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Nazism had all the elements of a cult and probably would have spawned a hybrid state religion based on old Germanic paganism and Christianity if it hadn't been stopped short (Hitler was actively trying to develop such a thing, as I recall).

So they were stopped because people just knew it was wrong, and if they hadn't been, they would have created their own religion anyway. Interesting.




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I'll be clear: Nazism was not religion. The quote I posted (from Steven Weinberg) is a pithy soundbite and not a formal logical proposition. There are certainly plenty of cases where good people have done evil without help from religion. But again, religion sure makes it easier.

I suppose we could make the quote more accurate by changing it to "for good people to do evil takes either nationalism or religion". But I see those things as two sides of the same coin.

Here's my conclusion - it's neither nationalism or religion, it's "tribalism". The "my tribe is better than your tribe" thing seems to be a pretty ingrained human thing. I am quite convinced that even if you somehow got rid of religions and countries and political parties (or race or gender or...) people would still find some Tribe to belong to and oppose the Not-My-Tribe with plenty o' vigor.

I agree with Yov. Blaming religion for evil is, IMHO, ridiculous. I know that I personally have never heard a single sermon telling me to hate.I've heard sermons justifying the actions of Judas (very convincing), sermons arguing that Christ was more human than God (also very convincing) and even sermons saying that it's ok not to go to church most of the time. You cannot logically say that religion is the root of all evil. It is rather, as Yov says, tribalism. To quote Obama himself, "the hardening of lines, the embrace of fundamentalism and tribe, dooms us all." Not religion, not nationalism, tribalism. Yes, religion and nationalism can be elements of tribe, but they are not always such.

All of Alma Cogan is dead.
Not all dead people are Alma Cogan.

It's othering. People need to pinpoint their position at the centre of the universe, as one of the 'good guys'. Nazis did it, I do it, you do it, terrorists do it, Christians do it. It's part of self-awareness - being aware of what you are not.

-Pips-

[quote]I know that I personally have never heard a single sermon telling me to hate.[quote]

I have. Very specifically, I was instructed in my church, as a child, that Catholics were idol-worshiping pagans, Episcopalians and Lutherans Catholic-lite, Presbyterians and Methodists suspect and Jews good for one thing: inciting Armageddon so we could watch as 98% of the world's population died while we floated around in the air.

You just don't go to the right churches. Good for you.

But are the majority of Christian churches like that? No. It's a small minority that encourages hate. The underlying principle, the fundamental belief of Christianity is love for everyone, no matter what. But the hating minority are more vocal.

It's a small minority globally, but in some parts of the US, it's a local majority. Enough to control school boards, county governments, state legislatures even.

I don't blame religions for evil. I blame humans for evil, religious or not.

Religion, nationalism, tribalism or whatever the social glue is - they bring out the best in us, they bring out the worst in us.

yovargas wrote:

Here's my conclusion - it's neither nationalism or religion, it's "tribalism". The "my tribe is better than your tribe" thing seems to be a pretty ingrained human thing.

I said religion and nationalism were two sides of the same coin. And yes, that coin's name is tribalism. So here's the thing. If you believe that tribalism is something that comes naturally to humans anyway, can't you see how systems that draw yet more lines in the sand, and that put down as holy, inerrant doctrine the idea that our tribe is the One True Tribe, favored by God, and other tribes must be eliminated, marginalized, or assimilated might make things worse?

And in addition to its contributions to tribalism, there are the effects it has on critical thinking skills and on the way knowledge and belief are approached.

Obviously that would make things worse. Which is why someone's usually taking their crazy pills when inciting such hatred instead of following the more positive ideas preached in their holy books and whatnot.




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*E*V*E*N*S*T*A*R* wrote:

someone's usually taking their crazy pills when inciting such hatred instead of following the more positive ideas preached in their holy books and whatnot.

They're not, though. I spent twenty years of my life in the fold and have seen too much of this firsthand. I've done it myself. The vast majority of the time, no crazy pills are involved. We're talking about ordinary people you'd never look twice at who suddenly turn batshit crazy when certain topics come up.

Here's an example (which illustrates the critical-thought-killing aspects rather than the tribal ones): My physics professor in college was a Christian fundamentalist. I liked him, he was smart, knew his physics, liked to play the guitar. One day in class we were talking about electrical fields and going over the equations that describe the field's strength as a function of distance from a point charge. He noted that the equation was related to the one for the surface area of the sphere, and suddenly went into what I can only describe as a fit of ecstasy. His voice quivered, his head inclined upwards; his whole body practically shook, and he started talking about how the mind of God can be seen everywhere. It didn't seem to occur to him that whatever the stuff of electromagnetism is, it would have to "spread out" as the surface of a sphere as it "moved away from" the point charge, and so of course that's what the equation would look like. It was one of the weirdest things I've ever seen.

But harmless, right? I also discovered later that the guy is a big ID crusader, probably as a result of the same type of thinking.

Dave--

I agree with you in the sense that anytime things like divine favor or punishment are used as coercive tools for maintaining social and political control, there's leverage there not available to simple tribalism. But it's a difference of degree, not kind, in my mind: a refinement of the tribal into the eternal. Extreme nationalism can distort or quell critical thought as well: ask someone who lived under the Nazis, or Franco, or Pinochet how far certain types of thought could go without punishment. Orwell knew that: authoritarianism ultimately has to come up with thought crimes to prevent rebellion, and attempts to shape the frames of reference for entire populations to eliminate them entirely.

Obviously I don't mean they're crazy in the way someone could be diagnosed with and sent to a hospital for, but just because they're acting foolish doesn't mean that is what the religion was created to do.




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But I don't care what it was created to do, the only thing that matters is what it does.

Ax, I agree with you. I'm making a quantitative argument too. All these negative things would still be with us without religion, but to a lesser degree.

Somebody might say that people would still be good without religion too, but also to a lesser degree. In that case the question is: would losing the extra bad be worth losing the extra good? That's a harder matter. For my part, my belief that religion is incorrect in addition to whatever else it may be breaks the tie.

Dave_LF wrote:

But I don't care what it was created to do, the only thing that matters is what it does.

Harsh, mate. That's like saying movies shouldn't be made anymore because a lot of them suck in the opinions of a lot of jaded people, even if there's always going to be really amazing ones that strive to deliver a good product. Someone's out there ruining a good thing, so the original intent is no longer valid? Oh.




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I think I misunderstood you before. I thought you were arguing that religions were good on paper and that the harmful aspects were a perversion of the intent, which is what provoked me to say that it's the practice that matters rather than the theory. On second read, it doesn't look like that's what you meant.

I was once part of a church much like Ax's. They did preach that every other church was not right. And I have been to others that say the same thing. I think the issue is once a church says they are the right way they make their congregration the choosen ones thus making everyone who is not in that congregration the non-choosen. And again I think that goes back to my tribe is better because....religion the because is 'because God said so'. That's pretty hard to argue against.

One church isn't always the entire religion. And if you don't believe the "choser" even exists, no need to get bent out of shape about not being chosen by them.




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