“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.”
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 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.
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.
As we all know by now, you’re as likely to be injured in a terrorist attack as much as we are likely to ever suffer an appropriate reaction to a mass killing after 9/11. Just sayin’. (0comments)
The Obama Administration is threatening to veto SOPA/PIPA’s cousin CISPA. Much as I rag on those guys at times, they have a very good record on opposing these sorts of internet invasion bills, and I’m happy to give credit when it is due. (1comments)
Former South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford must appear in court two days after running for a vacant congressional seat to answer a complaint that he trespassed at his ex-wife’s home, according to court documents acquired by The Associated Press on Tuesday.
> more ... (0comments)
Given that the bill itself seems to be redundant–a bill requiring the NLRB to observe quorum rules?–to the extent that voting for it is essentially a slap at labor, the Republican no votes here are probably a legit accounting of which House Repubs aren’t completely antagonistic to labor. The number appears to be ten, though > more ... (4comments)
I honestly hadn’t given it too much thought, and was probably disposed against it just because of who was for it, but Emily makes a very strong case for why Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard ought to be released from prison. She argues that it makes sense on humanitarian and political grounds, and I agree with > more ... (0comments)
At over 90 miles per hour, he had his penis out [the window]… he was masturbating… and that’s when it got really, really bad. I wouldn’t look over any more, and I wrote his tag number down on my hand, which I believe he noticed, and he exited very quickly.
An unintentional libertarian anthem/meditation from Sully at the Dish:
By then, the subtleties, the mixes of CBD and THC, the nuances of sativa and indica strains will all be turned by the genius of the free market into something quite marvelous. We will finally have made of this weed what was long made of the simple grape.
And we will all be happier.
Jack Shafer says “Foreign Correspondents”:
Pyongyang reliably remains defiant; talks have resumed or been proposed, canceled, or stalled, while a U.S. envoy seeks to lure the North back to those talks to restart the dialog; North Korea is bluffing, blustering, or is engaging in brinksmanship; tensions are grim, rising, or growing—but rarely reduced, probably because > more ... (0comments)
If it’s okay with you, I’m just going to take a powder on this one. It’s only minimally news, we knew that Obama wants to cut “entitlements” already, only now he’s just putting it in an official document that is going to be duly ignored by Paul Ryan in a matter of months. The article > more ... (0comments)
Plebs is coming to ITV:
httpv://youtu.be/xlm1VAN4XXQ
Somewhat tangentially, I ran across a Cicero quote just recently impuning the moral fiber of the poor; it reminded me of our own current and continuing struggle with the morality of poverty:
Gaius Gracchus passed a grain law: this delighted the plebs, for an abundance of food could now be had > more ... (0comments)
Fourteen. I’m a little under that, with zero on most days. Really, Facebook is only still useful to me as a way of handling event correspondence, which coupled with the (fairly nominal but needless and annoying) social effects of closing my account is the reason why I still have it. In a word, inertia. Y’all > more ... (2comments)
What with one thing or another — brain cells giving their final, weak-ass fuck; supposed leaders of society running around like they lost their damn minds; dogs and cats, living together, mass hysteria — I find I can no longer tell what’s an actual news story anymore, and what’s some made-up middle-school fart-type-joke.
Via the Raw > more ... (2comments)
Ketchikan’s KRBD recently broadcast a story about Congressman Don Young (R-AK). In one segment, Young waxed nostalgic about Tha Browns of his youth:
My father had a ranch. We used to hire 50 to 60 wetbacks to pick tomatoes, you know. It takes two people to pick the same tomatoes now. It’s all done by machine.
Today’s > more ... (0comments)
New Hampshire is moving forward with repeal of the state Stand Your Ground law. Of course, New Hampshire is a “blue” state generally. But it’s quite gun-friendly, with a pronounced libertarian ethos. So this could be a somewhat risky move, and if you read the article, it looks like the paranoiac NRA-loving assholes are in rare > more ... (0comments)
You know what pisses me off? Any jibber jabber at SCOTUS about hurting the fee fees of backward states like Alabama. The question is whether legislating against gays marrying (like legislating against different races marrying) violates equal protection. None of this has anything to do with whether southern governors will have a Sad, or > more ... (1comments)
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.