Is there a Purpose to Religion?
Friday, September 23, 2011
Editor’s Note: Dee Mason contacted me by email and asked me to post this essay on my site. I was happy to oblige. If you want to do a guest post, let me know. (Keep in mind that the opinions here are not my own, but that of Dee Mason, and I may not agree with everything said in this essay.)
No doubt those of you who have ever suffered a crisis or faith, or wondered about the meaning of life may have also thought about the reasons why so many people follow a religion. Those readers who have no specific faith or belief system may question the idea that religion is not an exact science.
In fact, it is the total opposite. We have no distinct proof that God exists, there is no definable evidence that he created the universe and as no one has ever truly seen God, we do not know if there is any kind of afterlife. God depends totally upon the amount of believers to perpetuate his existence.
Judgmental Attitudes
Marx defined religion as the ‘Opium of the Masses’, and it is easy to see exactly what he meant. People follow like sheep, in the hope that they will be rewarded by an eternity in Heaven. But are these people being Christian in their behaviour for the right reasons?
The supposed Christian attitude is to treat others with respect, as they themselves would want to be treated. It is also to do good for others, don’t judge–lest ye be judged–and generally to be decent folk. That premise may have been adopted by the Christians, but in truth it should apply to all people, should it not?
One doesn’t have to be a Christian, or follower of any religion to be a decent person. In fact it could be argued that Christians are generally the most judgmental of religions, in that they are the least tolerant of anything they see as ‘deviant’ to their beliefs. The same could be argued about the Islamic faith, where fundamentalists regard the Koran as the only Holy book that should be adhered to.
Many extremists feel that the rest of the world population are ‘infidels’ and should either be converted or punished. This is not entirely true of the entire Islamic faith, but there are large groups who feel very strongly about detaching themselves from western religion and culture.
Off-Shoots
Christianity has many off-shoots, which depict different beliefs and varying ideas of Biblical interpretation. Baptist, Lutheran, Pre-Lutheran, Methodist, Presbyterian, and Anglican religions–to name but a few– have differing concepts of how the Bible should be interpreted. Most of these off-shoots have their roots in the Reformation period of the 16th Century, when many churches repudiated the Papal doctrine and authority of the Catholic religion.
King Henry the Eighth was alleged to have started the Protestant Church in answer to the Pope’s refusal to give him a divorce from Katherine of Aragon. He renounced his Catholic faith and began the Protestant movement, which then spawned varying off-shoots that we are familiar with today.
Why is Religion so Unreligious?
One might think that sharing the common values of millions of other people would bring them closer together and yet what happens is that people argue over who’s god is better. Seems like playground banter when thought of in that respect. Surely the solution would be to agree to disagree but find no cause to fight.
One classic example of war between religions is the Arab Israeli Conflict, which is alleged to have begun over one hundred years ago. The beginning of this has been put down to the settlement of Jewish people in Palestine, after the establishment of the Zionists. It further escalated with the creation, in 1940, of the State of Israel, which gave rise to more conflict, as people metaphorically, hired a moving company to shift an entire population to a new home. This has spilled over into today’s political arena.
It seems very malicious that people of God should be so against one another, with no real foundation in their feelings. It would certainly open the discussion that religion and politics should not be mixed. However, they seem to have become intertwined with one another and it is becoming more difficult to define the extremely smudged line.
Further Conflict
In the ten years since 9/11 there has been much speculation as to whether the attack was religion-based or politically based, and no specific conclusion has been drawn. Many theories have surfaced, including radicalisation, the defence of the Islamic faith as proposed by Bin Laden, stagnation and decline in the middle east and middle eastern authoritarian regimes, among many others. Whether it was any of these, or a complex mixture of some of them is unknown, but the damage caused on 9/11 was not only devastating at the time, but has had major impact on how we all live our lives.
The ripple effect has spread over the world and security is now a priority. It has caused even further rifts between the Christian and Islamic faiths, perhaps never to be reconciled.
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It’s funny Peter, in reading this essay I finally understand why you are so unyeliding in your expansion of your defintions. It is to protect what is important to you. Reading this, I am sorely tempted to write an extensive essay about how much the author of this essay misunderstands the concepts of faith, religion, and belief. Arguing that in fact, this essay is highly religious. Which it is, but only if you define religion by its ideals and not a collage of historically removed triggers of negative connotation.
When you expand your paradigm of thought I see it as you trying to preserve your “rightness”, to win. But this is demonizing you and your position. I have made the assumption that points of your position are inherently flawed (i.e wrong)and am uneasy when you “expand” your defintion, which is really just you trying to claim some postiive connotation for your side.
Hmmm… I am kind of at a loss of what to do in this position. Showing this author where they are wrong is pointless. It is not the idea of religion that he is fighting, but his own personal experiences of and with religion in a context. It is not an attack, but a defense. Being an atheist I am sure he has grown up attacked on multiiple levels because of his rejection of something that is so commonaly held. In the face of that is it beneficial to even state my defintion of religion? I don’t know.
To the author I guess I will just leave you with some things to think about. I am not religious in the traditional sense at all. I am a Confucian! Just wanted to throw that in there.
I think you should retitle your essay to state ” Is there a purpose for religion now.” It could be argued that our society is now so rich with symbols that a sacred body of symbols can be contrived from just abotu anything, and organized religion in the traditional sense is no longer needed.
However, I would not say there is no purpose to religion. The fact that humanity has devloped to the point it has today is largely because of traditional religions. The bigger they are and the longer they have been around are pretty good signifiers that they were highly benefical to social life.
Take Judaism for example. Why are Jews, despite being a statistical minority in our country, so over-represented in the upper class? Well, Judaism is a religion that promotes literacy. That may not seem like a big deal now, but a couple thousand years ago when not many people were literate it was. Literarcy is a HUGE power. To have your passage into man/womanhood be synthesized to being literate was really benefical to surival. Judaism doesn’t have any blood sacrifices. Another really good inovation in a time when the majority of religions demanded sacrifices to the Gods. What does Judaism demand? Loving thy neighbor, respecting your parents, not stealing or killing. These are all really great things for developing society, which thus develops culture, technology, ecnomy, etc. Again, probably seems pretty self-evident now. These things are foundational in our laws, but they were not for a really long time. They are foundational in our laws because they were foundational in judaism.
My point is that Judaism presents people with a body of habits and beliefs that promote cohesive communities and the production of knowledge. I would say the only real flaw in judaism as a stimulant for the growth of humanity is that you had to be jewish to be in the club. I am sure a three thousand or something years ago, tons of over familes and villages saw how great the jews were doing. They were building knowledge, saving wealth, not dying. I am sure they wanted some of that. But they were not educated enough to see the power of Judaism as the habitus of the reiligon, they saw it as gifts of their God. And if the Jewish God only likes Jews, they are screwed.
Next great innovation in western religion, Christianity. Here is a jew who has all that jew power saying that actually anyone can be blessed by God if they do X,Y, and Z. Christianity was the first true (western) monethistic religion. Monethesim is a ideology that promotes human survival. The reason Judaism is not Monothesitic is that it divides the ethnic group of the jews from all other people. A polythesitic religion attaches God to a specific locality, thus emphasizing the in-group/out-grooup distinction (Read Paul Tllich, Theology of Culture for a more elequent argument of this fact). Saying that anyone can be a part of God is like saying we are all one society, not distinct tribes. This reduces war and makes the production of imagined communites of a scale beyond the tribe (such as the empire) possible.
-Religion:
– Promoted the production of knowledge
– Promoted the development of societal vs. nomadic cutlure by emphasizing socially benefical characteristics (not killing, not stealing, empathy, reverence for elders, love of neighbor, etc)
– Laid the foundation for the nation-state
– Laid foundation for globalization (and perhaps a global society of humanity)
Ok, that is probably enough.
P.S Peter if you are going to allow other people to post on your site, I’d re-write your
Greatplay.net © Peter William Hurford via CC by-sa License 2004-2011.
The opinions expressed here are my own and not the opinions of any other person or group, unless otherwise noted. You may contact me via email or form. (K1ll sp@m.)
It strikes me that even without labelling “religion” as bad, you could say it helps societal control, coherence, finding a partner, qualm fears of the unknown, justice (codes of agreed upon fair practice at least).
Rationalism can also develop religious aspects.
Perhaps, as Religion functions as a mirror of society, in attacking it, we attack ourselves, and sometimes we bloody well deserve it. By positing an omni-benevolent God, it seems the “religious” leaders are trying to create something that cannot be attacked (and often seek protective cover). People will always do it because they are people, and religions are as frequently attacked from the inside as the outside.