"Why All Religions Aren't Equally Dangerous" by Susan Jacoby

Susan Jacoby, "The Spirited Atheist," writes regularly for The Washington Post. On June 6, her article was entitled: "Why all religions aren't equally dangerous" . Recently I did a post entitled: "Will Atheism Eventually Replace Religion"? I was taken to task by some commenters who said I was being unfair in my criticisms of religion, especially of Islam. I, of course, don't think that every Muslim is dangerous nor do I think that every conservative Christian, whether Mormon, Roman Catholic or evangelical, is dangerous. However, I do agree with Jacoby that very conservative religions can be dangerous to society.

She writes:

The most dangerous religions in the world manifest three distinct, though related, characteristics. First, they hold absolute truth claims, generally based on a literal interpretation of some "sacred" book and maintain that nonbelievers, sooner or later, are damned. Second, they frequently attempt to impose their beliefs on others through violence and coercion. Third, they seek political power to further their aims--and to suppress dissenters--wherever and whenever they can find it.

Radical or fundamentalist Islam creates the most concern for Ms. Jacoby.

By my criteria, the most dangerous religion on the international stage today is clearly radical Islam. It possesses each of the characteristics I have cited---the absolute truth claim, adherents who advocate and use violence and coercion to achieve their ends, and aggressive use of political power in areas of the world where Muslims constitute a majority. Does this mean that all Muslims agree with those who would fly airplanes into buildings and prevent women from enjoying the hard-won personal freedoms (often over the dead hand of their own traditional religions) exercised by women in the West? Of course not. But as long as powerful segments of this religion hold the same view of the rights of nonbelievers and nonconformists as the Catholic Church did six hundred years ago, Islam is a major threat to world peace and individual rights.

As her last sentence above states, Christianity, in the past, has been guilty of some of the same crimes that radical Islam is guilty of today.

She continues:

Within the United States, right-wing Christians--whether Catholic or Protestant--pose the biggest threat to those who do not share their worldview, because they constitute a large and determined enough minority to finance and maintain a long-term movement to write their views into law. Like radical Islamists, they rely on an absolute truth claim to justify their actions. Unlike radical Islamists, even Christians on the far right have outgrown violence (except for individual psychotics) because Christian denominations exist under legal institutions--established by secularists and minority religious believers--that prevent them from doing what their historical predecessors tried to do to heretics.

In my prior post, I mentioned that many of the present conflicts in the world would disappear if somehow Islam disappeared. While Christianity doesn't at the moment present the same type of violent threat, I believe the potential for conflicts would be reduced if it were removed as well. That doesn't mean that I think all conflicts and wars would end if religion disappeared. I agree with Jacoby:

Human beings have shown themselves to be almost limitlessly inventive in their capacity to battle over sex, money, power, land--you name it. But only a fool could look at the recorded history of the world and not see that religion has always been one of the most significant rationalizations for violence and a reinforcer of violence over nonreligious disputes.

At this point, of course, someone is going to mention the violence of atheistic communist regimes. Jacoby anticipates this objection:

Here is the point where someone always brings up the evils perpetrated in the name of secularism--say, in Stalin's Soviet Union--as "proof" of claims for the superior morality of religious societies. It cannot be said enough that while secularism itself is not a religion, the kind of secular ideologies that deify leaders and ignore evidence that a particular secular creed isn't working, are indeed just other forms of the monist religious impulse. Stalinist Communism was a religion, and a terrifying one, in precisely the same sense that fundamentalist Islam and fundamentalist Christianity are religions. The leader was worshipped and absolved of all blame for the manifest cruelties and economic failures of Soviet society. If you doubt this religious character of Stalinist Soviet society, read accounts by inhabitants of that realm (Evegenia Ginsburg, Yevgeny Yevthushenko, Joseph Brodsky, for starters) of their contemporaries' reactions to Stalin's death in 1953.

The fact is that the dictators of these communist regimes are often worshipped as if they were gods. See my prior post on "The Dear Leader" of North Korea. The problem is actually authoritarianism, whether that takes the form of a Communist regime, a theocracy run by Mullahs, or a Roman Church such as existed in the Middle Ages. The only hope for peace in the world is tolerance of divergent beliefs. Its okay to engage in intellectual and cordial dialogue about different philosophies and world-views but when one insists that only his or her view is the correct one and that those who disagree should be eliminated, conflicts arise.

Let me state for anyone that might be confused, while I think the world would be better off without religion, I am not advocating any type of force to remove it. I am not advocating the suppression of religion. I am a firm believer in the freedoms granted in the US Constitution and the Bill of Rights. What I hope is that eventually man will realize that his time, money, and energy can be spent on much better things than religion.

Is This a Religion?

I saw this documentary, Inside North Korea, on the Nat Geo channel recently and I was startled to see how the people of North Korea worship their dictator, Kim Jong Il. They call him the "Dear Leader," and worship him as divine. As I was watching this, I was struck by the similarity between the people's actions and what goes on in some evangelical churches. The narrator, Lisa Ling, says that the devotion to the Dear Leader is because of generations of indoctrination. Why do these people worship Kim Jong Il? Because they have been indoctrinated (brainwashed) to do so. Their devotion to him is their religion. This illustrates again why I think religion is ultimately very dangerous. It causes people to become fanatical. It causes them to do things that otherwise rational people would not do. Watch this short video below beginning at 2:55.

Is Religion Cognitive-Emotional Cheesecake?

Yesterday, I ran a post that included a video by Sam Harris on the dangers of religion. Is religion really dangerous or is it mostly harmless? Paul Thagard calls it Cognitive-Emotional Cheesecake. For most American Christians, that is probably an apt description. But too much cheesecake could also be dangerous to one's health.

On his blog, Thagard writes:

Religion is not innate, but rather a cultural development that we might call "cognitive-emotional cheesecake". I adapt this metaphor from Steven Pinker's claim that music is not innate, but rather amounts to "auditory cheesecake". A preference for cheesecake is not innate, since cheesecake did not exist during the early stages of human development. But preferences for sugar and fat are innate, and cheesecake cleverly combines them in an appealing way. Similarly, I conjecture, religion is appealing because it combines the psychological needs for explanations and emotional reassurance.

He believes man's belief in god(s) is not innate (as in the God Gene or a God-spot in the brain), but rather is due to it's pyschological and emotional appeal.

Another blog, Epiphenom: The Science of Religon and Non-Belief, has a recent post entitled, What's the evidence that anxiety and insecurity turns people to religion?. In the post, the author refers to several scientific studies that show the following increase a person's interest in religion:

1. Being reminded of death.

Ara Norenzayan has shown that subtly reminding people of death makes them say they are more religious. That's probably related to something called 'World View Defence' - when you remind people about death, they tend to grab onto their traditional, cultural values.
Research shows that having a positive view of the afterlife (i.e., heaven or paradise) seems to be good for one's mental health, whereas having a negative view (i.e., hell or annihilation) brings no psychological benefit.

2. Feeling loss of control.

Aaron Kay has shown that making people feel like they are not in control strengthens their belief in a controlling god - in other words, they compensate for lack of control in their own lives by believing in a god that has it all in hand.

3. Dealing with negative life-events.

Kurt Gray has shown that people invoke god as a moral agent to explain negative (but acausal) events. In other words, instead of saying that a major life event happened by chance, one prefers to think that it was caused by an intentional agent, usually god(s).

4. Feeling lonely.

Nicholas Epley has shown that making people feel lonely increases their belief in the supernatural. Many people turn to religion when they feel all alone in the world. You've got a friend in Jesus is very appealing.

5. Feeling anxious.

Researchers from the University of Toronto have shown that religious believers get less 'error-related negativity' (ERN) - a neurological response that's associated with conflict anxiety - when they make mistakes (Religion: Xanax of the People?). Perhaps, Marx was right when he called religion the "Opiate of the Masses." It definitely seems to relieve stress (especially prayer and meditation ).

6. Having financial hardship.

Matt Bradshaw and Chris Ellison have shown that religion can reduce the stress caused by financial hardship.

Andrew Clark found that European Protestants and Catholics are less fearful of unemployment than the non religious.

If these studies are correct, they reveal why religion is so appealing to people. It provides comfort and certainty in a cold, hard world. However, if the benefit provided is really a delusion, is it not dangerous ultimately? Does it not cause one to stop looking for real solutions to life's problems? I think so but it's hard to resist cheesecake.

Is Religion Dangerous?

The politically correct view today is that one should not criticize someone else's religion. Religious beliefs are personal and should be respected, we are told.

Sam Harris shows in this CNN interview below that this kind of thinking is seriously misguided. Religion is focusing attention on the wrong issues, holding society back, and in its extreme forms endangering our lives.