I know people of faith. Good people. Jews, Muslims, Christians. Good people all. Faith can be a good for people, it can anchor them, it can ground them. It can build community and a sense of belonging. But there’s a catch. It’s a big catch: Religion is only helpful to good people. That’s right, religion doesn’t make people good, it fosters the good in already good people.
Meanwhile, religion is used by bad people. Bad priests who prey on believers. Foolish people who take words from ancient texts literally. Weak people who feel hopeless and lost. And sometimes it even takes good people and clouds their judgement, turning their faith into misguided devotion.
When good and smart people who contextualize religious teachings with a morality that anchors them and their faith leave that faith, they do not suddenly become bad people. The religion isn’t a necessary part of being good. But religion is often used to to harm ‘others’; to ostracize and attack those that don’t fit. The crusades, military jihadists, ethnic cleansing, these are examples of how religious beliefs undermine morality as opposed to foster it. Man’s inhumanity against Man has often been driven by faith.
If religions were to suddenly disappear, would there be more or less violence in the world? How many good people would suddenly fall from grace? On the other hand, how many blindly devout and misguided people would suddenly have no need to harm non-believers?
Today, more hate is promoted by religion than love. This is the paradox of religion: Good people will be good without their faith, bad people will not be as bad without scriptures to misinterpret and blindly follow. What religion does to support good people is grossly outweighed by what it does to co-opt the weak, draw them in, and have them blindly follow the misguided religious teachings of men and women who misinterpret old and outdated texts.
Has religion helped some people? Yes. Absolutely. But at what price? How many have died in the name of their or other’s religions? How many continue to die? To hate? To fight? To abuse believers? To impose their beliefs on non-believers? All in the name of God.
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A few thoughts here…
https://www.mguhlin.org/2022/07/skirting-paradox.html
Miguel, thank you for sharing such an insightful post! It took a while to read because I paused to go to every link. I appreciate your links to scripture and your perspective on them. I wrote this back in March, https://daily-ink.davidtruss.com/from-faith-or-with-faith/
In honesty I did not remember writing this when I wrote the post above… the consequence of writing every day is that I often repeat concepts months later, not remembering what is unexpressed versus written thoughts in my mind. But the slant in the link is a little different, less harsh, less of an attack on religion (which I was concerned about, but you saw through in your response). This previous writing reminds me of a conversation I recently had with a religious colleague, whom pre-covid I often spent time with speaking of and about religion. In this conversation I said to him at one point: (paraphrasing)
When I share my atheistic points, they are not intended to convert you. I do not perceive atheism as a religion to adopt, simply a lack of religion… there is no intent to change your mind on your faith… in fact I see how your faith grounds you and I see no benefit in you not believing what you do.
But that is a conversation between two educators, two public school principals, both of whom do not share their religion/beliefs with students. This does not change the ideas above that you succinctly reduced to:
“What religion does to support good people is grossly outweighed by what [evil] it does.”
That is the thesis statement. That is the problem today, be it with evangelical beliefs on abortion versus the liberty of women over their bodies in the US; Or warring Shiites versus Sunnis in the Middle East; Or Chinese versus Tibetans in Asia; Or… Or… Or… the list is almost endless. Why would a benevolent, all-knowing, and un-interfering God want His/Her worshippers to impose their beliefs on others? When two people of differing faiths squabble, no finger of God comes waving down upon one of them. When that squabble leads to the use of swords or guns, no hand of God shields the supposed Righteous One. Instead, Man’s evil against Man is shed, and the God they love is no longer represented in their actions.
And there in lies the problem of religion, it does not remain in the ‘respective closets’ you mention. Instead, it manifests in hatred of the heathen non-believers. In fact, the wrath of God on non-believers in scripture is what turned me away from religion. I wondered as a teen, “What kind of cruel God would do this?”
https://daily-ink.davidtruss.com/coffee-after-class/
“What religion does to support good people is grossly outweighed by what [evil] it does.”
Faith in God will not ever end, but maybe we can find a humanist… (I fear saying Humanist with a capital ‘H’, for this too can become dogma worth fighting to protect)… maybe we can find a humanist approach to faith that invites love of life and liberty, dialogue not conflict, and faith without evil.
Thanks again for your insightful reflection.
Thank you, David. I agree wholeheartedly with your points, and the last paragraph in particular. Perhaps the next question, how can we present a more humanist approach to counteract the vehement actions of those seeking to restrict education to dogma and narrow mindedness?
I will craft some more birdwalking thoughts later tonight.
Within an American context specifically, as well as a democratic society generally, I think the key is to ‘infiltrate’ local municipalities with humanist minded people. Local government and local school boards have a lot of local power. I’ve watched in horror on social media where I’ve seen people who have spoken out against backwards-thinking school boards to no avail. That’s why I intentionally used the word ‘infiltrate’ above. That’s what narrow-minded people have done, and it takes the same effort to combat that. It’s simple math. For example: If more than half of a school board have no interest in banning books, books won’t get banned.
Anyone willing to stand before a school board and say, “What you are doing is wrong,” needs to be willing to run for school trustee. I believe the battleground where the average person has the most influence is their local community.