Tired of prejudice towards religion
It’s a fairly common scenario. Another tedious evening in York which, being a first year, is really rather depressing. I’m sitting in a pub with a large group when the discussion wanders into the vaguely political realm. One of my drinking companions decides to take that oh-so-original pop at the evils of organised religion. He reels off a long list of atrocities fuelled by people acting in the name of their respective deity; September 11, the Crusades, conflict in the Middle East. The list is endless.
Lots of people seem to believe a deeply flawed hypothesis; that the world would be a better place without organised religion. The problem is that the formation of organised religion is inevitable. This is due to two principal factors: the first of these is that throughout history we have seen a psychological trend for human beings to believe in (or create) some form of deity.
The second factor is that societal groups form naturally. I personally believe one of the reasons is a human necessity to constantly define oneself but I know there are myriad other explanations. In a purely empirical sense I believe the fact that societal groups are naturally forming is a fair assumption to be made.
When we consider these two assertions in unison we arrive at why organised religion does, and would always have, existed. Societal groups are inevitable and sadly, the animosity and power structures which accompany them are also. We have countless examples of corruption by the church throughout the ages but is this not true of so many non-religious institutions as well? If, hypothetically, there hadn’t been religious crusaders needlessly slaughtering each other there would have been other groups fulfilling that role in any event; look at the Rwandan genocide if you need a case study.
Organised religion is in itself nothing negative. The ability to believe in the existence of something higher facilitates the ability to accept moral realism; put simply, to believe in the existence of wrong and right. On a personal level the existence of something higher than oneself can help provide one with a sense of perspective and assist in guiding one through the moral maze that is everyday life.
The question of whether god exists, however, is completely immaterial to the argument. It doesn’t matter what form societal groups take. Be it religion, race or even football teams, it is inevitable that the uglier aspects of human nature will sometimes prevail and manifest themselves through these institutions. Pretentious students need to remember the flip side: sometimes the positive aspects will prevail as well. This is just human nature.
