religion and lies
Jun. 4th, 2007 12:19 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
miriam_eI had a visit from the Jehovah's Witlesses recently while I was out and they left me a copy of their "Awake!" magazine.
The publication is terrible. The lies begin with the cover. The headline is "What does the MORAL BREAKDOWN mean?" and the people on the cover are taking pills, drinking alcohol, gambling, and the implication of the sexily dressed women is that they're prostitutes, but all appear to be non-anglosaxon. At the bottom of the cover is another question asking "What does it mean to be a christian?" which unfortunately seems to be already answered: it appears to mean a willingness to be xenophobic and accept abyssmal lies.
Inside the magazine it begins with "Worldwide, morals have declined dramatically" which is a bald-faced lie. Any criminologist can confirm that crime rates have been declining since we began keeping records. People have become more moral, not less.
Slavery used to be perfectly acceptable. Even Jesus didn't see anything wrong with it. It was an unquestioned part of the way things were; some people simply owned other people. These days we are far more moral and easily see how wrong slavery is. Just a single lifetime ago women were commonly owned by men and it was not unusual for a man to show his displeasure by beating his woman. Now most of the world acknowledges women as independent entities who deserve control over their own lives. In recent decades children were owned by their parents, whereas they now have rights of their own. There is even a growing popular movement for animals other than humans to have rights. Morality has made great advances in recent times. But there are some places these advances have been stunted, and it turns out that these places are exactly where religion is dominant.
Religion portrays itself as the wellspring for morality, but instead of simply having faith in their pronouncements, if you look at the facts, you find something quite different. Religion turns out to be the common denominator for almost all forms of social ill. The more powerful the religion the greater the immorality. Fundamentalist christians have the highest divorce rate in Western society. See the report in The Journal of Religion and Society for the results of research showing that religion correlates directly with violent crime, homicide, sexually transmitted disease, abortion, teen pregnancy, child mortality, and shorter life expectancy.
It amazes me that the vague fear-promoting claims made in the "Awake!" magazine are accepted by anybody at all, but of course it will always lure some people. It uses old tried and true methods of brainwashing. Make your subject feel fear and hopelessness mounting on all sides, then offer a single beacon of hope (the religion). Reality is far too messy for such tactics. Instead of telling of the great improvements in the world they make many broad claims of decline, unsubtantiated allegations of worsening morality, and quote people over and over again who all say "things are worse now than in my day", all leading up to the implication that the world is going to hell. They ignore the fact that most people are nostalgic for how things were when they were young. That doesn't mean things are declining, just that we are attached to our past. But the magazine keeps pounding home the message of fear. Things are getting worse. Evil is rising. If you want to survive you need to belong to us. Of course once you join them you are compelled to give them your money and spend your life getting them more converts. This terrible publication should more properly be called "Asleep!".
Incidentally, Jehovah's Witnesses have predicted the end of the world many times: 1914, 1918, 1925, 1975, and 1989. Why do these poor sods have any credibility left at all?
The publication is terrible. The lies begin with the cover. The headline is "What does the MORAL BREAKDOWN mean?" and the people on the cover are taking pills, drinking alcohol, gambling, and the implication of the sexily dressed women is that they're prostitutes, but all appear to be non-anglosaxon. At the bottom of the cover is another question asking "What does it mean to be a christian?" which unfortunately seems to be already answered: it appears to mean a willingness to be xenophobic and accept abyssmal lies.
Inside the magazine it begins with "Worldwide, morals have declined dramatically" which is a bald-faced lie. Any criminologist can confirm that crime rates have been declining since we began keeping records. People have become more moral, not less.
Slavery used to be perfectly acceptable. Even Jesus didn't see anything wrong with it. It was an unquestioned part of the way things were; some people simply owned other people. These days we are far more moral and easily see how wrong slavery is. Just a single lifetime ago women were commonly owned by men and it was not unusual for a man to show his displeasure by beating his woman. Now most of the world acknowledges women as independent entities who deserve control over their own lives. In recent decades children were owned by their parents, whereas they now have rights of their own. There is even a growing popular movement for animals other than humans to have rights. Morality has made great advances in recent times. But there are some places these advances have been stunted, and it turns out that these places are exactly where religion is dominant.
Religion portrays itself as the wellspring for morality, but instead of simply having faith in their pronouncements, if you look at the facts, you find something quite different. Religion turns out to be the common denominator for almost all forms of social ill. The more powerful the religion the greater the immorality. Fundamentalist christians have the highest divorce rate in Western society. See the report in The Journal of Religion and Society for the results of research showing that religion correlates directly with violent crime, homicide, sexually transmitted disease, abortion, teen pregnancy, child mortality, and shorter life expectancy.
It amazes me that the vague fear-promoting claims made in the "Awake!" magazine are accepted by anybody at all, but of course it will always lure some people. It uses old tried and true methods of brainwashing. Make your subject feel fear and hopelessness mounting on all sides, then offer a single beacon of hope (the religion). Reality is far too messy for such tactics. Instead of telling of the great improvements in the world they make many broad claims of decline, unsubtantiated allegations of worsening morality, and quote people over and over again who all say "things are worse now than in my day", all leading up to the implication that the world is going to hell. They ignore the fact that most people are nostalgic for how things were when they were young. That doesn't mean things are declining, just that we are attached to our past. But the magazine keeps pounding home the message of fear. Things are getting worse. Evil is rising. If you want to survive you need to belong to us. Of course once you join them you are compelled to give them your money and spend your life getting them more converts. This terrible publication should more properly be called "Asleep!".
Incidentally, Jehovah's Witnesses have predicted the end of the world many times: 1914, 1918, 1925, 1975, and 1989. Why do these poor sods have any credibility left at all?