Mod 6

SOC 420 Lesson 6 Subtopic: The Good, Bad, and Ugly (Religion’s Socio-Historical Dynamics)

There were honest people long before there were Christians and there are, God be praised, still honest people where there are no Christians. It could therefore easily be possible that people are Christians because true Christianity corresponds to what they would have been even if Christianity did not exist.

—G.C. Lichtenberg, 18th century German scientist

You can safely assume that you've created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do.

—Anne Lamott, contemporary American writer and activist

I'm frankly sick and tired of the political preachers across this country telling me as a citizen that if I want to be a moral person, I must believe in A, B, C, and D. Just who do they think they are? And from where do they presume to claim the right to dictate their moral beliefs to me? And I am even more angry as a legislator who must endure the threats of every religious group who thinks it has some God-granted right to control my vote on every roll call in the Senate. I am warning them today: I will fight them every step of the way if they try to dictate their moral convictions to all Americans in the name of conservatism.

—Barry Goldwater, U.S. Senator and 1964 presidential candidate from Arizona, speaking in 1981

(All three quotes according to http://www.quotegarden.com/religion.html)

Religion has had a long and colorful history in human society. Throughout that history, contributions to the development of society have been attributed to religion, notably positive social values as well as advances in knowledge and technology. Likewise, various problems and crises have also arisen. These have included political involvement in religion, bigotry, wars over belief and territory that different groups consider sacred, etc. With apologies to Clint Eastwood, throughout history, we have seen the good, the bad, and the ugly arise in connection with religion. Some modern critics blame religion itself for this, though an even more problematic common thread exists in all these religion-connected incidents, good and bad alike: The involvement of human beings.

As we’ve discussed in a previous lesson, it’s a bit nonsensical to label any religion a “religion of peace” or any other such generalization. This is not because religions don’t teach peace—virtually all of them do, particularly the world’s major religious movements. But it’s then up to the human beings involved in the religion to put those teachings into practice. The problem is: Some humans are much better at practicing peace than others—and TBH, some humans just want to pick a fight and use religion as a pretext. To somewhat grossly paraphrase Karl Marx, the history of religion is the history of human involvement. Let’s take a look at how human involvement in religion throughout history—the socio-historical dynamics of religion—has produced good, bad, and ugly alike in these required articles:

Reading 1: Idler, Ellen. 2008. “The Psychological and Physical Benefits of Spiritual/Religious Practices.” Spirituality in Higher Education (newsletter), vol. 4 no. 2. Pp 1-5. (Optional due to sheer length and scope but otherwise highly recommended: Koenig, Harold G. 2012. “Religion, Spirituality, and Health: The Research and Clinical Implications.” ISRN Psychiatry, US National Library of Medicine, National Institutes of Health. See also multiple studies cited within this meta-study.)

Reading 2: Dawkins, Richard. 2003 (November 19-20). “The Science of Religion” and “The Religion of Science.” Transcript of The Tanner Lectures on Human Values. Harvard University. Online.

Recommended for Further Interest:

Mochon, Daniel, with Michael I. Norton and Daniel Ariely. 2011. “Who Benefits from Religion?” Social Indicators Research (Springer), vol. 101 no. 1, pp. 1-15. PDF also located here.

Rettner, Rachel. 2015. "God Help Us? How Religion is Good (And Bad) For Mental Health." LiveScience.

Public Broadcasting System (no date). “History.” (of science v religion) Faith and Reason. pbs.org. Web.

Now that we’ve covered the readings, just a few words about the humanity of it all, starting with my own. As noted elsewhere, I am a religious believer, though I likewise respect the historic significance of science and the utility of the scientific process. As such, I have attempted to cover this subject fairly and with as little bias as possible. But granted, what bias still remains is likely a believer’s bias—though, as we shall discuss, the believer’s bias is far from limited to only me. As also discussed in previous lessons, I profoundly value the free marketplace of ideas. So in the interest of fairness, I have asked you to read that article by Richard Dawkins, even though I don’t exactly endorse his arguments, shall we say. Still, there is a great deal to learn from in his ideas; for example, few experts today understand the scientific process as well as he does.

Galileo saw no contradiction between his faith and scientific investigation, though the Catholic Church disagreed. His trial for heresy was in 1633. Image from theeagora.com.

Also as noted elsewhere, I see little reason to draw a dividing line between science and religion. Although the history of both has seen a fair share of disagreement and even power struggles, such as the 1633 trial of Galileo, the outright attempt to fundamentally split the two is only recent—since Darwin, in fact. But in the largely European medieval and Renaissance time periods all the way through the first half of the 19th century, religious men (yes, primarily men in these times and places) explored and shaped what we now know as modern science. Let’s duly acknowledge an argument from more than a few believers from several faith traditions: Perhaps science and religion alike would not exist without inspiration and/or revelation from deity. But as with other belief claims, we will leave the Ultimate Truth of this question to the theologians and examine the role of humans in religion and science alike. Some religions assert that the origins of religion, science, philosophy, art, and many other bodies of knowledge either did or may have stemmed from deity. Yet it seems beyond question that humans have been primarily responsible for their operation and development. So we will approach this topic from that standpoint and examine science and religion alike as largely human-operated phenomena.

History and Religion

Taking a look at known history, we see a great deal of religious involvement with the processes of societal development and knowledge. The Greeks and Romans both had very well-developed religious mythologies. (Please note that I use the terms “myth” and “mythology” in the religious-studies sense of a story considered sacred by a group of people, past or present, NOT in the popular sense of a known fiction or deliberate falsehood.) Greco-Roman mythology has since been passed down to us today, most recognizably in the form of narratives and memorable characters. This may be particularly true for those of us who have ever picked up any books in the Percy Jackson series, though that’s just a few crystals on the tip of the iceberg. Also historically influential were Egyptian and Norse mythologies, as well as the Semitic traditions that produced the Judeo-Christian religious accounts, all of which likewise influenced world history and literature alike. Hinduism and later Buddhism also profoundly influenced Asia, though the influence of these religions remained largely in that area for centuries.

The Greek goddess Athena governed wisdom, including military strategy as a counterbalance to the angry passion of Ares, god of war. The city of Athens not only bore her name but produced many of the Greek philosophers that are still widely admired today. Image from ishareimage.com.

As we know, all of these but monotheistic Judeo-Christianity and non-theistic Buddhism were polytheistic societies, assigning various valued attributes to a pantheon of deities. The Egyptians had a multitude of traditions that continually changed, so that different attributes were ascribed to different deities at different times—hence, the somewhat confusing and contradictory nature of the mythology we’ve inherited from the Egyptians. Interestingly, the Egyptian experience also featured a brief monotheistic experiment under the Pharaoh Akhenaten. The Nordic cultures attributed various qualities, events, and circumstances to the gods of Valhalla, who rarely intervened in mortal affairs. The ancient Hebrews, often in defiance of their polytheistic neighbors, located all positive attributes in a single all-powerful God, who was very much involved in earthly and human matters, though at times more subtly than others. The Greeks and Romans in particular developed similar religious systems that originated from a common source, though the Romans also adapted a fair amount of Greek mythology. Parenthetically, post-Biblical Christianity also borrowed a great deal from Greco-Roman cultural heritage (in part because many early Christian converts were Greek and Roman!), though most of these cultural contributions aren’t usually as well-noted or as obvious.

In any case, the Greeks and Romans each saw in their deities the qualities they valued most: wisdom, love, and intellectual power for the Greeks in Athena, Aphrodite, and Zeus; protective power, social stability, intelligence, and warlike power in Jupiter, Juno, Minerva, and Mars. Greco-Roman mythology is particularly well worth considering because the mythology and wisdom in a more secularized form persisted and influenced European culture, particularly during the European Renaissance. (More on that in a page or two.) The mythologies of several ancient cultures have had an inestimably profound influence on our modern world, particularly in terms of folklore. Nordic legends gave us giants, dragons, trolls, elves, and dwarves (and even magic rings, Tolkien fans!), while Egypt contributed an early form of the divine right of kings, Pharaoh, Biblical influence, and mummies.

For the ancient Greeks, Poseidon represented the power and mystery of the sea. He tended to be protective of those who respected him yet vengeful of those who didn’t. These and other qualities added to the mythical status of this deity. Image from Pixabay.

The Judeo-Christian mythological context also became important in the post-Biblical period, though as above, since Christianity was established in a largely Hellenized cultural context, early Christianity was deeply influenced by Greco-Roman thought as well. In fact, the ideas of the Greeks and the Romans may have been the most deeply embedded in European-influenced culture for the longest period of time. Philosophy, art, politics and governance, humanism, science, biology, war strategy, plumbing, and architecture all have components directly traceable back to ancient Athens and Rome. Because the founders of America were also well-educated in the Hellenized post-Renaissance environment, it can even be fairly said that America as we know it today wouldn’t exist without Greco-Roman influence.

Even further than this, on a more unconscious level, mythology itself has a profound influence on us and our society, as Joseph Campbell pointed out years ago, though his insights remain profound and largely valid. Myth has a power all its own, Campbell argues, that comes from our collective unconscious and archetypes that reside in our cultural memory. Keep in mind that Campbell took a highly Jungian view of the world and culture. The myths of the past live on in our culture today, even though we tend to be much more empirical and materialistic than past societies. But because of our past, we still tend to recognize mythic connections when we come across them, and they also live on in the symbolism and language we use. Mythology certainly has a place in our popular culture—some of which succeeds because it ties into that sense of myth and mysticism. (See Star Wars, Star Trek, Lord of the Rings, Chronicles of Narnia, Harry Potter, Dr. Who, and many Disney animated and live action hits over the past few decades. More on this in STS 494!) But it also has a place in our culture and definitely our religious traditions, and if we search long and hard enough, we will find it.

But back to the Hellenic-Christian influence on our modern world. After the power of the Greeks and Romans subsided (but not the influence of their heritage), Judeo-Christianity rose in prominence as a world religion in the wake of Constantine’s religious wars. The emperor Constantine fought these nearly three centuries after the life of Jesus Christ, expanding the territory claimed by “Christians,” thereby expanding the Christian beliefs of the time. The founding of Islam in the 7th century A.D. furthered the rise of monotheism. Semi-sequestered Asian polytheistic (including Hinduism) and non-theistic (including Buddhism) traditions continued, but monotheism had spread to much of the rest of the known world by the 8th and 9th centuries. Areas little known to the Middle-Ages European and Asian power centers, notably the interior of the African continent as well as modern-day Russia—not to mention virtually unknown areas at that time, such as the Americas and Australia—practiced various tribal religions that were often polytheistic. But as far as the powers that then ruled the European world were concerned, Judeo-Christianity now ruled the world. The mythic power of this religious-cultural context took root then and there.

Map from spanishdict.com.

This set the stage for the development of the world as we know it today. This historical episode is not often recognized, but when the Umayyad Islamic caliphate conquered a substantial chunk of land in what is now southern Spain and a small part of Portugal, ostensibly from its Visigoth occupiers, around 720 A.D., this established a key interchange of knowledge between the Christian and Muslim worlds. In Andalucia (AKA “Muslim Spain”) for nearly the next 800 years, the Islamic population brought its knowledge and intelligence with them, not only building cities but commercial centers, libraries, and universities. This was not Utopia; it was certainly Muslim territory under Muslim rule, albeit in a relatively benign form. Christians and Jews were welcome in Al-Andalus as long as they respected Islamic control and accepted a sort of second-class citizenship, which in this case essentially amounted to our modern equivalent of paying more taxes. Still, this worked well enough to sustain that particular social order for centuries.

Though unthinkable by today’s political, national, and religious standards, this social arrangement was almost certainly the most peaceful and tolerant of any mixed-socio-religious-group context during the Middle Ages. Forced conversions were apparently minimal, and scholars of all three religions collaborated at the universities in Andalucia and elsewhere that kept the knowledge of the Greeks alive. This in turn helped produce the ancient traditions of philosophy, literature, mathematics (especially algebra, AKA al-Jebra), astronomy, medicine, and perhaps most notably, navigation techniques and travel methods, including shipbuilding! All this became particularly important in the late 15th century with Columbus and others, of course.

As time went on, a religious-political rivalry developed between Christianity—particularly the Catholic Church—and Islam, most notably seen in the Crusades. Differences in mythos and theology had real-world consequences in battles for mutually desirable territory. These battles for control over Jerusalem and modern-day Israel started in the late 11th century and continued well into the 13th. During the Crusades, Christian rulers in Europe became nervous about the established Muslim presence in Andalucia. They vowed to retake the territory, though the complexity of doing so without provoking all-out warfare with the vast Ottoman Empire proved daunting. Rather than a full-bore military offensive to reconquer southern Spain, Muslims (and Jews!) were gradually forced out of Andalucia over several centuries. The Ottoman Empire gradually declined as the Christian powers rose, and by the 15th century, the first Spanish Inquisition helped expel most of the remaining Muslims and Jews from the territory, bringing about the Reconquista.

The Third Crusade in the late 12th century featured something of an effort to recapture Andalucia, but most of the focus of these battles between Christian and Muslim armies was over control of Jerusalem. Map from pantherfile.uwm.edu.

The resources and facilities they left behind proved invaluable in several respects, however, especially to the prospect of Spanish exploration and colonization. It is far from coincidental, for instance, that Christopher Columbus sailed from Andalucian ports, since those living there had extensive knowledge of shipbuilding and navigation. This knowledge of shipbuilding and navigation soon proved critical to further voyages and exploration, first from Spanish explorers searching for gold and then spreading to other nations. Far from insignificantly, belief in native commoner Juan Diego’s religious experience in 1531 near present-day Mexico City—a vision today known as Our Lady of Guadalupe—helped facilitate the spread of Catholicism among the native population of Mexico and Latin America.

Backtracking a few decades in Europe, however, some early heretics had already been suppressed by the 1450s, but the printing press had been invented and the Bible was beginning to publicly circulate. European Protestantism arose in earnest with the rise of Martin Luther in the early 1500s and King Henry VIII’s split with the Catholic Church in 1534. The Anglicans never considered themselves Protestants in Luther’s sense, but the split with Catholicism created a bit of confusion about that. Around this time, the Renaissance began to take root in Europe. This mythic rebirth of the ideas and knowledge of the Greeks and Romans in a Christian-influenced (yet somewhat humanistic) context led to a number of different developments. Art, culture, education, and technology arose in Europe, but so did a number of other much less savory social issues, including corruption, religious persecution, and starting in the mid-15th century, the Atlantic slave trade of forcibly seized Africans. (More on this later.) As the Renaissance led to the American and French revolutions in the late 18th century, it sparked vehement debate and warfare over the “rights of man”—which can be primarily considered the rights of already privileged men. While the same rights were later extended, at least on paper, to men and women beyond the privileged classes, it took further debate and even warfare to reach that point. Sometimes art and culture provided the inspiration, as in countless religious-themed Renaissance paintings and sculptures, that was eventually handed down to the 18th-century Americans and French, for patriotic convictions that they had been granted God-given inalienable rights. But the enactment of those rights differed starkly, as the Americans simply drove the British army out of the colonies while the French commoners exacted their bloody revenge against the nobility.

The Medici Family

In Florence, Italy, the Medicis were a powerful Catholic family. They rose from humble beginnings as traders in the 12th century to become arguably European history’s most influential clan. By the Renaissance, the family was backing Florentine art, literature, and science. They supported Galileo as well as artists, philosophers, and educators. They influenced politics and Catholicism alike; Giovanni de Medici was elected Pope Leo X in 1513. See this link from The Galileo Project for more on the Medicis.

What was the role of religion in all this? It depended. Sometimes it offered a handy rationale, such as the abominably self-serving quasi-Christian notion that forcibly seized Africans and/or their descendants were the “seed of Cain” and therefore deserved sub-human treatment. Sometimes it provided a social setting or power structure for the larger changes in society to take place, such as decades of papal corruption leading to the Catholic Church’s permission to drive natives off their homelands in the interest of building wealth. Sometimes it provided the backdrop for positive developments, such as the highly influential Medici family’s generous support of education and the arts in the interest of achieving power in the church and building a more or less positive name for themselves despite the vast scope of their power and influence. The Medicis’ generally positive reputation despite some underhanded dealings has survived, unlike the infamous Borgia family and Pope Alexander VI, which have more of a corrupt-to-the-core legacy. Curiously, Alexander’s successor was Pope Leo X—from the Medici family—whose possibly Borgia-inspired selling of indulgences launched the crisis that led to Martin Luther’s dissension. In any case, religion was a source of inspiration for improving humanity and a handy rationale for suppressing humanity alike.

But we can look beyond the historical narrative here. With all due respect to Richard Dawkins (2003), he has often missed an all-important point in his withering critique of religion: Not only Western civilization, but world history as a whole, would be starkly different had religion not played a key role in shaping it. The social power of myth is real. The Crusades, Spanish Inquisition, and the like were rather sore spots in religious history. But it is all part of our human experience, nonetheless. We wouldn’t recognize the world today without religion and its countless influences, direct and indirect, manifest or latent. Would we even be here having this discussion about religion and socio-historical dynamics without its influence? Highly doubtful! Humans were involved in all the above-named movements, all throughout recorded history.

For better or worse, throughout the course of history, especially in Europe, humans did what humans do and have always done. Sometimes they used religion—or greed—or desire for power—or some combination of all of these, and other factors—to justify their actions. Sometimes their beliefs led them to question existing religious practices, as with Martin Luther and the Catholic sale of indulgences, and form new sects in response. And sometimes their creeds inspired them to perform better actions. The evidence suggests a “rational actor” approach is the best fit for this scenario. The bottom line, in any case: Humans used religion for all these purposes and more; contrary to what Dawkins ( Ibid.) strongly suggests, religion did not use humans.

The Good…

But we will come back to Dawkins. Let’s first consider in what ways religion has helped society, as well as how it can benefit us individually. In doing so, I’m aware that some people have not had this experience. Religion can also certainly be used and abused in ways that harm people, and we will also discuss that. Meanwhile, what positives can come from religion? As we’ve seen, religion in several different forms preserved the proverbial “wisdom of the ages.” As also suggested in its history, religion also helped preserve society and social order. It’s socially stable! Religion also encourages positive social values—honesty, respect for others, obedience to law, ideas about right and wrong, love for other people, and so forth. Social stability and positive social values contribute very much to times of peace, so to the extent religion contributed to that development, we need to acknowledge that. Religion can be the focus of conflict, but also peace. Both are possible.

Social Consequences of Religion

The Good: Preserving Knowledge, Social Order and Stability, Values, Health, Social Support

The Bad: Violence, Slavery, Conflict, Corruption, Delusionary Beliefs

The Ugly: Death Cults, Abuse, Terrorism

As we know from previous readings in the course, religion also gives meaning to life and answers questions about the meaning of existence, humanity’s ultimate purpose, why theodicies and other hard-to-understand life events occur, outlines soteriology for those who seek it, and so forth. We can argue about how well religion does all of this or whether we really need religion to do all of this, but the fact of the matter is that religion has done all of this for millennia—and we have never tried living in a world where it hasn’t. So as far as that “good” aspect goes, religion carries a fair number of crucial large-scale and long-term social benefits.

Idler (2008) further identifies several relatively short-term tangible positives for individuals. These include providing an opportunity to make friends, promoting a relatively healthy diet, avoiding risky behavior and health risk factors (and parallel expectation of high life expectancy), and contributing to a sense of spiritual development as well as rest and solitude. Religion also offers an alternative perspective on life and way of understanding other people, whether in terms of how they think, why they do what they do, or both—and likely other considerations as well. Religion can also provide a reason for people to furnish assistance to others who are in need, and it tends to promote altruism rather than egoism in individuals. The most far-reaching of Idler’s conclusions are 1) the long-term health benefits that can be expected from healthy dietary and lifestyle practices and 2) the provision of support networks, which are critical in helping cope with and/or overcome life challenges as well as accomplish life goals. Both factors help explain a higher rate of life satisfaction seen among religious people. This positive outcome may or may not be attributable to the religion itself, as some argue. As one possibility, it may be a byproduct of the behavior encouraged and/or expected by the religious group; as another, it may stem from avoidance of risky lifestyle choices. Still, there is little question nonetheless that there is a distinct association and statistical correlation between religious affiliation and positive life satisfaction.

Even above and beyond that, Koenig (2012) has produced one of the most massive reviews I have ever seen of the benefits of religion on various aspects of individual and public health alike. The meta-study he has conducted—a study that examines a vast collection of other studies—has an extensive range. Want a history of mental-health treatment? Here it is. Coping studies of various disorders? There you go. The relationship of religion and spirituality to other areas of mental health ranging from well-being to depression and various disorders? You got it. Studies of religion/spirituality as related to social problems, behavioral aspects and issues, and physical health? Sure thing. Even some downsides? It’s all there. Perhaps most impressively of all, the document provides internal links to many, many of the studies it has reviewed. Though most of the research was done prior to 2012, the Koenig meta-study still establishes documentation of the positive aspects of religion and spirituality to overall human mental and physical health. So these are the upsides of how rational actors can use religion for the better in their lives.

Benefits of Strong Social Ties

“People with strong ties [including religious associations] are happier and even healthier, because in such networks members provide one another with strong emotional and material support in times of grief or trouble and someone with whom to share life’s joys and triumphs.”

Rodney Stark (2007), quoted in Everton, 2015, “Networks and Religion: Ties that Bind, Loose, Build Up, and Tear Down,” Journal of Social Structure, vol. 16, no. 10, p. 10.

The Bad…

But on the downside, as Dawkins (2003) points out, religion also has a way of seemingly bringing out the worst in people. For instance, as we saw in the case of the Crusades and Reconquista (and Saxe’s poem in Lesson 2), religious conflict is recurrent throughout history. Of course, we live in another era of conflict, including conflict that is associated with religious belief. Despite the relative tolerance of our modern American society, as underscored in American Grace (2010), there is plenty of distrust of Muslims (just ask any Trump supporter you know!), “Mormons” (including the mainstream Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, though also members of the fringe splinter groups are often considered), and several other religious groups, even in modern North America. Some of the conflict in our past over religious differences has not only continued in the present but has escalated dramatically.

Moreover, in the European-American context, humans have used religion to justify slavery, which has come at a tremendous human cost. As humans used the rationale to seize and sell other humans, even while the discourse of human rights and liberty were advancing, it set the stage to identify some humans who deserved rights and others who didn’t. Religion both helped and hindered the development of society in this way. On an equally serious and more recent note of collective self-justification, see the Catholic sexual abuse scandal, in which pedophiles among Catholic priests took advantage of their privileged positions and the church’s trust to carry out crimes against the innocent. Though only a tiny fraction of all priests were implicated, this violation of religious trust came at a heavy price in the public eye.

Furthermore, corruption within established religions has contributed to the mixing of religious and political concerns, notably in power plays such as the Spanish Inquisition. But at other times, religious abuses of power have had even more far-reaching consequences. Take, for instance, Rodrigo Borgia, who as the previously mentioned Pope Alexander VI (actually covered somewhat favorably here) is arguably history’s most corrupt head of the Catholic Church. (Of course, his successor Leo X makes a strong argument in his own right with the sale of indulgences, leading to Martin Luther's 95 Theses in 1517 that launched the formation of Protestantism.) Borgia was from Spain—a Castilian, as were King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella, who perhaps not coincidentally ruled at the same time he was elected. Borgia’s election took place in August 1492, the same year that many historians consider the Reconquista of Andalucia complete, though later in the month after Columbus sailed.

Borgia as Alexander VI established the historical parameters for the Spanish and Portuguese exploration and conquest of the Americas. Here, what were at that time the world’s two most powerful nations literally laid out their claims in their plans to conquer the world and divide all its territory between them—with the head of the world’s then-most powerful church in these pre-Protestant days (and countryman and friend of the Spanish king and queen) as the referee and dealbroker. The papal Bull from Alexander preceding the Treaty of Tordesillas established the New World territory that Spain and Portugal would be able to hold. Far from coincidentally, the arrangement in the Americas heavily preferred Spain, which claimed the bulk of the South American continent as well as all of North America. Portugal got a tiny piece of land on the far eastern tip of South America from Alexander, broadened to a small slice under the Treaty of Tordesillas.

The post-Columbus Treaty of Tordesillas (1494) dividing the world between Spain and Portugal. Image from Fun with Cy.

The same treaty, which seems in retrospect almost like a cruel practical joke, also gave Portugal claim to Africa, the Middle East, Europe (except for Spain, presumably), most of Asia and modern-day Russia, and of course half of Greenland and Antarctica. Aside from the frozen and sparsely if at all inhabitable land, most of the territory granted to Portugal was already occupied and more difficult to conquer, especially as its power faded and that of other European nations rose. Portugal still managed to colonize a sizeable portion of land—vastly expanding the territory actually granted under the treaty—that became modern-day Brazil along with a few colonies in Africa, most notably Angola and Mozambique. In short, thanks to Borgia and the subsequent treaty, the Spanish acquired most of the so-called “New World”—at least at first. Also under Borgia, Columbus and the Spanish settled and conquered Hispaniola (modern-day Haiti and the Dominican Republic), along with the other Caribbean islands. After Columbus was dismissed as governor of Hispaniola, the Spanish overlords began importing African slaves to the Caribbean after virtually destroying the native Taino, Arawak, and Carib island populations, who would not submit to slavery. And so it began… In short: Without Borgia’s (corrupt) influence, our modern world would have never taken the shape it did. Still, all this speaks less to the nature of religion per se and more to the nature of humans who used religion for their own evil purposes.

As Dawkins ( Ibid.) also points out, humans have also experienced delusions and self-defeating behavior in connection with religion. Dawkins, writing as a “true believer” in Darwinism and atheism, rather curiously deals with religion as a pathology and uses these as his Exhibit A of sorts. This strikes me as something of an overgeneralization. As said elsewhere, we generally set aside truth claims when dealing with individual experiences with religion. Yet there are some claims that just cannot be true, such as the end-of-the-world claims from pastor Harold Camping. He first predicted May 21, 2011 as the world’s end; when that date passed, the next end of the world was scheduled for October 21, 2011. Though a few voices among Camping’s followers then claimed the predicted year was wrong and the world’s end would happen on October 21, 2012 instead, even fewer people were still listening. We all still seem to be here, all such dire predictions and the coronavirus notwithstanding.

And the Ugly…

However, some of these delusions go far beyond the sadly mistaken or even imperialism. Religion has also had its fair share of outright ugly episodes, particularly in more recent years. These have included fatal delusions, abuse, and terrorism as well as outright genocide. Though decades ago, many of us are still reasonably familiar with the People’s Temple atrocity perpetrated by Jim Jones in Guyana in 1978. Jones, preaching a curious and toxic mix of separatism and egalitarianism, managed to manipulate more than 900 believers into killing themselves. In the mid-‘80s, another charismatic leader, David Koresh (formerly named Vernon Howell), took control of a Branch Davidian sect near Waco, Texas, turning it into his own religious personality cult and closing the church’s compound to outsiders over several years. In 1993, after investigating allegations of sexual abuse by Koresh—including of underage girls—and other offenses, the FBI and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms raided the sect’s compound, during which 76 members died. As a footnote, outraged Christian anti-government crusader Timothy McVeigh observed the raid, then with friends (notably Terry Nichols) planned and carried out a retaliatory bombing of a government building in Oklahoma City two years later. In another tragic incident, charismatic leader Marshall Applewhite convinced 38 Heaven's Gate followers to kill themselves in 1997.

Jim Jones, leader of the People’s Temple, preaching. Image from jonestown.sdsu.edu.

Other episodes have not involved mass suicide but have been ugly in their own right—not because they have resulted in the deaths of followers, but because the followers have used the religion to justify atrocities and even genocide against others. We saw such abuses not only in the Spanish conquest of the Americas (including the destruction of the Taino, Arawaks, and Caribs of the Caribbean islands for resisting conquest and slavery), under the leadership of the highly corrupt Alexander VI and several others who followed, but also in the forcible seizure of Africans from their homelands to be sold as slaves to Europeans. This mainly affected West and Central Africans. Sometimes the Europeans themselves did the kidnapping; at other times, the enslaved Africans were prisoners in civil wars or had been taken by other means, including previous enslavement by rival tribes. (See this intriguing fact sheet on slavery from the University of Hawaii.) Note also that in Europe, religion and slavery had actually been linked for centuries. An ethos of Christians not enslaving other Christians gradually developed, though it eventually became justifiable for a Christian to enslave a Muslim or a supposed “non-believer,” as Africans, who were generally members of various tribal religions, were considered. Whatever the accompanying rationalizations and justifications, the religion-justified dehumanization and violence that accompanied the slave trade were also ugly.

As the chattel slavery (humans-as-property) paradigm gradually took hold in Europe and the Americas in the 17th century African slave trade, the “curse of Ham” religious rationale for owning slaves took root. BTW: Let’s keep this analytically distinct from the earlier “seed of Cain” argument, which mixes religion and biology to claim blacks are inferior because they are descended from Cain. The “curse of Ham” stipulates that blacks descend from Noah’s son Ham, who was presumably cursed for his sins that he and his descendants would be slaves forever. So making them slaves was simply fulfilling God’s plan for them, right? This got to the point where some slave owners actually considered themselves as on a mission of mercy. Doubtless this was relatively benign in more rare cases where black slaves actually were treated relatively kindly as human beings, educated, and allowed to develop their talents. But when cruelty and abuse towards chattel slaves were justified by any means, including religion, that most definitely fell into the “ugly” category.

Finally, another “ugly” use of religion surfaced around the time of World War II. Like other religious practices, extremism and violence had deep historical roots. But outside of the Islamic context—and even there, generally only in cases of active warfare—rarely had aggression and hostility ever become systematized as a religious duty against entire nations and classes of people. This changed. In the early 20th century, leading into the 1930s and ‘40s, a renewed emphasis on Shinto in Japan was given a rather nationalist and extremist twist. The new form of Shinto led many soldiers to be willing to give their lives for the head of their religion, the Japanese emperor, and their country. This produced not only the notorious kamikaze pilots of World War II but also millions of dedicated soldiers and motivated citizenry. The impulse died down in Japan after significant war losses, suffering, and horror, but terror in the name of religion had entered the world’s public consciousness.

Image from abc.net.au

Terrorism, in which a particular religious interpretation can be weaponized against non-believers, is well-known in the United States, particularly in association with the September 11, 2001 attacks in New York City. Though often associated with Islamic extremists, terrorism is far from unknown in other religious contexts. It also surfaced outside of Islamic extremism late in the 20th century in the Japanese cult of Aum Shinrikyo, which planned a mustard gas attack in the Tokyo subway system. Christian terrorists are also far from unknown, as in the case of Timothy McVeigh and the Oklahoma City bombing he and several others carried out. Among Jews, the nationalistic impulse of Zionism, rooted in the historic oppression of Jews, has adherents who are violently committed, typified in the assassination of Israeli Premiere Yitzhak Rabin. Terrorism and attacks are known in virtually every world religion.

Still, the Islamic militant extremists remain the most infamous. With roots in fundamentalist and highly selective Qur’anic interpretations, they fight in the name of their religion as they believe it to be. They have not only launched murderous attacks against other Muslims who disagree, attacked critics, persecuted Christians and other religious minorities (particularly Jews), and destabilized their home countries, but they have launched all-out war against America and much of the rest of the world. Islamic terrorists have brought us everything today from the 1972 Munich Olympics bombings to 9/11 to the 2015 Paris attacks. We know the terrorists best today as al-Qaeda and the fundamentalist soldiers of the Islamic State, but there are many other lesser-known cells and groups out there as well.

It’s difficult to say whether anything is worse than terrorism, but on the short list of what is, genocide may well be at the top of the list. Religious genocide is far from unknown. The current situation with the Burmese government carrying out “ethnic cleansing” in the Rohingya Muslim Crisis is truly horrific, in which this ethnic group is being targeted for cruel treatment and merciless slaughter. See also the Chinese government’s oppression of the Uighur Muslims. This group of around 11 million has been sequestered in concentration camps and mistreated for several years in the name of purported “re-education”—a curious word for government-sanctioned religious persecution. The Burmese and Chinese governments have so far been held largely unaccountable for their actions towards the Rohingya and Uighurs, respectively, but the day may well come. We can only hope it comes in time.

In the wake of the November 2015 Islamic terror attacks in Paris, interfaith gatherings and messages of solidarity arose worldwide. People coming together after tragedies is a positive development in the aftermath of the ugliness of terrorism. Images from Flickr (above) and Pixabay.

Other episodes of religiously motivated genocide have happened in the past as well. One such was the Armenian Genocide of 1915-16, sometimes overlooked in history since it occurred in the middle of World War I and tends to be overshadowed by that significant and complex event. But nonetheless, the Islamic Turkish government—the remnants of the old Ottoman Empire—systematically executed 1.5 million Christian Armenians. To this day, Turkey remains highly reluctant to admit that this atrocity ever happened. And, of course, as is essentially common knowledge among us, Adolf Hitler blamed the Jews for a host of economic and social ills for at least two decades in 1920s to 1940s Germany, culminating in the horror of more than 6 million deaths in the Jewish Holocaust, as memorialized by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Religion can play a terrifyingly chilling role when weaponized against entire ethnic groups or “races.”

The “ugly” isn’t even necessarily all that dramatic, either. Religion can be justified to incite many forms of relatively subtle violence and overall strange yet hostile behavior. Consider the case of the Cliven Bundy family members, who were engaged in a well-publicized standoff beginning in March 2014 in Nevada over cattle grazing rights. The Bureau of Land Management declared a vast swath of land off-limits to grazing; Bundy insisted the federal government had no authority to make this decision. ( Here is the Washington Post’s timeline and background.) Furthermore, Bundy cited his own distinctive and extreme interpretation of the beliefs of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in defending his decision to take his stand. The situation escalated to a tense armed standoff in April for about two weeks between the BLM, which had obtained a court order to seize Bundy’s livestock, and the Bundy family and a sizeable group of armed paramilitary supporters. The standoff ended when the BLM decided not to enforce the court order.

A Religious Art Urban Legend

Memes claiming historical portraits of Christ are actually based on Cesare Borgia, son of Rodrigo (Pope Alexander VI), have made the rounds on social media. However, no actual historical evidence exists for this. Similar portraits of Christ existed before the Borgias, only superficial resemblances exist to potential images of Cesare, and nobody really knows for certain what either Christ or Cesare looked like anyway. Snopes, for one, considers this claim debunked.

Nearly two years later, in January 2016, Bundy’s son Ammon helped lead an armed occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Oregon that lasted several weeks. The younger Bundy not only cited anti-federal sentiment but declared he was occupying the wildlife refuge because God had commanded him to do so. This rather rash and bizarre statement also drew an immediate rebuke from the leadership of the mainstream church, disavowing this and several other positions Bundy had cited and urging a peaceful resolution with support for the humane and just rule of law.

All of this brings to mind Monica Duffy Toft’s conclusion (2006) in our Lesson 4 readings: “When religious belief is used to justify violence, in other words, wars may (a) last longer, (b) be harder to stop, and (c) be more destructive than wars in which the central issue does not involve religious practice or identity.” In short: People tend to fight longer and harder when they have become convinced that God wants them to do exactly that.

OK, let’s wrap up. Overall, the positives of religion—especially seen through a historical lens—outweigh the negatives. Not only do Idler and Koenig presumably agree, but I wouldn’t be teaching this class in good conscience if that were not the case, and certainly not in this way. But there are downsides, and significant ones, as seen—especially when religion is used to harm others. It does us no good to overlook any of those potential downsides. However, given the mixed results over long periods of time—particularly the many largely positive outcomes that contribute to social order and stability as opposed to the few that undermine them—there seems to be no good reason to fear that religion itself is some mysterious mind-poisoning force that brainwashes people into doing horrible things. Instead, history is full of human beings using religious beliefs for the better and worse alike. Whether good, bad, or ugly, or all of these at once, we have used religion to make us exactly what we are.

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