Adherents as a measure for a religion's merit

[Infinitum]

This is not directed at any particular religion, path or philosophy, but is instead something I've been thinking about lately and finally got to a point where I'm curious to see what people think about it.

We all categorize belief systems (and the lack thereof) in various ways: true, false, good, bad, healthy, abusive, mine, yours, and so on. We often have opinions on beliefs based on many different variables. For example we might have nothing against Christians, but we feel disgusted by parts of the Bible that are in conflict with our own beliefs and ethics. We might even be Christians ourselves and feel the same thing, but still find the religion rewarding. Or maybe we appreciate Islamic rituals and find them beautiful, but we loathe the violence done in the name of Islam and therefore distance ourselves from it. These aren't issues of simply true or false, but rather us tallying the overall merits of a religion based on our personal preferences and morals. If we think a certain religion is evil, we do not care if it happened to be the divinely appointed True Faith or not, and in a similar way if we find a religion good, we hope or know the claims are true -- or at least they are true for us.

So, what I want to talk about is using the adherents (followers, believers, practitioners) of a religion as a measure to determine a religion's merit. Interpretations may vary on what these merits are or should be. What makes a religion true? What makes a religion abusive? Anyone is free to determine this themselves, since it does not change the actual question: would you say that the merit of a religion is measured by how good people the followers of said religion are?

Before you answer no, let's think about the question for a moment. I define a good person as someone who is empathetic, charitable, emotionally balanced and open-minded (both to new ideas and to learning). Different religions put different emphasis on these, and many also include elements like virtue (avoiding sin) and piety (performing the religious rituals). The way I see it, the goal of religions is (or at least should be) to teach people how to become better at these things. That's why we have scriptures and weekly masses and all sorts of rules that are meant to teach us and to help us avoid doing the wrong thing. Of course one could argue the rules are simply things that God (or gods) has declared are sin, but that's way too simple. Sin only makes sense if there is some sort of rational consequence, and for the sake of this argument that consequence should be defined as "sin makes you a worse person". How exactly, e.g. through Hell or karma, doesn't matter.

To give you an example of what I'm trying to get to here. Say religion A has some really horrible scripture, but nearly everyone you meet who says there are followers of that religion seem like really good people. On the other hand religion B's scripture contains some very good ideas, but every believer you hear of abuses its well-meaning message and does things you think are wrong and harmful. Which religion would you say -- if you had to choose -- has greater merit, religion A or religion B?

 

[lovemuffin]

So, what I want to talk about is using the adherents (followers, believers, practitioners) of a religion as a measure to determine a religion's merit.

Jesus is supposed to have said "By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another." I often think that this might be the single most damning thing of Christians in the Bible.

I think the argument you make for measuring the value of a religion in this way contains a valid point, and it's also useful I think as a corrective to the tendency to treat religions as merely systems of belief. I prefer the emphasis on practice as what really matters. Hence finding the criticism of Christians based on their failure to love more pointed than a criticism (for example) based on apparently morally unjustifiable bits in the Bible, which may or may not have much to do with actual Christian practice now.

On the other hand, I think the potential difficulty is that religion is so closely connected with culture, and the expression of a particular religion so varied, that it is difficult to really determine the merit of the people of "religion A" as though that were a single, simple thing. This is especially true with the larger world religions which span multiple cultures, and whose expressions are going to vary pretty greatly from place to place, or even over time. Is the Inquisition representative of Christianity? Is 4th century Byzantium? 21st century evangelical protestantism? That's one problem, but the other is that the way religion and culture shape each other, do you try to determine who is "really" a participant in religion A? Do you try to account for the reality that many people will grow up in a culture that is predominantly of one religion, identify with that religion in some nominalistic way, but without much attachment to it?

 

[Infinitum]

On the other hand, I think the potential difficulty is that religion is so closely connected with culture, and the expression of a particular religion so varied, that it is difficult to really determine the merit of the people of "religion A" as though that were a single, simple thing. This is especially true with the larger world religions which span multiple cultures, and whose expressions are going to vary pretty greatly from place to place, or even over time. Is the Inquisition representative of Christianity? Is 4th century Byzantium? 21st century evangelical protestantism? That's one problem, but the other is that the way religion and culture shape each other, do you try to determine who is "really" a participant in religion A? Do you try to account for the reality that many people will grow up in a culture that is predominantly of one religion, identify with that religion in some nominalistic way, but without much attachment to it?

I think this is an interesting aspect in cultural evolution. It's hard to say how much religions influence culture and how much culture influences religion, but there is some sort of connection. For example one could argue that Jesus' "love one another" has been one of the driving ideals that have led to Europe becoming a more tolerant place over the centuries. Someone else could similarly argue that this had nothing to do with the Bible, but the horrors of the World Wars.

On the other hand I was intrigued by what the author Kazuo Ishiguro said in an interview, where the brought up a conversation in one of his novels between the British Pagan and the Christian chiefs. The Pagan chief points out how easy it is for Christians to justify massacring people because they believe in a God who always offers them forgiveness. "It's very convenient", the chief tells them, and I hadn't really thought about that myself. It's possible to interpret religions both ways, always depending on what we people want them to say.

 

[Quintessence]

Can we measure the merit of a woman by what other women do? Can we measure the merit of an Asian person by what other Asian people do? Can we measure the merit of a college student by what other college students do? Can we measure the merit of Republicans by what other Republicans do?

Of course we can. We do. Routinely. We can't help it.

We also can't help being frequently wrong when generalizing in such a fashion.

 

[Infinitum]

Can we measure the merit of a woman by what other women do? Can we measure the merit of an Asian person by what other Asian people do? Can we measure the merit of a college student by what other college students do? Can we measure the merit of Republicans by what other Republicans do?

Of course we can. We do. Routinely. We can't help it.

We also can't help being frequently wrong when generalizing in such a fashion.

We do and a lot of the time we shouldn't. I don't think we should treat women and Republicans in the same way, for example. All of the examples have some sort of culture of their own, but not all of them define a clear belief system. Political parties are much closer to religions in that sense, and they also have a lot of power in our societies. For example many would condemn Communism as harmful because of what political leaders caused in Russia and China, even if the original intent of Communism was to provide a better life for poor people.

 

[Quintessence]

There are religions that don't define a belief system either, oddly enough. It's common among non-dogmatic religions, and people who take a non-dogmatic approach to religions frequently regarded as dogmatic. I think we frequently make the mistake in my country, at least, of assuming dogmatic approaches. And we sometimes overlook the fact that even when something is dogmatic, that dogma is still going through an individual person's filter, which shapes and alters it. There are also times we seem to use the word dogma when another is perhaps more appropriate. What do we mean when we say something has a clear belief system? Does that imply dogma? If so, what is dogma, in terms of both denotation and more importantly connotation?

We like to stick people into categories because it's a cognitive shortcut that sets our minds at ease. It's somewhat ironic that these cognitive shortcuts are also a source of much consternation.

 

[LuisDantas]

There is no other true patrimony to any religion beyond the attainments of its practicioners, be them mundane or phylosophical.

 

[Infinitum]

There are religions that don't define a belief system either, oddly enough. It's common among non-dogmatic religions, and people who take a non-dogmatic approach to religions frequently regarded as dogmatic. I think we frequently make the mistake in my country, at least, of assuming dogmatic approaches. And we sometimes overlook the fact that even when something is dogmatic, that dogma is still going through an individual person's filter, which shapes and alters it. There are also times we seem to use the word dogma when another is perhaps more appropriate. What do we mean when we say something has a clear belief system? Does that imply dogma? If so, what is dogma, in terms of both denotation and more importantly connotation?

We like to stick people into categories because it's a cognitive shortcut that sets our minds at ease. It's somewhat ironic that these cognitive shortcuts are also a source of much consternation.

That's some excellent points again and they come to something else I've been thinking about lately. Since we all interpret religious/philosophical teachings yet call ourselves followers of a certain religion (if we do, obviously not everyone does), how much can we make changes to a religion before it can be said that we don't believe in that religion anymore? The question becomes even harder due to the problems you mention with dogma. I would personally define dogma as beliefs that have been codified (preferably written down) and accepted by the majority of the members of the given group.

 

[Quintessence]

Some people take "dogma" to mean things that are taken as incontrovertible truths, rather than codified beliefs accepted by a group of people. I've seen the word used in both contexts, so it is sometimes confusing to know what a person means.

Indeed... how many changes can be made before the spade is no longer a spade? Ultimately, us stuffing things in categories is constructed and whatever we say it is to be - though that does frequently get mediated by the input of other people and becomes something of a social construct rather than an individual one. It's a serious issue discussed with frequency within my own religious demographic. Who is and is not Pagan? Do we count any atheists? Do we only count polytheists? Does it have to be nature-centered, and if so, what does that really mean?

These issues exist in religions considered dogmatic by your definition above too. It always amuses me how people think the Catholic church is some highly organized, authoritative entity. In principle it has a hierarchy that is to be followed, but in practice, it's a lot less centralized than it may appear to some. Folks will think that because the "Catholic church" (as if this is a single entity) is against some particular thing, that all Catholics and their churches must be too. Going around and visiting a number of Catholic churches will show some pretty remarkable heterogeneity in opinions, beliefs, and practices. I don't imagine it's much different with religions like Islam, though I have less experience with those religions.

 

[Infinitum]

Some people take "dogma" to mean things that are taken as incontrovertible truths, rather than codified beliefs accepted by a group of people. I've seen the word used in both contexts, so it is sometimes confusing to know what a person means.

Indeed... how many changes can be made before the spade is no longer a spade? Ultimately, us stuffing things in categories is constructed and whatever we say it is to be - though that does frequently get mediated by the input of other people and becomes something of a social construct rather than an individual one. It's a serious issue discussed with frequency within my own religious demographic. Who is and is not Pagan? Do we count any atheists? Do we only count polytheists? Does it have to be nature-centered, and if so, what does that really mean?

These issues exist in religions considered dogmatic by your definition above too. It always amuses me how people think the Catholic church is some highly organized, authoritative entity. In principle it has a hierarchy that is to be followed, but in practice, it's a lot less centralized than it may appear to some. Folks will think that because the "Catholic church" (as if this is a single entity) is against some particular thing, that all Catholics and their churches must be too. Going around and visiting a number of Catholic churches will show some pretty remarkable heterogeneity in opinions, beliefs, and practices. I don't imagine it's much different with religions like Islam, though I have less experience with those religions.

I know it's contrived, but would you say it would be possible to define some sort of "essence of Catholicism" in the sense that there are dogmas (as defined above) that are shared by the different groups? With enough groups there's a good chance none of the core beliefs would be shared by everyone, but if we were to make the best possible approximation, would that approximation be a fair representation of the religion as a whole?

 

[amorphous_constellation]

. These aren't issues of simply true or false, but rather us tallying the overall merits of a religion based on our personal preferences and morals.

So what this means is that we sort of had an inherent ethical code within us before we encountered the religion. If you're taking life to that extent where you cherish your own individual opinions and rules and weigh them against that of a religion, then it might not be the greatest use of energy to try and hammer that pre-made apparatus onto one's own form.

That's why we have scriptures and weekly masses and all sorts of rules that are meant to teach us and to help us avoid doing the wrong thing.

I think that the ancient way religion was practiced was a little different than that, you see they told you what the rules were, they told you what was good. You followed the sage around in the desert because he said this is what were are going to do. Now in this day and age, we want religion to serve us. We, the body of people agree that such and such is a 'good' thing. Well now the church picks up and that and they talk about that instead. I'm unsure if that level of consensus was historically something that religion was into for a good part of history.

 

[Laika]

I had to write this reply out before hand, but I hope it's intresting.

To give you an example of what I'm trying to get to here. Say religion A has some really horrible scripture, but nearly everyone you meet who says there are followers of that religion seem like really good people. On the other hand religion B's scripture contains some very good ideas, but every believer you hear of abuses its well-meaning message and does things you think are wrong and harmful. Which religion would you say -- if you had to choose -- has greater merit, religion A or religion B?

I hope you will forgive me for putting names to the religions, but I want to illustrate this problem a bit more deeply. In some ways, Religion A can be seen in Christianity, particularly in its most conservative attributes. Christians are generally nice people, but they are nice people out of fear of god’s wrath, out of committing sin and experiencing eternal torment? Personally, I do not believe that someone is a truly good person if they are only good out of fear. That doesn’t really make someone a good person, nor is living in fear a good way to live.

I am effectively an adherent of a Religion B. Communism had some good ideas, some amazing intellectual insights, but all you will ever hear about is the bloodshed. Trying to “square the circle” in which good ideas lead to bad people is tough; my first gut instinct is to think that this conclusion is wrong and to look for all the good things that must logically have happened and slowly realise that either they didn’t happen or they were not enough to compensate for what they did wrong. Denial is a natural response because when good ideas lead to bad people it fundamentally challenges your sense of right and wrong. These are not standards that we passively accepted, but often actively so- we lived by a set of rules and standards that have proven to have results contrary to their intention. So, it cannot be as simple as it first appears to be. These standards of right and wrong are not simply abstract products of our heads, but are intimately connected with our own experiences, our innermost thoughts and feelings and our sense of self. So the question is why and how we are at fault necessitates some really serious investigation.

Religion A usually isn’t as good as it first appears, nor is Religion B as bad as it first appears. Good and Bad cease to be opposed moral attributes and instead become moral capacities which exist within a person and each human individual. Christians are nice people, yet worship a god that brought terrible evil in the world; Communists were bad people, yet want to build paradise on earth.

And yet they were all members of the human race and each adherent represents part of a greater whole of the species. Every Stalin or Christ is not simply the realisation of an idea, but the realisation of our humanity, a capacity we each share and are capable of. Good and evil are not abstract qualities, but dimensions of who we are as people. So which do we chose?

So, what I want to talk about is using the adherents (followers, believers, practitioners) of a religion as a measure to determine a religion's merit. Interpretations may vary on what these merits are or should be. What makes a religion true? What makes a religion abusive? Anyone is free to determine this themselves, since it does not change the actual question: would you say that the merit of a religion is measured by how good people the followers of said religion are?

Given that both Religion A and Religion B fundamentally challenges our sense of right and wrong, we need to look at the question differently. Good people have a bad religion, whilst Bad people have a good religion; we should try to measure the religion by its consequences as they are ‘real’. No matter how good our intentions, it is our consequences that matter and our affect on this Earth that we leave behind when we die.

But can we necessarily separate intentions and consequences? If I lived by Religion A, yes I may be more like the good people that are adherents to it. But am I living a lie? Do I wish to spend a lifetime adhering to a belief system simply because it is what other people think is good even though I think their religion is actually bad? What happens if those goods idea had bad consequences of Religion B, turn out to be persuasive and convincing? What happens if the bad religion is the true one?

Given that life is short, precious and necessarily that each of us on this earth have but a limited number of breaths, it is better to chose Religion B, since we accept it has good ideas even if it has bad consequences. Those ideas do not stop being good because their consequences are bad. We chose what is good because it is closer to our sense of self, of our sense of right and wrong and therefore of our freedom, of meaning and significance in life. Life is too short to live a lie, so you end up choosing the bad religion because you have to know whether it really is that bad, or whether they were the good guys all along and we didn’t want to see it because we tried to hide from some dimension of our humanity, our moral capacities that we were trying to hide from.

I define a good person as someone who is empathetic, charitable, emotionally balanced and open-minded (both to new ideas and to learning). Different religions put different emphasis on these, and many also include elements like virtue (avoiding sin) and piety (performing the religious rituals). The way I see it, the goal of religions is (or at least should be) to teach people how to become better at these things. That's why we have scriptures and weekly masses and all sorts of rules that are meant to teach us and to help us avoid doing the wrong thing.

If the goal of religion is to teach people to become better at things, we end up choosing religion B because it has better ideas, as good ideas are the guide or the map for us to be able to achieve good consequences. How could we honestly chose to believe in a religion which we knew was Bad, which we felt passionately was bad, just because it makes other people good? We betray ourselves and engage in a form of self-harm by mindless conformity to moral standards we reject. Life is too precious to pretend to be someone we are not, even if it is what everyone else thinks is good.

If we trust the power of reason and science to come up with good ideas, it must necessarily follow that good ideas will eventually produce good consequences. Adherents of Religion B have the good ideas by which to improve themselves, to grow as people; whereas adherents of Religion A can only use their religion as a guide to become bad people. Rationally, adherents of religion A will get better, and adherents of religion B will get worse. The latter cannot improve on themselves, whereas the former can.

We are still left with the question as to whether bad people with good ideas in reality bad people? What we can be sure of, is that they are human and represent a dimension of our humanity, even if people are going to disagree with it.

For example many would condemn Communism as harmful because of what political leaders caused in Russia and China, even if the original intent of Communism was to provide a better life for poor people.

So, somewhat for this reason I’ve chosen the bad people with good ideas as Religion B would mean either I will end up being the good guy in-spite of what everyone else has done with those ideas, or, because I think the ideas of bad people are in fact good whilst they may not ultimately be so I’m going to turn into a bad person with bad consequences.

Either way, I’m still free and being true to myself and my sense of good. Given that life is best not wasted living a lie, is in some ways a measure of good because either I or others can learn from my mistakes. Ultimately, if adherents of Religion A are indeed good, they will understand that my ability to make mistakes is part of being Free because good and evil are dimensions of our own shared and flawed humanity; the truest measure of good is love since it is within each of us to make mistakes and to forgive, and as such learn to “Love the sinner and not the Sin”.

Bad people who can forgive us for being free are more human than a Bad Faith which cannot forgive because God wants us to live in chains. If we chose to measure our standard of good by our obedience to a bad master, we chose a religion that makes us his accomplice. We deny our own capacity to judge right from wrong, to know ourselves and to live and to exist as the instruments to another’s will. We are good because we are god’s willing slaves.

What kind of God gives us Free Will only to condemn us to eternal torment for using it? Why does being bad feel good if god didn’t want us to do it? Whatever the answer is, even if I were to accept the possibility that there may well be great wisdom in it that is not a god I would want to worship. It is simply more human to be free and to do wrong because you believe or feel it is right, than to do good because you are told it is so. A God which demands such things, and claims to be both omniscience and omni-benevolent, simply cannot be the true good because either one of those would lead to him accepting that we must necessarily be true to ourselves.

If god thinks I am a bad person and I don’t, that’s gods fault for creating me that way; it’s his problem, not mine. If I do what I think is good and god doesn’t; god is not omniscient. If I am ignorant of his laws, rebel and disobey, or am at war with god and god has to punish me because he can’t stop me; god is not omnipotent. If I do wrong and god wants to punish me; god is not omni-benevolent. If God is dead and I killed him, it’s because he created me to do it and I am only fulfilling the wishes of my creator by doing so. God created man in his image and therefore meant man to be gods and when we are so we will decide what is good. The creation kills the creator and the slave becomes the master.

The bad religion is the true faith because it is a truer reflection of the human condition in all it’s complexity and monstrosity and that we are able to accept, to love and forgive that side our ourselves which we keep hidden. Religion B looks way more fun anyway; Being good is so boring. Life is short and I’d much rather be interesting.

 

[Infinitum]

So what this means is that we sort of had an inherent ethical code within us before we encountered the religion. If you're taking life to that extent where you cherish your own individual opinions and rules and weigh them against that of a religion, then it might not be the greatest use of energy to try and hammer that pre-made apparatus onto one's own form.

I think that the ancient way religion was practiced was a little different than that, you see they told you what the rules were, they told you what was good. You followed the sage around in the desert because he said this is what were are going to do. Now in this day and age, we want religion to serve us. We, the body of people agree that such and such is a 'good' thing. Well now the church picks up and that and they talk about that instead. I'm unsure if that level of consensus was historically something that religion was into for a good part of history.

I can mostly speak from my limited understanding of ancient Pagan religion (mainly Greek and Roman), but I'd say based on that that there was no consensus whatsoever. For the most part of history every city and ethnic group has had their own gods and rules, or they've shared similar themes and symbols with neighbouring peoples and interpreted these in a way that fitted their own struggles and questions. I'd say these became "set in stone" only after they had been written down, and even then there has never been any large consensus on what the writings mean -- scholars start debating them before the ink even dries. As easy as it would be if religions were somehow unchangeable and independent of "hammering", as you put it, that's not how it works in reality. I do think we have more opportunities to choose our own path than when there were only three sages in town competing with each other, but even then every individual chose to which level of intensity they followed their sage.

 

[Nakosis]

I suspect there exists too much diversity among the followers of a religion to determine the merits of a religion by.

Culture and genetics may have far more to do with morality than religion. I can take parts of say Christianity which I find morally acceptable and find some way to justify to not follow the parts I don't agree with and still consider myself a "Christian".

Not to say religion has no influence on morality but it may be pretty minor. I think "good" people will be good and "bad" people will be bad regardless of the religion. Religion is a tool that people individually make use of as they see fit. The group of Christians I grew up with some 40 years ago I saw no discrimination towards homosexuals. This is obviously not true of all Christian groups.

I suspect people use religion and create religious theology according to their morals needs. Religions are what people create them to be.

I suppose as I see it there is no religion to be judged, there are just people to judge. The people are the religion.

 

[amorphous_constellation]

I can mostly speak from my limited understanding of ancient Pagan religion (mainly Greek and Roman), but I'd say based on that that there was no consensus whatsoever. For the most part of history every city and ethnic group has had their own gods and rules, or they've shared similar themes and symbols with neighbouring peoples and interpreted these in a way that fitted their own struggles and questions. I'd say these became "set in stone" only after they had been written down, and even then there has never been any large consensus on what the writings mean -- scholars start debating them before the ink even dries.

I'm talking about the consensus religion has come to regarding serving our needs, instead of us serving it. That is to say, we measure the merits of the religion nowadays more than the religion measures the merits in us, like I think it may traditionally have done. However, our expanded ability or option to start measuring a particular religion's merit may be an emergent property of religion. That is to say, as the tracts of it are produced into greater and greater volumes, we are bestowed with the ability to highlight the morality we choose within it. The bible for example is extremely long. Well, what if without proclaiming it, there are actually multiple paths to choose from within that book.

 

[Vishvavajra]

The short answer is yes, I believe you can and should judge the merit of a religious tradition by the behavior of its adherents. At least, this is true when the religion is of the sort that claims to make people better than they are, rather than just a set of rituals that define a cultural group. So I don't think that you can say much of anything about traditional tribal religious practices in this way, but Christianity, Buddhism, et al., are fair game.

The longer answer is that it's a bit more complicated than it seems on the outside. Judging modern religions by the behavior of ancient adherents is going to be problematic, since values and cultural norms have shifted considerably (see what Well Named said above). You also have to be aware that some people will claim affiliation with a religion while believing and doing stuff that most other members of that group would not want to be associated with if they had the choice. So you can't just point to one person and make a judgement; it has to be a more general observation of how people in that group tend to be. The last thing you must consider is that some people are just going to be swell or nasty regardless of their religious affiliation, so it's worth looking at what sorts of behaviors they are exhibiting that their religion actually encourages—but if everybody is blithely ignoring the religion's teachings, that alone is worth taking note of.

 

[paarsurrey]

So, what I want to talk about is using the adherents (followers, believers, practitioners) of a religion as a measure to determine a religion's merit. Interpretations may vary on what these merits are or should be. What makes a religion true? What makes a religion abusive?

Both are important, the scripture and the followers. The followers are human beings; could be excellent, very good, good, fair, bad, worse, worst.
It is for this that Quran mentions:

[3:58] ‘And as for those who believe and do good works, He will pay them their full rewards. And Allah loves not the wrongdoers.’

Regards