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“I
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f Men are so wicked as we now see them with Religion what
would they be if without it?”
Benjamin Franklin asked some unknown person in 1757. As if to illustrate this
point a man named Abu Ishaq al-Hijazi went into a house of worship in Najran wrapped
with explosives and detonated them, causing many casualties. He was a very
religious man, according to his friends. He differed theologically with the
worshippers, calling them “rejectionist Ismaili polytheists” and so murdered
them along with himself in an orgy of violence.
Wicked is clearly the right word for this guy, though I could
think of some others I’d prefer. And he did have religion. How much worse could
he be if he didn’t? I have to wonder, anyway. It doesn’t seem like religion did
much to moderate his particular brand of evil—quite the contrary, actually.
The notion that religion is a moderating force for good—whatever
that is—has always seemed a bit far-fetched to me. I mean, I get the concept—if
people fear supernatural sanctions for bad behavior they will be motivated to
do better. But self-love and self-preservation are much tougher than such
tinsel phantasms. “I will swear and forswear myself,” Robert Poley famously
observed, “rather than I will accuse myself to do me any harm.” Exactly. The
cobwebby fear of invisible justice means nothing against the visible reality of
personal harm.
Ah, but Abu Ishaq al-Hijazi turned to self-slaughter, the
ultimate in personal harm. Is this not a refutation of some kind? He was,
apparently, willing to die for his religion, at least if he could take
believers of another stripe along with him.
Well, maybe he was. But if he suffered from the delusion of his
own immortality his action might reflect the hope of reward rather than the
fear of dissolution. And that hope of reward, let us remember, is indeed a figment
of religious conviction. Which shows, I suppose, that religious belief can
influence behavior. Would the Aztecs have practiced human sacrifice on such a
large scale without the sanction of the divine? Would the Muslims and the
Christians and the Jews have fought so bitterly for so many years over a
relatively worthless chunk of terrestrial real estate were it not at the behest
of dueling deities?
By any rational standard these are not good things. And yet—and
yet we are assured that whatever bad things are caused by religion, life
without it would be worse. “Without religion this world would be something not
fit to be mentioned in polite company, I mean Hell” John Adams wrote to Jefferson. But there’s one hell of a good argument for his first
thought in that same letter: “This would be the best of all possible worlds, if
there were no religion in it!!!”
1 comment:
In practical terms, the law of Karma states that what goes around comes around, and that we are not edified when acting out of ignorance. So in that sense, sowing what we reap, can be viewed as a simple lesson in the way things are. Thus this concept can teach us that there is no escape from suffering due to the results of our own ignorance. Furthermore, many Eastern religions teach that taking action out of fear, only reinforces our own enslavement to our own ignorance. So according to this precept, taking or avoiding action due to fear of Hell or want of Heaven, are merely additional forms of ignorance.
As to whether we would collectively be better off in a world without religious faith---I prefer subscribing to John Lennon's beautiful poetic vision expressed in "Imagine." However, religious leaders and their followers seldom heed the cosmic teachings dispensed by their own religious Icons, such as Jesus or Buddha, and would rather spin the teachings of these great men in any way that facilitates their own greedy ends.
The question should not be "are we better off without religion?"---the question should be, "are we better off without the genuine wisdom and love exemplified in the lives of those who authentically understand love?" In that sense, doing anything out of fear, instead of from a standpoint of enlightened understanding, truly does not characterize a spiritual axiom which might point to the moral failures inherent in our own ego driven desires. We suffer spiritual consequences FOR our ignorance---not BECAUSE of it. Even if we willfully murder someone else, we also will not escape the bad fruit then harvested from the result of our own ignorant actions--externally and internally! What goes around comes around.
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