religion and charity

[miriam_e]

Why is it that even religious moderates are so often convinced that you need religion or faith to be a good person or to find purpose in life? It is incredibly arrogant. But I guess I shouldn't be surprised. It is really no more arrogant than believing that out of thousands of irrational beliefs, theirs is the only one that is right.

I listened to The Spirit of Things tonight. Big mistake. The guy being interviewed was amazing, but tripped and fell headfirst into the metaphoric mud when he said that faith is necessary for purpose. And Rachael Kohn clearly showed her limitations when she implied that religion gives us charity. Of course she ignored all the charitable atheists and agnostics (oh, but they don't count -- how could atheists possibly be charitable?). Ignore the fact that the least religious countries regularly live up to their international aid promises, whereas the most religious countries have never done so. The least religious countries have the most peaceful and healthy populations, whereas the most religious countries are split by fear and hatred and obscene wealth contrasted with appalling poverty.

Are people so willingly blind?

Sure, some religious people can be good and charitable, but on balance religion's harm far, far outweighs any good it has ever done. While atheists and agnostics quietly get on with the job of doing good without constantly trumpeting how great they are.

Comments

[miriam-e.livejournal.com]

Hitler definitely was not atheist. This is a Big Lie propagated by embarrassed catholic churches. He considered himself a good catholic and used catholic hatred of Jews as one of his emotional levers. As superchikka mentions, he also used a hefty helping of Nordic mythologies too.

Certainly there are evil people who are atheist. I would never think otherwise. The point of my posts is that religion considers itself an unquestioned force for good, but is actually responsible for most of the evil around us. This is, I guess, the thing that bugs me so much.

I don't know how many times I've been asked by an astounded religious person how it can be that I am so optimistic and spend so much effort trying to help others, yet I'm not religious! I never react to the implied insult (like expressing surprise that a black person knows how to wear clothes), but patiently and good naturedly explain that doing good things has absolutely nothing to do with religion.

[idealistagain.livejournal.com]

He considered himself a good catholic and used catholic hatred of Jews as one of his emotional levers. As superchikka mentions, he also used a hefty helping of Nordic mythologies too.

This seems to me to be an example of the same sort of thing that I've seen you criticize about religious people on numerous occasions: making a statement that is clearly contradictory and yet being so attached to your own position that you don't even recognize it as such.

How can Hitler be both a pagan and a "good Catholic"? The position of the Catholic church is that they do not recognize pagan religions, nor the existence of other deities. So if Hitler was making claims to believe in such things, then by definition, he was not a good Catholic, regardless of what he called himself.

I think you run into all sorts of problems when you allow people to self-identify without examining that identification closely. Someone can claim to be anything they want; that does not make it so.

religion considers itself an unquestioned force for good, but is actually responsible for most of the evil around us.

While I think its certainly valid and legitimate to point out the amazing amount of pure hypocrisy within religious people, this statement goes a bit too far, I think. Since evil is itself a concept that cannot be quantified in any way, by what measure are you making the claim that religion is responsible for "most" of it? Or even if this claim were proven true, how are you going about isolating the influence of religion specifically when most forms of evil have any number of complex interacting factors that cause them?

Saying that religion is responsible for most evil is not a fact, but a hypothesis. And even worse, its a hypothesis with no way of being tested, and so its also bad science.

[idealistagain.livejournal.com]

religion considers itself an unquestioned force for good, but is actually responsible for most of the evil around us.

It just occurred to me after I posted my last comment that this statement is also a good example of the logical fallacy of confusing correlation with causation.

[miriam-e.livejournal.com]

I'll go into this more later, but I have actually considered this before, but no, religion is not just coincident with, but truly causative of large amounts of evil.

I'll discuss the Journal of Religion and Society article more in this light later, but a few quickies on religion causing evil:
- the witch burnings,
- the mass murder of muslims by christians in the former Yugoslavia,
- the jihadists who did the bombings recently in London,
- the christian crusades
- homophobia

[miriam-e.livejournal.com]

I won't answer this fully just now. I'm running out of time and should try and do some actual work.

It is very easy for someone to have a blend of religions many of the religious people around the world do exactly this. It is especially easy with the catholic church. It has an enormous range of dieties and sub-dieties. How they manage that with the holy trinity involved such an incredible amount of twisted double-speak that it took up the attention of large numbers of theologians for centuries. Added to that you have Mary who is essentially a diety and a whole pantheon of lesser gods in the saints. The catholic church has historically invaded other cultures by surreptitiously merging with existing religions. It is why we have Easter (Estrus=fertility) for the pagan spring festivals, and the birth of Jesus during the winter solstice festivals, and all the weird admixtures of catholicism in South America and Africa.

The only way to recognise religion is by people's own self-identification. There can be no other way. How can you externally judge whether someone is muslim? Can you decide based on whether they follow the teachings of their holy book? In that case only the worst, most fundamentalist christians, muslims, mormons, hindus, etc are genuinely religious. In that case you have an even stronger argument against religion.

I take your point about my claim for use of the word "most". But even if I reduce it to the word "much" (religion is responsible for much of the evil around us) my point still stands. In any case I'll see if I can't quantify it better.