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I have long struggled with conflicted feelings about religion. I understand that it most likely is the creation of the evolutionary instinct to form tribal units. I also understand that the religious instinct is apparently deeply engrained within human beings, and that it can be a vehicle for the greater good.

But what currently concerns and distresses me about religion is its apparent facility in being utilized as a tool of manipulation. As the saying goes, religion may not change the nature of individuals - good people are good people in or outside of religion, and likewise can be said for bad people - but it takes religion to make a good man do bad things. Religion has the power to persuade that is seemingly unmatched.

Speaking frankly, there have been two recent incidents of good people being persuaded to do something bad, in terms of its effect on greater humanity. One is the ongoing use of sincere believers in Islam to engage in self destructive and murderous acts of terrorism. I doubt anyone finds that a controversial statement. It is the second that is controversial, and bear with me as I have to delve into US politics.

There is little doubt that George W. Bush was put into office through the machiavelian manipulations of Karl Rove, who deliberately engaged conservative Christians in the US and persuaded them that Bush would be their noble and moral leader. Instead, he has led this country into what seems to be the most ill-advised and destabilizing invasion of another country that had nothing to do with 9/11 in the first place. I believe that history may well show this to be the most disastrous foreign-affairs act in the history of the US. And this doesn't even address the dismantling of constitutional rights that has occured in this country and the loading of imperial power on the presidency.

To me, it appears none of this would have been possible without the utilization of religion to manipulate. At this point in my life, I deeply resent religion in general for this reason, as well as the manipulation of Islam to create terrorists.

Is my atheist bias blinding me? Would this current world-mess have occured without religion as a vehicle of manipulation? Could any other type of paradigm have that power?

Hi Beastie,

Is my atheist bias blinding me? Would this current world-mess have occured without religion as a vehicle of manipulation? Could any other type of paradigm have that power?

No I do not think your atheist bias is blinding you.

Have you read Sam Harris', The End of Faith? He powerfully shares and elaborates on your exact thoughts.

My personal view is that, like most changes in history, they only occur after some significant issue is compelling enough to cause the change.

This complete debacle of which you speak may be the wake up call for our country. (I'm hoping). The idea that we are God's chosen country, with the power and authority to do whatever we want in the world is growing tiresome with the rest of our planet. One can hardly travel outside the country without a sense of the anger and hatred toward America.

But more to your point... the idea that God is at the helm is a dangerous one. Now, if God really were then there would be no problem but of course everyone thinks God is at the helm of their religion/beliefs/country so we are left with a world of religions, all of whom think God is directing them to kill others, make the rest of the world believe as do they, and basically eliminate those who believe differently.

I do not know that human life can continue with this phenomenon. I really believe that if we don't change this, we will destroy our species. I know it sounds dramatic but I do not think we can continue as we have for the past five thousand years.

Can you imagine what would have happened if Joshua had WMD? The mindset begun in tribal communities, which continues in some degree today must be eliminated for humankind to continue to exist. The weapons are too powerful, the stakes are too high.

~dancer~

TD-

I have not yet read Harris' book, although I bought it ages ago. My son, another avid reader, "stole" it from me before I had a chance to even read it!! Guess it's time to "steal" it back.

I recently read The God Delusion, however, which had similar thoughts.

This complete debacle of which you speak may be the wake up call for our country. (I'm hoping). The idea that we are God's chosen country, with the power and authority to do whatever we want in the world is growing tiresome with the rest of our planet. One can hardly travel outside the country without a sense of the anger and hatred toward America.

I can't blame them, to tell the truth. Our "gamble" in Iraq may destabilized that entire region. Just what the world needs. Did you see the video of Bush Sr. weeping at his son Jeb's retirement? I can't help but believe he was weeping at what his other son has done to this country. Bush Sr had a reason for not going into Iraq...if only his son had been interested in hearing it.

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/17/magaz ... ssuserland

(from 2004)

Bruce Bartlett, a domestic policy adviser to Ronald Reagan and a treasury official for the first President Bush, told me recently that ''if Bush wins, there will be a civil war in the Republican Party starting on Nov. 3.'' The nature of that conflict, as Bartlett sees it? Essentially, the same as the one raging across much of the world: a battle between modernists and fundamentalists, pragmatists and true believers, reason and religion.

''Just in the past few months,'' Bartlett said, ''I think a light has gone off for people who've spent time up close to Bush: that this instinct he's always talking about is this sort of weird, Messianic idea of what he thinks God has told him to do.'' Bartlett, a 53-year-old columnist and self-described libertarian Republican who has lately been a champion for traditional Republicans concerned about Bush's governance, went on to say: ''This is why George W. Bush is so clear-eyed about Al Qaeda and the Islamic fundamentalist enemy. He believes you have to kill them all. They can't be persuaded, that they're extremists, driven by a dark vision. He understands them, because he's just like them. . . .
''This is why he dispenses with people who confront him with inconvenient facts,'' Bartlett went on to say. ''He truly believes he's on a mission from God. Absolute faith like that overwhelms a need for analysis. The whole thing about faith is to believe things for which there is no empirical evidence.'' Bartlett paused, then said, ''But you can't run the world on faith.''

Absolute faith like that overwhelms a need for analysis.

I don't know whether George W really believes - my LDS family (who agree with me on Bush) strenuously insist that Bush is a poser, that he doesn't really have the faith he presents to the world, and that he has deliberately created this "identity" in order to be able to manipulate people who really do believe.

I don't know the answer to that question, but I tend to think that Bush does believe as he insists. I think my family are resistant to that idea because they are trying to protect the nobility of faith, if you get what I mean.

But in a way his personal beliefs are irrelevant, because whether or not he is driven by a Messianic complex, I think it is undeniable that he and Rove did deliberately manipulate believers into supporting an agenda that, in the harsh light of day, probably was not in their best interest.

I agree we have to change this to survive. But right now I'm so pessismistic even about our chances of "fixing" the Iraq debacle quickly enough to avoid destabilizing the entire region, I can't even imagine the human race fixing our larger problem.

And speaking of destabilizing the middle east... I blame religious manipulation for that, too. I think the "peons" of the middle east have been religiously manipulated into supporting a system that enriches the very few at the cost of the many....and that is why the region is a tinderbox.

Another troubling quote from the Suskind article I linked above:

The aide said that guys like me were ''in what we call the reality-based community,'' which he defined as people who ''believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.'' I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. ''That's not the way the world really works anymore,'' he continued. ''We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.''

Hi Beastie,

Last night my family had a big discussion about this very issue.

Even my believing family members think Bush used religion for support.

I find the idea that our country was so easily manipulated, disturbing. There was absolutely NO connection to the invasion of Irag with the 9-11 incident and yet, Bush convinced much of the country this was the case. I find this FASCINATING.

The desire for revenge and the human belief that God has a favorite country and a favorite religion certainly makes for a dangerous combination.

It is a belief begun when all that was a state was a tribe or a community (not to diminish the lives lost by religious slaughter)... now the destruction of our species may be the result of these archaic beliefs..

I assert that all the scripture in the world will be meaningless if humankind destroys itself.

I do not know if Bush is sincere or not... we've had some family debate over the topic. What fascinates me though is the idea that perhaps Bush has convinced himself that he is doing God's will to rid the world of evil.

Over and over, throughout history we see this very dynamic.... it shows up in different forms, with different weapons, different leaders, different tribes, but the very same underlying belief is the same.

While I believe the universe will somehow overcome the trials and unhealthiness we currently face, I do accept the fact that the universe will continue its story with or without the human.

It would certainly take a MAJOR rethinking of our myths to alter the consciousness of humankind.

~dancer~

Intriguing ideas.

So,, you think religion can make a good person bad, but cannot help in making a bad person good?

I do agree that religion can, has been and is used to manipulate people to all sorts of behavior. One is more apt to do something that one may initially find immoral if one really believes they are doing God's will.

This is why when I first read the full letter to the Rigdon girl where Joseph Smith says happiness is the design of our existence, and realized the context of it as well, I became rather nervous about Joseph Smith or any prophet. It seemed to me that if things that were once not OK with God could become OK with God then that sure put a lot of power in the hands of the person that says "God speaks to you through me."

Anyway, I am not sure I by into all your comments about this current political problems with Bush, religion, the right, etc. I voted for Bush twice and have come to regret it for more then just the war in Iraq. However, in both cases the alternative, at least for me and many other voters was pretty crummy.

I voted for Bush twice and have come to regret it for more then just the war in Iraq. However, in both cases the alternative, at least for me and many other voters was pretty crummy.

That is my dilemma as well. It's not that I agreed with Bush. It's that the alternatives were not at all acceptable. If the Democrats could come up with just one viable alternative, I'd vote Democrat in a flash. I am not tied to the Republicans or their agenda. I voted Democrat in my governor, for both my Senators, but I voted Republican for the president and my Representative. I think there are millions of voters just like me. We didn't vote for Bush, nor did we believe in Bush's foreign policy or domestic message; we voted against Gore and the Democrat's message.

I find the idea that our country was so easily manipulated, disturbing. There was absolutely NO connection to the invasion of Irag with the 9-11 incident and yet, Bush convinced much of the country this was the case. I find this FASCINATING.

Even more interesting is that there still exists a certain segment of our society that continues to believe in the connection...and these people tend to get their news from FOX.

Jason,

So,, you think religion can make a good person bad, but cannot help in making a bad person good?

Well, you altered my statement just a little, but in a significant way. I said:

As the saying goes, religion may not change the nature of individuals - good people are good people in or outside of religion, and likewise can be said for bad people - but it takes religion to make a good man do bad things. Religion has the power to persuade that is seemingly unmatched.

Notice that I said it take religion to make a good man DO bad things. You may think I'm nitpicking, but I don't think this means the good person has become a bad person. This is an important distinction to note in my reply to you.

I don't believe religion alters the nature of individuals, but it can provide persuasive arguments to engage in certain behavior. You brought up polygamy which is an excellent example. Going by the journal entries, I doubt that the vast majority of people who practiced polygamy (at the beginning, during Joseph Smith' life when it was very secretive and sometimes included polyandry) would ever have engaged in this practice had not they been religiously induced to do so. Engaging in the practice did not alter their basic nature, but it made them engage in an act that, were they listening to their own internal moral compasses, they would not have engaged in.

Bad people being induced to do good things is a different matter. Again, just because a bad person engages in a good act does not alter his/her character. And the difference is, in my opinion, that many things can induce a bad person to engage in a good act. Social expectations, desiring to impress someone, etc. So I think bad people doing good things is pretty common. But good people doing bad things is more rare, and that is why it takes something as powerful as religion as an inducement.

(note, it may be more accurate to use the word "evil" instead of "bad", because I'm not talking about garden variety bad things all human beings do now and then, like lie for self interest)

Anyway, I am not sure I by into all your comments about this current political problems with Bush, religion, the right, etc. I voted for Bush twice and have come to regret it for more then just the war in Iraq. However, in both cases the alternative, at least for me and many other voters was pretty crummy.

I firmly believe no one but George W. Bush would have invaded Iraq. in my opinion, other than taking action on global warming, this is the one most dangerous and potentially catastrophic acts that Bush engaged in, and is the primary thing for which I condemn him. The other choices may not have been great, but at least they wouldn't have taken us into Iraq (and would have been more responsible re global warming).

beastie wrote:...To me, it appears none of this would have been possible without the utilization of religion to manipulate. At this point in my life, I deeply resent religion in general for this reason, as well as the manipulation of Islam to create terrorists.

Is my atheist bias blinding me? Would this current world-mess have occured without religion as a vehicle of manipulation? Could any other type of paradigm have that power?

So, its not just that you have a difference of opinions with religions, and it is not just that you chose but to voice various criticism against religion, in truth you also "deeply resent" religion in general. That comes as no surprise. In fact, your sweeping stereotyping and choice of words (such as: manipulation" rather than "persuasion") I believe gives some indication as to the true nature of your "deep resentment", if not also your self-perception in relation to religious people--a true nature that has, up until now, been boiling beneath the surfice and only manifesting itself in bearly perceptible rumblings throughout your many posts here and at other religious discussion boards I have been a co-participant on.

More on this to come on this later.

Thanks, -Wade Englund-

Even more interesting is that there still exists a certain segment of our society that continues to believe in the connection...and these people tend to get their news from FOX.

Hey!!! Wait just one second. I get my new from Fox, and I do not think there is a connection to WMD. Careful how you overgeneralize here.