Religion As A Scapegoat Analysis

Secularisation theory has argued that modernisation has undermined religion. The importance of science and technology on economic development and rational worldview on which they depend on are seen as destroying the belief in supernatural. However religion can contribute to development, but most recently sociologists have examined what role religion may play in development in today’s globalising world.

My logic is similar to Margret’s in a sense because scapegoating can be the effect of people being under stress or overwhelmed. For example in the selection Half- Hanged Mary, Mary is put to hang for being accused of witchcraft with no evidence to support except for the unfair evidence of her being an independent women. “I was hanged for living alone for having blue eyes and a sunburned skin, tattered skirts, few buttons, a weedy farm in my own name, and a surefire cure for warts” (Atwood 1). Mary ask the women that approach her for their assistance to help her get down from the tree but they are filled with fear and decide to leave her to hang. This begins to angers Mary to the point that she speaks to God as if she were challenging him that she no longer would believe in him any longer. Mary says “or like a dark angel insidious in his glossy feathers whispering to me to be easy on myself. To breathe out finally. Trust me, he says,caressing me. Why suffer?” (Atwood 2). At this point in the story Mary has been hanged for six hours, is hallucinating and is changing her thoughts on what she believes in with God telling her to give up. In Margaret Atwood’s interview with Bill Moyer she states, “When societies come under stress these things happen. People start looking around for somebody they can blame and they feel if they can demolish that person everything is going to be okay” (Atwood).

Being an atheist for the past three years in a Southern Baptist household in one of the most ideologically conservative states in the country has been incredibly difficult. My views are a complete 180 degree turn from the way that I was raised and the people that surround me. Possibly the largest issue that has arisen for me is the issue of church-state separation. Living in the state of the nationally infamous Ten Commandments monument, it has been hard to feel like an insider that is welcome. This is why it was refreshing to hear a like-minded individual, Dr. Charles Kimball, on many of the same issues that I struggle with in his book When Religion Become Lethal: The Explosive mix of Religion and Politics in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. It was also relatable in that Dr. Kimball and I both grew up Baptist and lived in Tulsa, Oklahoma. For many of the issues facing church-state separation, his ideas clicked and

Assess the view that religion is a major source of instability and conflict in society today

The central theme of Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky deals with conformity’s role in society. Dostoyevsky uses conformity to make Raskolnikov mentally ill and eventually turn himself in to face the punishment for his crimes. Religion influences every character in the book, but none more ardently than Raskolnikov. Understanding religion’s role as a force for conformity in Crime and Punishment provides a powerful insight into character motives and, furthermore, philosophical influences.

Religion had such a huge influence on the people in history. Once the officials of the catholic church were caught in the corruption they were in the people started to question it all. The church manipulated

A group of people using religion to manipulate the masses to oppose another grouping of people based on their own interpretation of faith; the conspiracy of organized religions is controlled, it is an easy way to take a group of people with like-minded beliefs group them together and manipulate them for an ulterior goal; our only goal should be to exist as good people and essentially that is what the core of all these faiths tell you but organized religion has taken that goal and twisted it for human made selfish ambitions of greed and power.

Can a person’s life morals and beliefs be used as an excuse for murder? For centuries the world has used personal beliefs as justification for the wrong done. For instance, the Americans used the Mandate of Heaven to say that it was okay to kill anyone that got in the way of their coast-to-coast empire. Recently, a shooting that took place in Charleston Church ended with nine people dead over a disagreement in beliefs.

Almost all religions around the world are based on a belief. Almost every religion have certain rules and principles that order together within a society: Many people misunderstand and misinterpret the holy texts the Bible, Quran, Torah, and others fabricate. Religion is defined as faith to a higher being who one believes has created us. It has also been used as laws through history to stop the committing of crimes. In many religions, the consequences of breaking rules and regulations of the religion are burning in the pit of hell. Religion is man-made and was created for many reasons but mainly to keep peace and justice in the world. But the words can be manipulated and used as an excuse to start wars on this planet. This caused many to believe that the world would be a better place without religion.

Yet still, hardly a week goes by when I don't hear someone blaming God for their troubles. Except, they don't call it blame; they call it a test.

“It’s all connected,” Sage said. “Education has been one of the biggest drivers behind liberal social engineering. Progressives figured out a long time ago that if the poor and needy can rely on government, they won’t need the church. And, more broadly, Americans have been conditioned to believe that if they pay high taxes, the government will take care of everything. With faith in government, why do we need faith in God? All we have to do is pay our taxes, and then run around without any meaningful accountability or personal responsibility to hold us back. Without the moral accountability to faith in God, Americans can do whatever they want – it’s party time: Homosexuality, adultery, pornography – go for it, if it feels good, why not? Gay

Religion has been a powerful force in human history. Mankind has longed and searched for the answers to its purpose, the reason for being and the possibility of life after physical death. They reasoned that an afterlife would be a place of accounting and reckoning for the life they lived on earth. Religious belief systems seemed to give the answers as to how to prepare for the afterlife. Religion became the means of giving answers to those basic yet deep-seated questions of both life and death. Religion provided a format of rules and laws for conduct and treatment toward others based on the desires and wishes of a god or gods that people envisioned, imagined or invented. Religious belief systems have been a powerful force for good and bad...good in the sense that it provided a measure of individual behavior and order in society for the wellbeing of the whole, but bad in the sense that men of ambition who craved power and control over others would often use religion as a tool of manipulation and fear. A casual glance of history tells us that complete civilizations have been built, grown and maintained around elaborate religious systems, ancient Egypt being a prime example.

Religion has its shares of promoting violence. Many will argue that a cause of religion wars is for economic and political reasons, but others argue that those who start wars are, by definition, not religious. In reality, separating religion out of economic and political motives can be involved in such a way finding religious motives innocent of much. Excuses for Christianity responsibilities cannot be accepted whether the person has misappropriated the message of Christ. The primarily set of doctrines is not Christianity, but by living through past background it personified the visible actions of Christians. In other words, Christianity, Islam or any other religion has no intention of excusing from survey. Given certain conditions,

Throughout history, religion has proved to be the main source of social stability in different communities and cultural groups. Everything that is part of a societal system, including law, is influenced by religious beliefs and practices of that society. This being said, most religions are based on the theory that there is a single more powerful entity, that has control over aspects of which humans do not. For the longest time in history, sociologists have argued that peer group, political movements, schools and most importantly, the family to be agents of socialization. Because of this reason, they have ignored the role played by religion in the perpetuation of cultural as well as social

Substantial studies in sociology, criminology, and social science have been conducted to understand the effect of religion on crime. Travis Hirschi and Rodney Stark directed the first leading observational study of religion and crime in 1969. The two collected survey data on teens that live in California to test the hellfire hypothesis. The hypothesis anticipated religion could decrease crime on the personal level through the suspicion of mythical sanctions. Prosocial behaviors could also be strengthened through the ambition and assurance of heavenly rewards. (Baier & Wright, 2001). Hirschi and Stark explored if some people who attended church were less likely than those who do not attend church to engage in a variety of criminal behaviors.