Does Religion Do Any Good?

This country is virtually carpeted in churches and awash in preachers of various stripes. But, despite volumes, mountains, torrents of preaching and reading and writing about religion, God, morality--proper human conduct--it's not clear that we have even the tiniest bit less lying, cheating, corruption, and even killing.

Human greed and lust impel men to lie, cheat, and murder for the sake of obtaining money, power, position, and sex.

Most people have a conscience--I say "most people" because it is clear that some criminals simply have no conscience whatsoever--but a person can do another person wrong and then confess, and then he is told, "Say twenty Hail Marys," and this institution of the confessional lets him or her shed all feelings of guilt whatsoever. It is said that some Mafiosi would murder other people six days a week and then go to church on Sunday and confess (and receive absolution).

Not only does religion, it seems to me, not lessen the net sum of human evil in the world; but religion sometimes even adds to it. There is evil committed in the name of religion. It is not only Islam (let me hasten to add, "as some people interpret it") that gives us terror attacks, with people being killed, almost daily, these days; but Christianity (if we look at the record) is far from blameless. The Crusades, for example, were very brutal: the aim, as incited by the Pope, to recapture the Holy Land from the Muslims not only resulted in many Muslims being brutally killed, but the Crusaders, on their way to the Holy Land, would pass through many towns in Europe and massacre any Jews they happened to find there.

And let us not forget about the Hundred Years War, when Catholics and Protestants were brutally slaughtering one another.

So I am saying, if you care to take a cold and detached look: The good that religion does is, at best over-rated. Yeah, churches sometimes feed the hungry, shelter the homeless, etc. But I feel strongly that these things could and maybe would be done in the absence of religion. And to look at the large picture, as I have tried to do in the opening paragraphs, of whether religion has had success in ameliorating some of the kinds of evil that are prevalent in the world, I don't think it really does much good.

Copyright © 2017

Some of the Things Done in the Name of Religion

In the sixteenth century, following the Spanish conquest of the Mexico, Bishop Landa, the bishop of Yucatan, tortured some 4,000 native Mayans in the process of trying to convert them to Christianity. Some 140 were tortured to death.

Nowadays we'd call that war crimes—so maybe there's been some progress for Mankind. But back then, it was just doing God's work, missionary work, trying to bring Christ to the heathens and save their souls.

I don't know how many people were tortured and killed by the Inquisition in the several centuries of its existence. There were the Muslims and Jews in Spain after 1492; and Protestants and suspected Protestants in Italy, for whom the Inquisition devised a new punishment, boiling in oil. And many more. We are just now learning some of these things as certain records of the Inquisition have only recently been opened up.

During the Crusades, the Crusaders, who had their Christian zeal stirred up by the preachments of the Pope, while on their way to the Holy Land to conquer it from Muslims, would kill any Jews that they happened to encounter along the way, in France or wherever.

These are just a few examples of many, many occurrences over 2000 years or more when, in the name of God, horrible things have been done. It should not surprise the religious that many of the non-religious—including me—view religion as more harmful than beneficial.

Is Religion Schizophrenic? Part 2.

An interesting PBS TV was called Not in God's Name. It was about precisely an issue that I have blogged about: intolerance and conflict among religions.

The program focused on India. India has seven religions: Hinduism, Islam, Buddhism, Sikhism, Jainism, Christianity, and Judaism. They all preach tolerance, brotherhood, peace—all the good things that certainly nearly everyone wishes would prevail in the world.

However, there seems to be a gap between these preachings and some of the actions that occur—and that is evidently an interest of Not in God's Name (an organization with a web site) and of mine.

Evidently—and this is a big part of the paradox—and as the program finds, the sacred scriptures of the main religions in India—the Koran, the Bhagavad Gita (Hinduism), the Old Testament, and the words of Jesus in the New Testament--can also be found to speak of conflict and war.

Either we have a paradox or things are changing. India has a 7,000-year-long tradition of multiple religions co-existing and usually tolerating one another pretty well. However, when India was partitioned into Hindu India and Muslim Pakistan in 1947, 1 million people migrated—Muslims leaving India for Pakistan and Hindus leaving Pakistan for India. And—sometimes literally along the way—some 2 million people were killed.

India and Pakistan have been hostile to one another and more recently have been developing missiles and atomic weapons (undoubtedly aimed at one another). Indian missiles are given the names of Hindu gods. The Pakistanis call their weapon "The Islamic Bomb." I can't help being reminded of the Old Testament which depicts, of course, its own age, which was a world of neighboring yet warring tribes, each with their own god. The victorious tribe was thought to be the one with the stronger god, so a war between tribes was a war that would determine who had the stronger—or the correct—god.

The program, and the organization that produced it, are as fascinated (or repulsed) as I am by this contradiction or paradox, and mostly spends its hour exploring it. I am not sure any definitive or satisfying answer was found; but some worthwhile ideas were that politics and territorial aggression can overtake the ideas of peace and brotherhood. One example: for years India and Pakistan have been warring continually if not continuously over the disputed border province of Kashmir.

One person who speaks on camera says that tolerance is not enough. More than that is needed. People may feel, "Okay, I will tolerate your ideas but basically you are wrong because my religion is superior, and/or we have the correct path to god." What is needed, the program says, is for people to recognize that every religion is a valid path to the divine and deserves not just a grudging tolerance but respect as equally worthy.

Copyright © 2011 by Richard Stein

Is Religion Schizophrenic?

Regular readers of this blog know that I have frequently been critical of organized religion and blame it for much of the conflict that mankind has endured throughout history: persecution, terrorism, war.

I recently learned of a so-called "peace camp," which brings together children of different religions so that they can get to know one another and learn about one another's religion. One premise is that Christians are very ignorant of Islam, Muslims are very ignorant of Christianity, and so forth. So the campers visit various houses of worship, learn about holidays and, presumably, religious texts and beliefs.

With such knowledge comes the discovery that the various religions have more in common than one might realize: all advocate peace, love, friendship, tolerance, and helping your fellow man.

The man who founded the camp says that when he looks at television, all he sees is religion depicted as motivating bombings. He wanted to counter that image. I'm sure he has a valid point.

But which is the correct view of religion? I don't want to say that either idea is totally false, even though they seem to be diametrically opposite. Well, how about this thought? Maybe religion is schizophrenic; you know, having a split personality, so that it can be both.

Maybe it depends on who is in charge, so to speak. Evidently the Koran both preaches love and tolerance, and also can be interpreted to favor violent strife against non-believers. The Judeo-Christian tradition may be similarly schizophrenic. Jesus (as I understand) advocated love, peace, forgiveness, helping the poor and disadvantaged; but the Old Testament which had been the basis for the Judaism out of which Christianity arose repeatedly contains violent images and the Old Testament god is a wrathful god who is always smiting his enemies.

Maybe it's all "in there," so to speak. Maybe it depends on what part of the text is being stressed or what a particular religious leader picks out to emphasize when he or she preaches. Sort of, who is in power right now.

To close with a little anecdote: I am reminded of a little episode from a drama I saw on TV some years ago, about a Jewish family of piano manufacturers, living in Germany in the 1930s just as the Nazis were coming to power. To reports of what was happening to the Jews, the wife says, "But how can this be happening? This is the country of Goethe, Lessing, Beethoven"--the idea being that those people represented enlightenment and tolerance.

Her husband replied, "Yes, but unfortunately they're not in power right now."

Copyright © 2011 Richard Stein

Was Religion to Blame for 9/11?

I don't want to just follow a trend; but today everyone is talking about the historic event now known simply as "9/11." So I will, as the saying goes, add my two cents' worth.

I remember the day well, and the officers of the company I was working for allowed employees to gather in a conference room and watch the TV coverage of the events of that day in New York. We saw footage of the planes hitting the towers and then footage of the towers collapsing. Both were beyond astonishing. It's been hard for everyone to get their minds around those events and all the consequences: both loss of life of a large number of innocent people; and peril to the health of the rescue personnel who were exposed to harmful smoke, ash, and so forth.

Of course America and, hopefully, most people elsewhere feel that this country and its civilians did not deserve anything of the sort. And we wonder, Why was this done?

There has been a lot of discussion about whether Islam in its prevalent forms tolerates or even preaches this kind of thing. From the limited amount I know about Islam, I tend to think it does not. But I also think that there has definitely been preaching, within some Muslim circles, of hatred of the West, hatred of "infidels" (which would not be a new idea), hatred of America, hatred of Christianity (and, while we're at it, Judaism).

But to take a larger perspective, every religion has tended to take a view of its challengers and opponents which is in various degrees intolerant. It can manifest itself in discrimination, in hostility, in persecution, in war and killing. So I hasten to point out, it's not just Islam. I even at times think that every religion contains within it, somehow intrinsically, a seed which can blossom into this kind of jihadist, holy war thing. If you want to look at it, Christianity is far from innocent. There have been wars between Catholics and Protestants in Europe over the centuries and in more recent times in Ireland. The Crusades involved capturing, for Christian control, the Holy Land. Once they captured Jerusalem, they slaughtered all its Muslim defenders and inhabitants plus virtually all the Jews there as well. (Incidentally a few Jews were slaughtered along the way as well. The Crusaders, revved up to be zealous for Christianity and militant against its enemies, as they passed through towns in Europe on their way to the Middle East, would slaughter whatever Jews they happened to find along the way.)

Not to mention the Inquisition. Prior to the completion of the "Reconquest" of Spain by Christians, the Islamic kingdoms in Spain—at least generally, and at most times—were models of toleration. Jews and Christians were tolerated and lived peaceably beside Muslims. However, it's no coincidence that as soon as the Reconquest was completed, in 1492, the Jews and Muslims were driven out of Spain. Any members of those groups wishing to remain had to convert to Christianity. Any who remained but were suspected of not being sincere converts would be tortured—perhaps to death—by the Inquisition.

The Inquisition generally was not a pretty matter at all; it even put to death numerous Christians who were suspected of having Protestant leanings; or anyone else whom they viewed as heretical, like Giordano Bruno (who was a Dominican friar and thus Catholic, but who held cosmological and theological views that were considered not sufficiently orthodox, so he was burned at the stake in 1600).

Here I have attempted to point out just a few examples of intolerance that have had religion at their root. Whether they kill 3 or 30 or 3,000—or six million—the less noble sides and corners and crannies of religion have been responsible for a saddening—no, shocking—amount of Man's inhumanity to Man.

Copyright © 2011 by Richard Stein

What Is Ethics, Anyway?

Today I had a painter guy come to my house to give me an estimate on a very small job. This guy is very chatty and at one point got to sounding off on what's wrong with the world. The problem, he says, is that the world is "anti-religion," so you have no ethics anymore.

This is a very widely accepted paradigm: If you have religion, you have ethics. If you have no religion—say, you're an atheist—you have no ethics.

Now, I don't buy either part of this. I believe you can have ethics without religion (I believe that an atheist can be just as moral and ethical as anyone else); and I believe that you can have religion without ethics. But I didn't want to get into a real argument with this guy—and have to "come out" as an atheist—so I just gave him this ready counterexample: The Mafia guy goes to Mass on Sunday and goes on beating up or even killing people the other six days of the week.

And this guy himself wanted to inflate his estimate, which was for a job that insurance was going to pay for, so that I could keep 40 percent and pass the other 60 percent on to him. I said No, I didn't want to pocket anything.

Also, this guy likes to be paid with a check payable to him personally, rather than to his company name, so that he doesn't have to report the income on his income tax.

How does this square with "ethics"? These two things, are they somehow not ethics? The only explanation that comes to my mind is that this is—to him--just the normal way of doing business, i.e., "business as usual." I'm too tempted to repeat the easy quip that "business ethics" is an oxymoron.

But we have to also recognize a human trait that never ceases to amaze me: the ability to compartmentalize things in one's mind, to keep them separate. Sort of like the right hand not knowing what the left hand is doing. So we can be righteous on Sundays and sinners the other six days.

Copyright © 2011 by Richard Stein

Parents, Beware! . . .Lest Your Actions Backfire

Sometimes parents' actions, with respect to their children, backfire. And sometimes, I think, the parents deserve it.

When I was a kid, I think I can say that religion was more or less forced down my throat. I was made to go to Hebrew school (two hours a day, after regular public school, four days a week), even though I was terrified of my Hebrew school teachers which caused me stomach aches that landed me in the hospital. But attending Hebrew school had to be done, so that I could have a Bar Mitzvah. (I didn't want to have a Bar Mitzvah, but, in my parents' eyes, how could a boy not have a Bar Mitzvah?) Also, where religion was concerned, I felt I saw hypocrisy in my parents, that they were saying, Do as we say, not as we do.

So I later rejected the ancestral faith pretty completely. I absolutely don't observe it at all--although, to be completely honest, my parents' actions don't get all of the blame for that. But I think my parents richly deserve that outcome.

In another example, when I was a kid I was into photography (I still am). I would use my mother as a photographic subject. So, maybe as a birthday present, my mother gave me a book called How to Photograph Women.

After she gave me the book, my mother discovered that the book had pictures of naked women (I was an adolescent at the time, I believe). Well, one day when I was not around, Mother seized the book—and cut out all the pages with the nude photos.

I think that that's screamingly funny when you consider that I grew up to be gay. I mean, what were the photos supposed to have done to me, make me feel lust for women? Of course I can't say that not having those pictures made me gay; but in hindsight, maybe my mother might have wished that she could have fostered lust for naked women in me.

Copyright © 2010 by Richard Stein