An Indictment Against Religion
"Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people. The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness. To call on them to give up their illusions about their condition is to call on them to give up a condition that requires illusions. The criticism of religion is, therefore, in embryo, the criticism of that vale of tears of which religion is the halo."
Marx could have just as easily used the word Politics as religion, for we are currently in the midst of a religious feeding frenzy to elect a president that we believe will be our mommy or daddy and take care of us and make things better, just as we do with religion.
Marx is calling people to give up their false settlement for pseudo happiness and go for the real deal. It’s just like addiction, in which people are settling for a drug that gives them a false sense of peace and security, when the drug wears off, so does the peace. Religion provides a security blanket in which one comes to believe; ‘I’m covered because I believe what I’m told is the way to believe.’ It’s an insurance policy in which you convince yourself that you’re on the right team, so your team is going to win!
Jesus said "blessed are the poor" but he didn't do anything to end poverty. Christianity teaches that we should be satisfied with the way things are, because it is God’s will. Religion teaches that our "reward" will come in the next life so we shouldn't expect anything better from this one. The opium Marx refers to is a pain killer that disguises the real human condition which is an existential reality that is too much for most people.
That reality is that no one knows what happens when we die, that we will all get sick, run down and eventually succumb to death, that everything/everyone we cherish will pass, either before or after we will. All this basically SUCKS!! So what do we do about it?
Meaning
Viktor Frankel, a survivor of a Nazi prison camp, went on to write a famous book called “Man’s Search For Meaning,” he believed the psychological reactions we have to life are not solely the result of the conditions of one’s life, but also from the freedom of choice we always have, even in the face of suffering. Buddhism, (which I don’t consider a religion), teaches about happiness independent of circumstances.
The Course In Miracles says to; “Choose Only Love, for that is what you are.” It is hard to conceive of yourself as love, but this is one of the many conceptions we have of God; God is love. Parents who really love their children, know of no greater love, this is why we have conceived of God as a big Mac Daddy, but if God really is love, there really is no need for God, we can and should just love one another! But we'd much rather formulate a whole religious ideology and then fight each other about it, this is madness!
On Being A Mystic
I identify, in my spirituality as a mystic. This is because all the mystics throughout the ages were above and beyond the religious matrix they were socialized in, and in fact, most mystics were/are persecuted by the religious traditions they were born into.
This is true in Christian, Jewish, and Muslim traditions. The Sufi’s for example, with which I feel a particular affinity, were ostracized and heavily persecuted by orthodox Muslims. Mystics like the poet Rumi, who founded the whirling dervish tradition, were seen as apostates because they claimed they not only had direct contact with the divine, they claimed they were God! This is certainly considered blasphemy in every religion, but if one were to make the efforts to understand what is meant by this statement you will see that the mystic is referring to a non-dual state in which there is no separation between me and God.
The Vietnamese mystic Thich Nhat Hanh is an example of this non-dual state;
“Our true nature is the nature of no birth and no death. We do not have to go anywhere in order to touch our true nature. The wave does not have to look for water because she is water. We do not have to look for God, we do not have to look for our ultimate dimension or nirvana, because we are nirvana, we are God. You are what you are looking for. You are already what you want to become.”
But religion is all about we do have to go somewhere, pay someone, read some book, profess some belief, and say some prayer if we want to get a ticket into see God. The mystic has no such need for the ticket.
The Religious Impulse
The religious impulse in man is around 300,000 years old, when humans took some time to ceremonially bury their dead with some idea, wish, and imagination that something would/could live on after death. Other early religious rites had to do with fertility, seasonal change, birth, hunting, healing, initiation, rites of passage for youth into adulthood, war, and some sense of artistic expression that can be said to have a religious nature. All of this is perfectly understandable in man's early attempts to reconcile the mysteries of existence with the psychological pressures of survival and the inevitability of death.
According to Edward O. Wilson, author of; “On Human Nature,”
“The changes that transpired in the interval between hunter-gatherer life, some 40,000 years ago to the first city states in Sumer, and all the changes from Sumer to Europe were mostly cultural rather than genetic.
As band changed to tribe, true male leaders appeared and gained dominance, alliances between neighboring groups were strengthened and formalized, and rituals marking the changes of season became general. With still denser populations came the attributes of generic chiefdom: the formal distinction of rank according to membership in families, the hereditary consolidation of leadership, a sharper division of labor, and the redistribution of wealth under the control of the ruling elite. As chiefdoms gave rise in turn to cities and states, these basic qualities were intensified. The hereditary status of the elite was sanctified by religious beliefs.”
So we see here, with cultural evolution came religious institutions that became a power base in which to control, socialize, and consolidate power. The founding of the Catholic Church epitomizes the institutionalization of power at the expense (literally) of the masses.
A contemporary example is “the candidate who wins the Catholic vote has also won the popular vote in every election since 1972. That’s four decades of picking the winner, according to exit poll estimates, from Nixon to Obama. What makes the Catholic vote unique is its ability to mimic the trends of the American populace as a whole”, says Robert P. Jones of the nonpartisan Public Religion Research Institute. We'll come back to the Catholics.
God, Psychotherapy, and Evil
In Richard Dawkins book “The God Delusion,” and the subsequent T.V. series “Religion the Root of All Evil?” Dawkins argues that "the process of non-thinking called faith" is not a way of understanding the world, but instead stands in fundamental opposition to modern science and the scientific method, and is divisive and dangerous. I would not call faith “non-thinking,” that’s clearly from someone who doesn’t understand faith, nor would I care that much about being in opposition to modern science (I, myself, am very critical about some of the so called modern science), but the part about religion being divisive and dangerous I completely agree with!
Faith is a very basic human need, we can see it developmentally from very early in a child’s life in which she must come to see the world as a safe place. This developmental phase is essential if the growing child is going to be able to risk and take chances that we all must be willing to take if we are to learn and grow.
The Bible says; "Now faith (pi'stis) is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen." We must have some assurance and hope to be psychologically healthy, and we must have some conviction in the parts of life that are not measurable through our 5 senses, such as love. This creates well-being, safety, security, meaning, and the hope that keeps people moving and growing through life. But when our assurance and conviction comes from specific religious indoctrination, therein lies the source of much suffering.
In my 30 years as a psychotherapist I can assuredly say that religious indoctrination ranks high among causes for suffering and psychological symptoms. The inner conflict that brainwashed people who have been taught that they are sinners, is an emotional torment that adds to the already stressful enough vicissitudes of human life in the Twenty-first century.
People religiously indoctrinated, believe they are born guilty sinners, are at risk to be judged and condemned to a suffering eternity in hell by a vengeful, righteous male god, and every time they experience a natural sensation like sexual desire, they are committing a crime in which they are encouraged to gouge out their eyes, creates an existential terror in many!
Judaism, Christianity, and Islam
The three major religions in the Western world all have the same ethnic, and cultural base, which is the Middle East. Judaism, Christianity, and Islam all originate in the Abrahamic area and ethnography that is truly one people, yet they hate each other with a murderous rage that has engendered wars, terrorism, and genocide.
But these religions did not spring into being like some spontaneous generation, they were all intricately linked to older religious systems each evolving in lockstep just as biological life evolves. The Torah and Judaism originated as a cultural evolution from older beliefs and older scriptures. All the religious motifs such as creation, holy wars, floods, sin, forgiveness, God's son, being saved, the trinity, punishment, heaven, hell, resurrection, communion, sacrifice, monotheism, etc. are archetypal patterns that have been formulated and recycled over and over.
Yet religious fanatics think their religious tradition sprang into being and is unique, and the one true path to God, Heaven, paradise, winning the lottery, and other such nonsense. There is much evidence that Egypt is the source of much of Middle Eastern religious motifs.
My point is that religious mythology is as old as man himself, and that all religions are intertwined and dependent on one another, none of them stand alone. So the ideas of people killing one another over their religious chauvinism is purely from ignorance. Just as is the idea that you are “saved” and held in some special light because you go to a particular church, or have what you believe is the word of God. This is all very destructive and engenders much of the world's suffering.
The Leftovers
There are recurrent patterns of belief about certain people being God's chosen, or people will be taken up in the Rapture and losers will be left behind, or people will be rewarded with some kind of special orgy with a dozen virgins if they blow themselves up, all these idea are among the most pernicious ideas humans have ever come up with.
The Leftovers is an excellent T.V. serious and book that brings the fallacies and pain of religiosity into a very clear light. The Leftovers takes place three years after a global event called the "Sudden Departure", the inexplicable, simultaneous disappearance of 140 million people, 2% of the world's population, on October 14, 2011. Following that event, mainstream religions declined, and a number of cults emerged, most notably the Guilty Remnant.
The Guilty Remnant represents a kind of anti-religion religion. These are people that cannot make any sense of the sudden departure, so they organized themselves around the futility and pain of life as the only thing that has meaning. They go around and try to get others to join them by dressing in white, not talking, and smoking constantly. They have given up living, yet believe strongly in their 'cause,' and go to great lengths to proselytize their message and get converts. Does this sound familiar? Meanwhile, the rest of the people are trying to get on with their lives and find meaning in what's left, even though they certainly feel the pain of missing loved ones. But even the people trying to get on with their lives are looking for someone or something that explains and can take away their pain. They find their way to a town called Miracle where, for some unknown reason, no one departed. People come to believe there is something magical about the town, and the people in the town capitalize on this childish seeking. You can see this is the story of religion and all its pitfalls dramatized in a very clever way.
Spotlight
It is synchronistic that the academy award this year for best picture went to the movie Spotlight which chronicles the 2002 expose on the Catholic Church in the Boston area and the institutional bureaucracy that built into its infrastructure a ways and means to expect, transfer, and cover up the pervasive child molestations that have happened routinely since the churches’ inception.
The movie chronicles how a small team of highly passionate investigative reporters, with the highest integrity, uncovered the abuse, and molestation of over 1000 children by trusted priests in the community, and how the Church, up to the highest levels of power, knew, covered up, and shuffled some 90 priests to other churches and communities where they continued to perpetrate abuse on children and families over some 30 year period.
After the story broke, hundreds of churches and victims around the world came forward with similar horror stories. The statistics came out to 6% of Catholic Priests are guilty of abuse and molestation. Considering there are 1 billion Catholics in the world, that’s a horrifying number of abused children that grow up with irreparable psychological damage!
This story is one of countless tragedies all perpetrated in the name of religion. In the 21stcentury we have to do better to meet people’s spiritual needs rather than the institutions of repressive/oppressive religion.
Ethical Culture Movement
One really valid alternative to religion resides in a movement that happened in the early part of the 20th century called the Ethical Culture Movement. Like so many great things springing from Jewish culture, this movement grew out of a Jewish reform culture that was seeking some integration and acceptance into mainstream America. Ironically, this was right before a wave of anti-Semitism that continued through WWI through WWII.
The Ethical Culture Movement included principles such as;
· The belief that morality is independent of theology;
· The affirmation that new moral problems have arisen in modern industrial society which have not been adequately dealt with by the world's religions;
· The duty to engage in philanthropy in the advancement of morality;
· The belief that self-reform should go in lock step with social reform;
· The establishment of republican rather than monarchical governance of Ethical societies
· The agreement that educating the young is the most important aim.
Other key ideas of the founder Felix Adler include;
· Human Worth and Uniqueness – All people are taken to have inherent worth, not dependent on the value of what they do. They are deserving of respect and dignity, and their unique gifts are to be encouraged and celebrated.
· Eliciting the Best – "Always act so as to Elicit the best in others, and thereby yourself" is as close as Ethical Culture comes to having a Golden Rule.
· Inter-relatedness – Adler used the term The Ethical Manifold to refer to his conception of the universe as made up of myriad unique and indispensable moral agents (individual human beings), each of whom has an inestimable influence on all the others. In other words, we are all interrelated, with each person playing a role in the whole and the whole affecting each person. Our inter-relatedness is at the heart of ethics.
Many Ethical Societies prominently display a sign that says "The Place Where People Meet to Seek the Highest is Holy Ground".
To me, this kind of thinking and practice is a viable alternative to the negative effects that religion is having on our world.
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