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12.1.03
What strikes me about this
kind of thing - apart from the hysteria, emotion and
politically volatile issues - is how it can be understood
psychologically. Religions (including Christianity) have
been fighting and killing for hundreds of years, surely
the antithesis of what they are supposed to be about.
This is not a demonstration of love or spiritual maturity,
but of ignorance and hate. So what gives?
Getting so profoundly upset just
because someone makes a flippant remark about a historical/mythological
personage marrying a beautiful woman is alarmingly childish.
Religions feel entitled to elevate themselves above non-believers,
that they are a superior spiritual elect. But if anyone
dares to question their belief system, they are considered
pitiable and spiritually lost at best, and at worst, they
are people who should be murdered. Well, religions are
against my non-beliefs - and it's my prerogative to say
that.
Children will sometimes use every
possible manipulative technique to get their own way.
For example, I was accosted on the street recently by
two girls who wanted me to buy them some beer. While I
pitied them for the lives they have that drive them to
do this (regularly, I assume) I cannot support a habit
that encourages alcohol-induced abandon (in young people),
to escape economic and social privation. It was that kind
of area. I couldn't explain this to them, so I merely
said I couldn't do it because it was illegal - they were
about 14. Said protagonists then threatened me with violence
via a cell-phone call to big brother/father, threatened
to shout and scream, and kept repeating their remarks
as if doing so would persuade me to their end. I could
see that they were using familiar manipulative techniques
which, I suspect, are often successful with their parents,
friends and teachers. I walked away; they hovered by the
shop doorway waiting for someone else.
The religious tensions around
the world have a similar dynamic. Some extremists have
proved they are capable of murdering people, and everyone
knows if they feel "offended" they are capable of doing
so again. They have a manipulative power over others which
begins with a threat, and culminates with a proven ability
to carry it out. The beer drinkers referred to a (non-existent)
mobile phone; religionists refer to a deranged interpretation
of dusty old religious texts (jihad, inquisition). Psychologically,
I don't see much difference between these two scenarios
apart from the scale, seriousness and subject in question.
Additionally, religion is also a kind of drug
- the opium, as Marx said, of the people. Perhaps the
religious violence we have seen for hundreds of years
can be explained as a reaction against people who dare
to jeopardise the religious 'fix'. Life without the drug
is too painful.
I'd like to see religion subject
to detailed psychological and philosophical analysis.
But this rarely happens, because the different methods
have insulated themselves from external questions. They
are self-enclosed systems, subject only to their internal
emotional logic. And like parents subjected to never ending
demands of children, non-religious people have succumbed
to the threats in the hope of an easier life - it's called
being 'politically correct', where no one dares question
what the fuck these religions are about.
Inciting religious hatred is supposedly
a crime; how ironic that for most of the time religion
is the cause of the trouble, fighting with other 'faiths'
and calling other people non-believers, infidels, sinners
etc. Everyone else is happily getting on with life in
the real world…and the religions continue to brainwash,
control and hypnotise people with incantatory texts and
dusty old rituals.
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