Religion is Social Control

Originally posted by budski

I think that one of the main aspects of religion is that people impose some control (at least to a degree) on themselves.
It is for this reason that I believe that government imposed control is doomed to failure - people have to want to be controlled, and religion fulfills this need, through a reward system, albeit a subtler one than perhaps governments could manage.

I believe that the success of any religion, cult, or political body in successfully influencing people stems from:

1. The FEAR created by perceived consequences of disobedience and disbelief; such as hell, imprisonment, death, loss of physical possessions or personal pleasures.

2. The perception that people have that there are MYSTERIES or special knowledge existing that are unknowable except to the few who foment the belief that they are the only ones who can use or interpret same.

The ones who are most successful in using these, WIN.

Valid points,
but you forgot to mention one of the most important factors: Peoples desire to be controlled (which also gives a vicarious feeling of being in control)

I submit that this is the single biggest reason for the existence of any belif system, whether that be religion, conspiracy, whatever.
This very human need to feel control, through being controlled, is what has lead us to the point we are at today.

I don't know what I am. I do believe in God, somewhat, but I question religion in itself, such as 'do this and don't do that'. I look at all the 'rules' as just a matter of interpretation.

I haven't read every single book out there, ie. Torah, Koran etc, but I look at everyone as human beings. I also ask many questions and like asking questions.

I asked a Rabbi about what makes him believe that his 'beliefs' are the correct ones, as christians and muslims and buddhists all believe that their version of the truth is correct.

The answer I got from that one particular rabbi was that he doesn't have all the answers and that I should come in and meet with them on a weekly basis.

Not the answer I was looking for.

Also, I was blessed by The Rebbe (lubavitch) when I was born, as I wasn't going to make it through the night. It seems that the blessing included me being a 'great' person, or something to that effect.

Now, the religious people I spoke to say this Rabbi never makes any mistakes. I'm wondering well, let's say he 'knew' that I will turn out this way, ie. questioning religion beliefs, not just 'believing' anything someone tells me.

So, question is, will I somehow change my way of thinking and become another person in the future? possibly... but if I do remain my 'current' self with my throughts, does that mean the great Rebbe was wrong? or is he 'on to something'? or is this just luck?

Religion is man made, as a subject of this culture for power and control over "the people".

As the military provides discipline, objectives and a way of life for those too incompletent to create the structure for themselves, so does religion create a structure and way of life for those too incompetent to keep there mind and eyes open and create life for themselves and there loved ones and there friends and be happy with it without some 3rd party intervention telling them what to do and how to do it.

Originally posted by Perfect Fifth
The fact that people in many different organized religions throughout history have done bad things is not proof that organized religion is flawed, it's proof that people are flawed.

Or it could indicate that organised religion is man made;man has never worshipped anything but himself and that:
"Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction" (Blaise Pascal)

There always seems to be a minority of people, like you mention, who make for dramatic stories and headlines because they abuse organized religion and/or do things exactly opposed to their beliefs.

I think the original post was more about whether organised religion just exists as a mechanism to control the masses and if it has always been diametericaly opposed to rational freethinking and liberty.
Heres what some presidents of the United States have had to say about it:

“In every country and in every age the priest has been hostile to liberty; he is always in alliance with the despot, abetting his abuses in return for protection to his own.”
Thomas Jefferson

"Ecclesiastical establishments tend to great ignorance and corruption,all of which facilitate the execution of mischeivious projects"
James Maddison

"Religious controversies are always productive of more acrimony and irreconcilable hatreds than those which spring from any other cause." George Washington

“Twenty times in the course of my late reading, have I been upon the point of breaking out, ‘this would be the best of all possible worlds, if there were no religion in it.’”
John Adams

Those beliefs created codes of morals and behavior that keep human kind from plunging into total barbary.

This is a popular misconception espoused through religious propaganda.
Moral integrity is a human attribute and in no way a religious one.
Are you honestly saying that before organised religion came along no-one was compassionate,benevolent,empathic and kind ?
Its utter nonsense to suggest this as it is tanatamount to saying anyone from the civilsations of ancient China and Sumeria never heard of or displayed these positive (human) values.

If anything life under the rule of organised religion has the most lacking in these virtues:

"When the churches literally ruled society, the human drama encompassed: (a) slavery;(b) the cruel subjection of women;[c] the most savage forms of legal punishment; (d) the absurd belief that kings ruled by divine right; (e) the daily imposition of physical abuse; (f) cold heartlessness for the sufferings of the poor; as well as (g) assorted pogroms ('ethnic cleansing' wars) between rival religions, capital punishment for literally hundreds of offenses, and countless other daily imposed moral outrages. . . . It was the free-thinking, challenging work by people of conscience, who almost invariably had to defy the religious and political status quo of their times, that brought us out of such darkness." Steve Allen

Religion is not the problem. Some certain people are the problem.

I think religion is the problem as ,along with nationalism and political ideoogy, it acts as a major catalyst for most of the feuding,bickering,squabbling,bigotry,prejudice,violence,bloodshed and warfare that occurs in the world today.
Perhaps its precisely because organised religion inherently promotes delusions of grandeur in its acolytes (via cult logic) that it has such a divisive effect on society.
Conditioning and indoctrinating members of a specific religious sect/cult with the beleif that they are somehow more special/saved/holy/chosen/superior to other human beings seems very irresponsible to me and has direct corellations with other deluded supremacist groups.

Here are some other refreshingly honest quotes by prominent free-thinkers about organised religion being adverse to liberty and cruely sociopathic in its treatment of 'inferior non beleivers' but ,perhaps the most telling is the last one:

"There is in every village a torch-the teacher:and an extinguisher-the clergyman"
Victor Hugo

"You find as you look around the world that every single bit of progress in humane feeling, every improvement in the criminal law, every step toward the diminution of war, every step toward better treatment of the colored races, or every mitigation of slavery, every moral progress that there has been in the world, has been consistently opposed by the organized churches of the world. I say quite deliberately that the Christian religion, as organized in its churches, has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world."
Bertrand Russell

When we blindly adopt a religion, a political system, a literary dogma, we become automatons. We cease to grow. -Anais Nin

“All natural institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian, or Turkish, appear to me no other than human inventions, set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit.”
Thomas Paine

“Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits it for every noble enterprise....During almost fifteen centuries has the legal establishment of Christianity been on trial. What have been its fruits? More or less, in all places, pride and indolence in the clergy; ignorance and servility in laity; in both, superstition, bigotry, and persecution.”
James Maddison

"Religion is fundamentally opposed to everything I hold in veneration--courage, clear thinking, honesty, fairness, and, above all, love of the truth."
H. L. Mencken

[edit on 02/10/08 by karl 12]

Religion is here because the majority of us believe its better to trust morals than governments.
Religions do control but its self imposed controls. Fundamentals that don't get voted on.

I feel the current religions have run their course of control.

The different Abraham religions need to understand that they can not work together and that their differences will only cause strife.

If a new religion is established there might be some breakaway religions but they all have to have the similar leadership and philosophy, for example live and let live, be mindful of your environment and neighbors. For example the East would have to adopt more Buddhist approach or something if they still were not seeing the good in God.

Basically either they continue to wait for the world to destroy itself, be sidelined to technology or stop teaching the outdated verses and try the new.

Religion is control. Truth just IS.

Mass suggestion thru media, transference of thought via internet and social aspects of being human....

But many never look into Truth, much further than perceptive facts anyway....

Perceptions are misinterpreted. So are meanings.

Feelings, guide the masses. Sensory data, played upon, to cause agreement.

Force of agreement feeds momentum.... hence, action.

The masses are educated to feed the pride of self, so as never able to look at what "they" may be "allowing".

To look, search, see, causes suffering. Hence, a "cross" to bear.

Truth just is, no matter how we feel about it. We should learn to love it, for it is freedom from the lying system that enslaves us.

"Demons" are actual living entities.... Lies with their own intelligence, seeking their own desire.

When agreed with, we choose to empower them. Just to "feel" better, even temporarily.

Jesus Christ is Lord!!!!

originally posted by: budski

Valid points,
but you forgot to mention one of the most important factors: Peoples desire to be controlled (which also gives a vicarious feeling of being in control)

I submit that this is the single biggest reason for the existence of any belif system, whether that be religion, conspiracy, whatever.
This very human need to feel control, through being controlled, is what has lead us to the point we are at today.

Nice observation here. People are in fact very inclined to fall into a "herd mentality," and this is not better demonstrated than through religion. This is why Christ Himself said that the path to life is very narrow. Most who believe they are on that path are not. The path is wide enough for only ONE, and it is an internal path. It is the quest to discover the living Christ who is within all things. (This is also why He said that those who truly wish to follow Him will have no place to lay their head.)

Mainstream religion (Christianity) of course demonizes this concept, and hinders those within it from embracing their own innate divinity that is hidden within the illusion of a carnal existence.

a reply to: budski

By that argument, NOTHING man makes is perfect and therefore none of it should be allowed. We should live in total anarchy with no religion, no government, no nothing ... not even family. After all, man made it all, right? And if nothing man makes can be perfect, then we shouldn't let any of it exist.

But then, let's follow that line of reasoning some more ...

If the real problem is that nothing man makes is perfect, perhaps that's because man himself isn't perfect (which is what almost all major religious systems teach as part of their core incidently), and if man himself isn't perfect and nothing that isn't perfect should be allowed to exist ... why then, MAN shouldn't be allowed to exist.

a reply to: budski

If you get brainwashed early with the God thing, you have a heck of a problem, because everything becomes the will of God, you have essentially given up personal freedom . All actions good and bad are God orientated. If you suffer bad luck, God must be punishing you for something , if its good luck then the opposite applies . Then the social conformity kicks in. In none of this are you able to take personal responsibility. If you are sick the personal responsibility is passed on to another authority figure . In no way can you hold yourself accountable for the crap food that has done a job on you ,if only ten percent of illness is gene related, and certain diseases show up in the same family, then the habitual diet, suggested to you from your family group, rests with your ability to change. this has nothing to with a god fantasy, more the application of logic and reason. But if your ability to change has been interfered with, by being convinced the responsibility lies elsewhere then its a form of mental sabotage.