Marketing of Religion

By Gordon Gamm, Esq.

There is no tragedy that can be more horrific, instinctively, than losing a child from death. The thought of losing a child can be more devastating than the loss of one's own life. So, when a talking spirit, that has become the subject about which our greatest love is attached, challenges us to demonstrate our faith by killing our child, then no greater conflict can be imagined. As children we read that God told Abraham to substitute a calf for his son as a quid pro quo for Abraham's faith in God. Around the world children are told by their preachers, mullahs, Rabbis, priests, and Popes that the message of this story is that "you should do what God requires because we don't know or comprehend his purpose and this story illustrates that God's purpose is good, even as it seems to demand cruelty from us." Thus, the story of Abraham is an emotionally compelling message to not think about the consequences of your actions as long as you are doing God's will. Since God's will is incomprehensible to children, it is desirable to look to religious spokespersons, i.e. Rabbis, preachers, priests, and mullahs, to tell us God's morals. For over five hundred years the Code of Jewish law was deliberately left unwritten because it was too holy to write down and only the Rabbis could tell their congregants the rules.

Thus, the story of Abraham became the most powerful inculcation from childhood that individuals were to dismiss their awareness of the hurtful impact of their actions while indulging themselves in righteous superiority for doing God's will when these emotions were in conflict with each other. Abraham's sacrifice is about disempowering people from thinking for themselves. It is about letting faith trump experiential consequences and displacing emotional intelligence. It is about turning over our judgment about how we effect others to religious professionals who have mystical ways of understanding the incomprehensible. The more dressed up in the incomprehensible, the more the priestly class can usurp the role of ethical guru to whom others turn for their answers. The more incomprehensible and "holy" their language and ceremonial falderal, the less room to challenge their authority. Religious people have managed to create a culture that has bought into the assumption that it is impolite to criticize religion or to even talk about religion because it might be offensive with people of other beliefs.

Rabbis spend much of their service reading and speaking Hebrew when they know that many in their congregation don't understand Hebrew. Catholics dress in costumes that distinguish them as sacred and hold secret meetings to elect their Pope. Mullahs certify one another as to who can appropriately interpret what may be required from the Koran. They are dismissive of difficult questions by giving the impression that until their congregants have been through the priestly mystical rigors, no one else can understand the incomprehensible as well as these anointed religious leaders.

The story of Job has become the standard bearer for giving religions throughout the world an explanation for why our senses may fool us in believing that God is unfair. If we are pious, as Job was pious, and we lose our children from death, then we should not lose faith in God. After all, God gave Job some other children to replace the ones he lost due to God's test of his faith. Billions of religious people throughout the world are persuaded by this story that God is fair and that life's tragedies, no matter how horrific, can be reconciled with an all-perfect moral God.

The story of Abraham and Job are talking points for addressing common objections from people who doubt the value of faith. Abraham's story has resonated with children for over two thousand years to believe that God is good and that ultimately he will reward the faithful, no matter how cruel or foolish what is demanded of us in the name of faith. Job has been the answer for parents to children's questions about the incongruity between being obedient to God and the failure to have our prayers answered. It is the answer to the question of why Santa Claus didn't bring us the gifts we requested inasmuch as we had been good.

We, Humanists, should have our talking points for frequently distorted views about us. The conservative think tanks have used their tools for "framing" us in order to demonize us in the general public eye.

1. It is common for the religious community to say that without their religious laws the only alternative is nihilism, do what feels good morality, or moral relativism. (Moral relativism is spoken with a sour face and sinister tone of voice). This has a lot of traction for the dogmatic religions, conservative Catholics and fundamentalists. These religions are the most authoritarian and rule-bound with certainty that they, alone, have the right rules that were dictated to them by God, their holy book, or their Pope who is God's representative on earth.
1. The Humanist response to this can be that absent morals attributed to God, it is fallacious to assert that Humanist ethics are unconstrained. To be consistent with Humanist ethics one must be willing to put community interest above self interest. Humanists reject "no constraint on self interest" as well as supernatural origins for morality.
2. Developed countries (as well as U.S. blue states) with the lowest religious affiliation and God belief (i.e. Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Canada) have the lowest homicide rate, divorce rate, incidence of child and spouse abuse, crime rate. They are countries (and states) with the greatest concern for the fellow citizens as reflected in voter participation.
2. Frequently, people attack Humanism as anti-God and/or anti-religion.
1. Humanists can recognize that many people find comfort in times of tragedy with their religion and with God. Humanists recognize that many religious people do admirable work for humanity because they are inspired by God or their religion. Our emphasis as Humanists is not on attacking God or religion, but upon morals, values, and public policy that makes for a better world and society. Humanists believe that better values, morals, and public policy can be discerned without deference to religion, God, faith or assertions of the holiness of the origin of their morals. Being generous of spirit by serving others is an admirable Humanist value, independent of the motive for the action.
3. Humanists are intellectuals without emotional passions, without "spirituality," without the capacity for wonder.
1. Humanists have the same emotional makeup as any other person. The object of our wonder is the natural universe of experience (rather than an unseen supernatural realm). We can and do become awed by nature's beauty, the wonder of discovery and the celebration through the arts. Music, dance, poetry, sculpture, paintings, and human creative works are all objects of Humanist passion. The intellect and emotions work together to inform our understanding of our world and our values. Our desire for pleasure and sexuality are part of our nature and to be given full responsible expression. There is no rational justification for denigrating pleasure with shame or framing sex as dutiful or limited to purposes of procreation. Although Humanists can be emotional, they don't subscribe to letting emotions or faith trump rational consideration of the consequences of behavior.
4. Godless Communism didn't work as a political/economic/moral system. Their leaders, i.e. Lenin, Mao, and Pol Pot, atheists all, were among the most notorious monsters of all times.
1. Humanism as a moral philosophy is an alternative to authoritarianism in any form. Lenin, Mao, and Pol Pot were not Humanists. They worshiped or purported to worship a political/economic ideology so that the human consequences of their actions were not part of the calculus of their value system. For them ideology trumped human consequences, as faith trumps human consequences for dogmatic religious people. Their atrocities as justified by their political ideology were equivalent to the Crusades and religious wars. The fact that Communism was Godless wasn't the reason for its failure. Communism was a flawed economic system that did not have the flexibility of a freer market system for distributing goods and services. Forced Godlessness was one of its flaws as a reflection of disrespect for freedom of conscience and individual deliberation. Similarly, our constitution prohibits government from forcing religion or God on our citizens in our first amendment to the Bill of Rights.
5. In order to be a Humanist one must renounce their religion and God.
1. There are people who function in their daily lives as Humanists that are Jewish, Protestants, Buddhists, Hindus, Muslims, Catholic, and of no religious faith. Within these religions those who function as Humanists (as distinguished from those who don't) make value choices and truth claims on the basis of experiential considerations rather than faith. Furthermore, it is antithetical to Humanism to espouse religious superiority by virtue of being favored by God by reason of birth, religious ceremony, or because of membership in a particular religion.