What good is religion? A personal Journey.
Offline I am writing this in part to process my thoughts, but I also want to put this out there as a discussion about the destructive effects of religion. This is also going to be a part of an autobiographical paper that I am doing as part of my graduate program.
My paternal grandparents were Croatian immigrants. My grandfather worked in the coal mines in Pennsylvania, and my father was the only boy in his family, and the third of four kids. He was more or less raised by my grandmother, because my grandfather worked such long hours in the mine. My grandfather was a scab during the early union days. He crossed the picket lines in opposition to worker rights. Ironically he died of black lung.
My father was a pretty screwed up guy. He had huge issues with women, and was extremely misogynistic. He abandoned my family when I was 8. Prior to this I was extremely devoted to my father. Aside from the natural love that a boy has for his father, I was particularly attached in part because he seemed so certain about everything. Looking back he was actually extremely dogmatic. I was completely devastated when he left.
At the time that he left we were living in Guadalajara, Mexico. He moved back to the states. I think that the original plan was that he would get a job, and my mother would move us kids back to the states once he paved the way. My mother decided to move into the jungle, where I lived in a palm-frond hut for about a year instead. My dad came and visited us. I asked to go back with him, and he refused to take me. Needless to say this broke my heart.
My mom got malaria, and we moved back to the states to live with my maternal grandfather. She found a new husband who brought the family squarely into the middle class – he was an architect named Roger Patterson. A good man. Over the years I only saw my dad every year or two, and then only for a couple of weeks.
Still, I strongly identified with my father, and it was always very confusing when I would go and visit him, because I would always find him to be both very devout, as well as very confused, conflicted and angry. Even before he left us, he was a practitioner of meditation and yoga, and his faith seemed to be a weird mixture of Catholicism and Hinduism. Looking back he was extremely wounded, though at the time, as a kid, I didn’t really have the mental framework to understand this fact.
When I went to get my master’s degree in counseling, one of my assignments was to interview my family about the family genealogy. This was to help provide insight into family dynamics. When I interviewed my father, he told me about how devoutly catholic his mother was. So devout in fact that my grandmother used to pressure my father into “giving the priest kisses because he was lonely.” The interview was extremely weird. His speech was pressured and rambling, and it seemed that he was dancing around a big issue that he had not actually come to terms with.
At the time, I was puzzled by this, but at the time the scandal about child molestation in the church hadn’t broken yet. Looking back, I have come to realize that he was probably sexually molested by this priest, and that his mother essentially gave tacit support to the molestation. The support of the offense by family members is actually pretty classic human behavior in these situations. I think that when he went to his mother to protect him from the guy, she supported the priest instead, and made excuses for him. This all fits. It explains his confused religiosity. It explains his issues with women, it explains why his issues with women destroyed his marriage, and it even explains why he stayed away from his own sons: Perhaps he was protecting us from himself.
I look at all this. I look at my screwed up family of origin. I look at my own unsuccessful relationships born out of this wound, and I look at the anger and distrust I have of religion that I learned from my family of origin, and it occurs to me that I am a second generation product of the child molestation that was supported by the Catholic Church; That the wounds in my family were inflicted by this pedophile who found a venue for his predatory practices in the institution of religion and in his status as a priest.
As much as this is a bombshell realization in my life (if it’s true – I’m not 100% sure– let’s say 90% instead), I have to ask myself a question that really sums up the whole problem with religion for me: Why did this guy have the power to molest my father? Even if he didn’t, I’m SURE that this question can apply to LOTS of other children out there in the world. We give priests the power to be brokers between us and god. Why is that exactly? Never mind that we have no real evidence of god’s existence, assuming that god is an imaginary friend, what good is religion? What benefit comes from creating these institutions?
I understand that this pedophile would have probably found a different venue to molest kids if he could. I understand that his pedophilia was not a product of the church. However the church did give him a venue to express his sexual desires, and the power and status he needed to cover up his crime, and the support of his community in the behavior. Think about this – my grandparents were ignorant peasants. They viewed the church as the center of their society. The power this guy had over them must have been enormous.
As for the priest, who knows, he may have even entered the priesthood as a way of “cleansing” himself of his sexual desires – I suppose if you know that your sexual desires hurt people, one way of coping with this is to seek shelter in celibacy. But who knows?
The problem I see here is that the very structure of religion gives people social power for no other reason than because they get to call themselves “reverend” or “father,” and so they gain status by virtue of their job. What I find interesting about this is not that their job gives them status, but what KIND of status it gives. “Reverend” means “revered one,” and of course “father, brother, sister” are all family titles that give the priest the status of an insider within the family system. I suppose this can be psychologically useful when a family needs a mediator to resolve internal conflicts, but at least in the case of my grandmother, this activated supportive and protective scripts for protecting a man who was NOT a member of my family even as her son was being given up to him as a sex toy. The status of priest gives power without any checks and balances in place. In fact, it’s not even beholden to evidence to put a check on its power – this is why churches teach that faith is a good thing, right? So that priests don’t have to explain themselves too much? It is the power of indoctrination.
So all this revelation aside – what good is religion? I’m not asking the question rhetorically, what is it good for? If we didn’t get something out of it, we wouldn’t do it. So what do we get out of it?
Here are some ideas that I have:
Community - Religion is a venue for joining emotionally and intellectually with like-minded people. You come together, you go through rituals and sing songs together – it is a very powerful way for the individual to connect with the group and feel like he is part of something bigger than himself. It is also a very nice treatment for loneliness.
Psychological discipline and training – One of the places that I have been educated is at the Naropa University – this is a school based on Buddhist teachings. From this school, I learned how to meditate and discipline my mind. I also learned how to tell my thoughts from my perceptions – which has been a very useful tool in telling fantasy from reality – in fact my Buddhist teachings have really helped me a lot in supporting my atheism. They have also helped me to recognize:
that all things in the universe are impermanent (except, apparently energy and matter)
that suffering is a part of life that it is better to relate to than to run from
that death is natural and not to be feared
that stories and narratives are a powerful part of our psychological makeup and identity, but that they are not who we are.
I believe that these are often NOT the teachings in other non-Buddhist faiths –For example the Abrahamic faiths are just horrible when it comes to many of these disciplines.
Social Control – Religions are a great way to get people to tow the line and be manipulated by an authoritarian power hierarchy. This is especially true of the Abrahamic faiths, since the doctrine of original sin is a huge mind-fuck that allows the priesthood to act as a broker for god. It also teaches people to view the divine as a form of monarchy – another mind-fuck to be sure.
Identity formation – One of the things that all religions have is a creation myth. This story is used by practitioners to help to form their identity. I’ll use the examples I know the best:
In Buddhism the story is that the universe has always been here and that we get reincarnated again and again – this allows practitioners to build an identity that says that their job is to grow, develop and purify their souls by letting go of selfish desire and the pain and confusion that it creates. The belief is that people are basically good, and that evil and suffering are caused by forgetting and ignoring our basic goodness.
In Genesis the story is that we are fallen from grace. We are separated from the creator of the universe by virtue of a woman’s decision to disobey the divine monarch, and to seek knowledge over union with god. The belief is that people are basically evil. That we are born in suffering because we are bad and that the way to get back to the presence of god is by believing in magical ideas.
Of course both of these creation stories lead to different approaches to living and different identities for the practitioner:
A Buddhist is concerned with practicing meditation in order to psychologically discipline himself so that he can end suffering in himself and others. His relationship with death is that there is no death, there is only transformation.
A Christian/Jew/Muslim is interested in believing the right thing so that he can be absolved of his sins when he dies. His relationship with death is that he fears it and he is simultaneously waiting to die.
These are very different story lines, and very different identities associated with these story lines. I obviously prefer the Buddhist view, and while I don’t believe it to be true, it is certainly more compassionate.
Moral training and framework - This spring’s out of the religious story line – for example, the idea that Christ died for your sins is often used by practitioners of Christianity as a roadmap for how one should act in the world –being Christ-like is viewed as virtuous. Being Christ-like includes caring for the poor and downtrodden, being self-sacrificing, forgiving, etc. etc. These are good qualities to practice and they often go a long way toward creating a just society. “Do unto others” is a good example of a moral axiom that is taught in one form or another by all religions.
Psychological Transformation – The real power of mythology is in its ability to structure the psychology of the believer in such a way that they undergo psychological transformation. This may be sudden (as in the case of conversion experiences) or it may be gradual (as in the case of the practice of yoga and/or meditation). The psychological transformation that takes place generally gives the individual an opportunity to redefine themselves in terms of their new ability, insight or belief. The down side of this is that such people will often hold onto false beliefs in order to maintain their new (and presumably higher functioning) sense of self.
A good example of this is the “born again” drug addict. Here is a person who is dysfunctional and suffering. He reaches a psychological crisis point (i.e. he’s going to die if he keeps up his behavior) so he “finds the love of Jesus” and transforms himself into a sober person who is now wholly devoted to the church as both his support system AND his new drug of choice. Never mind that the evidence shows that Genesis never happened, therefore there was no original sin, therefore the whole Jesus died for your sins story is pure fairy tale. Certainly the psychological transformation that is brought about by this belief is mythology is quite real.
Hypnotic induction and programming - As a practitioner of hypnosis, I can attest to the fact that one of the most powerful tools for inducing trance is to get the person to use the part of their imagination in which they do their magical thinking. In addition, metaphorical, mythological storytelling, and words with multiple vague meanings are extremely powerful tools in hypnotic induction. One of the best “trance words” of all time is the word “God.” Think about it – here is an idea that means something different to everyone – if you ask a 100 people to define god you will get 100 different definitions. This is a GREAT tool for getting in underneath the rational, skeptical part of your mind, and going right to the magical thinking parts of your brain. Similarly, repetition, music and self-stimulation such as those found in prayer, rocking, ritualized behavior etc. are all tools for hypnotic induction.
Identification with an “in-group.” – while I suppose this is part of identity formation, it is important enough to stand alone. Human beings are a tribal species, and belonging to a religion is a way of belonging to a tribe.
So religion is an institution that has grown up around all of these functions. Can you guys think of any more?
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Despite the lack of paragraphs, I actually read the entire article.
One benefit of religion that I was pondering before you even listed them was psychological transformation or, in laymen's terms, I frequently refer to it as an emotional crutch.
Our revels now are ended. These our actors, | As I foretold you, were all spirits, and | Are melted into air, into thin air; | And, like the baseless fabric of this vision, | The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces, | The solemn temples, the great globe itself, - Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve, | And, like this insubstantial pageant faded, | Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff | As dreams are made on, and our little life | Is rounded with a sleep. - Shakespeare
Yeah, I had read it all too.
Tell me someone, what are the advantages of organized religion, over unorganized religion?
Organized religion is in my opinion an evil thing, the same as giving a power over people's finances to another institution, and over people's lives to another one. Institutions, or corporations, are a hostile, parasitic "life forms" (or meme forms) and anything taking a form of institution will eventually be a threat to people, as I demonstrated here.
There are five fundamental principles behind all religions.
1) There is a formless, perfect, eternal, infinite unknowable Being.
2) From this Being there originates the manifested God, from the original unity comes duality (the good and evil, for example) and from this duality comes trinity of a basis.
3) From the manifested trinity there is a plenty of spiritual intelligences, upholding the world order.
4) The human - the image of manifested God, thus having the trinity basis as well, his inner, true self is eternal, and identic with Self, which is the basis of the universe.
5) The human's development is done in repeated incarnations, in which he is forced into by lust, and from which he can only be freed by knowledge and sacrifice. He'll become divine also by his power, as he was since the beginning latently. (having this divinity hidden )
I believe that the 5th point, the teaching about reincarnation was originally also in Christianity, but was erased from there on the Constantinopolis Council, in the year 533, by Justinian, the emperor.
The religions are a worthless local folklore, except for what they have in common, the 5 points and the teaching about compassion, love, help, not killing, and so on. Do we need an organization in the religion to know that? I know that and I'm not even religious. I'm sure the religion needs the same thing as the rest of the world, to bring down the institucionalism.
Both my parent had a violent and deeply religious parents, this is why I'm not baptized, not religious, though I would be, as all the neighbours and their children are. I also thank them for managing to maintain a balance, non-religionism, but also not being fiercely against the religion. As also Christians says, God doesn't pick sides, and so shouldn't I, to be here for everyone.
Btw, dear women sorry for referring to a human as "he", it's not misogynic, it's ambiguous in english, so I chose a gramatics of my language, where everything, living or not, has a male, female or middle gender.
Beings who deserve worship don't demand it. Beings who demand worship don't deserve it.
Well, thanks for reading it all. I'm sorry about the formatting. Does anyone know how to fix it? I cut and pasted it out of word, and it looks fine until you submit it.
I think it is not necessarily something that is good for humans, but it could merely be good for itself. Religion exists because it survives memetically.
Put in this context, the 'benefits' it provides can be seen as benefits for the religion itself, in competition with other cultural ideologies.
But getting back to your original point, what is it that we DO get out of religion? Even if it exists for its own sake, why do we allow it to continue to exist? And I think here it comes down to one prime reason: It satisfies certain emotional needs we have. Again, it doesn't satisfy them for our sake, it satisfies them because satisfying them allows it to survive. But it does satisfy them, and this is something we 'get' out of religion.
Specifically, I think it all boils down to one thing: The unknown. The unknown is the source of awe, fear, terror, love and wonder. We fear the unknown, but we are also fascinated by it, drawn to it. Mysterium tremendum et fascinans. This primal emotion I call 'awe'. Awe can be split into fear-based awe, which is terror (tremendum), and love-based awe, which is wonder (fascinans).
Examples of unknowns that spark religion: Death, the future, the past, weather, disease, the stars, etc.
Most religions focus on fear-based awe. Fear of god. God is just a synonym for The Unknown, although you'll not find many theists who admit it, as they are so afraid of the unknown, that they fool themselves into thinking it is a known: They think they know god.
So that's the explanation for the majority of religious belief on the planet. Quenching the fear of the unknown with made-up answers.
Of course, fear-based religion has the major problem that it kills curiosity. Questions are frowned upon. We have the answers, and you'd better believe them and shut up that they don't make any sense! That's fear-based.
But to advance in knowledge, to truly confront the unknown and learn from it, to know what was previously unknown, you must have a fundmental fascination with the unknown that overcomes any fear you have. This is wonder, curiosity, seeking answers.
Thus, your love of the unknown must be stronger than your fear of it. Otherwise, you end up in stagnation and decay.
This is a more rare form of religion, and in fact is mostly anti-religion if you take 'religion' to be synonymous with dogma or scripture. This is the kind of religion Einstein meant when he spoke of being a religious scientist. This is the fundamental motivation underlying science itself.
And so, in my view, it all boils down to the human attitude toward the unknown. And the systems we develop to tackle that problem, whether terror-based or wonder-based, are known as religion.
Again, the key comes down to the human emotions. The religion itself is just serving those emotions for its own purposes. But when you think of it, emotions are what make people act. And it is action that affects whether or not religion survives. Think of it like little switches in our heads. Some religious ideas flip the fear switch: Hell, wrathful god, etc. Some religious ideas flip the wonder switch: heaven, story of loving Jesus, etc.
Religion, from its perspective is just flipping these switches to try to survive into the next generation of culture. The people, on the other hand, have fundamental emotional needs. They need their swtiches flipped. That is what fundamentally motivates them to do anything at all. Even the purely rational person has underlying emotional reasons for his actions: Usually wonder at wanting to know things, but often fear of being wrong.
There's my answer. Religion exists because it satifies our emotional needs. That is the 'good' we can get from it, but it is also the source of religiously motivated evil as well. It all depends on whether you choose to be motivated by wonder or by terror, and whether we let religion serve its own selfish purposes, or whether we harness it toward a better future for all. This latter has not really been accomplished, and so for the most part, I see religion as being mostly evil.
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natural, that's an xlint digestible post, worth emailing to my fat list, and reposting to all the religious .... like this new poor person, post 30,
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Good post there Natural.
I just want to riff off your idea there for a second.
One of the concepts that I have been thinking about a lot lately is the nature of dogma. Dogma to me seems to be an attitude of certainty in the face of the unknown. This occurred to me because I was listening to liberal talk show host Rachael Maddow, who was talking about how the right wingers "had religion" about lowering taxes. This is actually a pretty good way of talking about the right wing agenda:
The economy is hugely complicated. So complicated that no one can fully understand it's workings. Part of why the trickle down economics failed is because it approached this hugely complicated thing and said "we have one simple solution to controlling it - The free market with tax cuts for the rich." The truth is that the free market and tax cuts for the rich probably DO have a beneficial effect on the economy, they just don't have a purely beneficial effect -they also create other problems. Rather than responding to these problems, the Republicans stuck to their dogmatic stance, and drove the economy into the ground, while allowing a few people to become criminally wealthy. This is very similar to what religion does as well - it says "here is the huge uncertainty - let's make up a simple answer and just stick to that"
The net effect of this is that the simple answer is then used to manipulate and control people. Like my grandmother, who sided with power instead of with her son, or like a poor person who keeps voting republican out of fear that the democrats are "socialist." Both people have been sold on the notion that their simple story about the unknown is absolute truth, and therefore they are loyal to the story instead of being responsive to their personal self interest.
This is the part that interests me - people seem very ready to reject evidence in favor of certainty. I know we all do this, but some people seem to make it a core part of their personality.
I also think that this is self perpetuating. I think that this stance creates suffering in people's lives, and once they decide to stick to their dogma in spite of the pain that it causes them (and often because they simply see no other choice), they become MORE invested in the dogma. This is sort of like the process of battered woman's syndrom - once a person takes their abuser back they become more attached to the abuser and less likely to stand up for themselves, precisely because they have made the calculus that their relationship is more important than their safety. So they devalue themselves more and become more dependant on the relationship for meaning and comfort in their lives, even if they are really causing themselves pain in the long run.
It's kind of like the frog in the pot - if you slowly turn up the heat it will just sit there and boil.
All that said, I thought of another couple of uses of religion:
Entertainment - Let's face it, sitting in a pew listening to a fire and brimstone preacher is proabably more entertaining than talking to your family. I think that this draws a lot of people to church.
Imprinting and attachment - The psychological process of imprinting often occurs when people attach to a charismatic leader. This is especially true in cult leadership, evangelism, and hindu guru's and other "spiritual teachers". These leaders are often attributed magical powers (like faith healing) that may actually have a very real placebo effect. This occurs because the individuals following the leader have imprinted on the person as their template for spiritual growth and development. Note that while a skillful leader may effectively manipulate the attachment of the follower, the basic impulse to imprint and attach resides in the follower. This gives huge power to the leader, who may or may not use it to the benefit of the follower. Part of this is a manifestation of the instinct to follow authority.
First observation: Despite my general displeasure at the concept of memetics, I'll go along with the idea that religion is a self-propagating institution. That is, it survives on its own, independent of it's relative merit to any individual or group. This seems like an odd concept at first. Since people are the "carriers" of religion, we would expect that religion would have to have some benefit for the carriers for it to survive. However, you've illustrated the erroneous nature of this idea in your own biography. Abuse begets abuse -- in most, if not all forms. You know this from your counselling career.
Some things that humans pass from generation to generation are not particularly helpful to humans. They are just repeated behaviors and/or beliefs.
I am not trying to make the point that religion has no uses for humanity, but rather to show that if we are starting from scratch, we must consider the possibility that religion doesn't serve any purpose, or any purpose it accomplishes is done less efficiently than it could be. In short, we must consider the possibility that religion is an inherently bad practice/belief.
Second observation: My last sentence was deceptive if not read properly. Good and bad are always relative to a goal, and it's certainly possible to construct a system in which anything can be good, provided we define good in such a way as to produce the result we want. Good and Bad are nearly useless words since their frames of reference are unique and internal to each individual.
Having made those disclaimers, I'll get to your points:
One of the most effective ever devised. I don't think any rational person could deny religion's ability to form cohesive groups of people. However, we must note that all the current god-centric religions in the world are also extremely devisive. The answer to the paradox is that religion strengthens existing social barriers, and as you know, social barriers are one of the best ways to form cohesive in-groups.
Remember, religion is the deification of what people already cling to with great emotional strength. Each Christian denomination is nothing more than the standardization of what a certain group of people think is the "correct" interpretation of the Bible.
So, to say that religion promotes community is only half right. It promotes divisive community by strengthening already existing social barriers. Just as an exercise, try to imagine a religion (not a philosophy! a religion. You know the difference.) that fosters social inclusion, including those who disagree with the religion.
Now, take religion out of it, and try to imagine a philosophy that would allow relatively peaceful coexistence of opposed sides.
When you think of it this way, it becomes easy to see that the core elements of religion are division and isolation, not inclusion and community.
Brainwashing and propoganda distribution are great for psychological discipline and training.
Again, no doubt. As with the last category, I think it's easy to see that the core element of religion makes the results of the social control and psychological discipline less egalitarian and inclusive than a non-religious philosophy.
Of course. Even in the most secular areas of Europe, there are still social conventions that are religious in origin. The question, Susac, is whether or not societies without religion form any less meaningful social or personal identities. I strongly suspect religion is unnecessary. That being the case, we must ask if religion encourages conformity or individuality, and which of those is most beneficial to an egalitarian society.
The farther I get from my Christian upbringing, the more I have to question whether religion has any positive purpose in this regard. I'm running out of time before a meeting, so I can't really answer this in depth at the moment, but I suspect you already know a lot of my answer. Feel free to ask if you don't know what I'm getting at.
Again, it's hard to deny this. The question is what kinds of transformations it tends to produce. I suggest that the transformation from relgion to atheism is generally a more productive one, but I'm happy to grant that many people believe that the only way they got off of drugs, kept their job, stopped raping kittens, or whatever else, was through religion. Placebo is a powerful effect.
I'm really interested in discussing this more. I don't know a hell of a lot about hypnotic induction, but I'm sure it's a huge part of religious ceremonies. I'm highly resistant to hypnosis, so I've never experienced it in more than a very mild form -- like getting "into the music" at a concert, or something like that. I'm really fascinated by the level of conviction people can have from strong hypnotic experiences. I wish I knew more about it.
At the very least, religious services do have all the earmarks of a good hypnotist routine.
I'm pretty sure I addressed this well enough already. Anyway, I hope to have time to read everyone's responses in more detail later. This is a good thread. Thanks, Susac.
Atheism isn't a lot like religion at all. Unless by "religion" you mean "not religion". --Ciarin
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Have you ever seen this experiment, or are you just repeating it? I tried it once, and the frog jumped out of the pot when it got hot.
(This story is apparently in the preacher's handbook for every Christian denomination in the country.)
And certainly we can say that children who imprint onto priests are quite vulnerable. I agree with you that religion imprints children onto both "god" and church leaders. I just question whether this is a good thing in many, if any, cases.
Atheism isn't a lot like religion at all. Unless by "religion" you mean "not religion". --Ciarin
http://hambydammit.wordpress.com/
Books about atheism
ack... should have said "imprints people," not "imprints children."
Atheism isn't a lot like religion at all. Unless by "religion" you mean "not religion". --Ciarin
http://hambydammit.wordpress.com/
Books about atheism
My 2 cents...
According to Theosophy, the good attributes of religion are individualism, (remember the 34 000 denominations) devotion and idealism, the bad attributes are (as you write) division, isolation, and thus inevitable competition. From that point of view, the religion through it's attributes seems to be a natural part of human society. Of course I don't mean an organized, institutional religion, which is just a form of oligarchy, parasiting on that concept.
Again, I wonder how a religion would look like, which's believers wouldn't seek a supposed omnipresent being only in a particular institutional building and a book. God doesn't pick sides, (a Christian told me this, but did not live up to it) churches, holy books, one nation over another, so how it would be when people would realize it?
It does great, remarkable things, man. The edge of the mind power was not yet found. I had seen Christians speaking and praying in tongues, not being able to do it on purpose, consciously. I saw them talking about Holy Spirit feeling, the fire flowing through their body, and poured onto others, who feels it. Including me, not being hypnotized at the moment. They also "exorcized the demons" in form of a bad dreams, fears, and literally, another, hostile personality seeming to be in the body. So they said to me, reminding me of a similar cases I know about. I think this is worth of a study in terrain, though I admit, it's creepy. One might as well visit a bloody rituals of skull hunters, but those are your good neighbours from the next door. I don't say I haven't tried some such things on myself, but we non-religional people keep it under control and work rationally to achieve a results of a therapy, not losing a time with what is not helpful.
I don't know how much hypnotizable I am, but probably a lot, I'd actually prefer it that way. I can actually help myself with some mental or physical problems, by a power of my mind, or placebo effect, if you want to call it so. And nobody yet hypnotized me, against my will. Well, as much as I remember...
Beings who deserve worship don't demand it. Beings who demand worship don't deserve it.
Pretty well said Luminon. I could say a belief in a "higher power" is simply to realize the errors and higher potential in our individual and therefore collective selves, where cooperation eventually over takes fear and greedy competition, as you often say .... and as I, and many say, we are g-o-d, we are stardust, as all is of the eternal non separable force! Clever Carl Sagan mused, we are the eyes of god ....
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I want to say a few more things about indoctirnation and imprinting.
I think that attachment to Christ is a form of imprinting as well, however it occurs in a purely idealized psychological form – that is to say the person imagines all their best possible character traits – being kind, gentle, courageous, self-sacrificing, etc, and they have an idea in their head about a person who is so perfect as to only manifest the best in themselves. What they wish they could be. They then imprint on this psychological construct. This is especially powerful, because since it is their own creation it has already bypassed their psychological defenses of critical reasoning etc.
What I see going on in Christianity is that people create this psychological construct of Christ (note that Christ is a title – Jesus is the person – Christ is the status of the person). They imbue this mythical person with magical powers – primarily the power to love them, but also the power to heal and the power to absolve them of the moral consequences of their actions. This mythical person becomes an icon for a sort of hypnotic induction process that encourages them to imbue absolute authority in the spokesman for the church.
I suppose that in Islam the same process is going on with the figure of Mohammad – they even create a ritual around his name (the whole “peace be upon him” thing). They give him the title of prophet – which means he speaks the word of the creator of the universe – and even do the incredibly evil act of calling him the “last prophet.” This is evil because it cements in the whole ideology – no one after Mohammad can come along and say – “yeah, Mohammad was right about these things – but this idea here is bullshit.” By writing “last prophet” into his mythology, they effectively turned their ideology into a dead-end worldview.
In the case of my grandmother, she imprinted on this pedophile catholic priest, and viewed him as both an icon of “spiritual attainment” (which is already a hypnotic induction by the way) and an authority figure who could broker her entrance into heaven. I have to believe that if she had not imbued her priest with the magical power to advocate to god for her, and to keep her from the fires of hell, that she would not have shown more loyalty to him than she did to her own son.
This is typical of how pedophilia works in family systems – the authority figure (often the father, but in this case the “father” - priest) violates a family member by using them for sex. This may include inappropriate touching or whatever. The sexual predator has enough power and status to risk this violation due to the social structure of the situation. The other adults in the family feel disempowered in the family system because they have social, emotional and economic ties to the perpetrator. Because of this they rationalize and minimize and deny the abuse, saying that it’s not as bad as it is, or making excuses or simply denying that it ever happened. This demonstrates to the victim that they have no status in the system, that they are un-valued, and that the adults in their world will not protect them. Often they harbor more resentment toward the complicit parent than they do toward the abuser.
In the case of my father, he generalized his resentment toward his mother to all females. Hence his misogynism.
I am offering my personal story not as some sort of Jerry Springer tell-all, but as a case study in how the processes of religion can have a damaging effect on the lives that it touches.
One of the other things that I have learned about childhood abuse as a counselor, is that people are often attracted to other people by their wounds. That is, people who are sexually abused are often attracted to other sexual abuse victims or to perpetrators. There are several theories about why this is. My favorite is that they keep putting themselves into the same situation over and over again in order to try to gain mastery over the issue. Another contributing factor is that people tend to pair up with people of similar social status. Abuse victims are low status in their family of origin – that’s what makes them victims – so they find other low-status people to pair up with.
The implications of this in my case are twofold. First, my parents were probably attracted to eachother at least in part due to their mutual abuse history (my mom’s abuse was not related to religion as far as I know, so I’ll leave it out of this discussion). This means that I would probably never have been born if it were not for that pedophile priest! This sort of a head-spinning realization for me, I can tell you, but then if I think about it, I can say the same about a lot of historical events that lead up to my birth, so there is no special reason to single this one out, except that it is directly related to my father’s sexuality, so it’s a bit more personal to my conception than most of my father’s history is.
The second consequence of this is that my father’s wounds, and his mistreatment of my mother out of those wounds contributed to my parent’s divorce and to his decision to abandon me. So here is this huge wound in my life that made me what I am because of an event that happened long before I was born! Kind of weird, huh?
I owe my existence and my personality to my grandmother’s belief in the superstitious mumbo-jumbo that lead her to sell her son down the river in loyalty to a stranger who she gave absolute authority to.
This is what religion does to people. It causes them to give authority to anyone with a bullshit title before their name like “reverend” or “father,” and then show more loyalty to their church than to their own family.
I became a counselor in part so that I could deal with the wounds that my family system passed down to me (“the sins of the father…” etc. etc.). I can write about this stuff now because I have developed the emotional skills that I needed to cope with these truths. I worked out how to face my family system and confront my parents for their abuse and neglect toward me. I have systematically developed psychological processes that help me to understand both the processes of abuse and neglect and the processes of understanding, grieving and forgiveness. I have even managed to make a career out of helping other people heal their wounds.
And I did all of this without faith. I am an atheist. I did it without the love of Jesus, or the prophet Mohammad. Without the Buddha or the Lord Krishna. Healing, personal growth and development, and creativity are no more divine than that pedophile was. Taking what life gives you and making the most of it is the basic trick that every life form on the planet is working on. It seems to be a part of our evolutionary heritage – I can only assume that creativity has huge survival value.
I certainly did for me.Susac, you have a lot of insight. Thanks. Quote: "What I see going on in Christianity is that people create this psychological construct of Christ (note that Christ is a title – Jesus is the person – Christ is the status of the person)." ~~~~~~
Indeed, and that's why I fire back at the religious saying, "for those not blind, all is g-o-d and we are all the christ, the buddha, and that was the all of the simple "gnosis" dirt simple message, of all ancient/present history in any land, perverted by the ignorant want for what religion is." ....IOW, to be "saved" is to simply be personally free of "separatism religion ideology".
Atheism Books.
I think this is a really good observation. The flip side of it, of course, is that some people imagine a hateful Jesus. Fred Phelps comes to mind. I think we see the same things in people who have short flings with a new romantic interest and then develop a long term relationship where they don't see each other very much. They fill in the gaps and create their ideal mates in their imaginations. In fact, there are people who fall madly in love with internet chat buddies they've never met in person! Certainly, Jesus is not the only ideal character people become imprinted on, but I imagine the process is very similar.
Woah. That's a really interesting idea. Like I said, I don't know enough about hypnotic induction to be able to comment, but it certainy sounds plausible.
Susac, I bet if we could get an accurate count, we'd find hundreds of thousands of mothers who'd traded religion for their children in one way or another. Religion, as we know, is particularly appealing to women because of (among other things) the sense of community and the promise of unconditional love.
My brain is drawing a blank so I can't think of the name, but I wonder if it's similar to the syndrome where kidnap victims imprint on their captors.
I believe this kind of thing is necessary. Very few people seem to realize just how much emotional damage can be done as a direct result of religious indoctrination. The danger is that people will say, "See... he's just angry at god because he got hurt." I wouldn't worry about it, though. People say that anyway.
This is absolutely true of those who've been indoctrinated into particularly abusive religious models.
I suppose I take a more behaviorist approach. I don't believe people are consciously aware of their motivations. That is, I suspect that imprinting in humans is a lot more like imprinting in ducks than we would like to admit. Once a person has imprinted onto a power figure, it's not a thought process anymore. It's just a reaction. When they meet similar people, they automatically fall into the same behaviors.
I'm particularly fond of cognitive therapy because it acknowledges the unconscious move into a certain state of mind. Rather than try to prevent people from feeling a certain way, it tries to condition them (imprint) to recognize the state of mind and move through it into another, more productive state.
Exactly! So many people get caught up in a single event because they see it as some kind of a personal sign or totem, or whatever. The thing is, if a particular stoplight had not been working improperly a month before, your mother-to-be might have taken her normal route to work and been killed in an auto accident, and you wouldn't have been born. We could make up thousands of what-if's, but as you say, there's no particular reason to single this one out as *the* reason you were born.
Have you noticed that there's pretty much no such thing as a counselor without some serious issues? One of my party tricks is guessing significant events in people's childhood by knowing what causes they support. Show me someone who supports cancer research, and I'll show you someone who lost a loved one to cancer.
Isn't it neat that understanding emotions and using rationality to mold them is so effective?
Susac, you have a lot to offer people. I'm glad to see you writing these kinds of pieces. Have you ever considered writing a book?
Atheism isn't a lot like religion at all. Unless by "religion" you mean "not religion". --Ciarin
http://hambydammit.wordpress.com/
Books about atheism
I plan to write a piece about how hypnosis works as part of the process of religious indoctrination. I need to organize my thoughts around it first, but I think it will be quite revealing.
This is a good insight! There is definitely a stimulus-response component to the sort of scripts that people act out in their lives. Thanks.
Thanks! In fact one of my motivations for posting this stuff is so that I can do exactly that! I want to post several essays that I can refine and work into a book after getting feedback from the community.
I want to write a self-help book for loosing your religion. I plan to call it "Faith-Heads" Subtitle: "How religion controls your mind and what you can do about it."
I figure the controversial title will improve it's market value
The idea behind finding the valuable parts of religion are that I figure that one of the techniques for working with addiction is that you get the addict to think about how the drug helps them. Once you identify these ways that it is helpful, you then help them to build new techniques for getting the needs met that the drug used to help them with. So for example if a drug is used to relieve stress, you can teach them healthy stress reduction techniques, that sort of thing. Religion is a tougher drug to fight though, because it has so many entrenched social structures associated with it - I think we need to build a parallel set of secular social structures in order to support people in giving up their irrational beliefs. But that goes WAY beyond a mere book!
I think you are referring to the Stockholm Syndrome.
All that is necessary for the triumph of good is that evil men do nothing.
Thank you for sharing some of your personal story. Since I don't see any meatheads in wife-beaters pretending they have enough physical ability to punch someone, I wouldn't think of it as Jerry Springerish.
It is always good (and helpful) to read a critical analysis of some of the effects of religion.
Have you thought about possibly adding "addiction" to your book title somewhere? Perhaps, Faith-Heads: How religious addiction controls your mind and what you can do about it? , or something along those lines? It does sound like you'll create quite an interesting read.
"I am that I am." - Proof that the writers of the bible were beyond stoned.
Indeed I am. Thanks.
Atheism isn't a lot like religion at all. Unless by "religion" you mean "not religion". --Ciarin
http://hambydammit.wordpress.com/
Books about atheism
Yeah, I have some ideas about addiction to put in there too. I never wrote a book before - much less marketed one. It's a huge project, and I am only just beginning, so please, wish me luck.