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Blaming Religion: Unfair?
Sile
Veteran
I was musing about something this morning...it seems to me that, when someone says, "Christianity is basically about love," someone else will say, "But look at all the killing that has happened because of Christianity - it can't be about love!"
Yet if someone avenges his brother by killing someone, we don't say, "Look at the killing that happened because of the love between two brothers." We don't blame the fact that the brothers loved each other as the reason for the revenge killing, do we? Yet if Christians kill each other over Christianity, we blame Christianity. Isn't it really the case that people just kill each other wrongly, and it's not necessarily anything inherent in the religion?
Yet if someone avenges his brother by killing someone, we don't say, "Look at the killing that happened because of the love between two brothers." We don't blame the fact that the brothers loved each other as the reason for the revenge killing, do we? Yet if Christians kill each other over Christianity, we blame Christianity. Isn't it really the case that people just kill each other wrongly, and it's not necessarily anything inherent in the religion?
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The implications of such a statement may be unpleasant to swallow, but they are completely apt. What people believe is entirely their responsibility. It might be nice to praise or blame "God" or "enlightenment" or "compassion," but the responsibility and capacity of the individual precedes any religion, philosophy or whatever.
It is a red herring to blame or praise Christianity, blame or praise Buddhism, extol or denigrate explanations, winkle out vast meanings ... instead, it is far better to find out who is the true boss and live according to his or her laughter.
Sile The Bible and Christian tradition, like the sutras and Buddhist tradition, are a mixed bag, reflecting wisdom, history, prejudice, hubris, speculation, politics etc etc
It is true that some people latch on to the prejudice and politics, and make a practice of those things, whereas some people sift the texts for wisdom. But texts are by definition not blank sheets of paper which we impose our values on; some of them impart deep wisdom, admittedly in symbiosis with our attention, and the conditions which shaped the pre-existing understanding with which we approach them; but some are poorly constructed, vitriolic, or plain erroneous.
So let's not make a choice based on our loyalties, a choice between holding people accountable and holding religion accountable - let's do both.
In the same way, the positive side of religion urges us to resist following an instinct through to harm someone.
There is also the "media factor" - - - at any given time, most Christians are not killing someone in the name of religion. But those Christians will rarely make the headlines, so what sticks in our minds is the newsworthy soundbite, "Protestant Ulster Defence Association blows up Catholic schoolbus."
But it's a difficult one to call, because strong faith may be needed just to get someone to practice the teachings, which is a huge uprooting of one's values in a secular world, and tends to cause people to fill the remaining void with some degree of fanaticism. Strong faith is not always compatible with rational, even handed thinking. The Buddha really tried to create a good balance between the two in the suttas, and if we look at Buddhists today, he did a remarkable job, if only comparatively speaking.
I think there may be a mechanism that adopts a more or a less skillful ideology and then is lulled into the notion that the ideology somehow precedes or is responsible for the actions of the one who adopted it in the first place.
All I am trying to suggest here is that anyone might be well-advised to keep a sharp eye on his or her adopted philosophy or ideology. Failure to do so promotes confusion and unhappiness, I think. What others do and do not do is not so much the point.
And I am willing to concede that sometimes it is extremely difficult to do this ... if you doubt it, just try talking to any true believer, any 'me' at all.
I think it's part sensationalism to get a reaction out of people, and part laziness in actually trying to understand the belief system. Egocentrism plays a good part too ("I only care about my own beliefs/my own world.")
Overcoming them, maybe, but the whole is to place our faith into action, no matter what that faith is. We may lose the war's, but the battles will be victorious!
Best wishes,
Abu
Fighting is prescribed for you, and ye dislike it. But it is possible that ye dislike a thing which is good for you, and that ye love a thing which is bad for you. But God knoweth, and ye know not (2:216).
But when the forbidden months are past, then fight and slay the pagans wherever ye find them, and seize them, beleaguer them, and lie in wait for them in every stratagem (of war); but if they repent, and establish regular prayers and practice regular charity, then open the way for them: for God is Oft-forgiving, Most Merciful (9:5).
The former verse actually suggests people know that violence is bad, for they dislike it, but their god wants it and they should obey. The bible is also littered with violence including god ordering the slaughter of children. Both books are also full of a merciful god, teaching tolerance and forgiveness. But men do not need to do any twisting when the teachings contain both peace and violence, just select the pertinent section for the situation.
We are quick on this thread to point out that it is man, not the ideology, that is flawed. The ideology, though, is man made.
I agree with the rest of the post, and it should also be pointed out that not everyone freely adopts a religion. Most are born heirs to strong traditional and doctrinal obligations.
I think religion still gets an unfair rap, partly because (usually) it carries an inherent message to not harm others. Safe to go further and say that it stresses that message as a main point (again, usually).
I think you could say organized soccer carries an inherent, sportsmanship message not to harm others, and while that message isn't as strong as it is in religion, when a soccer brawl among fans breaks out, we don't always blame the entire sport of soccer, but say, "hooliganism at soccer matches." There is lots of muttering about what type of behavior soccer inspires, but we tend to still blame "idiotic soccer fans" more than soccer itself, at least in my opinion. We all know that brawls also break out at basketball games.
People nowadays tend to wrongly think that Islam is violent; and yet a Christian nation, we (the US) dropped an atomic bomb (twice) on innocent civilians. The number of Muslims killed by Christians in the past 100 years far exceeds the number of Christians killed by Muslims. I still don't blame Christianity, because in almost no case is violence between "religions" genuinely religious at its root.
Very, very often there are ethnic, social, economic and historical foundations for conflicts which become caricaturized as religious wars.
Also, all the violent parts of scriptures usually have a socio-historical context which we can't ignore, a context which would help explain the inclusion of such verses in books generally filled with tolerance and wisdom.
Just as a side note, your inclusion of a "hateful" verse from the Qu'ran but only a nod to the Bible and to the good stuff in the Qu'ran has a bit of an Islamophobic stench to it, not sure if you intended it that way. Be careful!
It is interesting - we generally just sort of skirt around that fact, in my experience. I do think it's something the churches should address, because it is in such absolute contrast to the message of love we generally feel is the focus.
At any given time, most practitioners of any religion are trying to do good things, not bad, and here I mean real practitioners, not just people who call themselves this or that. There are more people being kind, in general, than being violent, though we'd never get that from the TV news.
From that I think one could gather that religions promote good, or at the very least do not promote bad, overall, since most people in the world practice some religion, and most people at any time are not committing a violent act.
Note: I'm actually including atheism as a religion, given that many atheists are atheists for strong philosophical reasons which generally include a strong feeling that ethics should be secularized--meaning, their atheism itself has an ethical component.
At this point we should probably refer to it as "spiritual philosophy" as opposed to "religion."
We often say that no war has ever been fought in the name of Buddhism, which I guess is true. But Buddhist nations are awfully good at conducting war.
The rest of your post I pretty much agree with, and think you wrote well.
At any rate, here's the map:
Black: Major wars, 1,000+ deaths per year
Purple: Minor wars and conflicts, 10-1,000 deaths per year
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lists_of_wars
It's probably best to included other death, sources, then, besides just war. Here is another grim statistic - the worst genocides in recorded history:
http://www.scaruffi.com/politics/dictat.html
The top four listed are:
Mao Ze-Dong (China, 1958-61 and 1966-69, Tibet 1949-50) 49-78,000,000
Adolf Hitler (Germany, 1939-1945) 12,000,000 (concentration camps and civilians WWII)
Leopold II of Belgium (Congo, 1886-1908) 8,000,000
Jozef Stalin (USSR, 1932-39) 6,000,000 (including gulags, purges, and Ukraine famine)
The Stalin numbers strike me as far too low - even Russian papers in the 1980s ventured to put it near 20,000,000.
Current Countries at Risk of Genocide, Politicide, or Mass Atrocities
They have a breakdown of the various issues:
http://www.genocidewatch.org/alerts/countriesatrisk2012.html
As for the Islamophobic charge, i would ask whether you would have considered it christianophobic if i had only mentioned verses from the bible. I suspect not, so i ask what is the difference? Why is Islam regarded above satire, but not Christianity?
To address the 'taken out of context' issue, and redress the perceived Islam/Christianity imbalance, please watch this video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PK7P7uZFf5o
Not sure why the video didn't embed, nevermind.
Ah, got it. Sorry for the double post.
As for the video, I haven't finished watching the entire thing, but I think I get the gist of it. The problem I have with it is that the person making the "defenses" is obviously someone who believes the Bible is straight from God's mouth and that every single word is true and factual. And he's really bad at debating.
Also, how does it 'address' the context issue?
Debates using scriptures are tricky, because you have to know if the audience believes the holy book is the infallible word of God (or other deity) or not. If we accept that people wrote these books, it's very likely that the writers embellished their accounts and made things sound much more "epic" in order to keep attention.
Imagine there is an ideology - no need to label it. That ideology contains within it descriptions of violence said to be just. A few people have also killed explicitly in the name of that ideology. I think it reasonable to question whether the ideology encouraged violence in any way. No? Yes, it's a caricature for sure. And yes it assumes the person takes the bible to be the literal word of god, which may well be erroneous, depending on the individual. It asks some interesting questions:
Why is the context of the 'good stuff' never questioned, but the first response to the 'bad stuff' is to challenge its context. I think this a legitimate question.
Another interesting question it asks is in what context is it OK to be punished by being forced to eat your own children, whether literal or allegorical? Yes, this is true. My arguments proceeded from the assumption that people took the bible to be the literal word of god. I know there are some differences within Christianity regarding this. The Koran is the direct word of god, no debates if you're Muslim, so this would not be an issue in debating the Koran.
If we accept humans wrote these holy books, then we can accept there is much embellishment. There is no problem with this. It is the moral content of the stories that need to be examined.
Could i ask you some questions to establish some ground rules for our debate?
Is it ever OK to criticise a religion, or must religions be held above criticism?
If yes to the first question, how is it possible to skilfully have such debates, when that very act of criticism is itself likely to cause offence?
If such debate does cause offence, should it be stopped?
As far as I can tell, even if the debate has become a little controversial in places (and it does sound like theo-bashing at times) we have not to date received any 'Alerts' or flagged comments.
so I can only presume that so far, insufficient offence - if any at all - has been caused.
However, we should all be mindful of our opinions, our attachment to them, their skilfulness and whether such opinions are conducive to our continued practice, calling and adhering to the 4, the 8 and the 5.
Those are actually the main reasons i have not participated in this thread.
I have opinions.
I just personally feel it's more skilful for me to keep them to myself, and under my scrutiny, as frankly, I'm not too sure I'm exactly ok with them.
Evidence: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sierra_Leone http://www.iraqbodycount.org/analysis/numbers/2011/
Looking at the graph, even the higher estimated death figure (for all violent deaths) in Iraq is only roughly the same as the American firearm death toll.
Sounds like someplace needs liberating.
Even so...
Edit, no, not even so. What the **** is going on? The religion of consumerism appears to inspire more murderous fanatics than any other.
I think it's clear that at the root of any violent conflict, one finds someone trying to hold onto something, whether that's their life, property, freedom, or the lives and property and freedom of "their" people. Then after that initial act, there is a reaction, and a new injury is caused, and then a reaction to that new injury...even if one is hollering out religious insults during the fracas, I don't believe it's religion itself at the root of these conflicts, but the human instinct to protect "our own."
Are we really that different from the animal kingdom? If two bugs are fighting, are they angry at each other or both just obeying instinctive impulses to survive?
I think it's clear that religion serves to restrain more human violence than it causes, when you add up all the instances of cause and effect across the course of one human day - not just religion, but ethics (which in most cultures are rooted in or sustained by religion).
I'm not sure if this particular question has been answered by science though.
By very virtue of its requirement of Faith from its adherents, you cannot apply logic to something that in many ways, is to Science, illogical.
Religion in and of itself does not cause violence, but it speaks at times in violent ways and some followers believe that if Religion speaks of violence, then practising violence may be acceptable, in a context they classify as religious. Religion begets violent responses from those whose nature or morals either exemplify or accept violence as a central tenet of their Devotion.
I agree with your latter statement though. I guess that if research such as i describe was conducted, religion would not be found cause violence, but would be correlated. This itself though would raise questions.
The question is as simplistic as asking if guns kill people, bullets kill people or if people kill people when really it's is a lack of empathy & compassion that kills people.
There is actually abundant evidence that religion does not cause violence. There are countless religious groups across the world that are not violent.
Does ice cream cause us to overeat?
Does religion cause violence?
To me, the answer to both is no. Millions of people eat ice cream because they enjoy it, but do not over-indulge, so they don't get fat. Some choose to over-indulge and they get fat (like me).
Same with religion.