Religiocity (Part1)
Recently I was watching a docu-series on cults and extreme religions in America and I was watching the sixth episode, which is documenting the Twelve Tribes (Est ~1977) it dawned on me that there is the potential that these extreme off-shoots of mainstream religion might point us to the inevitability that all religions are founded in similar circumstance, and are as a result, complete malarkey.
We could propose a couple of things that I think would be difficult for anyone to refute. The first is, like I said above, a small group of individuals within a culture took the premise of their tribes spiritual mythology to a fundamentalist extreme. This likely happened many times, but one particular iteration possessed the right recipe to endure long enough for elders of that society to realize that the religious sect in question possessed the tools that could effectively govern a population with rules rooted in morality. The second proposal is that the resurfacing of fundamentalist sects throughout history point to the illegitimacy or falsehood that the broader more moderate belief system is rooted in. In other words, we can conclude that they are likely rooted in bullshit.
Extremes.
While we can easily recognize that there exists fundamentalist sects within religions and we can demonstrate how such sects are destructive, hypocritical, and dangerous, we seldom see or recognize that there are more liberal, or anti-fundamentalist sects that also emerge. The Children of God were once such sect, or perhaps better put, cult. They began in the late 1960's with a Hippie-free-love interpretation of Christian doctrine. This involved polygamous behaviors and group sex, orgies, etc. and evolved into condoning children as young as 12 years to begin having sex, which evolved into such young persons marrying and having sex with people their grandparents age.
The point I'd like to make is that both extremes are unhealthy (liberal and conservative), what does that tell us about the rest? Could it be that the middle-sects are merely watered down by the respective cultures that play host to these religions? I'm mainly looking at Islam and Christianity in this context but we could look at Judaism as well, and there are of course those well documented Buddhist and Hindu-based cults.
Judaism evolved into what it is in part due to the fact that there was a schism between the Tribe of Judah and the ten tribes that made up the rest of the kingdom of Israel in ancient times. They split off and kept control of Jerusalem, whereas the tribes of the north founded a new capital and temple. Unfortunately for them the Assyrians invaded and broke up the kingdom and banishing the tribes (at least the prominent members of the tribes). When Assyria tried this against Judah they failed to take Jerusalem as it was well provisioned and quite fortified. The surviving tribe of Judah took this as a sign that their more exclusive, conservative, and perhaps even more fundamental interpretation of Hebrew scripture was the true path of God. They had validation. The scriptures of their prophets endured whereas those of the Northern kingdom of Israel did not. Going forward, the Judeans or Jews frowned upon individuals that had survived in the north, these tribal remnants also inter-married with non-Hebrew populations and the Jews saw this as a sort of sacrilege. Some of these people would later be called Samaritans. In either case, Judah was simply lucky to survive and endure due to circumstance, God did not favor them or rescue them, it was all about supply lines, fortifications, and economics. History would indicate that this surviving tribe was more fundamental, or perhaps even innovated some of their own fundamentals, when compared to the lost northern tribes.
Revelation.
Going back to the documentary, a girl of about 12 years in the Twelve Tribes Cult (which still exists today) was falsely accused of messing with her father's guitar by a boy (whom probably did it himself), when she insisted that it was not her and that she knew better than to tamper with the instrument the boy was apparently believed over her in this patriarchal system. Shock. As a result she was confined to her room and not to even get off her bed. She was allowed one meal a day, which was brought to her by a different individual each day whom also pleaded with her to tell the truth. So the girl began to pray to God to reveal to her father and the others that she was in fact innocent of the accusations. She realized that when her parents and the elders told her that God had told them that she in fact did tamper with the guitar and she should tell the truth, that they were all full of crap. God had not answered her prayers and he had not spoke to the adults, she then questioned everything they had told her regarding God her whole life. She had glimpsed what was outside the cave and now knew what the shadows really were.
This is where I began considering the possibility that these cults might be the litmus test of a broader truth. It's all bullshit. That is not to say that these holy books do not contain wisdom regarding morality and that which is destructive to society, just that perhaps we should not regard them as possessing empirical truths. Perhaps they have some historical accounts, but perhaps not facts -though to be fair most historical documents present a perspective of an event. We already know that much that is asserted by the Bible, the Quran, the Book of Mormon is provably false. The world was not created in six days, Mohammad was not attacked by Gabriel in a cave (Maybe something demonic, or psychotic), Joseph Smith did not perceive golden tablets in his hat written in ancient (or 'reformed') Egyptian that only he could read. With all these lies, what else is claimed in these texts as absolute truth that we should question or discard? And if we'd like to still argue that they possess wisdom and that is their value, I would retort that Greeks, Celts, Egyptians, Chinese and many others wrote about the same concepts without the influence of a central faith nor the idea of an all-powerful, central god.
Consequence
The most useful concept to come out of organized religion is the idea that there is an eternal consequence for actions in this life. Consequence above all things regulates human behavior, bad behavior in particular. We have laws and punishments for breaking those laws, which incentives us to behave in accordance with what the broader society has deemed appropriate behavior, unless we believe we can get away with it -an important distinction. Some of my conservative Christian friends assert that since America has started leaving the church there has been a corresponding increase in immorality and crime and that this is because people are nor longer concerned with the eternal consequence, only whether secular law will result in a consequence and perhaps how severe it might be. At the end of WWII the question was not whether you attended church, it was where you attended church. Today believers in the corporate world are guarded about to whom they share their beliefs, faith is out of fashion.
Normative Doctrine
One issue we have is that perceptions of what is normative within a society are fluid. Half a century ago homosexuals were not tolerated here in America, this is partly due to the influence of Christianity, and Christianity doesn't speak well on the subject. Today things have changed, even Christianity. We all think that it is better now right? Other groups of people with what we might call non-standard attractions have taken notes on how homosexuality has gained acceptance in the broader society. We know about Trans-folks, but have you ever heard of MAPs? Minor-Attracted-Persons? We typically call them pedophiles. They are mimicking the path that homosexuals took in decades past, clearly we can see that there us a astronomical difference between a couple of chaps or ladies being attracted to one another and a 50-year-old man fantasizing about 10-year-old kids, I would never compare the two. I have LGB friends that are dear to me, all I have for a MAP is a kick in their junk... my only point here is to demonstrate the fluidity of society and what it deems acceptable.
Fruit
Does all this mean that in America, Christianity was providing an overall good, and now that it is out of fashion we are in a moral decline? What are the goods of religions? I cannot comment about Islam or Judaism but Christianity has pulled many folks out of the Gehenna of life. One of the greatest paths of evidence that Christians point to is the effectiveness that the religion has in helping those with addiction. This religion like its fundamentalist offshoots makes wild assertions regarding the nature of the universe and the condition of humanity. The best evidence in support of Christianity is the result it has on people, there are bad people in every religion because there are just bad people in general. For the most part Christianity enriches the lives of its adherents, at least those that do not approach it as a hobby or a life-accessory. So it is most effective when it is fully adopted, but, sometimes a misguided and charismatic person gets heavy into the fundamentals and starts a cult. This seems paradoxical, in that it (Scripture) needs to be taken very seriously, but if taken too literally or perhaps fundamentally it then does harm. Or perhaps better put, the people do harm. We can look at the last 2000 years and see much good and much harm, mostly people these days would highlight the harm... from burning witches to the torture of the Inquisition, but I might remind myself that these awful acts took place not because of Christianity but despite Christianity. Christianity does not teach to torture confessions out of people, but it happened anyway. Christ never preached burning pagans or witches alive, much to the contrary actually. But it happened anyway.
Secular Sin
I suppose the important question to ask is whether society can function as a total good without the consequence of eternal reward or eternal damnation? Who actually believes either anymore? Maybe we should consider the legacy we leave behind as our immortality, be it damned or exalted. What do we leave for our descendants? One would think we should at least for care that, I would think that most would agree that going beyond our immediate descendants is also important. Our community, our society, the fate of our planet should all be things a moral person would consider. Too many people are prone to not care what happens once they cease to exist unless they believe that something of themselves persists in some fashion beyond bodily death. We should also factor in the procrastination of accountability, "Someone else will take car of it, I can make changes tomorrow...". Even if we solve this bit we neglect the behavioral tendencies for us to behave in a selfish manner. One can be a caretaker of the environment and still be a thief or an unfaithful person, immoral behavior yes, but not as legacy-impacting as trashing the environment or starting a war.
One way to address immorality without the concept of eternal consequences is to go the way of nations like North Korea, but those methods themselves are immoral and thus a house divided in its own hypocrisy. Strict and harsh societies routinely end in violent revolution.
What about group identity, like nationalism? There are instances where this has been disastrous but also instances of success. Is it enough to unify a people throughout the ages? Are we doomed to form, collapse, and re-form over and over again? What if the nationalism needed was one that unified us all as a species and planet? We would need to be unified against something (hence the need for unification), perhaps the discovery of alien intelligence as the fictional series Star Trek asserted. While in that fiction Earth united, there wasn't the removal of immoral behavior, a very rosy fiction regardless. Perhaps a secular solution does not exist, and this is the dilemma at which I keep arriving. One of the attractions of religion and in turn cults is this diagnosis, "The world out there is evil", "People have turned away from that which is righteous and to that which is selfish" -who can argue? We are driven by consumerism and/or hedonistic behavior... "do what feels good..."
Where does this leave us? It is apparent that our society as a group will fail to act wholly in accordance with that which we'd all agree is morally sound, unless there is a universally accepted belief in some eternal consequence for bad behavior to be judged by something or someone that cannot be duped and that sees all. The fact that this observation can be made makes sound the proposition of Christianity, which asserts that no matter how many rules we make and try to follow, that we will fail to be truly good all the time. Rules alone won't get us there, but belief in a being/god/person that is transformative of our characters enacts a change upon both our individual and our collective character, so that we are inspired to behave in a manner that is not in accordance with our selfish nature. Thus the motivation for proper behavior is not necessarily fear, the fear of eternal consequences, the fear of judgement, the fear of a Hell of suffering and physical torment (an innovation of Dark-Age clergy that is perpetuated enthusiastically by American Evangelicals), rather the motivation stems primarily from the acknowledgement of our imperfection and the love of someone whom suffered and bled so that we could finally see the chains of our inequity. The problem then becomes belief. We cannot just believe something or in someone, if we are not convinced we do not believe. Another nagging question here is whether the trans-formative nature of Christianity would be nearly effective if there wasn't a promise of an after-life? Again eternal consequence. I know I asserted above that for many Christians it is not the primary driver... but it is still there. If the answer is 'yes', then perhaps transformation can come from non-religious philosophy... ah shit, starting to sound like a cult!
It seems that, every time I set out to diagnose society and humanity at large of its symptoms, the deeper theological tenants of Christianity surface as if to say, "Yeah, that's what we've said!". Typically my motivation is to illustrate the usefulness of religion in general but also to characterize that the inoculation that society needs against its own inequity needn't be rooted in some ancient desert-religion, but then there's Christianity. It's really very annoying that way. Perhaps we should consider the possibility that most of the world's religions evolved out of or into a cult led by some very smart and charismatic persons, but that there might also be an exception to this norm. Some of us might even go along with the idea that Christianity too was founded by a crazy man and his convinced and convincing followers, but he just had the right ideas and the right implementation of those ideas. Unlike other founders, Joseph Smith, Muhammad, Jim Jones, and many others, Jesus and his disciples sought no profit from their movement, nor did they attain any. Nearly all went to their early deaths broke, professing His message and their faith in Him. Perhaps they were crazy zealots, but unlike the followers and zealots of the aforementioned groups and leaders, none of these disciples harmed anyone else. Nearly four centuries would pass before a violent empire would adopt this religion and weaponize it against those they sought to subject. Even still, much of the spread and subjugation of assimilated cultures was done so peacefully, which is unheard of in the ancient world and definitely a first. Every time I attempt to give Christianity a bad wrap I find that it is the best we've got, and that it is people that fail the religion, and not a religion that fails people.
Throughout the last 2 millennia, and the last five or six centuries in particular, Christianity has produced many innovations, some of which have been an overall positive for humanity and some that have been regressive for humanity. One thing that historians often agree upon is that the life of Jesus of Nazareth has been, to date, the pinnacle of human history and that no other life has impacted the world and the course of history in such a way.
Next I will take a look a bit deeper at the good, the bad, and the ugly of this history. Until then, Peace...
We could propose a couple of things that I think would be difficult for anyone to refute. The first is, like I said above, a small group of individuals within a culture took the premise of their tribes spiritual mythology to a fundamentalist extreme. This likely happened many times, but one particular iteration possessed the right recipe to endure long enough for elders of that society to realize that the religious sect in question possessed the tools that could effectively govern a population with rules rooted in morality. The second proposal is that the resurfacing of fundamentalist sects throughout history point to the illegitimacy or falsehood that the broader more moderate belief system is rooted in. In other words, we can conclude that they are likely rooted in bullshit.
Extremes.
While we can easily recognize that there exists fundamentalist sects within religions and we can demonstrate how such sects are destructive, hypocritical, and dangerous, we seldom see or recognize that there are more liberal, or anti-fundamentalist sects that also emerge. The Children of God were once such sect, or perhaps better put, cult. They began in the late 1960's with a Hippie-free-love interpretation of Christian doctrine. This involved polygamous behaviors and group sex, orgies, etc. and evolved into condoning children as young as 12 years to begin having sex, which evolved into such young persons marrying and having sex with people their grandparents age.
The point I'd like to make is that both extremes are unhealthy (liberal and conservative), what does that tell us about the rest? Could it be that the middle-sects are merely watered down by the respective cultures that play host to these religions? I'm mainly looking at Islam and Christianity in this context but we could look at Judaism as well, and there are of course those well documented Buddhist and Hindu-based cults.
Judaism evolved into what it is in part due to the fact that there was a schism between the Tribe of Judah and the ten tribes that made up the rest of the kingdom of Israel in ancient times. They split off and kept control of Jerusalem, whereas the tribes of the north founded a new capital and temple. Unfortunately for them the Assyrians invaded and broke up the kingdom and banishing the tribes (at least the prominent members of the tribes). When Assyria tried this against Judah they failed to take Jerusalem as it was well provisioned and quite fortified. The surviving tribe of Judah took this as a sign that their more exclusive, conservative, and perhaps even more fundamental interpretation of Hebrew scripture was the true path of God. They had validation. The scriptures of their prophets endured whereas those of the Northern kingdom of Israel did not. Going forward, the Judeans or Jews frowned upon individuals that had survived in the north, these tribal remnants also inter-married with non-Hebrew populations and the Jews saw this as a sort of sacrilege. Some of these people would later be called Samaritans. In either case, Judah was simply lucky to survive and endure due to circumstance, God did not favor them or rescue them, it was all about supply lines, fortifications, and economics. History would indicate that this surviving tribe was more fundamental, or perhaps even innovated some of their own fundamentals, when compared to the lost northern tribes.
Revelation.
Going back to the documentary, a girl of about 12 years in the Twelve Tribes Cult (which still exists today) was falsely accused of messing with her father's guitar by a boy (whom probably did it himself), when she insisted that it was not her and that she knew better than to tamper with the instrument the boy was apparently believed over her in this patriarchal system. Shock. As a result she was confined to her room and not to even get off her bed. She was allowed one meal a day, which was brought to her by a different individual each day whom also pleaded with her to tell the truth. So the girl began to pray to God to reveal to her father and the others that she was in fact innocent of the accusations. She realized that when her parents and the elders told her that God had told them that she in fact did tamper with the guitar and she should tell the truth, that they were all full of crap. God had not answered her prayers and he had not spoke to the adults, she then questioned everything they had told her regarding God her whole life. She had glimpsed what was outside the cave and now knew what the shadows really were.
This is where I began considering the possibility that these cults might be the litmus test of a broader truth. It's all bullshit. That is not to say that these holy books do not contain wisdom regarding morality and that which is destructive to society, just that perhaps we should not regard them as possessing empirical truths. Perhaps they have some historical accounts, but perhaps not facts -though to be fair most historical documents present a perspective of an event. We already know that much that is asserted by the Bible, the Quran, the Book of Mormon is provably false. The world was not created in six days, Mohammad was not attacked by Gabriel in a cave (Maybe something demonic, or psychotic), Joseph Smith did not perceive golden tablets in his hat written in ancient (or 'reformed') Egyptian that only he could read. With all these lies, what else is claimed in these texts as absolute truth that we should question or discard? And if we'd like to still argue that they possess wisdom and that is their value, I would retort that Greeks, Celts, Egyptians, Chinese and many others wrote about the same concepts without the influence of a central faith nor the idea of an all-powerful, central god.
Consequence
The most useful concept to come out of organized religion is the idea that there is an eternal consequence for actions in this life. Consequence above all things regulates human behavior, bad behavior in particular. We have laws and punishments for breaking those laws, which incentives us to behave in accordance with what the broader society has deemed appropriate behavior, unless we believe we can get away with it -an important distinction. Some of my conservative Christian friends assert that since America has started leaving the church there has been a corresponding increase in immorality and crime and that this is because people are nor longer concerned with the eternal consequence, only whether secular law will result in a consequence and perhaps how severe it might be. At the end of WWII the question was not whether you attended church, it was where you attended church. Today believers in the corporate world are guarded about to whom they share their beliefs, faith is out of fashion.
Normative Doctrine
One issue we have is that perceptions of what is normative within a society are fluid. Half a century ago homosexuals were not tolerated here in America, this is partly due to the influence of Christianity, and Christianity doesn't speak well on the subject. Today things have changed, even Christianity. We all think that it is better now right? Other groups of people with what we might call non-standard attractions have taken notes on how homosexuality has gained acceptance in the broader society. We know about Trans-folks, but have you ever heard of MAPs? Minor-Attracted-Persons? We typically call them pedophiles. They are mimicking the path that homosexuals took in decades past, clearly we can see that there us a astronomical difference between a couple of chaps or ladies being attracted to one another and a 50-year-old man fantasizing about 10-year-old kids, I would never compare the two. I have LGB friends that are dear to me, all I have for a MAP is a kick in their junk... my only point here is to demonstrate the fluidity of society and what it deems acceptable.
Fruit
Does all this mean that in America, Christianity was providing an overall good, and now that it is out of fashion we are in a moral decline? What are the goods of religions? I cannot comment about Islam or Judaism but Christianity has pulled many folks out of the Gehenna of life. One of the greatest paths of evidence that Christians point to is the effectiveness that the religion has in helping those with addiction. This religion like its fundamentalist offshoots makes wild assertions regarding the nature of the universe and the condition of humanity. The best evidence in support of Christianity is the result it has on people, there are bad people in every religion because there are just bad people in general. For the most part Christianity enriches the lives of its adherents, at least those that do not approach it as a hobby or a life-accessory. So it is most effective when it is fully adopted, but, sometimes a misguided and charismatic person gets heavy into the fundamentals and starts a cult. This seems paradoxical, in that it (Scripture) needs to be taken very seriously, but if taken too literally or perhaps fundamentally it then does harm. Or perhaps better put, the people do harm. We can look at the last 2000 years and see much good and much harm, mostly people these days would highlight the harm... from burning witches to the torture of the Inquisition, but I might remind myself that these awful acts took place not because of Christianity but despite Christianity. Christianity does not teach to torture confessions out of people, but it happened anyway. Christ never preached burning pagans or witches alive, much to the contrary actually. But it happened anyway.
Secular Sin
I suppose the important question to ask is whether society can function as a total good without the consequence of eternal reward or eternal damnation? Who actually believes either anymore? Maybe we should consider the legacy we leave behind as our immortality, be it damned or exalted. What do we leave for our descendants? One would think we should at least for care that, I would think that most would agree that going beyond our immediate descendants is also important. Our community, our society, the fate of our planet should all be things a moral person would consider. Too many people are prone to not care what happens once they cease to exist unless they believe that something of themselves persists in some fashion beyond bodily death. We should also factor in the procrastination of accountability, "Someone else will take car of it, I can make changes tomorrow...". Even if we solve this bit we neglect the behavioral tendencies for us to behave in a selfish manner. One can be a caretaker of the environment and still be a thief or an unfaithful person, immoral behavior yes, but not as legacy-impacting as trashing the environment or starting a war.
One way to address immorality without the concept of eternal consequences is to go the way of nations like North Korea, but those methods themselves are immoral and thus a house divided in its own hypocrisy. Strict and harsh societies routinely end in violent revolution.
What about group identity, like nationalism? There are instances where this has been disastrous but also instances of success. Is it enough to unify a people throughout the ages? Are we doomed to form, collapse, and re-form over and over again? What if the nationalism needed was one that unified us all as a species and planet? We would need to be unified against something (hence the need for unification), perhaps the discovery of alien intelligence as the fictional series Star Trek asserted. While in that fiction Earth united, there wasn't the removal of immoral behavior, a very rosy fiction regardless. Perhaps a secular solution does not exist, and this is the dilemma at which I keep arriving. One of the attractions of religion and in turn cults is this diagnosis, "The world out there is evil", "People have turned away from that which is righteous and to that which is selfish" -who can argue? We are driven by consumerism and/or hedonistic behavior... "do what feels good..."
Where does this leave us? It is apparent that our society as a group will fail to act wholly in accordance with that which we'd all agree is morally sound, unless there is a universally accepted belief in some eternal consequence for bad behavior to be judged by something or someone that cannot be duped and that sees all. The fact that this observation can be made makes sound the proposition of Christianity, which asserts that no matter how many rules we make and try to follow, that we will fail to be truly good all the time. Rules alone won't get us there, but belief in a being/god/person that is transformative of our characters enacts a change upon both our individual and our collective character, so that we are inspired to behave in a manner that is not in accordance with our selfish nature. Thus the motivation for proper behavior is not necessarily fear, the fear of eternal consequences, the fear of judgement, the fear of a Hell of suffering and physical torment (an innovation of Dark-Age clergy that is perpetuated enthusiastically by American Evangelicals), rather the motivation stems primarily from the acknowledgement of our imperfection and the love of someone whom suffered and bled so that we could finally see the chains of our inequity. The problem then becomes belief. We cannot just believe something or in someone, if we are not convinced we do not believe. Another nagging question here is whether the trans-formative nature of Christianity would be nearly effective if there wasn't a promise of an after-life? Again eternal consequence. I know I asserted above that for many Christians it is not the primary driver... but it is still there. If the answer is 'yes', then perhaps transformation can come from non-religious philosophy... ah shit, starting to sound like a cult!
It seems that, every time I set out to diagnose society and humanity at large of its symptoms, the deeper theological tenants of Christianity surface as if to say, "Yeah, that's what we've said!". Typically my motivation is to illustrate the usefulness of religion in general but also to characterize that the inoculation that society needs against its own inequity needn't be rooted in some ancient desert-religion, but then there's Christianity. It's really very annoying that way. Perhaps we should consider the possibility that most of the world's religions evolved out of or into a cult led by some very smart and charismatic persons, but that there might also be an exception to this norm. Some of us might even go along with the idea that Christianity too was founded by a crazy man and his convinced and convincing followers, but he just had the right ideas and the right implementation of those ideas. Unlike other founders, Joseph Smith, Muhammad, Jim Jones, and many others, Jesus and his disciples sought no profit from their movement, nor did they attain any. Nearly all went to their early deaths broke, professing His message and their faith in Him. Perhaps they were crazy zealots, but unlike the followers and zealots of the aforementioned groups and leaders, none of these disciples harmed anyone else. Nearly four centuries would pass before a violent empire would adopt this religion and weaponize it against those they sought to subject. Even still, much of the spread and subjugation of assimilated cultures was done so peacefully, which is unheard of in the ancient world and definitely a first. Every time I attempt to give Christianity a bad wrap I find that it is the best we've got, and that it is people that fail the religion, and not a religion that fails people.
Throughout the last 2 millennia, and the last five or six centuries in particular, Christianity has produced many innovations, some of which have been an overall positive for humanity and some that have been regressive for humanity. One thing that historians often agree upon is that the life of Jesus of Nazareth has been, to date, the pinnacle of human history and that no other life has impacted the world and the course of history in such a way.
Next I will take a look a bit deeper at the good, the bad, and the ugly of this history. Until then, Peace...
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-J