Religious violence?

[Geoff-Allen]

Wondering what people think of this passage -

This raises an important issue. Over the centuries, many violent deeds have been done in the name of religion. People often wonder how this can be. From a psychological perspective, it seems clear that it occurs when religion exists as a set of doctrines, ideas, rituals and experiences divorced from any deep and expansive sense of empathy or compassion. Without empathy, people's religious ideas become yet another means of seeing others as "different" and of distancing oneself psychologically from them. Feeling disconnected in this way, people devalue others, leading to intolerance and the tendency to inflict their views on others. When this happens, even the most beautiful doctrines become like poison, serving as causes for prejudice, anger, oppression and even violence.

By contrast, when religious ideas are conjoined with a deep sense of empathy and compassion, they can serve as a bridge, allowing people from different backgrounds to connect and to share the best of themselves. When we have empathy and compassion for others, we honestly respect each other's differences. And from a feeling of compassionate responsibility, we can share the best of ourselves with others and encourage others to find and share the best of themselves as well.

Comes from "The Lost Art of Compassion" by Lorne Ladner

Cheers.

 

[Epic Beard Man]

Wondering what people think of this passage -
From a psychological perspective, it seems clear that it occurs when religion exists as a set of doctrines, ideas, rituals and experiences divorced from any deep and expansive sense of empathy or compassion.

Any belief, idea, philosophy that is devoid of empathy and/or compassion is not religious but apathetic. It is not religious in nature to do such things.

 

[sun rise]

The OP makes perfect sense to me.

 

[Polymath257]

Compassion and empathy are the basis of all morality. Any doctrine, religious or not, that goes against them is evil.

 

[PruePhillip]

The great passion of the early 20th Century was that with the overthrow
of the European monarchies and the churches there would be an era of
peace and prosperity unmatched before.
As it turned out, this Century was the most violent and cruel.
I got a student to do the math - find out what acts of mass inhumanity were
purely religious, what part was religious and what part was secular.
I think he came to a figure of 85% that were purely secular.

Hitler's mother was Catholic. Stalin studied for the monastery. Mao and
Pol Pot were Buddhists. Would history have been different if people
devoted themselves to religion instead of its alternative, politics? I say
a hearty yes.

Today, a submarine sinking a ship and leaving its passengers to drown
is ordinary. Destroying whole cities with women and children is nothing
at all. Mass murder because of people's views has become an art form.

 

[Polymath257]

The great passion of the early 20th Century was that with the overthrow
of the European monarchies and the churches there would be an era of
peace and prosperity unmatched before.
As it turned out, this Century was the most violent and cruel.
I got a student to do the math - find out what acts of mass inhumanity were
purely religious, what part was religious and what part was secular.
I think he came to a figure of 85% that were purely secular.

Hitler's mother was Catholic. Stalin studied for the monastery. Mao and
Pol Pot were Buddhists. Would history have been different if people
devoted themselves to religion instead of its alternative, politics? I say
a hearty yes.

Today, a submarine sinking a ship and leaving its passengers to drown
is ordinary. Destroying whole cities with women and children is nothing
at all. Mass murder because of people's views has become an art form.

True enough. But also recall that when Genghis Kahn left a city, it was often because the stench
of the dying forced him away.

Humans have been killing each other for as long as we have been around. We have learned
new techniques for doing that killing, but I suspect that many people before the rise of technology
would have killed many more than they did if the technology was available.

We also have many more people today than even a century ago. That means that even if the
percentages go down, the total numbers can go up. Timur Lang killing off a whole city
meant killing only tens of thousands of people. Today, it would mean millions.

 

[PruePhillip]

True enough. But also recall that when Genghis Kahn left a city, it was often because the stench
of the dying forced him away.

Humans have been killing each other for as long as we have been around. We have learned
new techniques for doing that killing, but I suspect that many people before the rise of technology
would have killed many more than they did if the technology was available.

We also have many more people today than even a century ago. That means that even if the
percentages go down, the total numbers can go up. Timur Lang killing off a whole city
meant killing only tens of thousands of people. Today, it would mean millions.

It's a good point and one I thought to mention. By way of example:
Technology enabled the Soviet Communists to kill vastly more than
Tsar could ever do. But... the Tsar had no reason to kill on such a scale.
The Tsar didn't live in an age of ideology, and his power was constrained
by the church, the nobility, the merchants, the army and yes, the peasants.
What would happen with the loss of religion? Dostoevsky said it would be
totalitarianism, Nietzsche said it would be nihilism. Both proved right.

 

[Hockeycowboy]

Simply put...if one truly follows Christ, there will be none!!

That’s really how a person can tell, who is following Christ, and who isn’t. — John 13:34-35.

There’s nothing wrong w/ protecting your family. But Christ’s followers never instigate violence. — Romans 12:18

 

[Spirit of Light]

Any belief, idea, philosophy that is devoid of empathy and/or compassion is not religious but apathetic. It is not religious in nature to do such things.

So if i understand you right, Buddhism who has based its teaching on Compassion, empathy and moral code has nothing to do with religion? sound strage to be as a buddhist

 

[PruePhillip]

True enough. But also recall that when Genghis Kahn left a city, it was often because the stench
of the dying forced him away.

Humans have been killing each other for as long as we have been around. We have learned
new techniques for doing that killing, but I suspect that many people before the rise of technology
would have killed many more than they did if the technology was available.

We also have many more people today than even a century ago. That means that even if the
percentages go down, the total numbers can go up. Timur Lang killing off a whole city
meant killing only tens of thousands of people. Today, it would mean millions.

Of course. They didn't have guns, bombs or WMD's back then.
And in hunter-gatherer times I believe the death toll for young males
was about 25-30% of the population.
But I sense something was different in the 20th Century. It wasn't
just tech doing the killing - it was ideology. People killed for a belief
or for the "class" you belonged to. The moral compunctions that at
least restrained religious people were gone.

 

[Valjean]

I think religious teachings of compassion are a thin veneer in most cases, easily trumped by tribalism.
Absent enculturation, we're still killer apes.

I find it disturbing that there are clergy in the military, and that soldiers can go to church with no sense of cognitive dissonance.
Patriotism among the religious I also find odd.

 

[Augustus]

This raises an important issue. Over the centuries, many violent deeds have been done in the name of religion. People often wonder how this can be. From a psychological perspective, it seems clear that it occurs when religion exists as a set of doctrines, ideas, rituals and experiences divorced from any deep and expansive sense of empathy or compassion. Without empathy, people's religious ideas become yet another means of seeing others as "different" and of distancing oneself psychologically from them. Feeling disconnected in this way, people devalue others, leading to intolerance and the tendency to inflict their views on others. When this happens, even the most beautiful doctrines become like poison, serving as causes for prejudice, anger, oppression and even violence.

By contrast, when religious ideas are conjoined with a deep sense of empathy and compassion, they can serve as a bridge, allowing people from different backgrounds to connect and to share the best of themselves. When we have empathy and compassion for others, we honestly respect each other's differences. And from a feeling of compassionate responsibility, we can share the best of ourselves with others and encourage others to find and share the best of themselves as well.

I think this misunderstands the nature of empathy and compassion, which can easily be a cause of violence. We empathise most with those we see as part of our group, and feel their pain most strongly. Anything which divides also unites, and our natural state is division, not unity.

Empathy and compassion are behind modern 'humanitarian wars', and also behind much terrorism. Think OBL, who gave up a life of luxury to, in his mind, help oppressed people in Afghanistan. Compassion and empathy drove many educated and kind people to become Soviet Communists and engage in atrocities for the 'greater good'.

As much human violence has likely been done for 'moral' reasons as immoral ones.

Some religious teachings are obviously more conducive to violence than others, but I'm not sure this can be narrowed down to compassion and empathy.

 

[Augustus]

Humans have been killing each other for as long as we have been around. We have learned
new techniques for doing that killing, but I suspect that many people before the rise of technology
would have killed many more than they did if the technology was available.

Tech changes the nature of warfare.

With primitive tech you often had to kill defeated soldiers as you couldn't feed them and releasing them could mean you ended up fighting them again later.

If a city surrendered they would often be left alone, if they resisted then they might be wiped out. You didn't really want to have to take a city by force, or waste months starving them out so the carrot and stick approach was a rational approach to warfare.

Also modern tech increases the cost of going to war so acts as a deterent. Many historical battles were not to conquer or wipe out an enemy, but to achieve a favourable settlement when you declared a truce.

Wars could be fought with minimal impact on the day to day lives of most civilians.

So tech cuts both ways in terms of potential impact on deaths.

We also have many more people today than even a century ago. That means that even if the
percentages go down, the total numbers can go up.

While people often make this point, it seems a bit facile to me to think that war casualties should be more or less proportional to total civilian populations. That doesn't seem very logical at all.

In addition, we always include famine and disease to historical war deaths, even though these may not have occurred until years after any fighting and been unconnected to it, but not to modern so we don't add 100million to WWI casualties. Also people often died from minor wounds and things that could easily be treated today so such stats become very misleading (even before considering that historical death tolls are mostly made up out of thin air, and are always overstated, often being an order of magnitude too high).

 

[ChristineM]

Any belief, idea, philosophy that is devoid of empathy and/or compassion is not religious but apathetic. It is not religious in nature to do such things.

And yet wars, abuse, slavery, theft, murder, even genocide are the basic ingredients of the Tanakh and the bible. Not sure of the quran. Not studied it in any detail.

So much so that much abuse of the human race has been justified by religion.

 

[Polymath257]

I think this misunderstands the nature of empathy and compassion, which can easily be a cause of violence. We empathise most with those we see as part of our group, and feel their pain most strongly. Anything which divides also unites, and our natural state is division, not unity.

Empathy and compassion are behind modern 'humanitarian wars', and also behind much terrorism. Think OBL, who gave up a life of luxury to, in his mind, help oppressed people in Afghanistan. Compassion and empathy drove many educated and kind people to become Soviet Communists and engage in atrocities for the 'greater good'.

As much human violence has likely been done for 'moral' reasons as immoral ones.

Some religious teachings are obviously more conducive to violence than others, but I'm not sure this can be narrowed down to compassion and empathy.

In fact, it appears that the same area of the brain that produces compassion and empathy also is the one mediating hatred of 'other'. We have empathy and compassion for those in the 'in' group and despise those in the 'out' group with the same area of our brains.

 

[ChristineM]

Mass murder because of people's views has become an art form.

It always has, from the first mass murder on record, god murdering the entire population (fauna and flora) of earth, the muslim conquests, the crusades, the european wars of religion. All thats changed is the efficiency.

 

[lewisnotmiller]

Any belief, idea, philosophy that is devoid of empathy and/or compassion is not religious but apathetic. It is not religious in nature to do such things.

Rubbish.

 

[ChristineM]

In fact, it appears that the same area of the brain that produces compassion and empathy also is the one mediating hatred of 'other'. We have empathy and compassion for those in the 'in' group and despise those in the 'out' group with the same area of our brains.

I have suspected this for some time, that opposite emotions are sourced from the same area of the brain?

 

[Subduction Zone]

I think religious teachings of compassion are a thin veneer in most cases, easily trumped by tribalism.
Absent enculturation, we're still killer apes.

I find it disturbing that there are clergy in the military, and that soldiers can go to church with no sense of cognitive dissonance.
Patriotism among the religious I also find odd.

And yet it is far more common and tends to be stronger among the religious. It may have to do with a need to believe in something.

 

[Polymath257]

I have suspected this for some time, that opposite emotions are sourced from the same area of the brain?

It isn't *exactly* opposite. The point is to bond those in the 'in' group together. That is done via compassion within and hatred without.

Explains a lot, doens't it?

/E: I'd point out that the effect of religion is to both expand the 'in' group and to sharpen the boundary with the 'out' group. This leads to more compassion within and more hatred without.