10 Common Mistakes About Religion

There are all manner of things people believe about religion that at root are confusions of one kind or another. Here are ten typical examples:

1. Science has superseded religion

Modern science is an empirical research programme. Religions are traditional beliefs and stories concerning metaphysics and ethics. So to say science has superseded religion is rather like saying the space shuttle has superseded sausages.

2. Religions are founded upon immutable dogmas

Anyone trying to make this claim has to explain how it can be that the beliefs and practices of Christians, Buddhists, Hindus and so forth have changed so radically over the past few millennia. The relationship between static dogmas and the religions they have accreted from are like fossil creatures compared to their living animal relatives. No tradition begins set in stone (the Ten Commandments not withstanding!).

3. Either one or zero religions are true

While there is clearly an orthodox belief that implies this proposition, it is by no means the only perspective – both Sufi Islam and Hinduism have touted religious plurality for millennia, for instance. Also, consider that in science the incompatibility between relativity and quantum mechanics is not taken to mean that either one or neither model is true, rather it is assumed future theory will reconcile them – similarly, no-one can rule out the possibility that multiple religions might contain key elements of the truth.

4. Religions dictate hatred for other religions

The distrust or contempt of outgroups is a part of human psychology independent of religion. Hatred between nations, ethnicities and even rival sporting allegiances show that this runs far deeper than traditional belief systems. And of course, the contempt certain non-religious individuals feel for religious people underlines this point.

5. The First Amendment mandates the exclusion of religion

The point of the establishment and free exercise clauses of the First Amendment to the constitution of the United States was to prevent government from interfering with individual liberty in the practice of religion. It was intended to protect religious rights, not to quash religious expression.

6. Karma is good

In the oldest Dharmic traditions, there was no conception of 'good karma' – karma was understood as a negative consequence of human action. In the image of the Wheel of Karma, evil deeds caused a giant stone wheel to turn thus crushing humanity beneath it, and the only way to stop its destruction was for everyone to avoid causing evil, thus preventing the wheel from turning. This can be interpreted metaphorically rather than metaphysically – the idea that evil deeds in turn cause further evil to occur can be grasped intuitively as part of the nature of human interaction, and is a common theme in global religion (see Galatians 6:7 for the Christian version).

7. Jihad means holy war

This is only one meaning of the word, and not even the most relevant to the Muslim faiths. In fact, 'jihad' literally means “struggle”, and in the Arabic language peacefully-conducted campaigns such as Gandhi's fight for Indian independence and the women's liberation movement are considered 'jihad'. Even when jihad is taken to mean physical warfare, it's objective according to the Qu'ran must be to uproot persecution, and the murder of innocents is expressly excluded (see the Qur'an, 5:32).

8. Hinduism is polytheistic

'Polytheistic' is a term that Christian scholars used to describe traditional Indian beliefs that, frankly, they did not fully comprehend. In fact, Hindu beliefs are predominantly monotheistic or panentheistic (i.e. the divine interpenetrates all of nature, and extends timelessly beyond it), but there are also pantheistic, polytheistic and indeed atheistic interpretations. It is a truly diverse collection of beliefs.

9. The Pope cannot make mistakes

Papal infallibility does not mean the Pope of the Catholic Church is incapable of mistakes. It simply means that there is no possibility of error when the Pope declares new dogma for Catholics. In fact, this tenet is rather trivial and many Catholic scholars doubt it was necessary to declare it at all. A gainful comparison can be made with the situation facing the referee of a sporting match, who is the ultimate authority in interpreting the rules and could be said to enjoy “umpire infallibility” (although the umpire, unlike the Pope, cannot declare new rules).

10. The time of religion has passed

Some post-modernists proclaim that the age of grand narratives is over, saying that once we believed in such stories, but now we have moved beyond these primitive practices. Yet clearly this is also a grand narrative – once upon a time there was religion, then we lived happily ever after. Human culture and identity is inextricably intertwined with its stories, making it highly likely that religion will be part of human life for as long as our species is around – although what forms our future religions might take is anyone's guess.

Comments

[Peter Crowther]

I like the list.

Point 4: Your comment doesn't refute the headline, surely; it merely notes that the problem is not exclusive to religious groups?

(This comment may or may not be relevant, depending on your definition of "religion")

[Peter Crowther]

Oh - and could you show me how you reconcile point 2 with point 6? Feels like if you believe 2, 6 is irrelevant as karma has merely changed over time?

[Darius K.]

"Yet clearly this is also a grand narrative – once upon a time there was religion, then we lived happily ever after."

That reminds me of a section straight out of The Illuminatus! Trilogy:

"That's the biggest bunch of bullshit I ever heard," said Joe. "You're trying to claim that there's no such thing as good and evil, that the concepts were invented and taught to humans deliberately to fuck them up psychologically. But in order to maintain that you have to postulate that the condition of man before Gruad was good and that his condition afterward has been evil. And you have to make Yog Sothoth into a carbon copy of Satan. You haven't progressed one iota beyond the Judeo-Christian myth with that highfalutin' science-fiction story."

Hagbard roared with laughter and slapped Joe on the knee. "Beautiful!"

Heh. Thank goodness for a searchable PDF copy of that book that I may or may not own.

[Chris]

Darius: do I take it your copies of Illuminatus! have disappeared? Mine too! Can't work out where they've gone to... Probably in the intergalactic sock drawer somewhere. :)

Peter:

"Point 4: Your comment doesn't refute the headline, surely; it merely notes that the problem is not exclusive to religious groups?"

Yes, but point 3 already refutes the headline for 4 c.f. "both Sufi Islam and Hinduism have touted religious plurality for millennia".

My general feeling is that it's an error to pick on religion for things that are not exclusive to religious traditions.

"...could you show me how you reconcile point 2 with point 6? Feels like if you believe 2, 6 is irrelevant as karma has merely changed over time?"

Even if one accepts point 2, that religions change over time, that doesn't make the nature of those changes wholly irrelevant... That seems to me a bit like saying it doesn't matter what laws we have today only that they are different from the laws we used to have. :)

The purpose of point 6 is to show that when we think about "good karma" this is a very recent way of thinking... karma originally meant (and for some practictioners still does mean) something bad.

I suppose I don't really see these individual points in tension; but then I didn't really intend the list to be run programmatically, but rather for each point to stand on its own. :)

Cheers!

[Darius K.]

Oh I still have my copy, it's just nice to have a searchable one for when I need to find a passage now and then.

[Peter Crowther]

I think my point would be closer to "it doesn't matter what laws we used to have, only that they are different from the laws we have today." Which, to (say) a court of law operating today, is a perfectly reasonable point of view :-).

As you know, I tend to look holistically. Generally, so do you. It seems a little odd to intend each of your points to stand on their own, but to use as an example the current difficulties with combining relativity and quantum mechanics (both of which are reasonably effective when taken on their own).

[Gorgias]

Point 2 is well taken, but one can understand why one would get confused, given that many religions do claim to have an immutable body of dogma that has not changed in all of their existence.

[Chris]

Peter: I see you point re: laws. :)

Yes, I like to adopt a holistic viewpoint quite often, but I just don't see this list as that kind of entity. Point 8 and Point 9, for instance, are simply not connected by anything other than the general theme. :)

Similarly, I don't really see Point 6 as subsumed into the observation of Point 2 because in this case what I'm saying is there's another perspective on karma, one that is still extent and also older than the form that the New Age people have promulgated. For me, this older form is also the more interesting one.

Gorgias: Yes, of course - the issue here is the confusion between the general and the specific. That there are specific people and traditions that advance this view doesn't mean the view applies in the general.

We simply wouldn't make this mistake in other domains most of the time. Can you imagine people suggesting that because some sports used bats, it was characteristic of sports that they use bats? It would be nonsense. The claim refuted in point 2 is equally nonsensical in my estimations.

I think perhaps that "fundamentalism" (which need not be negative - the Amish are fundamentalists, but are pretty harmless) is an appropriate term to apply to people who hold to the immutable dogma position - and this term can be applied to certain scientists as well as to some religious people. ;)

Cheers!

[Theo]

Chris -

Nothing I disagree with here. But would point out that postmodernism (pt. 10) can as easily lead to a retreat into a narrowly Christian identity, sharply divided off from other religious traditions. I'm thinking of the Radically Orthodox (Milbank et al) here.

[John]

Please check out these two references.

The first one points out that all forms of knowledge, whether religious or scientific, are means of gaining power and control over The Divine,human beings and the world process altogether. Hunter-gatherer behavior!

Reality & The Middle via:

http://www.dabase.org/s-atruth.htm

Plus a unique set of references re the above authors relation to both modernism and postmodernism. And indeed all forms of limited "knowledge".

And yes all of the archaic "grand narratives" are well and truly past their useful use by date, and are now waging global warfare in their "final showdown" for totalitarian control.

http://www.adidaupclose.org/FAQs/postmodernism2.html

Of course the grand narrative provided by scientism is just as dismal--even more so.

http://www.adidam.org/teaching/aletheon/truth-science.aspx

Plus the authors extensive examination of the Great Tradition

http://www.adidam.org/teaching/17_companions/great_tradition

[Chris]

Theo: I'm not overly familiar with Radical Orthodoxy, but I think the thing about post-modernity/post-metaphysics/whatever-you-want-to-dub it is that it opens the floodgates for a huge diversity of views. This is Taylor's Nova Effect. Inevitably, we're not going to like all of them, but the fact of the matter is that we are facing near infinite diversity in the framing stories we can adopt, not a disappearance of those stories.

John: thanks for commenting, but I'm afraid this many links is just too much at once. While I'm happy to read a little off-site material, I would prefer to have the main points raised in the comment, and any links being expansion of points rather than in lieu of making those points. This is not the first time Adidam site links have been thrown into the discussion this way, and I'm afraid I will decline from exploring this any further in this way.

Thanks for the comments!