that one is playing a part in a spiritual war of good vs. evil, etc. I'd say it is not just corrupting, but uniquely corrupting in a way that elevates the danger beyond what could be accomplished without religion.
well said. there is precious little else that can cause people to abandon the fine grains of natural empathy that reside in people than religion. once you tamp down the embers of empathy, the "other" (i.e., non-believers) become fearsome monsters to be fought and vanguished
Deep in our DNA is encoded a unrelenting desire for self preservation. A very successful process for self preservation is the flooding of our minds with the idea that we are somehow better than "those awful people over there" (doesn't matter where you point). This allows us all to "stick it to them before they stick it to us" dramatically improving our chance for survival and to pass along these tendencies to our offspring. This flood of thought permeates our lives and is inbred and fundamental to our existence.
But as John Steinbeck reminds us, we also have free will:
But 'Thou mayest'! Why, that makes a man great, that gives him stature with the gods, for in his weakness and his filth and his murder of his brother he has still the great choice.
So we can know the limitations of our own mind and still decide our own actions. It is our choice to do good or to do evil. Truly, how do you expect the human species to embrace the idea of rational thought when you use the same terminology to denigrate them that they use to denigrate us? There is no "Better". There is but choice.
a good point. although to your point that there is no "Better", I disagree. I believe knowledge to generally be "better" than willful ignorance. I believe peacefulness to be generally "better" than jingoism and bloodlust, etc.