Lying is the Root of all Religion

[Dr. Shades]

What a bizarre thread!

Just a friendly reminder, but passing judgement on a thread isn’t the same as contributing to a thread.

What’s your contribution, if any?

[ceeboo]

What a bizarre thread!

Just a friendly reminder, but passing judgement on a thread isn’t the same as contributing to a thread.

Understood. Thanks for the friendly reminder.

What’s your contribution, if any?

[Some Schmo]

Quick question for RI: since I repurposed the expression "money is the root of all evil" to come up with my thread title, do you consider "money is the root of all evil" to be an emotional black and white narrative?

[Gadianton]

It's easy to understand why an observer would get the impression that lying is the root of religion when the Republican party is led by the most shameless living liar on the planet who only gets more popular the more he lies, and the Republican party's loudest voices are self-avowed religious nuts. To the extent that right-wing politics reflects religion, it must be true that lying is a big part of religion. At the same time, Donald Trump himself is not even the slightest bit religious, and I really don't think the "Freedom Caucus" people are actually religious themselves either, although I haven't spent any time looking into that. Neo-Nazism isn't religious, though it is the gold standard for being a non-RINO Republican. I almost want to say that gullibility is the root of religion and now is the day in the sun for sociopaths ready to exploit the gullible. But, many are not gullible, they are themselves lying, or they are so unwilling to face obvious facts that they are essentially lying by omission.

The justification is a belief in a higher level of honesty. Lying for the greater good or lying for the Lord, like my right-wing friend all but admitted to when he told me he hoped the Supreme Court would overturn Biden's win but he couldn't bring himself to say he believed the election was rigged, only that it was possible that it was.

To me, the more interesting cultural phenomena of lying is found in the legal system. This is all anecdotal, but to me, back in the day, coming clean and telling the truth in general was a socially enforced norm. Now it seems by default, you're expected to lie and never admit guilt until maybe down the road as part of negotiating. Like back then, if your kid did something wrong at school, you owned it, felt embarrassed, and set the kid straight. Now you have to deny everything. "Not my kid! It was the other kid!" And a driving reason for that is the dire consequences for being guilty of anything.

Funny enough, Trump to me seems to be case-in-point product of the new legal world since legal grifting is what has defined is success -- or rather his ability to not implode despite failure after failure.

[ceeboo]

Hey SS

..since I repurposed the expression "money is the root of all evil" to come up with my thread title, do you consider "money is the root of all evil" to be an emotional black and white narrative?

From a biblical Christianity stance, it's not "money is the root of all evil" - It is "For the love of money is the root of all evil."

[Moksha]

What a bizarre thread!

Although the title’s proclamation is (in my opinion) unduly harsh in several ways, maybe consider it (the thread) and its central claim in context of the linked article.

Excellent point. This board is not ready to contemplate that religion puts forth lies.

You need Ceeboo up on that wall so you can sleep soundly in your beds at night! Here is to all angels with drawn swords acting as procurers and to the talking donkeys (keeping the earth in steady rotation). Balaam's up!

[Res Ipsa]

Quick question for RI: since I repurposed the expression "money is the root of all evil" to come up with my thread title, do you consider "money is the root of all evil" to be an emotional black and white narrative?

If you're meaning to quote the Bible, you've got the quote wrong. It's not "money" but "the love of all money." is it black and white? Sure. Anything that draws significant inferences from dividing two things into different categories is black and white. It's also extremely reductive, as is your title. I wouldn't call it emotional however. What makes your title emotional, in my opinion, is the use of the emotionally loaded term "lying." "Liars" are bad people. People who believe false things are, by contrast, merely mistaken.

[Res Ipsa]

To extrapolate Huckabee's lies to something general about religion is a huge stretch.

It would be a huge stretch if it were an isolated incident, but it's not. It was just the latest example I'd heard about when I thought to create this thread. We could talk about the Bible museum with the dinosaurs. We could talk about dozens of cults. We could talk about Fox News. And on and on and on.

I didn't just read that article and suddenly come to my conclusion. I'm surprised it's even controversial. Seems self-evident.

Things that "seem self-evident" rarely are.

[Doctor CamNC4Me]

Hey SS

..since I repurposed the expression "money is the root of all evil" to come up with my thread title, do you consider "money is the root of all evil" to be an emotional black and white narrative?

From a biblical Christianity stance, it's not "money is the root of all evil" - It is "For the love of money is the root of all evil."

Nice logic chopping.

- Doc

[Res Ipsa]

I very much admire and agree with Steven Weinberg's take on religion:

“With or without religion, good people can behave well and bad people can do evil; but for good people to do evil - that takes religion.”
― Steven Weinberg

Schmo, you used to say in your signature line that religion is a placeholder for ignorance. I think there is a lot of truth to that. I also think that a major impetus for mankind's invention of religion was desperation to understand enough about the scary world we live in to protect us from it and feel a bit more secure, even if, at first, we could only pretend to know that what we imagined or wished were true. Religion was (and still is) a placeholder for what we couldn't yet know or figure out. Shared religious beliefs undoubtedly motivated people to form cohesive groups for their own mutual protection and survival.

I don't think we can deny that much of the noblest and most beautiful achievements of mankind in art, literature, philosophy, music and human compassion have been motivated by sincere religious belief. But neither can we deny that many of the very worst atrocities and conflicts and most enduring hatreds between us have also been caused by "good" people fanatically convinced they were only carrying out the will of God.

No disrespect intended to you, Gunnar, but lots of disrespect toward Weinberg. He's a brilliant physicist who deservedly won the Nobel Prize in physics. But, in my opinion, that statement is one of the most idiotic things uttered by a high profile atheist. Rwandan genocide is the easiest example -- where an ethnic conflict led neighbors slaughtered neighbors, including children, with machetes.

What causes good people to evil is fear that an outgroup represents an existential crisis. And Weinberg's quip reinforces the in group-outgroup dynamic that is what causes good people to do evil.