Shadow1980 said:
Religion isn't the problem. Politics is, particularly authoritarianism, and authoritarianism is likely to be pervasive in regimes wracked by political instability, extreme poverty, and other destabilizing influences. It can also be found in cultures with a history of oppression and "othering" of certain groups. A person's religious beliefs are far more likely to be molded by their political mindset than the other way around. Faith gets co-opted as a mere tool for identity and justification of mores in an insular group that is antagonistic, often violently so, towards anyone not part of their in-group. It can be and has been argued that ISIS and other Islamic terrorists could easily be characterized as political movements first and foremost.
The same denomination of the same religion (Baptism, in this example) produced both Jerry Falwell and Martin Luther King, Jr., two men who couldn't have been any more different on the issues. One dedicated his life towards advancing a form of Protestantism that sought to keep gays in the closet, women barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen, and evolution out of the classroom, while the other dedicated his life towards expanding freedom and justice to all. The Falwells of America will focus on Old Testament passages that, at least in their interpretation, condemn things they believe threatens their culture's norms (e.g., homosexuality), while the MLKs of America will cite scripture that emphasizes social justice, caring for the poor and sick, and warning of the spiritual rot brought on by wanton greed, lust for power, and senseless war. In the U.S., religion was wrangled into opposition to the atheistic Soviet Union, and various shifts in the party system and U.S. politics in general during the Cold War led to religion in America being effectively hijacked by the political right in America, with religious moderates and progressives largely ignored, and this has been a factor in how both sides perceive religion (many young progressives reject religion likely because the right has used their ostensibly Christian faith to justify anti-LGBT and anti-woman legislation). I dare say that the Falwells of America were shaped more by 20th century issues like Jim Crow, the Red Scare, and the rise of supply-side economics than they were by their faith. At the end of the day, it's the battle between authoritarianism and anti-authoritarianism that is the real issue. Religion is just a distraction.
Authoritarianism, like its anti-authoritarian opposites, is no respecter of beliefs. You have some authoritarians that are explicitly religious or at least profess to be (e.g., Islamic extremists), some that are largely indifferent towards or nominally supportive of religion but are largely secular in their goals and ideology (e.g., most strains of fascism and anti-communist authoritarianism), and some that are explicitly atheistic (e.g., Communism, atheistic elements of the alt-right). The latter types show that, even in the absence of religion, some people will latch on to secular beliefs and mythologies to provide justification. Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, and the Kim family collectively butchered millions of people and oppressed tens of millions more, and didn't need to invoke the name of the God of Abraham or any other supernatural entity to do so.
An authoritarian will use and appropriate whatever they can in order to justify their oppression and convince people to follow them. Religion, race, nationalism, cultural traditions, economic systems (e.g., Marxism). Doesn't matter. Those are all things to be weaponized to use against freedom, democracy, and modernism. Nothing more, nothing less. Authoritarians, regardless of their beliefs in the supernatural or their cultural background, all have more or less the same basic attributes. So called "right-wing authoritarians" (a term that doesn't necessarily mean right-wing politics in general, and can apply to nominally left-wing movements and individuals) have been described as those who "want society and social interactions structured in ways that increase uniformity and minimize diversity. In order to achieve that, they tend to be in favour of social control, coercion, and the use of group authority to place constraints on the behaviours of people such as political dissidents and ethnic minorities. These constraints might include restrictions on immigration, limits on free speech and association and laws regulating moral behaviour. It is the willingness to support or take action that leads to increased social uniformity that makes right-wing authoritarianism more than just a personal distaste for difference. Right-wing authoritarianism is characterized by obedience to authority, moral absolutism, racial and ethnic prejudice, and intolerance and punitiveness towards dissidents and deviants."
Regimes and groups the like Stalinist USSR, right-wing extremists (e.g., Nazis, white nationalists), and violent fundamentalists, despite their differences on religious or economic matters, have very similar attitudes towards social issues, emphasizing the "traditional values" of their respective cultures, the importance of the "traditional" nuclear family, opposition towards homosexuality, modernism, and other "deviant" behavior, obsession over crime and punishment, disdain towards anyone deemed part of an out-group and a paranoid desire to support and defend their in-group against perceived external threats, support for "masculinity" and opposition towards "softness" and "feminism," a struggle for purity and homogeneity, a tendency to reject the findings of science when it conflicts with their worldview, and an acceptance of the use of government coercion and even outright violence against anyone who opposes them or violates what they perceive to be "proper" social norms. It's the horseshoe theory in action. Political extremism on either end leads people to develop authoritarian attitudes that are more similar to each other than different. And religion is hardly a causal factor in any case.
TL;DR: Religion doesn't make people bad. Bad people make religion—and everything else they touch—bad. |
