The news are full of cases where very religious people do extremely ridiculous or cruel things. For example, there’s Javon Thompson, a 1 year old starved to death by his cult member family because he did not say “amen” during mealtime. Or more recently, a 7 year old girl who was killed during an exorcism by her priest and congregation members. If you want something less harmful to others, look no further than the man who spent his life savings on those Harold Camping apocalypse ads.
A response I’ve seen a few times is that it’s wrong to “blame” religion for these incidents. The reason given is that the people who perpetrate this “obviously” just have a mental illness and that’s all there is to it. It would be as disingenuous as to blame critics of Rupert Sheldrake (a biologist who’s a major proponent of telepathy and other “challenges to the orthodoxy”) for the man who stabbed him . A certain percentage of the population just have Issues. No movement or social group will be without such people as members. Should every movement be blamed for its kooks?
It’s clear that in some cases of hyperreligiosity combined with mental illness, it’s mental illness that’s the overwhelming force. Cases of mothers who kill all their children because they want them to “be with God” are the most blatant examples. But I think to divorce these acts from religion entirely (and say that the exorcist priest was “just crazy”) is to miss the point.
Firstly, I don’t think it’s obvious that all of these people have a mental illness. We have a strong interest in seeing them as “crazy” since otherwise it would mean that the act was done by someone “normal” which is horrifying to most people. But unfortunately, both history and psychology show that the things we label insane are often done by very normal people. It’s crazy to see a suicidal person at the top of a building and yell for him/her to jump. And yet it’s common knowledge in police circles that a crowd of NORMAL people will spontaneously do this — more here. It’s crazy to deliver a 450V shock to a person at the behest of a person dressed in a lab coat, a shock that would be fatal. And yet 65% of people do this. It’s crazy to take a holiday snapshot of yourself posing in front of a few corpses of civilians you’ve hanged and send them as a postcard to your family, to see yourself in that moment as an average Joe Bloggs. But of course this happened all the time with the Nazis. And it looks like this was done by many ordinary soldiers too (not just the SS elite), meaning the ones drawn from the general population.
It’s ridiculous to explain these acts as a chemical imbalance in the brain. No, this is just normal brain function in a very specific set of circumstances. As scary as these might be to face up to, these are facts. Circumstances can influence a very ordinary person to do horrible things. These circumstances include ideology. If a horrible thing related to religion becomes very widespread (eg. the “witch children” of Nigeria), the mental illness explanation becomes much more unlikely. Of course the religious ideology is rarely the only cause or even the most important one — but it shouldn’t be ignored.
The second reason has to do with cases where we accept that a person has a mental illness and that this was the main cause for the action. I came across it in a wise statement by Angie the Antitheist when she was a guest on the fabulous Godless Bitches podcast episode 1.5. To paraphrase, because mainstream religion often consists of ridiculous beliefs, it provides an indirect cover for someone with an actual mental illness. In other words, a person’s crazy beliefs don’t stand out as much as they should.
To give just one example, if a person belongs to one of the Christian communities that is heavy into the persecution and martyr complexes, who emphasise something like Matthew 24:9 (“Then shall they deliver you up to be afflicted, and shall kill you: and ye shall be hated of all nations for my name’s sake.”) then it will be all the much more difficult for anyone to notice if in fact he/she has paranoid delusions. Especially given how extreme entire religious communities can get in these matters.
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Very good posting. Really interesting. It reminds me of today’s news on Breivik who may not be psychotic after all: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-16416791 There seem to be a lot of under-the-surface racism in Scandinavia (this is my hunch), but people are not allowed to express it openly. A few months ago, Swedish newspapers had to shut down their online comments, due to lots of racist comments, many of which were in support of Breivik.
‘Circumstances can influence a very ordinary person to do horrible things.’
That’s an extension of adaptability in humans, though, isn’t it?
I mean if you’re immersed in a culture that speaks, say, Swahili exclusively, no one can be surprised if you end up speaking Swahili after a while.
To take it farther, no one will be surprised if you start thinking in terms of Swahili, not just as a language, but as a cultural milieu, a worldview, etc.
That’s not unusual, unexpected, or pathological – so when you’ve got a society that’s immersed itself in Nazi ideology for a decade, it really isn’t shocking that you get horrendous abuses.
Similarly, when you believe that your god requires ritual deicide, symbolic cannibalism, and absolute fealty for you to be a True Believer, it’s hardly surprising that you’ll tend to normalize other, similarly nutty beliefs.
Put another way, what we do has quite a lot to do with what we’re surrounded by – what game we think we’re playing, and what we believe the rules to be.
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I agree with much of your evaluation.
But again, I think that attacking “religion” (a fuzzy, ill-defined word) as a whole, “misses the point”. We need to dissect exactly where craziness finds a home in religions. As you point out, all sorts of people, religious or not, demonstrate the same things you detest — but religion often gives these people an easy place to hide. Arguing to attack such a broad sweeping word as “religion”, however, seems counter productive to a methodology that emphasizes careful thinking.
Takis — sorry, just fished your comment out of the spam queue again due to it having a link. On cases like Breivik’s, I think this highlights some of the remaining ignorance and stigma of mental illness in the general public. In that in the eye of the media and many people there seems to be a dichotomy of sane/insane. I’m pretty sure that Breivik would be found to have several conditions upon examination, even if they might not be as severe as the type of diagnosis that a layperson would translate as “insane”. But then again, 25% or more of us have one or more of these conditions as well!
Very interesting on the under-the-surface racism.
Warren — yes but it’s where the boundaries of adaptability lie that’s been the source of most of these controversies. There are those who would argue that a certain percentage of people just “are” the way they are regardless of influence. And that seems partly true in the case of sociopaths — so my point was that not all religiously-based crimes/atrocities are like this.
Sabio — I’m not sure what makes you be so committed to the idea that religion is some fuzzy concept that we can’t define. I mean if you just talk about [say] “social organisations that are centered around supernatural beliefs, usually including gods, spirits, and souls” that would cover the vast majority of what I mean — especially when talking about the actual things that the majority believes and the actual beliefs that may influence atrocities.
The only extra caveat is that most people would only apply the term religion to movements like these if they’re reasonably old (as opposed to new age movements and so on). And based on that I think the criticism of “religion” as a whole falls into place quite neatly.
I understand the “ballpark” use of the term with those who agree with its parameters. Maybe if you look at this short post of mine and read Pascal Boyers article which is links (if you are interested), you will better see my points.
I feel my points matter, of course, and especially where they rub “common sense” the wrong way.
Your link to Boyer’s article is now a dead link. Since I don’t know the original article title would you mind seeing if you can find it elsewhere and update your original post? (Which I assume you’d want to do anyway).
But to expand on what I meant, I think claims like “there’s no such thing as religion” are a case of the fallacy of gray (see http://lesswrong.com/lw/mm/the_fallacy_of_gray/). In the name of “nuance”, what I think is being sacrificed is basic intelligibility — or perhaps our ability to even use terms with complex designations like “religion”.
@ michael:
Great ! That is a fun objection and I will examine the link. I have thought about this issue and need to think more. Hopefully I can come up with a way to productively capture both notions. More later, thanx.
Concerning Boyer — yeah, that link is dead and I can’t find his article now. Have you read his book: “Religion Explained” — I loved it!
Hi mates, thanks for the tip on Boyer and Boyer’s book–it looks great. I’m ordering it now. Looks like a good read.
Michael, yes, this is a good definition of religion but it is not one that religious folk or the goverment would approve. With regard to the latter, see my posting on kopimism. I’m not sure what it means, for a state, when a state “recognizes a religion”. What exactly is it they are recognizing?
[Reluctant to add a link to avoid your spam filter
]
BTW, here is a link to a fellow who quoted his Boyer’s article — to show you the gist.
Since I can post links safely, here’s Takis’s post about kopimism
http://randomprocessed.blogspot.com/2012/01/meanwhile-in-sweden.html
Sabio, is Boyer’s main point (as per the article) really that the aspects we might give the term religion used to be separate for most of human history?
@michael
Yes, that is a large part of the point, if I remember correctly.
A abstract word that is constructed to put together someone’s favorite traits has those sorts of issues.
I think you saw my syndrome definition of the word, which is my attempt to wrestle with that issue.
It is important when two people disagree about something “being a religion”. If everyone is in agreement, then there is no problem, of course. Abstract words are like that, eh?
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