Walid Shoebat and Kamal Saleem
May 1, 2008
Walid Shoebat and Kamal Saleem, self-described (former) Palestinian terrorists, spoke at the University of Colorado here in Boulder the other night. I had the opportunity to attend.
It was interesting timing. On Sunday, after a couple of days of web surfing, I had ordered Walid Shoebat’s book “Why I Left Jihad.” On Monday, I happened to open the local paper while waiting for an oil change on my car (no irony intended). The front page article was about Walid Shoebat. I discovered he would be speaking at the University that evening.
All (free) tickets were gone, but they did have about 200 tickets available at the door. I arrived early, anticipating quite a turn out.
Indeed, the hall was full, and security was tight.
Kamal Saleem spoke first. He described his life growing up in Palestine. It was a mostly unsurprising account: the education his family and school gave him about how the Jews were the enemy, the Holocaust was a hoax, America was the ‘Great Satan,’ Israel was the ’small Satan,’ and one day Islam would be the one true religion displacing all the others, worldwide. At that time, he became resolute for jihad. Obviously, at a very early age. I found particularly humorous how, given the education he had at the time (which, again, said the Holocaust had been a hoax), he asked his teachers in his school “how did they get the Jews to be so skinny? What diet were they on?”
Walid Shoebat was next. I might call him “the headliner.”
His descriptions of his childhood were similar. He emphasized the impact it had on him at a very early age. He held and fired an AK47 at the age of 6. At 7, he ran his first bomb supply mission from Syria through the Golan Heights. Like Saleem, he was instilled with the desire to fulfill jihad; to become a martyr.
“In my right hand, I had the Koran. In my left, the AK47″
Walid Shoebat is a darling of conservatives, particularly among Christians (since, of course, he converted to Christianity).
He is a self-described member of the “far right.” A quick search on YouTube will turn up many of his appearances in prophecy-oriented Christian discussions. I haven’t bothered to watch all of those (I pretty much know what to expect). But I know he is often a speaker in such arenas.
Walid Shoebat is also a focal point of controversy. Some say his story of being a (former) terrorist is unverified, even perhaps fabricated. Some say he is simply a mouthpiece for the Christian Right. He is never a critic of the current administration. From him I found not the slightest criticism of the invasion of Iraq.
Boulder being “liberal” (albeit mostly “limousine liberal”), and this being a presentation at a university, you can imagine the reception.
Actually, it was somewhat mixed. The members of the Arab Student Association were none too pleased. He was heckled a few times, and during the Q&A session the discomfort of Arabs in the room was palpable. A few people were escorted out by rather well-armed police.
On the other hand, he received a huge applause for describing what he wanted to see from American Muslims if, indeed, they loved America: “I want to see you with headbands in Arabic and with signs in English: ‘Allah bless America.’” There were other points in his presentation where he aroused substantial emotional support. Again, please keep in mind I’m referring to the notoriously “libral” Boulder, Colorado.
Mr. Shoebat invoked many of the well-known passages in the Koran that support what we today call terrorism. “What part of ‘kill’ do you in the West not understand?” he said.
Koran: 9:5
But when the forbidden months are past, then fight and slay the unbelievers wherever ye find them, an seize them, beleaguer them, and lie in wait for them in every stratagem (of war); but if they repent, and establish regular prayers and practise regular charity, then open the way for them: for Allah is Oft-forgiving, Most Merciful.
This Sura in the Koran is oft quoted by both critics of Islam and terrorists themselves. In fact, Muslim terrorists cite it to justify their violent jihad. Critics of Islam claim that it commands Muslims to act with aggression towards the non-Muslims (polytheists) of that period, and contributes to Islam’s final theological doctrine of aggression towards all non-Muslims of all times. Apologists for Islam claim that this passage is purely defensive.
Personally, I find the apologists’ argument to be simply ludicrous. Of course, when I say that, I find more than one Muslim telling me that, since I can’t read Arabic, I have read a mis-translation. Also, it seems, even if I had a proper translation, I wouldn’t understand the context.
Y’know … I have to say….I don’t read German. But I don’t think I need to be fluent in German and German history to get the overall gist of “Mein Kampf.”
I had the opportunity to chat with Mr. Shoebat (briefly) after the event, before he was whisked off by his handlers. I pointed out to him that, during his presentation, he had mis-quoted Mr. Richard Dawkins. He invited me to engage in a discussion with him over email. I have started that discussion — we will see where that leads.
To be honest, I am not expecting much. He has a great gig going, and he doesn’t need some pinko like me confusing him with the facts. On the other hand, he apparently admires Christopher Hitchens, which I found quite ironic.
If you would like a taste of Mr. Shoebat’s lecture, this series on YouTube is pretty much the script he followed at CU Boulder.
Enjoy.
Infidel
April 24, 2008
One November morning in 2004, Theo van Gogh got up to go to work at his film production company in Amsterdam. He took out his old black bicycle and headed down a main road. Waiting in a doorway was a Moroccan man with a handgun and two butcher knives.
As Theo cycled down the Linnaeusstraat, Muhammad Bouyeri approached. He pulled out his gun and shot Theo several times. Theo fell off his bike and lurched across the road, then collapsed. Bouyeri followed. Theo begged, “Can’t we talk about this?” but Bouyeris shot him four more times. Then he took out one of his butcher knives and sawed into Theo’s throat. With the other knife, he stabbed a five-page letter onto Theo’s chest.
The letter was addressed to me.
Whether you a re a person of faith, an agnostic, or an atheist, I highly recommend Infidel by Ayaan Hirsi Ali.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali grew up in Africa (born Somali), the product of a Muslim upbringing, ultimately bravely abandoning her roots and becoming a controversial member of the Dutch parliament. Her story is one of incredibly bravery and an amazing capacity to overcome all obstacles. At the same time, it is a painfully clear indictment of Islamic misogyny, absolutism, intolerance, and the price we all pay for religious beliefs that contribute to insane actions.
Some of her criticisms could just as easily be leveled at any other organized religion, but her critique is certainly most scathing of Islam. But she holds back no punches against the West for failing to address the fundamental conflict between Islam and the West. For example, she faults multiculturalism:
“We in the west would be wrong to prolong the pain [of the transition of Islam to the modern world] by elevating cultures full of bigotry and hatred toward women to the stature of respectable alternative ways of life.
This is not just a critique, however. This is her personal story. It is filled with vivid detail, personal trials, the charming and beautiful moments of adolescence, the tragedy of war and her conflict between faith and reason. It is both tragic and uplifting
I found this book so compelling I am reading it all over again even though I just finished it. This is one of those books which, when you close the final chapter, you ask yourself “what exactly do I have to complain about? Wow …”
I also recommend looking her up on YouTube.
Why Hate Religious People?
April 16, 2008
Sometimes, as someone who is an “unbeliever,” I am asked why I hate believers; why am I so against their beliefs?
It’s a funny question. Maybe I come off arrogant and intolerant. That’s entirely possible (I’ve been known to be so), and if that is the case I must apologize both to people of faith, and atheists. I apologize to the people of faith because I really don’t mean to project hate. I apologize to the atheists because I don’t want to contribute to the stereotype “angry atheist” that is often portrayed.
Let me be perfectly clear: I don’t hate “believers.” I hate their beliefs.
What people of faith are probably picking up from me is impatience and my discomfort with an absolute certainty on their part, and a double standard.
Somehow, it is okay to question and debate someone’s beliefs about physics, astrology, medicine, politics, psychology, parapsychology and astrophysics. Yet it is (as far as I can tell) not acceptable to debate someone’s religious beliefs.
Here I am simply re-phrasing Sam Harris. None of this is new to atheists, though I am sure it is new to some people of faith. For them, I would suggest reading Mr. Harris, or at least spending twenty minutes watching him here:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=J3YOIImOoYM
He’s not perfect, and I don’t agree with everything he says.
But I do think he makes quite a few good points.
Let me be clear: I don’t hate religious people. I just hate their religion. I’m not entirely sure how different this is from “love the sinner, hate the sin.”
I hate what religion does to people. I hate the evil that has been committed in this world in the name of God/Allah/Jehovah — whatever.
To be honest, that’s kind of a funny thing because I don’t believe in evil. Let me quote Robert Jay Lifton of Harvard (visiting professor of psychiatry):
“…one has to be aware of any claim to absolute virtue, because it’s absolute virtue that you call forth to kill large numbers of people. It may be impossible to do that without that claim.”
I’m hard-pressed to come up with a more apt description of the horrors of history.
Most of the evils of the world can probably be traced back to such sentiments. It is the adherence to absolute virtue, the belief one is serving God, that provides us with the means to commit unspeakable horrors. Some evils can be traced to selfishness, competition for resources, exploitation, racism, untreated mental illness and just plain stupidity. But I still believe the majority of the atrocities that have taken place on our planet were done in the name of “absolute virtue.”
I’m posting this on an atheist site, obviously. I suppose I am posting this to ask all of you atheists to recognize that we don’t hate people, we just hate what their beliefs have contributed to.
In a future post, I’ll address the popular belief that atheism has given us the dictators of the world. What makes that ludicrous is the belief that atheism is a philosophy that has adherents.
But for now, let’s agree that people of faith are not people to be hated, and we (atheists) don’t hate them. We just don’t like the bi-product.
I’m new here. But ….. Is that a fair start?
I want the Witnesses to leave me alone!
March 24, 2008
I can’t stand it anymore! I came home from the store the other day and found my husband standing at the back door talking to a young lady. In the driveway, blocking my way into the garage is a minivan being driven by a young man dressed in a suit. Great, I thought, another one. My husband and I have lived in our new home for less than a month and this is the third time we have had a Witness on our door step. The first thing that I wanted to do was whip the door open and apologize to the girl, maybe tell her that he was visiting for Easter from his group home or something…anything to save her from all of his questions. The poor girl had no idea what she had gotten herself into when she knocked on our door. None of them ever do. She finally left after stuttering a little about Easter and her beliefs. I don’t know if she cried. Maybe she got into the van and they all prayed for our family. Maybe (please please PLEASE) they crossed us off the list of places to stop. Either way, we got noticed, for you see, I am married to a special man. My husband is TJM admin, and the Witnesses will never leave me alone. First I was invited to the memorial service for Jesus, and then they had a meeting of some sort to talk about who was qualified to rule the world. I would have LOVED to go to that one. I can’t remember why this poor girl was here this time. She told him that she had talked to me before, so I guess I am in her precinct. I should go back and read the “Porch Monkeys” article again. When we were first married we lived literally right next to a meeting hall. We would watch those little 6 year olds run into the building carrying their little brief cases. We were there for 4 years and were only visited once. I miss those days. My hubby told me that those “No soliciting” signs don’t work either. Did you know that? They aren’t solicitors. I guess I will just have to let TJM admin keep answering the door! Poor little Witnesses…
Logical Path from Religious Beliefs to Evil Deeds
December 19, 2007
Nobody is suggesting that all religious people are violent, intolerant, racist, bigoted, contemptuous of women and so on. It would be absurd to suggest such a thing: just as absurd as to generalize about all atheists. I am not even concerned with statistical generalizations about the majority of religious people (or atheists). My concern here is over whether there is any general reason why religion might be more or less likely to bias individuals towards all those unpleasant things in Christopher Hitchens’s list: to make them more likely to exhibit them than they would have been without religion. I think the answer is yes.
Religion changes, for people, the definition of good. Atheists and humanists tend to define good and bad deeds in terms of the welfare and suffering of others. Murder, torture, and cruelty are bad because they cause people to suffer. Most religious people think them bad, too, but some religions (for example the religion of the Taliban) sanction all of them under some circumstances. For non-religious people, the behavior of consenting adults in a private bedroom is the business of nobody else, and is not bad unless it causes suffering – for example by breaking up a happy family. But many religions arrogate to themselves the right to decide that certain kinds of sexual behavior, even if they do no harm to anyone, are wrong.
The actions of the Taliban, their vile bullying of women, their sanctimonious hatred of all that might lead to enjoyment, their violence, their ignorant bigotry, their hatred of education, their cruelty, seem to me to be as close to pure evil as anything I can imagine. Yet, by the lights of their own religion they are supremely righteous – really good people.
The nineteen men of 9/11, having washed, perfumed themselves and shaved their whole bodies in preparation for the martyr’s paradise, believed they were performing the highest religious duty. By the lights of their religion they were as good as it is possible to be. They were not poor, downtrodden, oppressed or psychotic; they were well educated, sane and well balanced, and, as they thought, supremely good. But they were religious, and that provided all the justification they needed to murder and destroy. Their madrassas and their mullahs had given them good reason to think they were on a fast track to paradise.
Polls suggest that 13% of British Muslims regard the 7/7 London bombers as blessed martyrs. Neighbors and friends expressed bewilderment that such nice, gentle, kind, youth-clubbing, cricket-loving young men could do such terrible things. But once you understand what they truly and sincerely believed – that it was Allah’s will that they blow up buses and subways – it becomes all too easy to understand.
It is easy for religious faith, even if it is irrational in itself, to lead a sane and decent person, by rational, logical steps, to do terrible things. There is a logical path from religious faith to evil deeds. There is no logical path from atheism to evil deeds. Of course, many evil deeds are done by individuals who happen to be atheists. But it can never be rational to say that, because of my nonbelief in religion, it would be good to be cruel, to murder, to oppress women, or to perpetrate any of the evils on the Hitchens list.
The following quotation from the Nobel prize winning physicist Steven Weinberg has become well known, but it is so devastatingly true that it is worth quoting again and again: “With or without [religion] you’d have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, it takes religion.”
The Demonization Of Matthew (or Religion is the Problem, not the Answer)
December 13, 2007
Matthew Murray’s world was haunted by demons.
Somehow, a child of a prominent doctor, someone who was home schooled in a comfortable Denver suburb, evolved from would-be Christian missionary to a killer trying to rain Columbine down on the Christian world.
A family spokesman said Murray grew up in a loving home. But other interviews and what appear to be Murray’s own online ramblings portray a disturbed individual who resented his sheltered upbringing, had problems with his mother, heard voices in his head, felt rejected and abused — and yet appeared to be searching for a place to belong.
He sought refuge in everything from an online forum for recovering Pentecostals to an occult group.
End of quote and beginning of my rant.
I feel so much pity for this young man. It was no loving home he grew up in; if it was his parents would have known about his problems. Voices in his head? Did they think it was Jesus talking to him? Wasn’t it a warning? Or is it a given that the religious expect to hear voices? Isn’t that what is taught from the pulpit and in the Bible where and everpresent but invisible being hears and sees everything we do and say, but only speaks to the chosen in the heads?
I know only too well about the isolation of growing up in a fundie home. No one to talk to, no one to discuss anything with; from religion to social aspects. God is supposed to be your best friend and he is supposed to provide all the answers. The contrary is however true. God is not the answer, it is the problem; remove God/Allah with his unfair and inhuman expectations out of the equation and leave us to be normal human beings with normal desires and emotions.
I blame Mathews parents and ultimately religion for what happened. When the bubble burst and Mathew needed support, he was alone; so he went on internet forums to have the outlet he so desperately needed. He wanted to disassociate himself from his religious background but was so brainwashed that it caused him only pain and anguish, intense bewilderment and in the end, a tragedy.
What will happen now is that fundie parents will prohibit their children to have access to the internet - and the snowball becomes only bigger. The young men and women will become increasingly isolated and bewildered in a world full of temptation, a flesh and blood body screaming for release which is sinful in the eyes of the God they pray to.
A few of Mathew’s cries for help on forums:
I remember growing up in pentecostalism/evangelicalism, we were always told to support the republicans/conservatives and to “hate those evil satanic democrats.” Jesus never said to put our trust in any political leader, yet we see so many christians trying sooooo hard to believe that “America was founded on fundamentalist evangelical christianity and we must turn america back towards God!!!(the evangelica/fundamentalist/pentecostal version nontheless)”
Another one:
Internet was treated as one of Satan’s special weapons in the “end-times” to promote sex(which everyone knows is of the Devil…..) Everyone was terrified that one of us teenagers *might* get a glimpse of a naked body and become demon possessed. This always confused me for how can viewing what God designed be satanic at the same time? And if we “lust” are the demons able to read our thoughts and somehow *know* to seize upon us? Isn’t it possible to see nudity without *lusting* somehow? Of course, the senior pastor’s two oldest children, one male the other female, got someone pregnant and got pregnant; the other two younger ones were proven to be sexually active. Other church leader’s children were sexually active.
More important:
Well, I got all fed up with the insanity, hypocrisy, conflicting doctrines, the and lack of absolute answers in regards to “salvation,” heaven and hell and other theological issues, the child abuse, brainwashing, lies, gossip, scandals, threats and fear mongering. I got tired of always hearing “oooohh, you’re saved by grace, not by works!” “Everybody loves you! Jesus loves you!” only to hear about how I was going to hell for watching “The simpsons” or could lose my salvation and could never be certain if 30 years from now I might lose it due to some odd sin and die in an accident and end up in this eternal hell preached to us day and night.
Me, I found a new Law to live by and I realized……I don’t have to be abused nor submit to these liars and their lies nor do I have to be afraid of this make-believe hell and false theory of salvation which no fundamentalist Christian could ever give solid answers on.
Me and many others are waking up.
We will rise up above and against these abuses against humanity.
Men will no longer be ruled by fear and superstition, oppressed by bigotry and tyranny.
The absurdity of religion - Part 1.
December 10, 2007
A short, condensed summary of the first part of:
An introduction by Christopher Hitchens to the book: The Portable Atheist.
The pre-history of our species is hag-ridden with episodes of nightmarish episodes of ignorance and calamity, for which religion used to identify, not just the wrong explanation but the wrong culprit. Human sacrifices were made preeminently in times of epidemics, useless prayers were uttered, bogus “miracles” attested to , and scapegoats, like Jews or heretics or witches - hunted down and burned. The few men of science and reason and medicine had all they could do to keep their libraries and labs intact, or their very lives safe from harm. Of course, when the evil had “passed over”, there were equally idiotic ceremonies of hysterical thanksgiving, propitiating whatever local deities may be.
One is usually told, as an unbeliever that it is old fashioned to rail against the primitive stupidities and cruelties of religion because after all, in the enlightened times the old superstitions have died away. Nine times out of ten in debate with a cleric, one will be told not of some dogma or religious certitude but of some instance of charitable or humanitarian work undertaken by a religious person. Our response is to issue a challenge: name an ethical statement made or action performed by a believer that could not have been made a non believer.
Against the insane eschatology with its death wish and its deep contempt for the life of the mind, atheists have always argued that this world is all we have, and that our DUTY is to one another to make the very best of it all. Theism cannot coexist with this unexceptional conclusion.
To be charitable, one may admit that the religion often seem unaware of how insulting their main preposition actually is. Exchange views with a believer even for a short time, and let us make the assumption that this is a mild and decent believer who does not open the bidding by telling you that your unbelief will endanger your soul and condemn you to hell. It will not be long before you are politely asked how you can possibly know right from wrong.
The working assumption is that we have no moral compass if we do don’t somehow in thrall to an unalterable and unchallengeable celestial dictatorship.
Religion was the human race’s first and worst attempt to make sense of reality. It was the best the species could do at a time when we had no concept of physics, chemistry, biology or medicine.
We did not know we lived on a round planet, that the said planet was in orbit in a minor and obscure solar system, which as at the edge of an unimaginably vast cosmos that was exploding away from it’s original source of energy.
We did not know that micro-organisms were so powerful and lived in our digestive systems in order to enable us to live, as well as mounting lethal attacks on us as parasites.
We did not know of our close kinship with other animals. We believed that sprites, imps, demons and djinns were hovering in the air about us.
It has taken us a long time to shake off the heavy blanket of ignorance and fear, and every time we do, there are self-interested forces who want to compel us to cower under it again.
Religion was our first attempt at philosophy, alchemy was our first attempt at chemistry and astrology our first attempt to make sense of the movements of the heavens.
All of these things cater to our inborn stupidity, and our willingness to be persuaded against all evidence that we are indeed the center of the universe and that everything is arranges and created with us with us in mind.
Let us grant the assumption that some “thing” was indeed present at creation and gave the order to let matter explode to let th evolutionary process begin here on the far away little blue planet.
On what authority can he hope to show that the original flying part of matter was set in motion with the object of influencing life on a minute speck of a planet , billions of years later, at the very margins of the whirling nebulae and amid the extinction of innumerable other worlds?
Isn’t id odd that religion, which continually enjoins an almost masochistic modesty upon us in the face of god, should encourage such an extreme and impossible form of self-centerdness and self-regard?
What kind of creator is so wasteful and capricious and approximate? What kind of creator is so cruel and indifferent?
And- most of all: what kind of designer or creator only chooses to reveal himself to semi-stupefied peasants in a remote desert reason?
Not even highly intelligent believers understand the “mind of god”.
The religious person claims to KNOW that this creative force is an intervening one who cares for our human affairs and is interested in what we eat and with whom and how we have sexual relations, as well as in the outcomes pf battles and wars. (Not to mention sporting games).
To be continued.
Cross posted from The Atheist Toolbox.
“God” of the Boy Scouts
December 2, 2007
It’s been done to death, I know… Still, let’s put the blame where it belongs.
The entire time I was in Scouts, God wasn’t a big issue. I’ve later learned that the official policy of the Boy Scouts is not to define God.
That’s right, the Scouts REFUSE to define God; they accept whatever definition the individual chooses. Read more
A White Christian lashes out
November 26, 2007
This is en excerpt from a blog:
Rapport (A South African Sunday paper) has decided to kneel at the feet of the idol of WHITE AFRIKANER CHRISTENDOM. The very same sacks of filthy white shit who supported APARTHEID. We must bow the knee to these racist scum!?
Fuck white Afrikaner Christians! White Afrikaner Christians suck the shit out of a dead man’s colon!
They clearly don’t know me and my absolute antipathy for white Afrikaans Christians.
I am a white English Christian. A confirmed Anglican. I attend Church regularly.
I am not so insecure in my beliefs, my faith, and my religion that I feel the need to squelch all those whose opinions differ from mine. I don’t require the people I do business with to align their religious and political views with mine. Clearly these cocksuckers do.
I would feel sorry for the poor little insecure white Afrikaans (fuckers) Christians, who feel that they have to organise boycotts over a religio political issue, but WHERE the fuck were you cunts when Apartheid was devastating our country?
Where the FUCK were you cunts THEN?
I’ll tell you WHERE! You were in your little kerkies (churches) praying to dear Jesus to save your white arses from the SWART GEVAAR (Black Danger).
Guess what? He didn’t listen.
Why not?
Because, you insane little bastards, you were praying to SATAN! As you still are, because you have NOT repented your Apartheid sins. Only when you get down on your knees and beg forgiveness for the heresy that Apartheid was, and properly kiss black arse, can you arise forgiven. Until then, you are damned to Hell!
Jesus will say to such people, “Begone from me, you evildoer! I never knew you!”
Those mamparas (dumbasses) will soon discover that the only poephols (assholes) that they are hurting are their own ones. The moment anyone caves to religious morons, is the moment they start their slide into The Abyss.
No surrender to racists.
The above is a quote from the blog of Richard Catto:
http://capetownnews.co.za/2007/11/17/
So South Africa has it’s very own Fred Phelps, in the person of Richard Catto, who preaches hate in the name of Jesus. He is extremely proud of the fact that he is a WHITE ENGLISH CHRISTIAN who hates other white Christians and wants all white Christians out of South Africa.
Mr Catto is a racist who hates whites and is not ashamed to acknowledge it openly in his blog; he is even proud of the fact. He claims allegiance to a religion that has nothing to do with his ideologies. He is intolerant to the point of being a vile pig. He calls himself a liberal but his actions speak louder than his words.
He wrote this to me in a letter: My whole point is this: people must stop fucking with other people.
Mr Catto, isn’t that exactly what you are doing?
He has so much anger and hatred in him that I believe he is a danger to society. He clearly has a problem with color, as he specifically calls himself WHITE.
As far as I am concerned he is a throwback from evolution; a subhuman.
He is shooting himself in both feet. This is Christianity speaking.
I asked him where he was 20 years ago; when Nelson Mandela was still in jail? During that time I was a card carrying member of Nelson Mandela’s political party, the African National Congress. I risked my freedom for my own sanity and to live with my conscience. During that time the ANC was classified as a Terrorist Organization, today they are the ruling party in South Africa.
Where were you, Mr Catto? You have not answered me.
Lu
NEW THEORY SUGGESTS PEOPLE ARE ATTRACTED TO RELIGION FOR 16 REASONS
November 20, 2007
People are not drawn to religion just because of a fear of death or any other single reason, according to a new comprehensive, psychological theory of religion.
There are actually 16 basic human psychological needs that motivate people to seek meaning through religion, said Steven Reiss, author of the new theory and professor of psychology and psychiatry at Ohio State University.From Ohio State University:NEW THEORY SUGGESTS PEOPLE ARE ATTRACTED TO RELIGION FOR 16 REASONS
People are not drawn to religion just because of a fear of death or any other single reason, according to a new comprehensive, psychological theory of religion.
There are actually 16 basic human psychological needs that motivate people to seek meaning through religion, said Steven Reiss, author of the new theory and professor of psychology and psychiatry at Ohio State University.
These basic human needs which include honor, idealism, curiosity and acceptance can explain why certain people are attracted to religion, why God images express psychologically opposite qualities, and the relationship between personality and religious experiences.
Previous psychologists tried to explain religion in terms of just one or two overarching psychological needs. The most common reason they cite is that people embrace religion because of a fear of death, as expressed in the saying ‘there are no atheists in foxholes,” Reiss said.
”But religion is multi-faceted it can’t be reduced to just one or two desires.”
Reiss described his new theory which he said may be the most comprehensive psychological theory of religion since Freud’s work more than a century ago — in the June issue of Zygon, a journal devoted to issues of science and religion.
”I don’t think there has been a comprehensive theory of religion that was scientifically testable,” he said.
The theory is based on his overall theory of human motivation, which he calls sensitivity theory. Sensitivity theory is explained in his 2000 book Who Am I? The 16 Basic Desires that Motivate Our Action and Define Our Personalities (Tarcher Putnam).
Reiss said that each of the 16 basic desires outlined in the book influence the psychological appeal of religious behavior. The desires are power, independence, curiosity, acceptance, order, saving, honor, idealism, social contact, family, status, vengeance, romance, eating, physical exercise, and tranquility.
In fact, Reiss has already done some initial research that suggests the desire for independence is a key psychological desire that separates religious and non-religious people. In a study published in 2000, Reiss found that religious people (the study included mostly Christians) expressed a strong desire for interdependence with others. Those who were not religious, however, showed a stronger need to be self-reliant and independent.
The study also showed that religious people valued honor more than non-religious people, which Reiss said suggests many people embrace religion to show loyalty to parents and ancestors.
In the Zygon paper, Reiss explains that every religious person balances their 16 basic human needs to fit their own personality.
”They embrace those aspects of religious imagery that express their strongest psychological needs and deepest personal values.”
One example is the desire for curiosity, Reiss said. Religious intellectuals, who are high in curiosity, value a God who is knowable through reason, while doers, who have weak curiosity, may value a God that is knowable only through revelation.
”People who have a strong need for order should enjoy ritualized religious experiences, whereas those with a weak need for order may prefer more spontaneous expression of faith,” he said.
”The prophecy that the weak will inherit the earth should appeal especially to people with a weak need for status, whereas the teaching that everybody is equal before God should appeal especially to people with a strong need for idealism.”
If religion and personality are linked, religion must provide a range of images and symbols sufficiently diverse to appeal to all the different kinds of personalities in the human population, Reiss says. Religious imagery potentially accommodates everybody because in many instances the images and symbols are psychological opposites.
”How we value and balance the 16 psychological needs is what makes us an individual, and for every individual there are appealing religious images,” he said.
”The values that guide a personality with a strong need for vindication are expressed by a God of wrath, or a war God, while the values that guide a personality with a weak need for vindication are expressed by a God of forgiveness.”
”The values that guide a personality with a strong need to socialize are expressed by religious fellowship and festivals, while the values that guide a personality with a weak need to socialize are expressed by religious asceticism.”
The need for acceptance makes meaningful images of God as a savior, while its opposite inspires the concept of original sin, according to Reiss. The need to eat motives some people to value abstinence and others to value sustenance.
”Because this theory can be tested scientifically, we can learn its strengths and weaknesses, and gradually improve it,” Reiss said. ”Eventually, we may understand better the psychological basis of religion.”
Reiss emphasized that the theory addresses the psychology of religious experiences and has no implications for the validity or invalidity of religious beliefs.
http://www.scienceblog.com/cms/node/2788
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