Concerning Damaging Religion

My statement above that religion and faith can be enjoyed by some without detracting from the blessings and enjoyment of others is bound to be met with the criticism that a large part of history’s conflicts, as well as some of the cruelest acts of humanity, are done either in the name of religion or are primarily inspired by such. I thought I’d examine this dynamic a little and show that, while it is true that religion can lead people to inhumane acts, it is a sort of side-effect of ethnicity and the human tendency to xenophobia that so much evil is done in the name of God; not done by religion per-se, but religion forming the most visible fault-lines of hostile ethnic groups.

Ethnicity is at its most fundamental simply a state wherein the people internally identify themselves as joined, and externally excluded from others. The idea of an “us” and “these others” is a fundamental component of culture, and I am not aware of any people anywhere--in the present or past--who have been documented as not having this concept--this concept of unity with their fellows and exclusion from outsiders. There are several fault-lines for ethnicity, with varying levels of intensity. The four most prominent are nationality, race, language, and religion. There is a fluidity for all of these and the possibility of any of them either being significant in ethnic divisions or being totally disregarded. The Latino ethnic group, for example, is defined as basically any people of any race who are born and raised in a Spanish- or Portuguese-speaking country. But as I said, there is a spectrum and fluidity here--a man born in New York often, if is parents or grandparents were Mexican with brown skin, will consider himself Latino--even though he was born in an English-speaking country and may not speak much Spanish himself. But very few racially white or black people born in America of (white or black) Latino parents will identify themselves as Latino.

Language forms the major fault-lines of the Latino ethnicity--which is internally-identified according to such. There are many other ethnic groups usually based on, as I said, either language, nationality, race or religion. If any two people are of the exact same category in all these areas, I would expect that nearly always, these will be of the same ethnicity: which is, again, merely an internal joining together as excluded from the “others”. Likewise, I would expect that if any two people anywhere are different in language, nationality, race and religion--in all these four categories--I would expect it would be extremely rare for these two people to consider themselves ethnically identical.

Often in defense of religion--specifically against the attack that points out all the evil done in the name of God--people will say that the evil is not God’s, but humanity’s. They will say that God is good and perfect, but that godly institutions or churches or what-have-you are composed of men, who are liable to sin like all men, and these are the ones who commit cruelty. It will be pointed out that as soon as religious institutions gain power and might, they are corrupted and the dark side of man becomes manifest--it will be noted that power corrupts, as the saying goes; and the error, again, is a matter of fallen men, not a fault in God. But I do not consider this a satisfactory explanation. If “power corrupts” were the simple explanation, why is it that, say, Universal Studios, or General Mills--incredibly powerful organizations--are not given to crime and murder, cruelty and corruption--in the way that the Catholic church in centuries past was corrupt, or the way the Spanish Inquisition was inhumane? “Power corrupts” is certainly not a universal law of human psychology--we have in the more than two centuries of United States Presidents not a single attempted coup, nor use of the military or other unconstitutional means to remain in power by any President in all that time. And why is not NBC or CBS run and maintained by torture, cruelty and crime?--they are, after all, amazingly powerful entities.

I would suggest that power does not corrupt at least as often as it does corrupt, and so we must find the explanation for the cruelty done in the name of religion in another area.

Human beings--being in our origin tribal and ethnicity-centered--are naturally xenophobic when it comes to interacting with foreign peoples. This xenophobia is not incredibly intense universally--and racism in the world at large is despised--yet some small degree of xenophobia, I would suggest, is either latent or manifest in nearly all people. Americans may for the most part despise racism and even nationalism, yet when we hear of an earthquake in Iran--with a body count of, say, 30,000--we in America shrug and go on with our day; but how would we react to such a wide-scale disaster in Los Angeles or San Francisco? It is probably not wrong for us to be so ethnically-centered; after all, the Iranians would shrug at an earthquake in our country, as much as we would do to one in theirs. It is just the fundamental cultural dynamic that comes with the--likewise fundamental--phenomenon of ethnicity, that we care more for the “us” than for the “others”.

I would suggest that when men commit crimes and acts of cruelty--especially when attended by a war--in the name of their God, against those of a different ethnicity than themselves--this is just the xenophobia attendant to ethnicity, where the fault-line between peoples happens to be along religious lines. There are wars just as cruel and crimes just as inhumane perpetrated against one people by another along all the other fault-lines of ethnicity, not just religion. Can we say that the different races have been as kind to one another throughout history as the different religions? Have different nations with different languages, but the same religion, not perpetrated as much inhumanity upon one another as ever was done between hostile religions? I would suggest that religion is simply one among a handful of fault-lines upon which ethnicity can be drawn, and cruelty in the name of God means nothing but the natural propensity for humans to despise the “others” and empathize with the “us”, rather than religion being the primary impetus for these inhumane acts. The inhumane acts, were there no religion, would still go on just as strongly, and with just as much inhumanity, were there never any religion. We would simply mark out the “us” and the “others” based upon some other highly-visible distinction that can mark out ethnicity.

Man is a cruel and vicious creature; but his war and crimes are not due to religion--whether it is in the name of religion or not--but rather due to the tragic fact that we all have a sense of whom we are joined together with and who stands outside. And we have ever perpetrated viciousness on those who stand outside--especially after seeing them perpetrate viciousness on us. This is the dynamic that sends us to the mass-murder of war with which we torment one another every few decades. Were not religion a visible distinction by which we could mark out ethnicity to constitute its “us” and its “others”, then race, language, or nation would simply take its place. The problem is not with religion itself. Take away religion and you’d still have all the conflicts between peoples--there may not be religion to divide people in such a case, but so long as ethnicity is marked out somehow, the brutality will still be present.