Editor:
Re: Correlation is not cause, Feb.2 letters.
I am most impressed by Scott Keddy’s letter, in which he points out that the healthiest nations are the least religious. It was well-researched and beautifully written.
In my time, I have known some really lovely religious people but have long felt that any doctrine that includes the word “sinner” causes more damage than anything else possibly could.
Guilt is the poison that kills the plant, and for the health of a community it would be wise to remove it from our perception and take back our pointed fingers.
For the record, religion is loosely defined as following the beliefs of another and spirituality as following your own. There is a vast difference between the two.
Maureen Kerr, Surrey
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The statement that socially “healthiest nations are also the least religious” needs to be challenged. The most anti-religious countries of the 20th century were certainly Stalinist Russia and Maoist China. I don’t think even the most cynical of us would call them socially healthy.
Both the quoted researcher Gregory Scott Paul and letter writer seem to indicate that by eliminating religion we would make the world a better place. But mankind was created to worship something or somebody. In their case, presumably, it is themselves.
John Bootsma, White Rock
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Although I’m open to letter-writer Scott Keddy’s notation of study findings that mainstream religion “is caused by dysfunctional societal conditions and does not benefit societies,” I question whether religion plays a role in humankind’s dysfunctional conduct.
If religion does induce functional or ‘moral’ societal behaviour, I’d wager it’s mostly due to ‘the fear of God’ factor. As for cause and effect, I’d theorize that, rather than be the cause, high rates of social dysfunctionality may coincide with “popular religiosity” due to common societal characteristics that breed the said bad behaviour.
For instance, human anger may be one such commonality, with agitation becoming visibly more prevalent in us men in later years due to cerebral changes.
Then, there may be common human-aspiration traits that, for example, motivated a large quantity of western migration to North America – perhaps an insatiable drive for freedom from corrupt, bullish rulers and/or increasingly ‘Godless’ society – yet also eventually result in societally dysfunctional conduct.
I also wonder whether humankind’s predominantly religious nature is making mainstream religion superficially easier to blame for our great social woes? Might we see a reversed situation had we conversely lived in a predominantly atheist world, overwhelmed by the likes of the Khmer Rouge’s Cambodian Killing Fields and Russia’s often ruthless communist history?
The world’s three largest religions – Christianity, Islam and Judaism – are largely based upon an angry, vengeful creator. I’ve found that, by extension, this belief has condoned, if not promoted, violent behaviour by adherents; for, if man is made in His image and we’re preoccupied with traditional forms of physically tough justice, then He must also be similarly preoccupied with ‘fire and brimstone wrath’. In the case of mainstream Christianity, this rigid perspective is generally held regardless of Christ having taught and practised compassion, mercy and no anger-based retribution.
It all makes me recall a man who’s always adamantly opposed to any liberal entity governing ‘the people’; so much so that on a couple occasions he became so blindly narrow-mindedly angry that he, with his fist tightened before him, uttered to me, “I’d vote for the devil himself if that’s what it took to keep those Godless socialists out of office!”
Frank Sterle Jr., White Rock