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?
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no subject
Date: 2007-06-11 03:16 am (UTC)Your definition of "true religion" and religious weakness or strength conflicts with theirs.
As religion is purely in the eye of the beholder there can be no external definition of "true religion". All religious people can say is my religion is the right way to do it. And all religions do; they all insist that theirs is The Way. (Even the bahai faith who seek to unite all religions do this -- they say that intolerant religion is the wrong way to seek god.)
Religion isn't externally verifiable. This is the big trap that it falls into. Unfortunately, seeking refuge within its subjective definitions offers no help at all, because viewed from inside there is no way to say that a fundamentalist that takes Deuteronomy 13:12-16 to heart and goes on a mass murdering rampage destroying most of the people of Earth is wrong.
That's why it causes so many problems. The definition is derived solely internally. There is no way to consistently apply its rules from outside. Once you step outside religion it no longer applies. This is why a moslem can call another moslem an infidel if they don't agree with everything they think. This is why every religious group condemns every other religious group. Some religious groups are beginning to see the danger and become more tolerant of other religious groups. This is a good thing, but to do so they actually need to selectively discard much of their own religious texts -- a bit of a dangerous stand to take, and it causes them to be seen as even more of an enemy by all other, more strict, religious groups.
This is the great thing that science and maths stumbled upon: falsifiability. If you can show that something is testable then that is is a useful concept. But religion, by its very premise, can't be tested. This is its great danger and its great downfall. It calls itself "truth" without verifiability... worse, thousands of mutually incompatible forms make exactly that same claim to "truth", and none offer any reason to take it more seriously than any other.
Sorry to press on with this Annie. I'm only doing so because I figure you, with your sharp mind, will see my point. I think it would escape many other people and I wouldn't bother.
no subject
Date: 2007-06-11 04:36 am (UTC)(And indeed, religion is not falsifiable; but faith in an unfalsifiable statement doesn't make it inherently dangerous. Like I mentioned, a religion is not inherently dangerous -- it is its followers and and adherents that make up and follow dangerous interpretations that are dangerous.)
no subject
Date: 2007-06-11 04:49 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-06-13 01:11 am (UTC)The difficulty of adhering to any religious texts is complicated by the ambiguous and contradictory nature of those texts. The old testament is particularly notorious for this. There are many places where people are told to kill one another for "holy" reasons, yet it also says that you shouldn't kill. There is a particularly nutty pair of statements in the bible:
"God is not like men, who lie; He is not a human who changes his mind. Whatever he promises, he does; He speaks and it is done." - Numbers 23:19
"So the Lord changed his mind and did not bring on his people the disaster he threatened." - Exodus 32:14
It is impossible to adhere logically to something that is illogical.
The situation is worsened, of course, by those who would add other, spurious rules to their religious texts.
- Some moslems maintain that female circumcision is religiously mandated, when it isn't.
- Many christians believe that abortion is murder when actually the bible specifically states that killing an unborn child is not murder.
- Although homosexuality appears to be gently chastised (in the same league as wearing 2 different kinds of thread), yet there is a gay marriage between Jonathan and David (1 Samuel 18:1, 3 - 4). And Ruth, who even has her own book in the bible, appears to have been lesbian (Ruth 1:16-17).
You may be right that an unfalsifiable faith is not, by any logical requirement, necessarily dangerous, but unfortunately the evidence leads to a different conclusion. It correlates just too neatly with social ills.It may be possible to have religion in mild doses and suffer no harm at all. I know plenty of moderate believers who are good people. But I have a feeling that using this to say religion is okay sounds a little like arguing that cyanide is good because it's not dangerous in small amounts.
Sorry to rattle on about this. It is rare to find someone who has spiritual beliefs that I can discuss these things with. Don't feel compelled to answer if you are too busy. :) I totally understand. I shouldn't be spending so much time on it -- I have an AI to program.
no subject
Date: 2007-06-13 01:16 am (UTC)For example, it seems unreasonable that a god would create homosexuality in people and in the same breath have it condemned at the same time; or for example it seems unreasonable that a god would permit the murder of "infidels" and then condemn murder elsewhere.
Do you see what I'm getting at?
As to the other point, any ideology, not necessarily religious without rational thought can lead to great harm as well, and there are certainly historical examples of this as well.