1. Social control–offered in the form of “#moral guidance”–in place of #civil#ethics* — and to fill in where civil ethics give way to local tradition, crime, differences in social behavior and are thus porous.
2. The ancillary benefit of comfort to the infirm and #FeebleMinded in times of hopelessness.
3. The #Justification of nonsense political policies–regionally, nationally & internationally–allowing for institutionalized corruption, unfair electioneering, #VoterSuppression and #prejudice–via the inherent #division religion provides automatically.
When Meiji sought to modernize and unify #Japan, he put all religious parishes–Buddhist, #Shinto and #Christian under direct political control of the #government. Earlier in Japan’s history, #Buddhism had been outlawed to make way for the local religion and the spurning of a foreign ones. What this accomplishes is nationalism–something we see in #ChristainNationalism now–supporting #Trump. The three components of this are always:
1. Superstition (“god[s]”); provides cover & approval for nonsense
2. Nationalism; provides “Us or Them”-ism and #xenophobia
3. War; provides economy and hegemony
We all know about the #DivineRightOfKings in #Europe. It was overturning of this–via the #Enlightenment and kings being dismembered in front of crowds in France and England which birthed democracy.
And today, in Russia & Ukraine and in #America–religion is again being used to control those same feeble-minded-type people to justify #war; in our case–in the US–the war is not much different from that in Russia and Ukraine: Against #modernity and for #ethnicsupremacy.
I guess some modern-day Republicans want to see heads cut off during the next enlightenment and want to control human rights now–for women and people of other complexions….
Remember: “Religion Poisons Everything” – #ChristopherHitchens
What good old Hitch forgot was the last word: ‘good.’ Religion poisons everything good.
Virtue save democracy.
CA
Tokyo
If you would prefer other media, there are links in the comments.
*The #SecondAmendment ensures not only #FreedomOfSpeech, but the #SeparationOfChurchAndState — specifically for the purposes of disallowing the control religion has over a state that the majority deem to be a democracy; it also prevents the path to the Divine Right of Kinds (or as we like to say in Conservative America: #UniversalPresidentialPower.) The downside of the Second Amendment is that it ensures different morals and ethics state to state–and this is why we do not have (as other countries less religious do) a code of ethics everyone honors morally–in America.
Links:
The Russian Orthodox Leader at the heart of Putin’s Ambitions
Russia’s War in Ukraine Leads to Historic Split in The Orthodox Church
