Pam, I said that religion is sometimes used to justify horrible things like terror and rape. And I stick by that. It demonstrably does just that sometimes.
One of the things that I have become convinced of, during the many years that I have been thinking about religion, is that religion does a magnificent job at justifying things. I'd say that probably no other thing is as efficient at justifying things as religion is. To make you see what I mean when I claim that other methods of justification are not as efficient as religion, consider two ideologies that were used to create societies during the twentieth century, and which needed justifications that went beyond themselves. The ideologies that were used to create societies are Nazism and Communism. They both needed justifications that went beyond themselves. Oh, they had their "internal" justifications as well, of course: the Nazis claimed that the "Aryan race" was superior to all other "human races", and therefore the Aryans, like the Germans, had the right to claim and possess land that was inhabited by "inferior races". Communism was actually a lot more intellectual than that, because it was built on Marxism, which is a theory of how wealth is generated by workers in factories and transferred to the owners of the factories. Marxism is also a theory of how the wealth can be kept by the workers and not transferred to the owners of the factories. What Communism did was that it declared that the workers had to be liberated by a Communist elite, whose members would henceforth make all the decisions for all people (and who would, when necessary, execute all its enemies).
Well, both Nazism and Communism needed something that went beyond themselves to justify themselves. Neither of these theories accepted the concept of a God, so they couldn't use religion as a means of justification. Instead they both seized on history. They both claimed that history would prove them right. History was bound to unfold in such a way that the German Aryans would claim their proper place in the world and pretty much rule it, or history was bound to unfold in such a way that workers united all over the world and cast off their chains and claimed their proper place everywhere (and Russia would become everybody's shining example and become the mightiest country in the world).
So Nazi Germany and the Communist Soviet Union trusted in history to prove themselves right. Unfortunately for them, history let both of them down. I personally believe that Hitler chose to invade Poland in 1939 even though he knew that this risked to start a larger war, but he took that risk because he probably believed that he was bound to win. History would make sure that he did. Well, history did not oblige, and when the German forces crumbled under the onslaught of the Allied forces, Hitler had no choice but to commit suicide. Communism held out a lot longer, but eventually it became clear not only that workers were not taking over factories worldwide, but that the finances of the Soviet Union were in such bad shape that the CCCP had to give up its quest for world domination. Not only that, but the Soviet Union had to give up altogether.
Now compare the Nazi Germans and the Communist Soviets with the Jews. The defeats and horrors that have befallen the German Nazis and the Soviet Communists are nothing compared with what the Jews have suffered. For more than two millennia the Jews didn't have any sort of country that they could call their own. They suffered repeated pogroms and were killed or driven out of the countries where their Diaspora had brought them. Why didn't the Jews give up? Why didn't they just chuck their Jewishness out of the window and accept the customs and the beliefs of their adopted countries and become assimilated? There are several reasons, one of which is that they were not allowed to give up and become assimilated into the surrounding societies, because the surrounding societies often did their best to identify the Jews and push them into ghettos and force separation on them.
But another reason is, indeed, that the religion of the Jews was such that history couldn't prove it wrong. No amount of misery and suffering could prove that the Jews were not God's chosen people, or that God's promise to the Jews, that he would give them the promised land, didn't still stand. In the Old Testament books by the prophets, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel and so many others, the same thing is explained over and over: the children of Israel suffer so many misfortunes because this is God's way of punishing his chosen people for their disobedience. God's chosen people have not kept their part of their bargain with God, and they have repeatedly broken God's commandments. Therefore God punishes them. And therefore, the miseries that the children of Israel suffer are themselves proof that the Israelites are God's chosen people and that God's promises to them will one day come true.
It is interesting, too, to see what the prophets tell the Israelites to do to make God's fury with them abate. According to the prophets, the Israelites must become more fervent, more fundamentalist in their approach to religion. They must obey every single commandment. They must never be lax in anything that has to do with their duties to God. In the book of Ezra, we are even told about how the Jews purge themselves by breaking up all mixed marriages between Jewish men and foreign women, and then they drive out the foreign women and their children.
This Jewish idea of a strict and severe Creator of the universe who never backs down on his promises, even though he may punish his believers for centuries to come, was later picked up by Christianity and Islam. The idea is that if you believe in this God, you will be vindicated eventually. It doesn't matter how bad things look right now. You yourself will be rewarded in paradise even if you suffer on the earth, and if your society commits itself to the proper religion it will eventually triumph, maybe many centuries from now.
Religion allows you to believe that failure itself is a kind of proof that you will succeed eventually, or that your descendants will succeed after you. It is impossible to really believe that if you trust history to prove you right in your own lifetime. History is impersonal. It doesn't give promises. It simply unfolds, and by doing so, it proves you right or it proves you wrong. God, however, is personal. He gives you promises but he doesn't say when he will fulfill them. A religious person can never be proven wrong.
Also, the Bible and the Koran are both slightly cryptically written. It is not absolutely clear what they mean. They are open to interpretation. So if you are a Christian or a Muslim, you have to obey the Bible or the Koran, but it is open to interpretation what exactly you are supposed to do in order to obey these holy scriptures. The Bible and the Koran both tak about people going to war and killing their enemies, and both the Bible and Koran make it clear that men have precedence over women. Both the Bible and Koran allow polygyny but does not prescribe it. Clearly, however, if you want to, you can argue that it is God's will that you should kill your enemies and that a man should have many wives. And you can claim that God will reward you for creating a society where people kill others in the name of God, and where men clearly oppress women. And there is just no way to prove you wrong. (All right, yes, a religious person can be proved wrong about his or her timing, if he or she expected God's help now. But it can never be proved to a religious person that his or her belief in a God who will vindicate him or her eventually is wrong.)
So, Pam, are you evil for being Christian? Do you think it is your duty to kill others in the name of God? Would you recommend a society where men have many wives and where underage girls are forced into marriage? Honestly, Pam, I really, really think not. Please note that I didn't say that "Christian people are evil". And I didn't say that "Muslim people are evil". And I didn't say that "religious Jews are evil". Even I am not stupid enough to believe in that sort of generalisations, even for a moment. (And I don't believe that atheists are better people than others, either.)
I said that religion is extremely good at justifying things, and I'm not backing down from that. Because when you use religion to justify things, whatever they are, it becomes so personal. You know that this is right and good because the Creator of the unverse has told you so. What do you care if people tell you that you are wrong? What are people compared with God, who has told you that you are right? No matter what people say, God will prove you right eventually.
Ann
