Religion & Morality
A Contradiction Explained

French Sociologist Émile Durkheim observed that religion was the root of science. Religion, he said, was the first human attempt to systematically explain the world. Durkheim thought that religious rationality would wither away in modern times (for him, the early twentieth century) because scientific rationality would replace it, by virtue of its superior explanatory power. Alas, he seems to have gotten this one wrong.

But Durkheim was right about the genealogy of thought. Modern religion is an elaboration of a belief in magic. In the absence of a scientific explanation of events and institutions, faith in magical powers, fetishization of nature, and overinterpretation of random variation are inevitable. Durkheim expected religion to fall out of fashion as the outright belief in magic had, for the same reason. For anyone with the least education, the superior power of scientific thinking is obvious. Only a willful ignorance could lead to any other conclusion.

This is where we find ourselves. We live in a world that wants the fruits of scientific labor, but refuses the mental discipline of scientific rationality. Just like children, we want to have our cake and to eat it too.

I Am Alone, by T. Shortell. 2003.



Religions have persisted, despite their inability to explain the modern world. Here, in fact, we have a stunning reversal: religions play up the "essential mystery" of modern life. Since the world is too complex to understand all at once, in its entirety—even for the scientist—all of us will sometimes shake our heads in wonder at the turn of events in which we find ourselves. Many will find this uncertainty anxiety-provoking, and will look around for a convenient escape.

As social organizations, religions have a dramatic power that hides their essential irrationality. They persist today because they are so effective at constructing group identities and at setting up conflict between the in- and out-groups. For all religions, there is an "us" and a "them." All the ritual and the fellowship associated with religious practice is just a means of continually emphasizing group boundaries and hostility. It is no accident that the history of world religions is a history of violence, hatred and intolerance. The in-group has exclusive access to the truth, so the out-group need not—indeed, should not—be listened to; they can only deceive. And, being liars, and thus, evil, they forfeit their rights as equal members of the community. This is the poisonous logic of religious irrationality.

All modern religions are ideological: they insist on a total, though contradictory, system of beliefs and evaluations. Complete acceptance is the only way to escape the uncertainty of modernity. For this reason, religion without fanaticism is impossible. Anyone whose mind is trapped inside such a mental prison will be susceptible to extreme forms of behavior. All religions foment their own kind of holy war.



source http://www.anti-naturals.org/theory/religion.html

I disagree that religion without fanaticism is impossible. For true religion loathes fanaticism, fanaticism is a sign of repressed doubt. One of true faith no longer doubts because his conscience is leading him.

It is, IMO, the exclusionary rules of conduct among christian groups that splits the path of a morally ethical way of life into a path that carries the whiff of aristocratic, cliquish type social behaviour that is reminiscent of McCarthyism.

The in-group verses the out-group indeed............The purveyers of "The Truth" verses the liars.

If the members of one christian faith consider the followers of another faith to hold invalid beliefs, or to say they are wrong,or liars by assessing their behavior as immoral or heretical is religious exclusivism.

Once that religious exclusivism is transferred to an act it then becomes religious intolerance and is a harmful act , which is, by all intents and purposes, immoral.



From what I understand of religion it does demand worship. IMO worship in any form constitutes fanaticism.

Fanaticism can be defined as an irrational zeal.........one could say that any form of worship by a human being qualifies as irrational zeal.

Wouldn't that depend on who's defining irrational?

Yes it would depend on whether or not the definer has a preconception to the existence of God.