Violent Religions
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Observant people often claim that religion has motivated so much violence needlessly. Fueling this debate were the theories of Freud who encouraged sexual “liberation” . So religion was bad because it asked you to be violent and asked you to have little, or no sex.
Sometimes civilizations become very aggressive and are very willing to blow each other up and have world wars. Sometimes they want to just languish with narcotics as a stance. Sometimes they want to shoplift and hide the irony with humor.
Point is, religion says that everything has its use; that there is “A time to kill and a time to heal; A time to tear down and a time to build up” (Old Testament). Something similar is stated in the Gita which says that one who is disciplined in his activities of recreation, work, eating, and sleeping can overcome grief. Religion does not insist on total abstinence from sex for everyone. Religion does not insist on subjecting every non believer to the sword.
If you say that a certain section of the people want to murder the Chief Minister, then, naturally, if a force is deployed to combat them, the violence incurred is not needless or heedless. The police sometimes subdue mob fury with teargas or lathi charge. This violence is considered hygienic and legal. Just as a Chief Minister is a necessary piece of civilization, so are religion and things connected to it. Even in atheistic regimes, if someone would criticize the Dictator or Party Incharge, they could be tortured or killed or both. This is a science which can be validated. Anyone can see on the street how people get angry if we abuse their elders. They honour their elders and if someone dishonours them(the elders), the relevant individual feels demotivated due to the insult. If I do not honour the Caliph or Pope, I will honour a football player or a sleaze star. It is difficult to take away from individuals the tendency to honour. Besides, it could be easier to honour Christ than Boris Becker. The latter also contributes to some form of social welfare, but hey… Millions of people all over the world derive solace and billions already have derived solace from honouring Christ, especially in situations where Boris’ memory wouldn’t do too well.
As far as religion causing war is concerned, the picture needs to be considered in its entirety. In fact, war is actually caused by lust, anger, envy, pride, illusion, and greed – the symbols of irreligion, not religion. There is violence because of adultery, because of excessive anger, because of unnecessary hate, because of too much conceit, because of not having the right perspective and of course because of GREED. World war I, World War II, the Korean war, the Gulf war, the Vietnam war,(even the Cold war) – these were all due to greed, to a great degree, aided of course by the other passions. When the lower passions are sublimated to the status of greed, then there is the bent of philanthropy to the intent of war. “In the service of the millions of our country men, lets mow down so and so community… we will experience political and economical vindication.”… This and similar modes of thought encourage our warring leaders.
In the past people fought over SEEMINGLY religious reasons because people were religious (more than their present day counterparts) and their immediate neighbours were either more, or less religious. Thus they hated and fought due to intolerance, greed etc induced by these relativities. Such relativities have always existed and continue to exist and thus violence is spurred on. There has been untamed, relentless violence due to relativities in the economical situation. The relativities that exist between a man and his neighbor affect how the man feels about life. So if I am religious, but my neighbor is more so, it is the discontinuity of fortune that inspires my hate rather than my spiritual status. Communities have fought even over football matches….Whatever is the cultural symptom of status,… people are inclined to quarrel over. Even during the partition of India, the Hindus and Muslims killed each other more due to hate simply because they developed distaste for each other than due to religious sentiments. He wears a topi on his head and I have a turban. So if he is alright then I must be odd, and if I am normal then the other man must be off. The man with a topi and the man with a turban keep scoffing at each other and thus cultivating mutual distaste without even knowing why they should do so. So many people cannot speak more than a few words to explain, why they wear a topi or a turban. People like to form groups and fight each other … this is the psychology of pallid humans, not saints.
Inspired rhetoric doesn’t take away the fact that religion does inspire man to love his neighbor, his superiors and even strangers. Only will, a very superficial understanding of a religion reveal a tendency to advocate disconsolate violence. For example, the Gita is spoken to inspire a warrior to wield his weapons. However this war was a war that needed to be undertaken for the moral upkeep of society. The recipient of the knowledge, Arjuna was willing to resign himself to his fate and retire from active politics because of not desiring to combat his foes who were in many cases his own relatives. However his charioteer inspires him with the thought that a battle ought to be fought, or justice ought to be meted out not simply based on whether the person on the receiving end is his relative or not. Deeds ought to be carried out as a result of a dutiful mindset …. And waging war is one of them. A society that doesn’t prepare itself for its foes is a society that is doomed. Similarly a society that is cruel, is condemned. Religion discourages both approaches.
Another important point that needs to be made, is that reckless atheism has also contributed to violence. The propounder of evolution, Darwin, writes in the book, The Descent of Man, that he expected the better endowed races of human beings to physically exterminate by actual elimination processes the weaker sections of society so that they ceased to exist and what remained would be a strong, homogenous race of pristine men. It is according to this theory that eugenics or population control was devised. Hitler wanted to accordingly breed a race of “Aryans” who were one in blood, views and colour.
Removing religion from the equation still leaves us to struggle with our basic instincts which relentlessly stone our sense of composure. In other words if we just throw out of the window the bible, will we be a happier race individually and collectively.... ?
I quote a little heedlessly, another list of conflicts, wars or conquests which were inspired more by cultural degredations or pride than by religion.
Eighty years war
Hundred years war
American Revolution
French revolution
Russian Revolution
Spanish obliteration of South American Indians and European obliteration of North Americans to seek converts to Christianity, but may be, the GOLD also.( Perchance, if you are seeking to convert, you must let the person live).
At one point of time the sun never set on the British Empire. Now it rises and sets on the English isles. Of course Websters is still a best seller.
Simply put, we need a reason to fight and religion is one of them..., a bit like nationality or lineage.
It is a little bit pointless to relentessly point out how at different points of time religious pontiffs raised warcries preceded by sacred praise. If one is honest he will find that in every religious tradition there is a concept of knowing a religious man not by his robes or form of articulation of prayers exclusively, but also by whether he is following the injunctions of the scriptures, by judging whether he is selfless, or free from greed or charitable and so on and so forth. Non-violence is one such virtue mentioned with great heed in every parable. The blame thus should not be on religion but on the PSEUDO-religious (or politely... not as religious as they may look). I don’t love repeating, but conflicts between societies are instigated with religion as a spark and pontiff’s as the flag bearers more due to cultural inequities, mutual hate, economical dissatisfaction, rather than having anything to do with religion. If you look at the private lives of many of these pontiffs you might notice that they are not that religious at all... even about their own religions.
The solution can be... not to disregard all the pontiffs but to encourage them to be genuinely religious. The genuinely religious have singlehandedly moved humanity.... the instances are many.
Below I quote from Wikipedia as regards the French revolution which is famously symbolized by the guillotine. Please read on for a closer look:
Hanson notes, "The guillotine stands as the principal symbol of the Terror in the French Revolution." Invented by a physician during the Revolution as a quicker, more efficient and more distinctive form of execution, the guillotine became a part of popular culture and historic memory. It was celebrated on the left as the people's avenger and cursed as the symbol of the Reign of Terror by the right. Its operation became a popular entertainment that attracted great crowds of spectators. Vendors sold programmes listing the names of those scheduled to die. Many people came day after day and vied for the best locations from which to observe the proceedings; knitting women (tricoteuses) formed a cadre of hardcore regulars, inciting the crowd. Parents often brought their children. By the end of the Terror, the crowds had thinned drastically. Repetition had staled even this most grisly of entertainments, and audiences grew bored.
End of quote.
There are plenty of examples of they who held fast to their atheistic dogmas (familiar word) and who made the earth wretched with the blood of cruel gore. Again we turn to Wikipedia
What it is that horrifies people changes over time. Doyle comments:
Even the unique horror of the guillotine has been dwarfed by the gas chambers of the Holocaust, the organized brutality of the gulag, the mass intimidation of Mao's cultural revolution, or the killing fields of Cambodia.[158]
Stalin, Mao, Polpot, to name a few, were staunch flagbearers of atheism. They felt inclined to the sword because they were convinced that morality is a fuitile prospect, that compassion moved the robustly stupid and that victory at the end was worth the cruel intervention. They firmly believed that there is no one out there watching over what we do and how we do it and why we do so. They also compelled others to believe the same. They were competently irreligious... were they not violent?
The lives of all the prophets (yes... read again... ALL) exhibited exemplary behaviour between man and his neighbours which included not just human beings. Men wonder why their guardian angels don’t talk to them,... but they are loath to be compassionate to their own environment. Beasts are burnt alive for the banquet because burnt flesh tastes better if the victim has endured the flames which eat into his fat as it screams helplessly. On the same earth there are entire communities who meet the needs of the flesh with minimal cruelty and are substantially well endowed. There are performers in many different fields of activity who avoid cruelty to inferior beings and yet they maintian the vigour for victory. It may be that a certain modicum of cruelty is necessary for a specific kind of bodily stamina or build but that is only a certain portion of the diet. Any sane man can reduce his meat intake by at least 5-10 percent. If an entire population does it, the results will be remarkable. People don’t even observe whether they are liking the meat that they are chewing. Anyone can see that an occasional shift to a meatless diet for a day or even a meal appears quite pleasant. The excessive demand for meat products depletes the economy, the environment and our existential previleges, like equanimity, humility etc.
Once the animals have all become extinct, and the rivers have all become sewers, and the trees have all been felled, and we are all Darwin’s blue eyed men and women, then further evolution could be interesting to observe. Somethings in life could be simple, but maybe we tend to complicate them?
