j'accuse
Ever since I read, many years ago, Shirley Jackson's short story, "The Lottery," I have been haunted by the dangers inherent in our easy acceptance of unsubstantiated claims. I know many think that it is essentially harmless to accept imaginative and comforting scenarios as true, even if there is a lack of measurable evidence, but I think this has the potential to create the most horrifying possibilities and that most of the inhuman acts man has committed against his fellow man can be traced to this and this alone.
As one example, a few years ago, in France, a mother, impatient with doctors -- her daughter had a tumor removed from her brain and now had fits of epilepsy -- sought help from that vast storehouse of unproven knowledge by calling in the local priest. He, after examining the girl, decided that a devil resided in her. Under his direction the mother and the girl's brothers held her down and poured water down her throat to drown the devil. The terrible screams and struggling that entailed more firmly convinced them that a devil indeed was being successfully exorcised, for they knew their sweet girl would never curse like that, and, towards the end, when they could no longer force water into her, they shoved a towel into the girl's mouth and resumed their grisly task till, in her muzzled agony, she mercifully died. The mother and her sons were charged with manslaughter.
But who could blame them? They only had the girl's interest at heart. This is the terrible thing about unsubstantiated claims-- these people, I am sure, loved the girl and she, in turn, loved them back, yet they could not have tortured her more terribly than could some evil Bernardo. In all innocence, their compassionate faces became visions of horror in the nightmare the girl had to face in her final hours.
Similarly, when young women were burned at the stake, it was often justified as being necessary to free their souls from eternal damnation. Once you can declare that a woman has a devil within her, anything goes-- the devil has her tongue and we can only hear itspleas, not hers. Even today, there are preachers who create images of a child running around in a woman's belly, crying: " Help me, kind sir, help me." in order to arouse their more impressionable subjects to cruel acts.
I believe that almost all the most horrific crimes committed by we humans against our own kind are rooted in unsubstantiated beliefs. No one could have slaughtered six million people during the Nazi era, nor could anyone have continued to butcher women and children in Bosnia, unless they had first been incited to do so by false and lurid stories about their potential victims.
Someone once said that all it takes for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing. I don't think so.All it takes for evil to triumph is for a society to tolerate the propagation of information that has not been substantiated by empirical evidence.
And this is my main objection to organized religion.Because of its nature, it insists that we can believe in things without evidence-- this is its great crime; and it symbolizes, in my opinion, the terrible Pandora's box that could eventually destroy us all.
If religious leaders had only had the decency, the guts, to slowly concede step by step -- as we humans unearthed ever more information about this magnificent universe -- the superstitious parts that no longer made sense, that were no longer needed, religion could have become the most unifying and emotionally rewarding force for the good of mankind.
When we gather in a church and listen to the hymns we can feel the empathy that such a social gathering can emote. We can easily visualize that some ancient need of our species was to gather together and thus encourage mutual cooperation and help. Instead, this powerful force for unity has been turned into a justification to slaughter those who do not share our rigid dogma. The priest's exhortation to believe without evidence justifies almost anything. What could have been the most useful tool of human culture has been turned into a breeding ground of bigotry and hatred.
Gays are hunted and beaten, Jewish Synagogues are set on fire, many people live in tortured shame, obsessed with John's exhortation to "cut off thy offending hand," women are treated as evil temptresses and untrustworthy and are often murdered for 'disloyalty,' all because of some religious parable or another. What one religious leader might pardon, another will condemn.
agm
Andy Mulcahy