religion and lies

[miriam_e]

I 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?

Comments

[annie-lyne.livejournal.com]

I generally agree with you, but your statement about religion being the common denominator for social ill reminds me of the recent publicity about Dawkins et al and some of the statements that they have made.

I think it is in some respects too simple to make this leap; religion doesn't cause problems, it's the people's interpretation of the religion that causes problems (it's much like the "guns don't kill people, people kill people" slogan). And that interpretation is often dogmatic and their mentality is often closed to any form of challenge.

[miriam-e.livejournal.com]

Hi Annie,

Take a look at the research mentioned above.
http://moses.creighton.edu/JRS/2005/2005-11.html

or I've uploaded an easier to read version to my site. The original uses a tricky, but difficult to view, technique of swapping graph images in and out of the page. My version simply inlines them all.
http://miriam-english.org/files/religion_ill.html

The research itself doesn't say anything about causes. It simply gives the data.

It had always been clear to me that religion was wrong to insist it was the source of morality when I know so many good and moral atheists and agnostics. I used to feel that religion was simply a way that people (good and bad) justified their morals and that it was unrelated to how good or bad they were, so I was quite surprised to find that religion actually is directly related with so many social ills. But when I started to think about it I realised it should not be surprising at all.

The teen pregnancy figure probably results from the totally useless abstinence bunk that religious organisations preach. Sexually transmitted diseases are spread through religions discouraging use of condoms. Abortion is surprising until you remember that the high rate of teen pregnancies among religious folk also goes along with extreme social shame at that event. The high divorce rate among fundamentalists is well known and obviously grows out of their intolerance and extreme views. Perhaps homicide and violence are also due to intolerance.

Now, remember that this is about people in bulk. It says little about any individual. I know plenty of good and compassionate religious people, just as I know plenty of good and compassionate atheists and agnostics. But statistically it is clear that the stronger the religion, the more social ills accompany it.

My own feeling is that religion is the root cause of these and many other problems. Any belief structure that requires one to suspend skepticism in the ways religion does is dangerous, and we shouldn't be surprised when it is associated with social ills. If it was simply about people's interpretation of religion rather than the religion itself then you would expect to find little difference between religious and non-religious people.

Clearly we don't need religion in order to understand that being good to people is the right and sensible thing to do, or that honesty is the generator of trust, or to give us a sense awe at the world around us. And we certainly don't need it to implore us to mass murder cities full of people who follow a different god (Deuteronomy 13:12-16), or to contradict the fossil record, or to tell us gay people are bad. The bible is full of thoroughly wrong and immoral pronouncements, as is the koran, and I suspect, most other religious works. How can you feel that religion itself is not the culprit here?

I hope you don't feel I'm attacking you through your religion. I'm not. You are one of those admirable people who I see as good in spite of their spiritual leanings. :)

[annie-lyne.livejournal.com]

I'm at work, I'll have to look at those sites later.

I think it's dangerous to suspend skepticism too! I've always looked upon the enforcement of fundamentalist or dogmatic belief as dangerous and even a little bit sad, in a way. Religion in general doesn't however directly imply that one needs to suspend skeptical views -- in fact to have a healthy sense of spirituality/religion one needs to question things all the time. One would expect if God gave her creation brains, she'd expect they be used!

I also don't think that religion is the sole source of morality either. Religion I think serves best to provide a prototype or framework which to work with, but it becomes dangerous to apply ancient morality to the present (there's a reason why people don't obey the pedantry in Leviticus, for example).

[miriam-e.livejournal.com]

:) See? This is why I have high respect for you.
I agree with everything you said.
... except the bit about religion providing a framework. If that was so how is it that so many atheists and agnostics manage to be good and moral people? In the light of that, what possible use could religion perform?

[annie-lyne.livejournal.com]

Oh, I don't think it's the only framework at all. People can come up with their own :)

[miriam-e.livejournal.com]

:)