Why is religion...

[Dill]

(07-09-2017, 02:22 PM)xxlt Wrote: As usual, interesting take. I think there is a chicken and egg thing though, and I would be willing to flip your line of thought around a bit. Rather than identity being threatened and people rallying around religion I think it often goes in the opposite direction. People rally around religion and it is their identity, and part of the operative system of keeping it that way is to convince the faithful there are constant threats to their religious identity. Godless communism will destroy our church if we don't fight them over there before they come over here and Sharia Law will destroy our superior faith if we don't fight them over there... don't those sound like familiar ideas that set people up to back Korea, Vietnam, and Iraq? If the faithful weren't in constant fear of some "bear in the woods" that was gonna come and poop in their temple I am not so sure they would be so quick to send Johnny marching off to battle (again and again and again). I have a degree of respect for religion, particularly the more universal themes running through it as highlighted most effectively and beautifully by Joseph Campbell, but I think you and Bels are letting institutional religion off the hook too easily in this discussion.

I'm not a big supporter of institutionalized religion either, or religion in general. I just think it is overrated as a "cause" of so many misfortunes like war. Or worse than overrated, focusing on religion obscures the real causes. People treat religions in monolithic, ahistorical terms, when all the world religions are multifarious and changing over time and space and mixing with other religions and "isms."

Also, religion is rarely separable from identity. People don't see a need to "rally" unless they feel threatened in some way. Your examples seem to me of people using religion to garner and maintain political power. But the people convincing the faithful of a Communist threat may not be religious at all, just as, back in the 80s and 90s, many Republican leaders who were not particularly religious or pro-life nevertheless immediately recognized the value of becoming so. In every religious country, people who want power, or feel genuinely threatened, understand this and appeal to religion by elevating fear of threats to that religion.

But to continue your "flip" tactic, once people are embedded in some religious beliefs, and those beliefs are in some way challenged, then yes, it makes sense to see religion as a cause.  E.g., in the Middle East, there is a great hostility to the theory of evolution among Muslims. That sometimes makes it hard to teach science in some universities. It also helps cast Western influences as threatening, to be opposed. I can't imagine Buddhists being rallied by opposition to modern biology. So which religion people embrace, which variety or sect, can certainly determine what they perceive as a threat.