The Religion Defense

Philosophy Forums Religion and Spirituality
1

I Wikipedia’d Stockholm Syndrome for one reason or another. If you aren’t familiar with the syndrome, it is the phenomenon where hostages develop deep loyalty towards their captors, such that they will defend them, and even commit crimes for them, after the ordeal is over. The reasons are unclear, but proposed explanations include an instinct to latch on to powerful people, and a reaction through which people maximize their power in a situation where they are otherwise powerless.
For some reason, it struck me as similar to religion. If we personify fate as god, we can reasonably consider god the cosmic hostage taker: we are ultimately completely at the mercy of his/her judgments. And as a result, the same sort of love and loyalty that we see in Stockholm syndrome develop.
Wikipedia being what it is, I was led to the page on defense mechanisms, and found further parallels between religious belief and general psychological phenomena. A few examples:
-Projection: people project themselves onto god, anthropomorphizing the world to make it less threatening (I am apparently not the first to think of this. Bless you, Wikipedia).
-Fantasy: Religion develops heavens at the end of life to make life more bearable. If it’s hard to be good, one can use heaven to escape into.
-Idealization: In this case, it is the universe itself that is idealized, because everything is part of a divine plan.
-Reaction formation: taboos about sex especially seem reacted and projected on to god, so that the sex we want but cannot accept must be avoided because god doesn’t like it.

Not all the similarities are negative. We also find high-level, healthy defense mechanisms in religion: sublimation, altruism, and introjection all represent positive mechanisms that can appear in religion and lead to healthy coping and positive results.

Why is this? Is religion a defense mechanism? Or are defense mechanisms misapplication of sentiments we’re meant to feel for god? I hope the answer doesn’t split exactly along the lines of belief.

2

i will post more on this shortly but for now sefice it to say that yes, religion is dominatly regarded as the crutch of the masses.

“religion is the opiate of the masses”

3

You seem to have a good mind for social sciences. I suggest you look for a university tye book and start reading.

From a global perspective, religion falls into the category which we call “social institutes”.

Every culture and society sues social institutes.

Besides religion there are School, Government, Family and a few others.

Social institutes serve various and vital functions. Their goal is always the same: to promote success of our species.

Religion does this by shaping us to have similar morals, strengthening the society through communal activities, quelling emotions like hate and grievance, and basically just making us more uniform members of society.

School basically babysits us and prepares us for our future lives. It is vital social experience but also helps with actually babysitting kids.

Government exerts control over everything to maintain order and uniformity. Like religion the government exists to help the success of our society.

Family is the institute we know best. We learn to maintain long term relationships and most of our sanctions (reward or punishment) come from our family.

These institutes promote common rituals which are beneficial for the success rate of a society.

The way i see institutes is the same way i see schools of fish. These institutes direct us and mold us inorder to fit into a uniform school of fish. Only through uniformity can we maintain success, and it is because of that reason that social institutes have emerged.

Religion isn’t so much as a defense for the individual (though it does strengthen the individual) as much as it is a defense for a society.

Yes religion is successful on the individual level but religion itself is not an individual organisation and does not exist to assist the individual. The mere fact that there is ultimate leadership in most religions reflects the fact that the institutes ultimately do not exist to help the individual.

“if i help my friend, he can then help me”

That’s what the society would be thinking when it created something like religion.

4

I think religion is objective - a thing, a state of affairs, something ‘out there’. So, the reasons why people participate are likely to be varied and complex. Certainly some people will get into it out of fear/security, whatever.

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But this isn’t about why people get into the thing that religion is; it’s about the thing that religion is. I’m not pointing out that people’s reasons for being religious seem like defense mechanisms, but that religion itself seems like defense mechanisms.

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As i attempted to articulate, religion is more than a defense mechanism.

7 
A 'defense mechanism' is necessarily something that goes on in a person's mind, is what I'm saying.  Religion can't be a 'defense mechanism' in itself, any more than a bucket of sand or Communism can be.  All of these can be [i]used as such[/i] by people, but I don't see how that function could central. 
Perhaps you're thinking of a religion as a series of things or ways that a person thinks, whereas I'm thinking of a religion as an institution?
8

Perhaps he is referring specifically to the moulding effect that religion has on an individual.

An argument could be made that Religion itself promotes defensive thinking by design. That said the moulding effects of “the religion defense” might have some solid ground from which to begin.

9

I would agree with Ucc. The various defense mechanisms used by individuals, groups, and societies aren’t found in religion or any other idealist “movement”. But they certainly are used that way. Is democracy designed for the people or to create a slave mentality to be used by capitalistic greed?

I wouldn’t have any problem agreeing that religion has evolved (institutionally) to provide easy access and rationale for all those possible defense mechanisms, but one must first sort out intent from eventual practice. Institutions may provide social stability, but only by pandering to the lowest common denominator while declaring the highest ideals. Try to find any institution that hasn’t been twisted into performing the opposite of its ideals.

But isn’t this true of all idealistic movements? The original insights and wisdom are slowly but surely buried beneath layers of commentary making the powerful more powerful and the weak even weaker. What Jesus of Nazareth brought was a revolutionary new paradigm. A new way of understanding self in relation to the world. But he also brought personal responsibility, and we killed him for that. What became the christian “religion” was a tool of the powerful to control the weak. Some have seen through this and have become the message that Jesus brought, but it is in spite of the religion, not because of it.

Religion, like any other institution, can either be a challenge to the individual or a security blanket. For the sake of social stability, enculturation makes the security blanket emphasis the most likely path. But there are always a few…

10

au contraire, i see no perversion of the fmamily ideals, and frankly i see no perversion of any institutions.

The way in which we must look at institutions is in terms of how it effects teh success of a society.

Church does this well, however ugly the process may be.

There is only success and failure. The only ideals which matter is the ideal of being successful, and if these institutions wern’t successful they wouldn’t exist.

The ideals which an instition sets out with are usually one of benifit. Why would an entire population agree to do a certain thing if they didnt think it was beneficial.

I close by pointing out that just because the initial ideals are thought to be beneficial doesn’t make them successful.

Take the example of “the Quakers”.

It was a religous group (with stricter ideals than regular christianity) which formed in europe and moved to america. one of their beliefs was that having children was wrong. This worked well in europe due to wide spread famon at the time but something gunny happened to them when they moved to america. They died out

Their institution was flawed because it could not replenish its ranks, thus it failed.

In the case of the Quakers, they remained absolutely true to their ideals, yet their institution was fundementally flawed (if we look at the institutions ability for long term function).

If we can classify it as an institution, then its only ideal is success. You could look at the perversion of the specifics simply as tweaking orr changing with the time or yes, becoming more successful (you see it as a bad thing from a weak perspective, and rightly so).

But as far as the strong using ideals to control the weak, i believe that there is more to it because the strong are obviously gonna control the weak, so maybe the forced ideals are merely a side effect,

11

Wonderer,

If the definition of ideals is success, then the answer is obvious: we simply kill anyone who disagrees with us and the ideal has been met. Your definition might be a little simplistic given the possible variables involved in the evolution of institution/individual relationships.

This is one way of looking at it, but that raises the question: Are social institutions there for the individual or is it there for society?

A rather myoptic viewpoint. Some might say that all there is, is change. Institutions may persevere or fade from existence, it’s what they’re doing while they are present that is questionable. Sharia is an institution of religious law… If persistance is the definition of success, then it’s a winner, right? I wonder if the women accused of adultery and executed in the soccer stadium by the Afghani Taliban thought the institution of Sharia was “successful”?

Is a persistent institution relying on suppression really the definition of successful?

We have a governmental institution called Homeland Security. Wanna ask the residents of New Orleans about how “successful” the government has been? I could list more, but it’s like shooting fish in a barrel. You might want to reconsider your definition of “successful”.

12

the society of coarse.

Sometimes social institutions aren’t even intentional, they just develop.

When we call something a social institution, re referr to its functions for society as a whole. the individual is faceless.

now your migrating to a level of individual satisfaction.

Strictly speaking (and yes it is a specific viewpoint, not necessarily narrow) if the population is unsatisfied with the institution, and it is overthrown, then it has failed.

The success of a social institution is measured against what it does for a society. When we referr to a social institution we referr to something which helps a society function as a whole, not something which helps the individual.

There are many ways to examine societies and a few different ways to make predictions.

Conflict theorists look at the conflicts which arise in society and look at how thhose effects drive society. A conflict theorist would see sharia as a conflict between the institution and the people.

They might say that the conflict gives rise to more equitable living conditions.

an interactionist (who looks at interactions if you havnt guessed) would look at the way in which the interactions of the people brought about the law and how changing interactions affect the situation.

A functionalist (me) looks specifically at what the institution does, and how that helps society.

Remember, an institutions subjective ideals remain independant of the institutions success. Success is seen as a by product which actually defines the institution itself.

no but if the institution was not persistent then it is certainly not successful.

not al all my friend, not at all. Social institutions are subject to change along with societies or they risk failure. I admit i was not clear in my wording in that persistence alone does not make an institution absolutely successful (though it means that it must be doing something right).
What i meant was that persistance is a necessary attribute of a successful institution.

remember the quakers? they dies out. that’s failure from a functionalist perspective.

13

Wonderer,

Well, you seem to have a top-down perspective. I still have reservations about whether social structures are for the people or are people for the social structures. From my perspective, a successful institution is largely invisible, providing guidance without coercion. Faceless individuals? To me, that is the abstraction that is the failure of our hallowed institutions.

14

Institutions cannot see the individual and the masses at the same time. We know from observing our own society that there is no such thing as perfect.

It’s sunny that you should see our institutions as failures, but you could not possibly justify it, and soon you probably wouldn’t want to.

Religion. What is its function? get everyone following the same point in the sky so that better cooperation extsis. It also helps us to develop beneficial habits like not killing one another and monogomy.

What is its aim? to make there be more and more happy humans.

If it achieves this goal by making people less of an individual (faceless), then there is still success.

The notion that we should all be individuals is a subjective value in, as you said, a top down equation.

15

Wonderer,

You speak of institutions as if they are an entity, a thing, separated from the collective they supposedly nurture and regulate. I understand the “big picture” necessity of dealing with aggregates - but not at the expense of the components within that aggregate. It might be useful to remember that institutions are made up of aggregates of individuals who on more than one occasion have appealed to “church rules” to relieve themselves of personal responsibility. Institutions are people attempting to govern people, and yes, the “institution” is no more perfect than the people in power at any given time.

Wax,

Yes. In this sense religion becomes the pervasive environment, and what is the divine plan? Whatever is happening. Why? Because it is God’s will. Think about how many times you’ve heard, “We hope that __________ happens if it is God’s will.” It allows religion to claim anything successful and explain away anything that fails…

16

Doesn’t a religion define it’s own purpose? What I mean is, couldn’t the truest, actual purpose of religion X be “To honor God” or “To achieve Enlightenment” or “To guarantee a quality afterlife” or whatever that religion claims to be achieving in it’s own language?
Take Christianity for example. The purpose of Christianity could be correctly expressed as “to achieve communion with God”, and that would be it’s purpose, it seems to me, whether God existed or not. I think a lot of this “What is the purpose/function” of religion talk is just a little over-zealous on the part of the skeptic. Granted, there’s some stuff about a religion that a skeptic must explain using his own beliefs, and not that of the followers he’s examining. But a religion’s purpose can’t be one of them, it seems purpose is necessarily self-orienting to me.

17

Ucc,

Religion can certainly have both it’s own purpose and it’s own language, but in a social setting, it is how that purpose is acted out that is it’s testimony of purpose. “To honor God” sounds quite uplifting, and indeed, in many cases this is what we see, but we also see the Jihadist killing infidels and his fellow Muslims as an act “To honor God”.

As always, the devil is in the details, and religion has no particular claim to the moral high ground in human conduct. The idealistic declared purpose and what is acted out may have little in common, and historically, religion hasn’t shown itself to be more moral, more benevolent, than any other social structure devised by the heathens. This isn’t to denigrate the beatific individual, but to look at the aggregate behaviors of the followers of any religion.

18

I like Wonderer’s explanation of religion as an important institution. Civilization would be quite impossible without it. Now that we have civilizations, we might maintain them without religion, but I am not sure of this. This is because it is pushing our human nature to live together in such large groups. Our brains are limited and we are lucky to know 600 people by name. In the past this tended to keep humans in small groups like primates live in small groups. The size of these groups depends on available resourses, and the skill of leaders. Relationships at this early level, are personal and there are no impersonal laws that apply to everyone.

Mythology unites us in larger numbers, and gives us a leader above all, even above our leaders, and brings us to governments and formal laws. Mythology civilizes youth and transitions them to adulthood, with stories that convey concepts and prepares them for adulthood. When we have a shared mythology, there is less mental and social confusion. When we lack a shared mythology, individuals come up with the own private mythologies, turning the people in their lives into the gods and monsters needed for life’s transitions, and this can lead to various degrees of mental dis-eas and social success or failure.

From time to time, we must all go to Hades (hell) to get a sense of meaning, and doing so without the help of the gods (concepts), is very dangerous, because of the likelihood of getting lost. That is, to suffer depression, or worse, states of mental dis-ease, even psychosis.

From childhood, through adulthood, and late into old age, we go through different phases. In our later years, the need for some kind of spiritual resolution increases. I am not sure how practical it is for people in different stages of the life cycle to discuss religion and things of a spiritual nature, because they are likely to disagree. They are looking at the issue from different perspectives, with different needs, and will see, and value, different things.

19

How about The religious Vs. the religion? A perfectly good religion is always mucked up by the religious. Religions are only ideas, the religious turn those ideas into tools to control livng and lives. Much the same as what any human does with any really big idea. Think of the religious as idea salespeople, Really good PR reps., there is where Wax got the Stockholm syndrome. Its not the religion it is the religious. A leader is only a leader if that leader is able to capture and control followers. Words and ideas are better than guns and knives for that type of capture and control, it is really the more dangerous way too. The idea gets changed and then humans run amok. If guns and knives are put down people tend to be a lot calmer. The physical is less traumatic then the mental. yes? no?

20

I don’t think we disagree all that much- my point is only that even the violent Jihadist’s purpose is to honor God, just if he says so, because that’s all a purpose is. It’s a bitter pill for religious folks to swallow, I suppose, but if we’re going to criticize people like that, I don’t think we can begin by speculating after what they “really” intend, as if we know.