5-6 Sep 2010
I woke up at around 5:00 PM after a pretty solid night's sleep, and took 1 piracetam and choline at 6:00 PM and 12:00 AM. I have to wake up earlier tomorrow.
In reading about Rwanda, I've gotten to the part about religion and its relation to the genocide. Briefly, its role seemed to be minimal, neither encouraging nor discouraging what took place. It simply became irrelevant. "Religion could not find its place in our activities. For a little while, we were no longer ordinary Christians, we had to forget our duties learned in catechism class." One of the killers spoke about singing alongside Tutsis during choir practice, before hunting them down in the marshes the next day once the genocide began. Another told the story of how they killed people hiding in a church without any hesitance. During the genocide, any religious concerns appear to have been overridden by the priority of killing every single person. After the day's slaughter, some felt the need to confess and repent in private, and then they would go back to killing the next day. Once the genocide was over, many Hutu regretted what they did and turned to religion to console themselves. "In the marshes, pious Christians became ferocious killers. In prison, very ferocious killers became very pious Christians."
It made me think about one of the common purposes of religion. Aside from the actual existence of any gods, it's often claimed that religious belief promotes moral behavior. The strong version of this claim usually takes the form of something like "It's impossible to be a good person without God", which is easily disproven. The weaker version typically asserts that while religion might not be strictly necessary, it does help people to behave themselves and do what's right. This may not be true either. If religion is meant to guide people's behavior and push them in a more positive direction, it doesn't seem to be making much of a difference. The proportion of religious believers in prison isn't noticeably lower than the proportion of believers in society at large. In Rwanda, religion was quickly discarded and did nothing to interfere with the genocide ("...religion adapted to these changes in belief."), and was only reacquired after 800,000 people had been killed, at which point it couldn't do much good. Were religion effective in suppressing bad behavior, we could expect that these beliefs would operate to at least make people of faith somewhat unwilling to hunt down their fellow citizens with machetes every day. Instead, their faith appears to have had no meaningful impact here, and placed no real restraints upon their actions. "Deep down we knew that Christ was not on our side in this situation, but since He was not saying anything through the priests' mouths, that suited us."
In short, it appears that religion is failing to perform one of the primary functions put forth by its followers. This may become the subject of a future video.
If you'd like to read along with me, the book is Machete Season: The Killers in Rwanda Speak.
Definitely thinking about picking it up, thanks for the recommendation.
I wish I had a religious person next to me right now so I could make them read this. It's so goddamn obvious to some of them that if you've got the faith in Jaysus then you're a good person, and damn the rest. The part about the priests not speaking up against it was what really got me. Even the the people pushing these ideas will say "shoot, go ahead and commit genocide, seeya in confession Sunday" and let that be that. Public religion is never really about a book or a person, it's about an institution, and as long as the tithes keep rolling in and as many people not withing their scope of religious acceptance are subjugated as much as possible, all's well for the institution.
Based on my own observations, the main problems of religious morality I've seen are the emphasis on the weakness of the sinner, and on unconditional forgiveness. A religious person tends to see themselves as weak, doomed to sin (which is how my mother explained original sin to me,) and, as long as they 'repent' (an action that requires no apology or restitution to the actual victim, but only to god,) they are absolved of all responsibility. Jesus has already paid the price for your sins, so if you believe, you are no longer responsible for your actions.
"Based on my own observations, the main problems of religious morality I've seen are the emphasis on the weakness of the sinner, and on unconditional forgiveness. A religious person tends to see themselves as weak, doomed to sin (which is how my mother explained original sin to me,) and, as long as they 'repent' (an action that requires no apology or restitution to the actual victim, but only to god,) they are absolved of all responsibility. Jesus has already paid the price for your sins, so if you believe, you are no longer responsible for your actions."
Well this can cut two ways. What you're describing sounds something like antinomianism. The religious ethos can also lead to the totalitarian ethos where you know you did something wrong but you don't know what it was. As with all religious scriptures, it depends on what bits you take most seriously.
Oh, and I was very religious until around 3 years ago, and had the latter problem, so I speak from experience there.
That must have been rough. To be honest, when I was religious, I never thought much about that sort of thing. I took most seriously the bit at the end of revelation, about every knee bowing, and interpreted it to mean that everyone was going to go to heaven. It went nicely with my idea of god as omnipotent and omnibenevolent.
Well, something like antinomianism, not quite, but to be honest it's not much of a distinction. In the second case, you basically need to just repent for pretty much everything, for being human, but you still don't take responsibility, in the end.
@bkkawaii: I think logically you're correct. However, to assume religion is logically coherent is a very bad idea. For example, consider the condemnation of backsliders in Hebrews, or the unforgiveable sin (which so conveniently is never well defined, nor is backsliding for that matter). Also, in some cases, such as my own, the mind loses itself in obsessions and compulsions, in my case it led to the version of OCD called "religiosity" (at least in some circles, I don't know if the DSM IV lists it).
Also in James you have the issue of "works". (In contradiction to Romans to any straightforward reading, but straightforward readings of the bible were never in vogue). James says that ones faith will be made evident by works. Now consider the pathological view that you cannot be a REAL christian because you cannot avoid sinning (which is biblical as well, "For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of god", I believe that's Romans 12 something? I can never remember verse and chapter numbers). Throw in some Augustinian theology about the sinner being incapable of doing good (all works are as worthless rags to the lord, paraphrasing), followed by his idea that once you have been saved you regain the free will lost at the fall...
In the end, it's not logic, and it's not a "coherent" version of any particular theology, it's perception and false logic propagated in the church that lead to the real issues.
And you're right on antinomianism, that springs more from the calvinistic form of predestination, so rather than "you have to repent" it's "well it's decided already anyway". Brain fart on my part there.
Yeah, religion isn't logical, so people look to the institution, the "learned" people, for moral guidance. In the end, though, that's kind of another way in which it strips people of their individual responsibility, which is sad.
If one needs religion to be a good person, they are not a good person. ZJ for president! :D
No you do not need Christianity to follow Christian morality. Just intellectual integrity. If God does not exist then neither does a "good person", as religious precepts essentially define "good" and "evil". Whats "good" in one culture is "evil" in another, for instance kindness is a virtue in modern western civilized, but was seen as weakness to some of the ancient Greeks.
Christian morality is very flawed in that it supports life in another world rather then this life here, for all purpose preaching death and suffering as a virtue; its supposed kindness is nothing but means to bring all great people to the lowest common denominator.
And yes, ZJ would be a great presidential candidate, but judging from the comments on his channel I fear the American people would not be as supportive.
I think you might be missing the point here. It's not that Christianity, or any other form of religious morality, makes people be "good" its that these forms of morality defined the very notions of "good" that you seem to be appealing to. Pragmatically, some people don't follow the moral guidelines set forth by their religious teachers, but this doesn't mean that these guidelines aren't objectively true. I agree, religion does not necessarily make "good" people, however it does define what that notion of "good" is.
Great podcast by the way. I'm definitely looking forward to another video on morality, as I do believe this is the defining philosophical question of our century. We should all work together to try and come to some kind of conclusion here.
So first off i think your pretty interesting. but as far as im concerned religion can only give u an idea of what u should do its ultimately up to the individual how they will behave .