When I say “Dogmatic
Religion is inherently unhealthy”, what do I mean?
(Dedicated to my roommate Derek, who challenges me to write down what
I say)
You know they got me TRAPPED
in this prison of seclusion
Happiness, a loving god, afterlife, is a delusion
Shot up or shot down with tha bullet of dogma that they
preached…
Cause they never talk peace in tha community
All we know is violence, do tha job in silence
Walk tha city streets like a rat pack of tyrants
Too many brothers and sisters daily heading for tha
church
Brothers and Sisters commin' out worse off than when
they went in
Over tha years I done a lot of growin'
up
Getten drunk on religion thrown' up
Mentally Fucked up
Then I said I had enough
There must be another route, way out
To money and fame, I changed my religion and my name
And played a different game
Tired of being trapped in this vicious cycle
If one more religious leader harasses me I just might go psycho
And when I get tem
I'll hit tem with tha reality rush
Only a religious sycophant would like to see his brain turned to mush
Yo, if you’re smart you'll really let religiosity go
'G'
Cause it’ll keep ya cooped up in church and you’ll catch
tha bible
They got you TRAPPED....
The Main Culprits: Christianity, Islam,
and early Judaism
Degrees of Religiosity:
Obviously there are
varying degrees of dogmatic religiosity in adults that I must address. Let’s first examine the less active
religious people. For those of you who
simply, go to church/synagogue/mosque on prayer days and pay no attention to
their holy books or religion leaders, then you’re really not caught up in
religiosity. On the other hand you’re
really not informed and thus you belong to a group that you don’t know enough
about, and if you did, you might think twice.
As they say “ignorance is bliss”.
Next we have the people that grew up with a religion but stopped going
to church/synagogue/mosque all together and merely hold onto beliefs of a god
or an afterlife because they fear death.
These people really don’t know much about what’s going on in the church/synagogue/mosque
nor do they care to, so basically they are the religious outsiders. Anything outside of the religious outsider
group and we’d be referring to spiritualists, secularists, humanists, and
non-believers.
The Average church/synagogue/mosque-goers
remain somewhere in the grey area between less active religious people and
sycophantic fundamentalists. For the
average church/synagogue/mosque-goers there is no doubt as to why they go to church/synagogue/mosque
every prayer day and they stay well informed enough about church/synagogue/mosque
activities and theology and philosophy of the church/synagogue/mosque they
belong to. The range of activism for
this grey area religious people spans from being excited just to be at church/synagogue/mosque
and studying their holy books, to going to every event at their
church/synagogue/mosque and vigorously studying their holy books. Of
course the later of that range is known as the sycophantic religious
fundamentalist or SRF for
short. The SRF is the foundation of the
church/synagogue/mosque and they make sure that the rest of the followers stay
interested in what’s going on, furthermore making an effort to reach out to the
less active religious people and the religious outsiders.
We’ll get more into SRF’s
later on, but first we must examine how adults achieve their individual degrees
of religiosity. Some people are lucky
enough not to be brought up in a household that carries any degree of
religiosity of any kind. Unfortunately,
many of us are brought up in a religious household of varying degrees of
dogmatic religiosity. When we’re growing
up from child to teenager we often subscribe to whatever degree of religiosity
our caregivers subscribe to. It isn’t
until teenage-hood that many of us start to question authority, rebel, or in some
cases keep trying to please our caregivers.
In the later case where there is little to no rebellion or questioning
of authority than religiosity basically remains the same throughout
teenage-hood into adulthood. For that
majority of us who rebel, then either you drop religiosity all together, or you
drop a certain amount of it from your mental construct, and carry that amount
on to adulthood. Regardless of what
above categories you have fit into we all carry the baggage
I’ve found that through
recent studies and surveys done by research groups, such as PEW, that many of
us after graduating high school (if that were the case), and then while in
college, trade school, or young professionalism have a tendency to keep
whatever degree of religion carried from our teenage-hood for a number of years
because we’re too busy with school, friends, social acceptance, and work. So after those early years fly by, you’re
eventually faced with confronting yourself and trying to deal with emptiness,
curiosity, and self awareness. This
usually comes as a direct result of having more time to yourselves. Once this happens a reexamination of the
past occurs and this is when one begins to looks at the reasoning behind their
current religiosity. At this point a conscientious
choice is made to either continue on with the current degree of religiosity
into their later adult life, or to change.
It is usually at this time that people seek advice from their peers, and
oftentimes that involves religious leaders.
No matter what kind of religious leader you go to for advice, their
bottom line is to keep you in the church.
If you’re fortunate enough to be surrounded by free thinkers and
non-believers you’ll get a broader range of advice. On the other hand, if you are surrounded by
peers who are all religious than the chances of you not only staying in the
church go up, but also becoming more deeply involved.
Sycophantic Religious Fundamentalists (SRF’s):
The desire of religious
leaders throughout the world is to increase the number of people they can rely
upon to carry out their message, no matter what! Chances are that if you’ve been surrounded by
religious people all your life, and you ask their advice, you’ll end up like
them when you get to be an adult. This
is the most self destructive, isolationists, unhealthy path you can take in
your life, and the further you get yourself into it, the harder it is for the
outside world to reach you, and make you aware of how rigid your thinking has
become.
The best examples of SRF
organizations I can think of are the Evangelical Christian Movement in the
1. Evangelical
Christian Movement (Leader: Rick Scarbourough)
2. Fundamentalist
Islamic Movement (Leader: Any Imam in the
3.
For those of us who have
witnessed the power of these religious organizations, you can attest to the
fact that it’s a slippery slope and once you get in to the trap, you stay there
until you allow it to consume you totally, like a fly stuck on a spider
web. God is selfish. The church/synagogue/mosque that has you in
their possession will say anything and do anything to keep their most valuable
players inside their organization, so they build up a wall of lies, deceit, and
deception to insulate you from the outside world. When you suffer because of the choice you’ve
made to practice a SRF way of life, your peers in the church/synagogue/mosque
tell you that it’s God’s way of teaching you to sacrifice love, and become
persecuted because of God’s love for you.
Oh it’s true. Take certain basic fundamental teachings that
every church/synagogue/mosque teaches you and you’ll find that you are sharing
in the same plight that everyone else has succumbed to. Let’s look at this methodology of systematic
psychological oppression from a psychological perspective:
Unhealthy Religious Guilt,
Shame, and Regret
http://mentalhelp.net/psyhelp/chap6/chap6q.htm
Zealots
of fundamentalist
religious
thought
believe
the words
of sacred text
are a literal, accurate translation or indisputably accurate copy of the original
work.
To be a fundamentalist
you must reject reason
and believe
these sacred texts
are written
and copied by men
who will not change
the facts,
the nuance or the reality
as presented by the original
author.
In other
words
you must deny corruption.
Dogmatic Religion is the
key to controlling people thru deceit, deception, and fear. Every Dogmatic Religion is based upon a holy
book. The bible, the Koran, or the TANAKH,
which is a Hebrew acronym for the three sections it contains: Torah (the Pentateuch or first five
books of the Old Testament), Nevi'im
(Prophets), and Ketuvim
(Writings). The Tanakh
contains the 39 books found in the Christian Bible and called the "Old
Testament."
Let’s look at Stacks to un-stack
the pyramid of dogmatic religion:
http://www.unique-design.net/library/dogma.html
We can use the last six
years inside the
As the following books
have now adequately noted:
American Theocracy by
Kevin Philips
http://www.americantheocracy.net/
End of Faith by Sam Harris
Breaking the Spell by
Daniel C. Dennett
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breaking_the_Spell:_Religion_as_a_Natural_Phenomenon
This country is mired in
an immoral war in
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/1103AP_US_Torture_Report.html
Truly this is a corrupt
misuse of “religious moral authority” in the name of fighting terrorism. Bush believes he has been anointed by god to
fight against the powers of evil, thus making the
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20060501/theocratic%5Frepublicans
Historical Worldly examples of unhealthy SRF
influence:
9/11, the
Bottom Line, these
religious leaders have historically oppressed millions in the name of moral
authority given from their god, and will continue to do so until humanity
progresses past this extremely unhealthy viewpoint.
The grey area of religion; specifically the
moderate, liberal religiosity
I have already stated my
position of the current situation of this group of religious people:
http://jwismer922.tripod.com/American_Idiots.htm
They are weak,
marginalized, and do not have a very well organized message at this point in
history, and they continue to be overshadowed by the SRF movement. On the other hand, they continue to do
important work throughout the world.
Most of these moderate, liberal religious people have either gotten
there b/c they kept that point of view from their teenage-hood into their adult
hood, or somehow progressed there through a series of dramatic breakthroughs
that they’ve had along the way from their SRF religiosity. The later type of people are rare cases to
begin with because its so, so, so difficult to escape from that spider web, and
even more so these days with all these SRF organizations running around freely
in the world. The most common form of break through is
inviting someone you feel is an SRF into your home whom you greatly admire for
their work, and then find out the person is really a liberal, moderate
religious person who tells you how rigid your thinking is. That statement makes you very angry and
confused at first, because you’ve been told so often by your peers how
wonderful you are, and what a holy, righteous, and reverend person you
are. After the conflict, you become aware, and the
ignorance of your position begins to peel away layer by layer the more you find
out more about the moderate, liberal religious person.
By the way, if you’re
wondering if it’s possible for a non-believer to go into a liberal, moderate
religious position in life…not really.
The reason is because you’re position is already the result of some
choice you or your caregivers made when you were growing up. Sadly, the typical case is a moderate,
liberal religious person, or non-believer going straight into a position of SRF
because of something tragic happening in their lives, like murder or systematic
criminal activity, sex addictions, or years of drug and alcohol abuse. These types of SRF conversions are really, really
unhealthy, because it replaces one unhealthy addiction with another more
seductive and perilous one. When you
hear of “born again Christians” or “saved” that’s actually referring to the way
in which they were introduced into the SRF way of life.
Anyway enough about SRF,
that’s one dead equine, literally. The
moderate, liberal religious organization offers a more gentle, sensitive, and
outgoing type of religiosity. Oftentimes
these organizations are big into Human Rights and AIDS work. For example, Maryknoll, a classic missionary
organization that is very liberal and progressive in their theology and world
philosophy:
Like I said before these
people care a lot about outreach, and are a lot more accepting of people in the
world who are different then they are namely homosexuals and
non-believers. With that said, they are
still part of an organization that harbors SRF’s throughout the world, and they
themselves become the unwilling participant when these SRF leaders issue
proclamations on morality in the name of their church/synagogue/mosque. Of course on the issue of morality the
moderate, liberal religious person still believes, like the SRF, that their god
holds the monopoly when it comes to “morality” and “moral authority”. They claim that without god, there could be
no morality. This is adequately disputed
by Sam Harris as a myth:
http://www.secularhumanism.org/index.php?section=library&page=sharris_26_3
Furthermore, the liberal,
moderate religious people still believe that they need to prescribe to the
unhealthy historical traditions that the SRF leaders uphold, even though there
is plenty of evidence to the contrary.
Moreover, they still protect the very institutional dogmatic practices
that keep SRF leaders in power, such as; Jesus was god and man; Mohammad went
to heaven; god inspired their holy books.
That pretty much justifies everything in the mindset or mental construct
of a fledgling SRF. So please, do not
continue to say that you are really against the SRF’s in the world, when you
protect the very dogmatic foundational practice that allows them to be in
existence. Accept the fact that you’ve
chosen to continue the deceptions, trickery, and magic act in order to give you
a false sense of meaningful relationship between you and your god. To the moderate, liberal religious person,
you still lack transparency, and that will always get you into trouble in the
end.
Bottom line, the moderate,
liberal religious person does a lot of positive action throughout the world in
their perspective communities, but overall they do more harm to themselves and
others then the positive actions. They
still attach or hold on to something that is unhealthy, even if it’s a tiny
fiber of string holding them to the spider web, it still holds them down from
questioning authority, and looking beyond the false happiness of god’s graces,
and the façade of the safety net of an afterlife. For more on this we look into a gentle
psychological and philosophical perspective discussing evidence of the
unhealthy effects of moderate, liberal religiosity as well as the SRF:
http://www.positiveatheism.org/hist/mccabe01.htm#TOP
Of course to be fair, I’ll
let you look at their counter evidence to the unhealthiness of religion using
psychologists sympathetic to religion:
http://www.truthbook.com/15142.cfm
What am I trying to accomplish thru my analysis of
unhealthy religiosity?
Simply: Bring awareness to those who are trapped in
the web of lies, thus combating their ignorance. Bring light to the fact that there is a way
out of unhealthy religiosity and it’s their choice to keep themselves tangles
in the spider web. If they still choose
to stay in their webs, than at least they are aware that others view it as
unhealthy, and that there is evidence to support that claim.
I do not view this claim
as ridiculous or extreme. Whether or not
you really care about religiosity or not, it has a profound effect on all of
us, and you should be aware of how deep the well goes. Perhaps with enough scientific research, one
day there will be enough support to conclude that dogmatic religiosity of any
kind is inherently unhealthy, much like the proof that the scientific community
has done on smoking…where there is a conscientious effort to make sure the
public knows that if they choose to smoke, no that they continue to do so at
their own risk.
Finally, I DO NOT consider
myself to be a bigot or a discriminator against people who subscribe to
religiosity BUT I will point out to your face, what I and many other
researchers think about the unhealthy effects of dogmatic religion.
For further reading please
look at the following sources:
http://www.le.ac.uk/psychology/jm148/relig1.html