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Essays, Opinion, & Commentary |
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Why Religion?, by George J. Irbe (Con't)
Exploiting the Idea of Religion I have concluded above that man uses religion on a personal level as a tool for self-justification and for expressing his needs and wants. A man, a group of men, and entire societies, can appeal to the imagined higher power or powers for approval and help for any one of numerous reasons that basically fall into four categories: (a) when they wish to do something, (b) when they wish not to do something, (c) when they wish something would happen, and (d) when they wish something would not happen. It is quite remarkable, but not that surprising in view of man's powerful intelligence, that very early in his existence Homo sapiens developed this psychological tool for self-justification which had practically unlimited applications. What is even more remarkable is that early on men figured out that one can turn this tool back on its user, so to speak, and by doing so bring the other man under one's psychological control. Menzies discusses at length both the psychological development of religion and the development of the various applications of it; I am including here some significant passages from Menzies' work. In the first one he describes the intellectual limitations of primitive man and how these limitations caused man to invent fantastic (and often childish) explanations for things and events in the natural world, including (I suppose) the existence of "higher powers." Menzies, too, appears to be among the judgmental people identified by Morton Klass (see above), because Menzies is actually trying to provide an explanation to the query: "Why did they have to come up with such absolutely silly conclusions, ones without basis in reality and studded with outlandish nonexistent beings?" Menzies writes:
In the above passage Menzies provides a very reasonable explanation for the intellectual shortcomings of primitive man. As I said at the beginning, perhaps I have greatly underestimated the time that Homo sapiens would need in order for his intellectual development to reach a stage where a run-of-the-mill human with average intelligence would, first of all, understand the Creator, his Laws, and man's place in the grand scheme of the cosmos, and second, based on this understanding, recognize the irrationality, uselessness, and actual harm of religion. I concede that I might have been too hasty by saying in God, His Laws, and Mankind: "It is understandable and excusable that man was ignorant of the Laws at the dawn of his intelligence. But today, no longer can man's non-compliance with the Laws be excused by a lack of his understanding of them, as it could be at the beginning of man's ascendance. Today, there is not one primitive, ignorant society of humankind left that cannot be reached and taught by our most knowledgeable and enlightened members. Where the various societies of men spurn such knowledge and enlightenment -- and all do, to varying degrees - men stand and act in cognizant defiance of the Laws." In the same essay I also write: "Maybe it is time mankind stops regarding itself as something very special. It is not. It is also time for man to shed all religious dogmas that preach a concoction of self-serving notions of exclusivity and privileged status in God's creation for the 'believers', and promote hate-breeding attitudes toward those who are not. It is time for mankind to acknowledge the Creator and his Laws simply and honestly, in thoughts and by deeds, each person within one's own soul, not in temples and shrines. It is time to smarten up, time for teachers to teach and the ignorant to open their minds and learn." Perhaps mankind needs more time to reach this level of intellectual development, but I still cannot put away the suspicion that much of the present ignorance might be willful, because it appears to me that religion is an instrument which also serves man to justify his base desires and vices. And that leads to a consideration of a much baser reason for the origins and persistence of religion in man's psychological make-up, that being the lust for power in the form of domination and exploitation of the naïve and ignorant many by the knowledgeable clever few, i.e., the elite ruling class that is organic to every organized society. There is good reason for raising suspicions that through the ages it has been rather in the interests of certain elites of society to deliberately maintain, perpetuate and embellish the practice of religion while suppressing and excluding development of understanding and knowledge of the genuine Creator-God in the mass of common people. Among primitive people religion was used in a rather blunt manner to instill fear and obedience in the simple minds of ordinary people. In modern times the same objectives are achieved by more subtle application of religious threats. In complete contrast to that, belief in a Supreme Being, the Creator-God, and understanding of how the natural world functions according to his Laws is attained through common-sense philosophical reasoning and scientific inquiry. This belief and the knowledge that goes along with it can be instilled into the people through common-sense rational education. This belief in a Creator-God is not a religion; it requires no temples, rituals or priests or sacred symbols and objects. It is therefore of no use as an instrument of power that could be applied by a select few to intimidate the masses and compel their obedience. The conception of one Supreme Being as the creator of everything in the universe is the most natural one that a man could arrive at and therefore we can surmise that the concept has always been alive in the minds of at least a few men all through the millennia. Quite a number of historians and anthropologists who have investigated the history of religion from its primitive beginnings believe that there are sufficient indications that initially men believed in a Supreme Being who had created the universe as well as themselves. Curiously enough, this monotheistic faith, which could have naturally matured through the millennia into a rational knowledge-based understanding of the Creator-God, withered away and was replaced by various forms of religion worshipping imaginary spirits and gods beyond counting; every family and tribe had its own gods; there were fetishes, sacred objects and sacred places. In many cases there was also propitiation of the gods through sacrifice, even gruesome human sacrifice. It was the antithesis of a positive belief in a Creator-God; it was the triumph of willfully conceived phantasms and scary superstitions over rational thought and knowledge. Menzies writes [p. 47-8] that he is convinced that all religion came from the worship of nature and that "the motives which first caused man to worship the heavenly powers surely arose from other needs than that for food alone. The intellectual craving, the desire to know the nature of the world he lived in, and to refer himself to the highest principle of it, as far as that could be attained; the aesthetic need, the desire to have to do with objects which filled his imagination; the moral need, the desire to not to occupy a purely isolated position, but to place himself under some authority, and to feel some obligation, these also, though in the dimmest way, as matters of presentiment rather than clear consciousness, entered into the earliest worship of the heavenly powers." To this statement I would like to add that these same motives, this intellectual craving, encourages men to practice rational thought, and rational thought leads to monotheistic beliefs and eventually to a knowledge-based understanding of God. In connection with the Egyptian religion, Menzies writes:
No one will dispute the fact that in ancient times religion was used, first and foremost, by the patriarch of the family group to exert control over the family members and to have his will obeyed in the name of a god or spirit. With time, this religion-based physical control and political control extended to larger social entities like tribes and eventually nations and empires. It is well known that in many primitive societies control of quite large populations by a small elite was exercised by what can only be termed as religious terror. I call these particular societies "sinister primitive". They have existed in many parts of the world, but are known to have achieved particularly notable levels of infamy in Central- and South America during the first half of the second millennium up to the time of arrival of the Spaniards. Huge temples were built there to honor exceptionally nasty gods who had insatiable appetites for human sacrifice, especially of youthful men and women in their prime; these temples were nothing other than human slaughterhouses. The mass murders (for that is what they were) were carried out by tyrannical priests. One can imagine the peasant class of people living in a constant state of terror under their malevolent gaze. At a more advanced level, religion has often served as the glue for a kind of national socialism. Menzies makes numerous mentions of this fact, e.g.:
However, the control of social behavior through religious dogma and taboos has not been universal. It never got established among the Sinic peoples. But here, too, the real purpose of religion as a control of society is proven by its absence, because the Sinic peoples developed a very strong culture of obedience to, and veneration of, ones elders and superiors. The veneration was imparted with a quasi-religious nature by extending it to one's departed ancestors. This kind of obedience and veneration performs the same function of social control as religion, which we have defined as "worship of higher powers." In the quotes that follow, Menzies describes the Chinese as a pragmatic, industrious and practical people, but ones who are also devoid of imagination and are indisposed to philosophy. These characteristics ensured that the Chinese would not entertain nonsensical ideas about worshipping higher powers. Unfortunately, they also stifled the philosophical process that leads to the recognition and understanding of the Creator-God. Most students of the history of the Sinic peoples agree that in antiquity they too believed in the Creator-God; the notion of a Supreme Being is echoed still in the Chinese concepts of "Heaven" and "Supreme Ruler", used interchangeably and rather indiscriminately by the time of Confucius. Obviously, the pragmatic Chinese had no interest to pursue the "Supreme Ruler" idea any further, seeing that society functioned quite well through a hierarchical structure, which commanded veneration and obedience of one's elders and ones betters. In Menzies words:
The last quote above actually proves that the Chinese have no religion because the essential components of religion are not there. The other historical testimonial to the fact that not only can man live without religion but perhaps even live better without it, is a shining one indeed. It is that of Greece in the five centuries preceding the Common Era. I will have more to say about the achievements of the Greeks further on. Here I wish to give the Greek experience with religion, mostly quoting from Menzies, as the only historical example of where religion was discarded not because a substitute means of social control was established, as in China, but because it had no application at all, except perhaps as a form of artistic expression of mythological lore, in a society which was taking giant steps towards rational thought, individual freedom and democratic self-government. Menzies writes [p. 275] that "the Greeks had an unrivalled talent for doing what they saw others do, in a much better way, and so making it their own. They had an inborn disposition to what is reasonable." The Greeks never took their religion as seriously as other peoples and the early Greek religion had a most disorganized and disintegrated character. According to Menzies [p. 279], "Every town, every family has its own religion. There is no central authority. ... the same god is represented in different places in entirely different ways." As a result, the Greeks were able to gradually discard the shackles of religion. Continuing with Menzies:
The last two quotes are very significant; they state that men of reason can recognize the existence of only one God, and that religion has no utility for the person who is educated to think rationally. It has been shown, then, that religion has always been used as a tool to gain and maintain power and dominance by, first, a patriarch of a clan, a chief of a tribe, and subsequently, in larger societal organizations, by a clever elite (who do not, as a rule, themselves believe in the myths of the religious dogma they impose on the population at large). That this is so is proven best in the negative, i.e., by the absence of religion, as in China and classical Greece: in China because other means were instituted for social control, in Greece because there was no need for religious control in a rationally thinking free society.
Questions/Comments? Post them in The Radical Academy Forum Mr. Irbe's Website: Classical Liberal George E-mail Address: George J. Irbe |
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