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"Good people will do good things, and bad people will do bad things. But for good people to do bad things – that takes religion."
Steven Weinberg, Nobel laureate
I have to slightly disagree with Steven Weinberg on this point, I would replace 'religion' with 'delusion'. The required delusion can be religion, but other delusions will also serve the purpose. For example, a well-meaning person ran a campaign trying to link wind turbines with bad health from about 2010 to 2014 in Australia; but, of course, the link existed only in the imagination of a number of gullible people.
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Several of the greatest of the social systems that grew around religions came to be intolerant, self-centred and tyrannical. That seems to be a tendency for any social system, religious or secular, that comes to dominate a region, nation or community. Those in charge seek to gain more and more power over the powerless majority, simply because they can.
I'm thinking here particularly of the Christianity adopted as the official religion of the Roman Empire by Emperor Theodosius around 390AD and Islam (both Shia and Sunni Islam seem to date from around the death of Mohamed, 632 CE).
The Christian establishment in Europe held back free thought, clear thinking in ethics and scientific advance for much of the period from the fall of the Roman Empire to the Renaissance and beyond. The delusion that is religion is still stopping the majority of humans from access to fully rational thought.
I have summarised elsewhere how much there is in the Christian 'holy books' that were shockingly unethical by any reasonable standards elsewhere in these pages. What the Christian call the Old Testament was based primarily on the 24 books of the Hebrew Bible or Tanakh. It is also holy to the Muslims. I have written on the horrors that the Bible records as being done by 'holy' people elsewhere in this pages.
In 2023 there are two nations that could be called theocracies (a system of government in which priests rule in the name of God or a god): Iran and Afghanistan. Both are disasters, particularly in relation to their treatment of women and their contempt for, and denial of, basic human rights.
From April 2021 my web site has gone by the name of "A commentary on an age of contradictions".
One of the greatest contradictions in this age is at the core of both Christianity and Islam. Adherents of both religions are told to believe in two things:
- God is good and merciful;
- If Christians and Muslims don't live according to the rules in their respective holy books God will condemn them to an eternity of torment in Hell.
A person could live an otherwise praiseworthy life, but if he/she doesn't obey particular rules of Christianity/Islam they will go to Hell - for ever.
We are meant to believe that God is good and merciful - but get on his wrong side and he will arrange for you to be condemned to never-ending torture? Really? How could any sane person believe this? Such a god would have to be some sort of sadistic monster!
In the twenty-first century there is an almost universal acceptance that to torture a person or an animal is a crime and very unethical - yet we are to believe that God will organise eternal torture for us if we don't do the right thing according to his rules. And this, we are told, is a good and merciful God.
Judaism seems somewhat ambiguous on the Hell question.
- "Good people will do good things, and bad people will do bad things. But for good people to do bad things – that takes religion."
- Steven Weinberg, Nobel laureate.
- "I wish to propose for the reader's favourable consideration a doctrine which may, I fear, appear wildly paradoxical and subversive. The doctrine in question is this: that it is undesirable to believe a proposition when there is no ground whatever for supposing it true. I must, of course, admit that if such an opinion became common it would completely transform our social life and our political system; since both are at present faultless, this must weigh against it."
- Bertrand Russell, Skeptical Essays, I (1928)
- "Men never do evil so completely as when they do it from religious conviction."
- Blais Pascal
In the community scale religion provides social connection. People connect to others in the same religious group, Catholics feel close to other Catholics, Lutherans feel close to other Lutherans, members of the Uniting Church feel close to other members, Shia Muslims feel close to other Shia Muslims, Buddhists feel close to other Buddhists and Hindus feel close to other Hindus.
But even this has its downside. Just like with ex Australian Prime Minister John Howard's
mateship, those outside the in-group are treated with less consideration than those inside. In fact with religion it goes further than this; those outside of the religious groups are quote probably mistrusted or feared, even hated, by those inside the group.
Outside of religions there are many service groups that can also provide social connection: Apex, Lions, Rotary, Soroptimist, Country Women's Association, Zonta...
SA Community lists hundreds of such groups within just my home state, South Australia.
