I hated onions as a child. I recall entering a store with my mother when I was a child of three or four years old. She'd planned to make a potato salad and some calamari for a BBQ we were attending and ran a list of items needed. I questioned their necessity in the potato salad when she read off onions. "Because it's illegal not too," was the short answer. I seriously thought there would be police involved and I continued believing this until I was about 6 or 7 when I learned otherwise.
Why I bring up this uncomfortable episode from my childhood is that it perfectly illustrates how a person in authority will effectively lie in an effort to suit their own agenda. I don’t fault my mom for this. It’s really no different from other tools of indoctrination such as Santa Clause or other pseudo non-corporeal authoritarian figures meant to affect individual behavior for the benefit of a community. She could have said, “Because I like onions. Deal with it.” Or, “Because everyone else likes onions. It’s you that’s different.” But she didn’t. I was a small child and my mom never really was that abrasive. Besides children that age don’t exactly have a handle on their position in the world and are oft likely to test boundaries. Thus we have Santa Clause or other pseudo non-corporeal authoritarian figures to fit whatever occasion.
There are literally thousands of gods, goddesses, saints, prophets, and other incarnations to choose from to suit a specific purpose. Do you want help winning the big game? Make an offering to the Greek Goddess of victory,
Nike. You want to express humility for that amazing touchdown? There’s a
Jesus for that. Problem training your dogs? Try
St. Hubert. Need a standard of food safety in regards to pork or shellfish? The Talmud, Qu’ran, and Holy Bible all have variations on the Book of Leviticus. In fact if you see something in society that you don’t like be they the actions of a group or individual, you can take comfort in that their mortal actions will carry on into the afterlife by mechanisms of karma, being removed from the light of god, or just outright eternal damnation. What better way of manipulation is there to modify a person’s behavior short of physical abuse?
It’s simply cheaper and easier to tell a person that they will face some unseen punishment than it is to explain the truth of a matter, thus it is easier to control an uneducated population.
Do we need institutions that reinforce morality? It helps, but whose morality and necessarily are they just compounding intolerance towards others of dissimilar faiths. Three of the religions that I referenced earlier have the same foundation, so legitimately the same god, but one split off and decided that god should have a son, and then another split saying that son was just another prophet before their current one. They sit like riders on a Bill before it’s ratified into law. Religion is a governing body with its own purposes and agendas that knows no border, though depending on where you are born more than divine planning. If you’re born in the United States, you are likely to be born a Christian. In the Middle East, overwhelmingly you’re likely a Muslim. In Israel, by
law you should be a Jew. Each is culturally specific to be inclusive of the society following its edicts, and exclusionary of those devices that may challenge it. Why? Because fuck you. That’s why.
We can of course contrast and compare all day long in regards to how you are of the chosen in this divine plan while
72% of the population has been condemned to burn in hell on the day that they were born. Or that
98% of the population will await resurrection in Gehenna. Or that all but the true believers will suffer in
Jahannam for all eternity. We can discuss why the first
European immigrants came to the Americas, what our founding father's had to say about our
Christian nation, the
sanctity of marriage,
immaculate conception verses
rape and
contraception, contributions to contemporary culture, charitable extensions, or even that moment when you really felt alone. But let’s discuss historical fact where in American history alone we can also discuss
burning people at the stake,
manifest destiny, the
segregation of communities, the
subjugation of women, or the
firebombing of clinics and the assassinations of medical personnel. Globally we can discuss
77 dead in Norway,
inquisitions that lasted up until
1988, the
6 million dead at the hands of Nazi ideology, or even the one-thousand years of history called the
Dark Ages.
But society is better than all that. God after all is a fluid being designed in the image of man to suit the purposes of an individual’s idea of community that are not necessarily in line with communities competing for the same resources. Whether it was yesterday, 32, 80, 400, or 900 years ago, it’s not today. It’s not here. It’s not this moment. It’s not until the next terrorist, martyr, or patriot rises up to rampage a youth camp, mixed singles event, or family planning clinic, and even then the people will bury their heads in the sand looking for ways they are different rather than seeing how they are the same.
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Die Religion ... ist das Opium des Volkes"
