John Lennon Was Wrong
One of the most respected musicians was John Lennon and one of his most beloved songs is Imagine. The world that he calls us to imagine, a world of peace and love is very compelling.
But how do we get there? Lennon asks us to imagine a world without any religion. We know great violence has been done in the name of religion and so that sounds logical.
But I have no doubt that if all religious belief disappeared today, our world would be just as violent and unjust as it always way. Probably worse.
The problem with the world is not religion but the abuse of religion. Religion, including my own Christianity, when healthy is a powerful force for good. So many of our charities today have religious origins.
Yes religion has been abused and abused. But so have parenting relationships and marital relations. So have schools and workplaces. So have musicians and actors, doctors and nurses, teachers and students.
The examples of when things have gone bad is not proof that the things themselves are bad.
Yes, we should try to imagine a world of peace and love. I think that is the basic religious instinct. But we should also remember that the problem is not the institutions but the human heart.
We know that humans have probably had some version of religion from the beginning, be it animist or something like that. We also know that most, if not all, religion depends on an “us” and a “them”, with them being declared evil so “us” can pretend they are good. So, yep, violence has been done by religion and seems to be required by this idea of us and them.
You have nothing at all to base the claim that if religion (and I suspect you mean only your version of Christianity) disappeared then our world would be “just as violent and unjust as it always was”. Or that it would be worse.
Every theist claims that it is “abuse of religion” when that is not the reason at all. Your religion, and the religions of so many others (not all) call for violence against “them” constantly and have it in their holy books. Christianity is one of the worst. You want to pretend that if Christianity is “healthy” then it must be your version where you ignore what you want out of it. Yep a lot of charities do have religious origins, and many of their origins are that they were charities for the expressed purpose to convert, not to help because people needed help. We’re back to that “us” and “them” again.
Your “whataboutism” is bemusing. It fails since your religion claims to have some god that can control the actions of its followers per its holy book. That claim is of course a lie, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t expect it to do what it claims and hold it and its worshippers accountable for their false claims. Those rest who have abused their power are just humans who aren’t claiming that some god has some morality they follow. In this case, yep, the fact that Christianity and its god evidently allows these things is indeed evidence that Christianity and its god are indeed bad.
There is nothing about peace and love in the religious instinct. That’s all about control and obedience. It is a human thing to want peace and love. A pity your god is again impotent when you want to blame us puny humans. It had no problem in interfering in the bible.