The Harm of the Religious Experience

Intro

In a previous post I defended the religious experience as valuable to human existence because of the things it offers to individuals that have no direct, competitive substitute in secular society. The three greatest benefits of the religious experience include community, moral teachings, and prayer. Having all three under the same roof increases the benefit tremendously because members of the group meet regularly to learn and practice what is taught.

What cannot be completely described, what can only be felt, is the reinforcing feelings of peace and tranquility that result from following what one believes are the absolute-ly true commandments of a Creator that has one's spiritual path in his control. Being surrounded by others who believe the exact same creed with equal conviction enhances the experience. There are unique groups of religious followers who sacrifice everything for the good of each other with a long-term focus on winning the ultimate prize – immortality. The awe it inspires leads the devout to live in a state of tingly assurance where he cannot believe the world is missing out on such a glorious, liberating truth.

Here I will pose a seemingly random question: Is revelation a reliable means of obtaining knowledge?

The question is not the focus of my argument but should serve as a general wake up call to those who view alleged pronouncements from a divine being as heard by someone else as a legitimate form of learning about anything. After all, what matters is not what makes us feel peaceful, tranquil, and liberated, but what is true.

Make no mistake, fundamentalist monotheists deserve respect for the courage they have to affirm the truth of their faith in spite of so much secular opposition (1).  This argument is focused on the devout follower of a faith and not the person who inherited the label “Protestant” from their parents. If someone says they are a Christian, I assume they mean they believe Jesus Christ is the Son of God, their Savior and Redeemer, and the one who will come again to judge the living and the dead.

Religion is not exempt from scrutiny to determine whether it is true or false. Spiritualists, cafeteria Catholics, and nominal believers will water down the argument by claiming religion falls into a separate category that cannot be evaluated in terms of absolute truth. They say the metaphysical nature of the subject renders it outside the realm of hard scientific or historical scrutiny. They say God's decrees are revealed, not scientifically tested; confirmation is felt, not reasoned to the full extent; and the coexistence among faiths is preferable to determining the truth or falsehood of any particular faith.

The focus of this argument is on the devout, who will be much more offended by criticism because it attacks the cause to which they have dedicated their existence. They actually believe their faith is true, something that infuses their actions with such conviction. Nominalists and spiritualists I hope will be persuaded to avoid any temptation to further their quest toward deeper religiosity.

Religious Harm, Micro to Macro

Religious believers have made a tremendous impact on helping the poor, on promoting peace, standing for social justice, and many other aspects of human existence. Having shown some heartfelt appreciation for the religious experience in my previous post, I would like to now focus on its harm, which turns out to be greater than the benefit it provides. The criticism is primarily against Christianity, but because of the similarities among the major monotheistic religions, the critique applies to them as well. I argue that the harm of the religious experience has to do with the damage it does to self esteem, relationships, and politics. It infects the individual, then two or more individuals, then a political system.

Intro to Self Esteem – Original Sin

Religions were started and continue to flourish because man from the beginning of time has tried to find answers to philosophical questions like, Who am I, What is my condition, How can I change, and Where will I go when I die? Many answers are provided by the major religions, but the one the major monotheistic religions use as their starting point is the belief that man is born in a sinful state which separates him from God. He must follow God's commands if he is to be set right with God to live a devout life and go to heaven.

Accepting the premise that man is born sinful is an essential part of the teaching of these faiths. Without a spiritual problem like sin there is no need for a spiritual solution. The religions have taken the bigness of space and time, and contrasted it with the smallness of man, using it to their advantage to demonstrate the gulf that exists between man and his grasp of the universe. Over time, man has gained more and more knowledge, making the gulf smaller and God's job more difficult. Still, the drum of original sin lives on.

The damage of this central tenet to one's psyche is obvious. If one is born sinful, one has no ability to change one's nature. Without God's solution, say the religions, the rest of man's life is a futile struggle for forgiveness, redemption, and ethical perfection. As soon as a religion gets a person to associate one's guilt, bad habits, failures, and passions to an inherited state of sinfulness over which one has no control but to obey, the believer has no choice but to accept the prescribed Atonement.

There is nothing wrong with a great big divine excuse to behave in a moral way, especially if the belief system in question is providing peace to the believer. But the temporary and intermittent relief that the feeling of forgiveness these faiths provide is completely overshadowed by the nagging invisible third party that is God hanging over one's shoulder. Man will continue to struggle with guilt, anger, pride, and failure even after he has drunk the spiritual medicine of Atonement because man is not perfect. The difference between the religious believer and the secularist at this point is that the secularist is concerned about the big philosophical questions, but is not so preoccupied with the sin and death part to allow it to be all-consuming. The secularist does not associate his behavior and feelings with a sinful nature because to him it's just a myth. But the religious man has already bought into his religion's spiritual solution so he will associate his failures with his own spiritual unworthiness. (insert footnote – this is how cults get members. the believer has accepted central tenets so moves to a different congregation that really has the truth). The most harmful consequence of this internal mental struggle between God's will and man's is that it reduces man to a groveling servant, willing to do whatever it takes to obey the commands set before him. Man's natural need to survive, set goals, and achieve success are hampered by self-doubt that he is not fulfilling God's will, but instead chasing after worldly satisfaction.

So let's recap. Man is faced with metaphysical questions about existence. Answers are provided by religions that include the sinfulness of man as a central problem. Man follows the commands of God to get rid of his guilt and live forever. Man is then the slave of the faith that he follows. What results is a feeling of peace and forgiveness that are bought at the expense of what I call “self esteem.”

Self Esteem

Self esteem is a profound psychological need that establishes the foundation for success. It is a feeling of self worth. It provides humans with the motivation to move forward in life against obstacles, and to take pride in success having achieved one's goals. Unfortunately, “religion is not only incompatible with self esteem, but actively destroys it by promoting premises that are against a successful, moral, and happy life” (2.)  The premises religions promote are that man is sinful from birth, that knowledge is gained by faith and not reason, and that ethical perfection is the sacrificing of one's self for others.

Think about everything that a person must do to overcome the obstacles he faces every day: Hunger, gravity, inertia, discouragement, sickness, tiredness. In order to furnish the means of existence and move on into the future, man must have enough reason to face the obstacles and achieve goals. Man uses his mind to support his own existence, first by acquiring knowledge through the senses; using the knowledge to fashion tools to make food, shelter, and clothing; then establishing a set of short and long-term goals.

When man is told in the midst of this ongoing activity that he has a sinful nature that is the cause of his failures and unhappiness, he begins to doubt himself. The free will and clean slate he thought he had from birth is a figment of his imagination. He is told that only by substituting his own goals for that of the One with the ability to fix his problem of original sin can he truly achieve happiness. Desperately, he submits. The feeling of “rightness” with God enters his heart, but the failure and self-doubt continues, for those teachings are riddled throughout the texts expounded upon by religious teachers. Man must continue to exist IN SPITE of his sinful nature because he is never able to overcome it.

I must emphasize the mental shift that results from succumbing to the idea of original sin. Until a certain point in his existence, man has acquired knowledge through the senses, using his reason to understand the world. Some things are unexplained, but man presses on, confident that through the same method used his whole life, he will grow to understand life's mysteries. Rest is granted, food is harvested, goals are achieved. All of a sudden, man is told from revelation that his goals are not correct, that his nature is not what he thought, and that he must alter his goals and activities to align with a cosmic plan! Instantly, man spends less time acquiring knowledge empirically and more time acquiring them through revelation. He constantly doubts his own conclusions about the world, instead relying on faith, even when the teachings of the faith do not make reasonable sense.

Man will go through an emotional rollercoaster on the faith journey, one minute fervently praising the Lord's name in worship, then another crying in a corner because of ethical failures. Man will attempt to achieve the goal of ethical perfection according to the demands of his faith with as much fervor as he does for his own existence in the worldly realm. But the ethical goal preached by many faiths is self-sacrifice above all else. Every believer recognizes the difficulty of this striving toward ethical perfection eventually because at what point does one stop thinking about one's self and start thinking about others? Ethical perfection can only be achieved by self-immolation, which is why Jesus of Nazareth is held in the highest regard in the Christian faith. Ethical perfection is a slow path to death.

Relationships

There is no doubt that when an individual commits his heart and soul to a cause dictated by God that his relationships with his fellow man will change as well. Have you ever noticed how an extremely committed believer will try his utmost to sneak in the topic of spirituality when having a discussion? It makes perfect sense that a person will want to discuss what they spend their entire life contemplating. But it's not mere discussions many are after, it's proselytizing. Love God, love your neighbor, then convert your neighbor.

When the secularist sits among a group of friends the conversation is free to grow organically in any direction. The committed believer, on the other hand, has an agenda to discuss religion. The believer views humanity in two separate classes – saved and unsaved. Every interaction with others is an opportunity to convert another person, to save them from the life of sin, and bring them into the fold. Constant evangelism is exhausting. Eventually stubborn friends will be pushed away and the believer will gravitate exclusively toward those already in the club.

Many faiths preach the believer to abandon everything for God, even family. In some ways it makes sense. If the cause to which a person has dedicated himself is cosmic, sacrificing family is a small price to pay. After all, there is a whole family of believers welcoming him into their flock. You might know someone in your own family who has gone to the extreme end of religious belief and won't talk to anyone in the family that isn't a part of that belief system.

To be fair, not all religious folk feel the need to convert their friends and family. But think about the tendency to lean forever in that direction. If church is attended at least once per week, prayers are said at least once per day, a bible study meets once per week, and on top of everything, the person has committed their mind to the religious cause, refraining from the discussion would be more difficult than indulging! If one believes the biggest problem for individuals (extended to humanity) is that the problem of original sin needs to be addressed, what follows is the conviction that friends and family will not be truly happy until they fix that problem. If they don't see it as a problem the believer will be consciously or unconsciously be making case for it.

Politics

Every human being lives under some form of political system. A collection of individuals with similar ideals grant power to a group of leaders into which they entrust the use of physical force to govern the collection. Laws and guns allow the leaders to maintain order. Leaders legislate with votes and the citizens vote in legislators. This is a political system in its most basic form. Every citizen has a different viewpoint on how society should operate. It is the clashing of this variety of viewpoints that make politics extremely complicated.

I concede the point that in its most abstract principles, the fundamentals of any system of government, being based in political philosophy, have a metaphysical element that involves axioms and premises: “We hold these truths to be self evident”, “We have been endowed by our Creator with inalienable rights”, “In order to have laws we must understand right and wrong,” etc. Evangelicals use the term “Judeo-Christian values” and the 10 Commandments as being foundational to our system of government in the United States. This is a stretch, but I will concede that point as well. But the problem with faith influencing political decisions in its most harmless form, is not the belief that there is a Creator who has given humans rights, but that there is no one religious document, some mana from heaven that is agreed upon worldwide that defines what these rights are and how they are to be used in a system of secular government.

The complications that arise from using one particular faith to influence a political system is why systems of government have evolved over the centuries away from theocracies toward democracies. Getting religion out of politics frees people from the shackles every belief system inevitably tries to place on its unconverted citizenry. Governments function best when they grant citizens the right to practice their faith within the confines of their lives while simultaneously separating religious influences in the political system. No one religion is mandated and none is able to gain political power to create such a mandate. Separation of church and state cannot completely stop its religiously devout citizens from voting.

The best-intentioned, most tolerant religious people will try to avoid the biases of their faith when making political decisions. But just like in their relationships with friends and family, these same individuals will be almost forced into thinking a certain way because of what is taught and reinforced with the religious group of which they are apart. It's not even about brainwashing, though that happens among extremists. It's about the conclusions that have been reached within each particular faith's most influential figures and theologians who have something to say about the issue.

For example, a typical evangelical will turn on a Christian radio station to listen to a sermon from a well known preacher. At the top of the hour selected news headlines will air that have a political bias. A show later that day will be a family-oriented program that will discuss how certain political issues are affecting the nuclear family. The believer who is just trying to learn how to grow in his faith ends up hearing political viewpoints throughout the day on this station. In many places, though, this kind of station is the only one available. The specific pastors, theologians, and other hosts the listener is engaged with might not have the same political views as the ones broadcast in the news or by the blatantly politically oriented shows, but the association takes place in the listeners head nonetheless.

So the religious person ends up adopting the political beliefs of the most leading, dominant, outspoken part of that faith, however extreme the views might be. His opinions on controversial topics like abortion, gay rights, euthanasia, welfare, war, international relations, etc. are influenced heavily by the religious teachers and texts, ideas that have come come primarily by means of REVELATION and not empiricism. Teachers and texts are quoted to support the political opinions of the believers. And the believers will not be content enough to pray because while they are praying, there will be those who are participating in the political process to get laws passed. They will realize prayer does not actually work so they will be forced to become active participants.

Take the issue of abortion. The bible is mute on abortion, yet almost all Christians have a strong opinion on the issue. Why is this so? Contemporary Christianity has adopted a theological position from some date in the past when some influential figure used some quote from Psalm 139 to say life begins at conception. This is the reigning belief in the church today. The believer who is brought into the fold must adopt this position or face the discomfort of using his own mind to come to conclusions about the issue that are opposite the generally accepted belief of the church. What has resulted from the countless hours of prayers to overturn Roe vs. Wade? Nothing. So when Christians see that prayer does not actually work they will vote in legislators who will vote in justices who will vote to overturn it.

The effect can get very ugly when the religious followers get heavily involved in government. Watch out they don't pulling quotes from older texts in the bible! At one point in time God told Israel to commit genocide against people around its homeland. This is well documented in the Old Testament. If the Jew, Muslim, or Christian believes these ancient texts to be their inspired Word of God then there is no wonder why so many wars have been justified in the name of the religion. How much simpler would the Israel-Palestine conflict be if we were just discussing land, economics, water, and culture? Instead we are wasting our time with terms like “promised land” and “holy land” and “Canaanites.”

Conclusion - The Mind Pitted Against Itself

To become a committed religious follower, one must accept the fundamental tenets of a faith. The spiritual diagnosis followed by the spiritual prescription opens a whole new world to the previously terrestrial-focused human. Peace quickly fills the heart after the guilt of having been blind to such a glorious truth has abated. But the peace is never fully realized because throughout the rest of the believer's life, he is constantly battling the contradiction of what his being requires and what is being asked of him by his God.

For fear of focusing too much on himself, and fearing the retribution for attempting to accomplish anything that might reek of glorifying his own self, the faithful servant slowly loses his self esteem. Charitable contributions to the flock are generated because in spite of the damage to ones psyche, the human has no choice but to keep himself alive through the sweat of his own brow. He cannot help but be motivated by the desire to achieve worldly success. The sweat fills the collection plates that pay the salaries of the staff that builds buildings to house ever more believers.

Relationships will change when proselytizing overtakes the innate ability to simply sit down and chat with another human without an agenda to convert. Eventually, the believer will focus less on converting and more on associating exclusively with his own kind to avoid the awkward result that occurs from having converted nobody after all. Viewing every person in the world as either saved or unsaved is a taxing on the mind.

Political participation will become focused on the political party that has aligned itself with the values of particular persons of faith. The believers must take care, but will always repeat the same mistake of their predecessors – once in power the religious will force through laws that achieve what their prayers were unable to change. If the religious gain too many seats in the government then theocracy will creep in to the point where the religious freedoms the men and women of faith once enjoyed for all will be a thing only written in a chapter of their history books. The state will become a more modern version of 17^th century New England, and the secularists will have to wait for time to pass before the theocrats realize that they are killing those who oppose them instead of loving them.

(1.) The secular opposition is not a war, but rather natural human progress against which religion must constantly fight by its very nature.

(2.) Locke, Edwin A. Religion vs. Self-Esteem, 2007