![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
avevale_intelligencerIt is a commonly accepted idea in the circles in which I move that religion enslaves the mind. Google the phrase and you come up with a hundred restatements of it, differing only slightly in wording, and I have seen many more in the posts and comments of my friends. I'd like to take a moment to examine that idea, purely as an idea in itself and separate from any other grievances against religion which anyone may have (and there are many, and some of them are justified).
Karl Marx, that well-known champion of individual liberty and free thought, called religion the opiate of the masses, or something like that; but the idea is comparatively recent, I think. In Julius Caesar, Shakespeare has Cassius talking about changing his mind on a matter of metaphysics as though it were something one might choose to do as easily as changing one's mind about which toga to wear.
In the interests of clarity I should probably define my terms. By "religion" I mean "the state of having a positive belief or opinion which is unsupported by current observable fact," such as that the universe was created with a specific end or purpose in mind, or that part of one's being survives after bodily death, or that buses stop here regularly every ten minutes, or that Suchandsuch United is a good football team. By "irreligion" I mean "the state of having no such positive belief." That, I think, is a sufficiently broad, general and untendentious definition to satisfy anyone. As a subsidiary or subordinate definition, though, I should probably include "organised religion" and define it as "the state of subscribing to some or all of the set of religious beliefs professed by a particular organisation," because someone is bound to say that when they said "religion" what they really meant to say, as any fool should have known, was "organised religion." The question of why they did not in that case say it may be left as an exercise for the reader; also the question of whether there might be such a thing as "organised irreligion," to be similarly specified in these discussions.
So: are the minds of religious people any more "enslaved" than those of irreligious people? There seems to be a lack of evidential support for the proposition. Religious people seem to go about their daily lives in much the same way as their irreligious counterparts, making choices, exercising their free will, judging between alternatives. You do not hear about little Johnny at the breakfast table in tears because he does not know whether Jesus wants him to eat Wakky Flakes or Nuttykorn; you do not see groups of teenagers filing into a church or a mosque in order to seek guidance on whether to go to the pictures or to a club that night, or simply to hang around on street corners bawling abuse at passers-by; you do not read about prominent businessmen arriving late for meetings due to an inability to decide for themselves which of their two ties was the most godly. There are of course issues, not properly the province of religion, on which religious organisations tend to make pronouncements, and presumably at least some of the members of those organisations agree with them, much to their discredit; but there is plenty of evidence to show that other members of the same organisations are frequently in strong disagreement with them on the same issues. If these be slaves, they are damned rebellious ones.
Some articles on the subject of the religious enslavement of minds go into detail on the techniques used by the sinister, cackling priests of these deadly cults; as, for instance, the doctrine of original sin, which apparently shrouds the mind in a pall of shame and guilt from which only religion offers escape. Well, first of all, religion (and here we are talking about the Abrahamic religions) offers no "escape" from original sin, which in its essence is simply the consequence of the primal act of disobedience whereby we claimed for ourselves the knowledge of good and evil and therefore the capacity knowingly to do either. One cannot escape the consequences of one's actions, though they reverberate down the generations; and "forgiveness" is not the same as "escape."
At some point in our development, one of our remote ancestors conceived the idea that there were things that could be done that were in themselves good, and things that could be done that were in themselves bad, and that human beings had the power to distinguish between these actions before performing them and therefore the responsibility for choosing to perform them or not. It was the moment when reason began to try to supersede instinct as a motivating force in the human mind (a process still ongoing), and we have been living with the consequences ever since, and have enshrined the moment in a story about an apple, complete with its moral; that life from that point on would become a great deal trickier. I do not think any moral in the entire history of fabulation has been more thoroughly proved correct.
That is the nub of it; and I confess I do not see what could be more simple, more straighforward, or more liberating, than that. To know that one of the earliest tellers of the tales that were collected into the Old Testament could have had such a pellucid, such a scientific, insight into that moment of disjunction when homo sapiens ceased to be a mere animal, blindly following the directives of its DNA, and became a being capable of independent moral choice, of saying "this action benefits me, but it is bad" or "that action hurts me, but it is good" and choosing to do either; that they could then have articulated that insight in the form of a parable to enlighten future generations, as storytellers have been doing since language began; that, to me, is the very essence of the human miracle. And people see it merely as a tool whereby formerly free minds might be subjugated. Well, well, it takes all sorts, as they say.
But I must not let myself be bogged down in specifics. I was talking about the contention that religion enslaves the mind, a contention, as I say, unsupported by anything that a reputable scientist would call evidence. It is doubtless true that any activity regularly and communally engaged in, such as going to football matches or being in the army, will create patterns of habit in the mind; it is beyond reasonable dispute that any statement repeated often enough, such as "Donko washes really white" or "no taxation without representation," will embed itself in the memory and be called up, as it were, when appropriately cued, whether perfectly understood or not; and it is inarguable that many human beings are by nature disinclined toward deep thought and will accept guidance from someone they choose to regard as an authority, whether it be the Pope, Rush Limbaugh or Neil deGrasse Tyson. None of these phenomena are peculiar to religion; all of them are freely exploited every day by villains far more evil than any black-robed priest or mullah or rabbi; and yet it is supposedly religion that enslaves the mind, and only irreligion that can free it.
The simple fact is that there is no enslavement. Church spires do not beam out invisible mind-control rays; prayer books do not carry subliminal propaganda messages; hymn tunes were not designed by their composers to trigger pre-programmed responses, except in so far as all music is so designed. One can be religious, or irreligious; one can belong to an organised religion, or an organised irreligion; and still one's mind is as free as one chooses to let it be. There is no escape from original sin, either through religion or irreligion. One remains responsible for one's own moral choices, and for the consequences of those choices; and becoming an atheist will not save you from hell, if you have deserved hell by your actions. For original sin is freedom; and freedom makes life a great deal trickier.
Thank you for reading.
Karl Marx, that well-known champion of individual liberty and free thought, called religion the opiate of the masses, or something like that; but the idea is comparatively recent, I think. In Julius Caesar, Shakespeare has Cassius talking about changing his mind on a matter of metaphysics as though it were something one might choose to do as easily as changing one's mind about which toga to wear.
In the interests of clarity I should probably define my terms. By "religion" I mean "the state of having a positive belief or opinion which is unsupported by current observable fact," such as that the universe was created with a specific end or purpose in mind, or that part of one's being survives after bodily death, or that buses stop here regularly every ten minutes, or that Suchandsuch United is a good football team. By "irreligion" I mean "the state of having no such positive belief." That, I think, is a sufficiently broad, general and untendentious definition to satisfy anyone. As a subsidiary or subordinate definition, though, I should probably include "organised religion" and define it as "the state of subscribing to some or all of the set of religious beliefs professed by a particular organisation," because someone is bound to say that when they said "religion" what they really meant to say, as any fool should have known, was "organised religion." The question of why they did not in that case say it may be left as an exercise for the reader; also the question of whether there might be such a thing as "organised irreligion," to be similarly specified in these discussions.
So: are the minds of religious people any more "enslaved" than those of irreligious people? There seems to be a lack of evidential support for the proposition. Religious people seem to go about their daily lives in much the same way as their irreligious counterparts, making choices, exercising their free will, judging between alternatives. You do not hear about little Johnny at the breakfast table in tears because he does not know whether Jesus wants him to eat Wakky Flakes or Nuttykorn; you do not see groups of teenagers filing into a church or a mosque in order to seek guidance on whether to go to the pictures or to a club that night, or simply to hang around on street corners bawling abuse at passers-by; you do not read about prominent businessmen arriving late for meetings due to an inability to decide for themselves which of their two ties was the most godly. There are of course issues, not properly the province of religion, on which religious organisations tend to make pronouncements, and presumably at least some of the members of those organisations agree with them, much to their discredit; but there is plenty of evidence to show that other members of the same organisations are frequently in strong disagreement with them on the same issues. If these be slaves, they are damned rebellious ones.
Some articles on the subject of the religious enslavement of minds go into detail on the techniques used by the sinister, cackling priests of these deadly cults; as, for instance, the doctrine of original sin, which apparently shrouds the mind in a pall of shame and guilt from which only religion offers escape. Well, first of all, religion (and here we are talking about the Abrahamic religions) offers no "escape" from original sin, which in its essence is simply the consequence of the primal act of disobedience whereby we claimed for ourselves the knowledge of good and evil and therefore the capacity knowingly to do either. One cannot escape the consequences of one's actions, though they reverberate down the generations; and "forgiveness" is not the same as "escape."
At some point in our development, one of our remote ancestors conceived the idea that there were things that could be done that were in themselves good, and things that could be done that were in themselves bad, and that human beings had the power to distinguish between these actions before performing them and therefore the responsibility for choosing to perform them or not. It was the moment when reason began to try to supersede instinct as a motivating force in the human mind (a process still ongoing), and we have been living with the consequences ever since, and have enshrined the moment in a story about an apple, complete with its moral; that life from that point on would become a great deal trickier. I do not think any moral in the entire history of fabulation has been more thoroughly proved correct.
That is the nub of it; and I confess I do not see what could be more simple, more straighforward, or more liberating, than that. To know that one of the earliest tellers of the tales that were collected into the Old Testament could have had such a pellucid, such a scientific, insight into that moment of disjunction when homo sapiens ceased to be a mere animal, blindly following the directives of its DNA, and became a being capable of independent moral choice, of saying "this action benefits me, but it is bad" or "that action hurts me, but it is good" and choosing to do either; that they could then have articulated that insight in the form of a parable to enlighten future generations, as storytellers have been doing since language began; that, to me, is the very essence of the human miracle. And people see it merely as a tool whereby formerly free minds might be subjugated. Well, well, it takes all sorts, as they say.
But I must not let myself be bogged down in specifics. I was talking about the contention that religion enslaves the mind, a contention, as I say, unsupported by anything that a reputable scientist would call evidence. It is doubtless true that any activity regularly and communally engaged in, such as going to football matches or being in the army, will create patterns of habit in the mind; it is beyond reasonable dispute that any statement repeated often enough, such as "Donko washes really white" or "no taxation without representation," will embed itself in the memory and be called up, as it were, when appropriately cued, whether perfectly understood or not; and it is inarguable that many human beings are by nature disinclined toward deep thought and will accept guidance from someone they choose to regard as an authority, whether it be the Pope, Rush Limbaugh or Neil deGrasse Tyson. None of these phenomena are peculiar to religion; all of them are freely exploited every day by villains far more evil than any black-robed priest or mullah or rabbi; and yet it is supposedly religion that enslaves the mind, and only irreligion that can free it.
The simple fact is that there is no enslavement. Church spires do not beam out invisible mind-control rays; prayer books do not carry subliminal propaganda messages; hymn tunes were not designed by their composers to trigger pre-programmed responses, except in so far as all music is so designed. One can be religious, or irreligious; one can belong to an organised religion, or an organised irreligion; and still one's mind is as free as one chooses to let it be. There is no escape from original sin, either through religion or irreligion. One remains responsible for one's own moral choices, and for the consequences of those choices; and becoming an atheist will not save you from hell, if you have deserved hell by your actions. For original sin is freedom; and freedom makes life a great deal trickier.
Thank you for reading.