Religion
From Hobson's Choice
This article under construction
A belief system consisting of an explanatory narrative that links morality to some form of utility on the part of the believer. In other words, in the absence of a naturalistic explanation for why the righteousness of one's conduct would affect one's well-being, a religion explains that a connect does exist.
Religion is often associated with organization and with belief in God. These are not essential components of a religion, however; for example, Buddhism and Taoism do not require belief in God; likewise, shamanic or pagan religions may have virtually no organization at all.
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Context
In a strictly naturalistic universe, the ethical merit of one's actions doesn't alter their outcome. Even in the company of people, behaving righteously may be overlooked or misunderstood. Forces like disease and accident are just as likely to afflict the meritorious as the wicked. However, several belief systems suggest that there is a correlation between the goodness of ones actions and some payoff in this (or possibly another) life. This takes many different forms. One is the invocation of an extremely powerful force with consciousness. Or it may take the form of an impersonal "force," such as karma, in which the moral consequences of one's actions actually are revisited on one's future self in ways too complex to know at the time of the act.
Religions also have varying degrees and character of organization. For example, shamanic religions usually have no organization at all; pagan religions have a modest level of organization, and tend to coexist; revealed religions have a relatively high level of organization and are accustomed to being governing institutions of society. Additionally, an important aspect of religions is age with respect to other religions, with more recent ones having pretensions to global statements about religion per se; in effect, as religious traditions overlay in a civilization, the latter ones tend to be meta-religions, while the older ones evolve into transcendental philosophies.
Objections to Religions
Religions suffer from numerous institutional problems. The first of these is the necessity to win followers leads to charlatans dominating the discourse of the religion. Hence, Christianity fell under the influence of magical thinking; its ideological content was driven out by an emphasis on miraculous events, apologia for an omnipotent deity (theodicy), and identity politics. Buddhism, in some cases, succumbed to folk paganism and lost most of its transcendental character. Islam has fallen victim to identity politics. All religions have suffered from the lust of clergy for power.
The second is the tendency for movements to become ever more preoccupied with expropriating wealth and power for adherents, at the expense of the spiritual mission. Hence, modern Christian churches are mainly interested in demanding policies that serve the ambitions of ostentatious Christians, rather than in promoting actual Christian behavior or spiritual development of their congregants. Lacking profound metrics for spiritual achievement, would-be leaders of the Christian community often advertise their special divine worth by promising to attack non-Christians with extra zeal; in time, this has come to eclipse all other attributes of religious belief. This is also a well-known feature of Islam, although the superior armament and wealth of majority-Christian nations has allowed it to be the premier perpetrator of this particular type of pietistic fanaticism.
A third problem encountered among religious communities is hysteria. Religious hysteria is a complex phenomenon that is probably aggravated by, but not entirely caused by, religious piety. There exists a substantial body of research on hysteria, much of it suggesting that it is partly a biochemical imbalance and partly the result of neuroses stimulated by an unwholesome emotional regimen. Religious contributions to this may include perverse guilt, a projected sexuality, obsession with martyrdom and self-mutilation (mortification), and so on.
Mitigating Considerations
Objections to religions tout suite arise from the ugly historical events associated with religions, such as religious wars, destructive religious influence on social relations, religious obstacles to science, and pernicious impact on psychological health. However, it must be noted that often religion cannot be fairly implicated in these problems, or at least, not exclusively.
A case in point are the European Wars of Religion, in which several millions of persons were killed during a clash between several rival interpretations of Christianity. However, subsumed under the term "Christianity" were a host of secular political conflicts that would shape the composition of the modern European state. It is reasonable to argue that these conflicts would have emerged even if Europe were uninfluenced by religion. Variations on this defense can be applied to other issues. For example, many social relations associated with conservative religious milieux are in fact a commonplace cultural response to poverty and impacted natural resources. In other cases, the oppressive gender roles may not have a compelling moral justification (they are not the only method by which the society could survive) but they represent a survival/perpetuation strategy that the society evolved. Objectively speaking, the role of religion may be quite small.
See Also
Atheism & New Atheism
Buddhism
Christianity
Islam
Hinduism
Judaism
--James R MacLean 14:03, 9 April 2008 (PDT)
