Religion as an opiate
Name(s):
Utilitarian religion
Harmonial religion
Nature
Harmonial religion is the popular reinforcement of the divorce of fact from value that makes public moral discourse almost impossible. In harmonial religion the seemingly conservative call for a return to objective values is supported by an argument that is relativistic to the core. As such it constitutes an opiate for the masses, providing a welcome escape from the need to engage questions of moral truth, whether personal or public -- thus becoming the disease of which it claims to be the cure.
Background
In harmonial religion, religion is reduced to ethics which in turn is reduced to everything that makes a person feel good about himself or other people. Feeling good is perceived as a consequence of being good which follows from doing good. Religious traditions are viewed as carrying the communal experiences of what makes people do, be and feel good. Civil peace (and market viability) are secured by avoiding rival claims to truth. If any particular belief enables a person to cope more effectively with misfortune and disappointment, then that is true belief, whether historically true or not. The true is thus the useful and "God" is the sum of the human community's useful truths. The religions of the Roman Empire, prior to its fall, have been described as being considered equally true by the populace, equally false by the philosophers and equally useful by the rulers.
Claim
There is no doubt that society would be kinder, gentler, more generous, more peaceful and more harmonious if people lived according to the tenets of harmonial religion -- except for the resulting distortion of truth.
Counter-claim
1. The purpose of religion is not to explain God or to please God, but to help people meet some of their most basic human needs. The primary purpose of religion is not to put individuals in touch with God, but rather to put them in touch with one another.<2. If people are in real pain and are in fact helped by some set of religious beliefs, however spurious, to get their lives together, it is inappropriate to quibble over the means employed.
3. Religion is increasingly seen, even by non-believers, as a spur to the re-establishment of an internal moral compass that will help people move beyond the current spasm of crime and corruption.
Broader
Type
(F) Fuzzy exceptional problems