Religion: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

[cbayer]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/gary-laderman/religion-the-good-the-bad_b_4489454.html

Gary Laderman
Chair of the Department of Religion, Emory University and Editor of Sacred Matters Magazine

Posted: 12/23/2013 9:12 am

I've been in the study of religion for about 30 years and throughout all that time it has been relatively easy to avoid answering the inevitable personal questions that come up when people hear I work in a department of religion: Do you believe in God? Is American culture morally corrupt without religion? Isn't religion bad for society?

Today, it's no longer easy to avoid and evade, and the undeniable pervasiveness and unfathomable preposterousness of religion in our world requires more than a scholarly response full of magical hermeneutical formulas or transcendent critical deconstructions. I have tenure, I've published a bit, I'm over 50 and students keep calling me Professor even though I insist they call me Gary. It's time to lose all fear about offending people and breaking down the scholarly distance that, until recently, provided cover and legitimacy to claims of expertise and authority.

I was recently given the opportunity to experiment with this new openness and honesty about religion while visiting a wine bar in Santa Barbara, California, before a Jeff Tweedy concert. In a conversation with a young, aspiring actor who also has a semi-recurring role as a character's voice on a popular animated network show, I confessed that I taught in and was chair of a religion department. When he heard that the faucet turned on, and out streamed 20 minutes of monologue on the topic.

After hearing about his upbringing (reform Jew), courses he took at college in religion (philosophy of religion and Buddhism), and what his friends in LA think about it (lots are "nones&quot , he finally revealed that he had come to a conclusion about religion: It's all bad, all of it, and has caused awful destruction and violence throughout history. He then turned to me and asked the question I knew was coming, whether I liked it or not. "What do you really think about religion? Aren't we better off without it?"

more at link

[cbayer]

2. I think his nuanced conclusion makes a lot of sense.

It is ludicrous to deny that religion has and continues to cause much harm, but it's the fundamentalism that says it's all good or all bad that is the real danger.

[Promethean]

3. Very few things are all good or all bad.

However sometimes one must take an absolute approach because something is just so broken its good aspects have no chance of redeeming the bad. I am of the opinion that religion is one of these things. Yes it provides community and occasionally bolsters our sense of charity. However the bad aspects have become too large and damaging to continue: the insular xenophobia directed at those not of the religion, the damage believing in absurdities (creationism for example) does to rational progress in human knowledge, etc. This leads to the simple conclusion that religion is not only not a positive force but an actively negative force on humanity. Add in that the positive aspects of religion can be easily provided without religion and it isn't very hard to decide on an absolute approach on the topic of if religion is good or bad.

[cbayer]

4. I think you describe one aspect of religion that is not consistent across all religions.

That's the problem with seeing things as all good or all bad. YOu are likely to miss the things that don't fit your narrative.

You may look at the minuses and pluses and conclude that the outcome is an overall net negative, but, imo, that should lead one to helping the good parts grow and the bad parts to wither.

If the overall positive things could be provided without religion, why are they often not provided?

Again, I think it's the absolutist position that is the most dangerous…

in addition to really being the antithesis of what I consider a liberal/progressive way of approaching the world.

[skepticscott]

5. Or the fundamentalist untruth

that keeps getting repeated here, that every atheist thinks religion is all bad. You never truthfully report the real position, which is that none of the good religious people do would be impossible without religion, so why drag religion and all of its negative baggage into things.

[trotsky]

6. You need to understand, scott, that it's very very important...

to keep alive the meme that horrible evil atheists like you and me, who are not worthy of human interaction, truly believe that ALL religion is bad, and that it must ALL be destroyed by force if needed, and that ALL believers are stupid and mentally ill and... well I forget what else.

Some individuals just NEED to believe all that in order to triangulate themselves right into the perfect, wonderful, most wise and sensible place they believe they occupy. From which they then throw stones at everyone else, of course.