Does Capitalism Necessarily Destroy Souls?

Recently, I reflected on Frederick Douglass' autobiography, and the spiritually-destructive nature of slavery ("corrupt-making," I said) as he depicted it. A Facebook friend asked me if capitalism might also be "soul-destroying." I will attempt to answer that question in this forum.

First, my comments, and the challenge I received: 

DM: "Frederick Douglass' autobiography (ies) are wonderful writing, but often distressful reading. Christianity doesn't seem to have done the South much real good at that period, for instance. Douglass describes pious masters who went from singing hymns to beating or starving their slaves without a qualm. One of his masters got religion at a Methodist camp revival, and it just made him meaner. Douglass himself was a serious Christian as a young man, but found all this quite disappointing. (There were exceptions, which he gratefully describes.)

"Slavery was a corrupt-making institution: everything that came into contact with that rotten fruit, also went bad. From which we should ask: what about our worldview is not only immoral, but causes our faith, and our lives as a whole, to fester and stink? Much of what the Left says about 'Christian Nationalism' is hysterical and unjust, but certainly there are such temptations on the Right as well as on the Left."

ED: "Would you say that the imperative of viewing labor power as a commodity doesn't carry with it the danger of viewing people as commodities? If so, the latter is surely potentially soul-corrupting, especially if it tends to lead us to view them as mere commodities (in which case it very plausibly runs afoul of Kant's humanity formula of the CI."

I have not read Martin Buber for myself, but this question reminds me of his distinction between "I-It" and "I-Thou" interfaces. It is inherent to the nature of man to treat other persons in one of two ways: (1) as an object; (2) as a mutual subject, with whom one relates as a spiritual being. A human being is, among other things: a. A physical object with mass, subject to gravitational force. b. An animal with instincts which seeks to satisfy those instincts, competing with other animals for space, air, water, food, mates, and money. c. A social animal that exists in families, tribes, nations, churches, schools, and other social institutions, with hierarchies and rules.

d. A spiritual being in relation to God and other sapiential creatures.

It follows, then, that not capitalism in particular, but life in general "carries with it the danger of viewing people as commodities." We do, in fact, compete with other people, if only for the last seat on the bus, for a promotion, the best score in class, a girl a fish or the best room at a resort hotel.

To a linebacker, the quarterback is of necessity an "it," a "commodity." After the game, they might shake hands and nod at the "thou-ness" of the competition. Most of life must be lived on the "I-It" level: we cannot enter into a deep spiritual relationship with the guy tailgating us on the freeway, though we might let him pass. But is that because we recognize him as a troubled soul and have compassion on him, or so we can drive in peace?

Christian ethics, as exemplified in Jesus' story of the Good Samaritan, means looking at people we meet as "thous" and not just "its." The gospels amaze me because Jesus never seems to meet an "it," a "woman," a "Samaritan," a "cripple," or even a "Pharisee." He looks into the eyes of each person he encounters and says "I see you." So he never repeats himself, because he never meets the same person twice, or a category that renders any two people clones. He is always aware of the "Thou," even when he rebukes people.

Is this possible for a capitalist businessman? Does capitalism make "I-Thou" relationships impossible? Do pre or post capitalist social structures make "I-It" relationships either more or less frequent in comparison to "I-Thou" relationships?

The argument is that the businessman sees his laborers as mere "commodities," like his mules or his tractor or the produce of his factory.

Certainly that happens sometimes, maybe most often, just as it happens most often in every social structure. Students compete with one another. Teachers think of students, or their parents, as customers. Generals count their troops to calculate the chance of victory and glory, at a cost of so many lives. Even parents think of their children as extensions of their own ego, or perhaps someone to take care of them when they grow old.

These examples, though, may already suggest to you the importance of a hierarchy of relationships. It is an obscenity if a mother sees her children as no more than a McDonald's manager sees his employees. We cannot always think of the souls of those we interact with: say hi to the cashier, but both sides recognize that as a fleeting and mostly instrumental transaction. A saint might go further in seeing each person as a soul for whom Christ died. But you ought to think that way about your own kids.

The difference between capitalism and slavery is that the relationship between boss and worker is mutually-established. The slave doesn't choose to be a slave, usually, and seldom is allowed to choose her owner. The employee, on the other hand, does agree to work for so much an hour, applying to several companies before finding a job that he thinks will meet his needs. They sign a contract. The employee receives a wage. He can leave when he wants. He can't usually be sold to another cotton farmer down the river.

Still, both sides may see their relationship mostly as "I-It." "The boss" is grumpy today, better avoid her. This employee is inefficient and has low ratings from customers, better let him go.

So yes, the transactional push of the bottom line -- for both parties -- encourage "I-It" thinking, as does driving on a freeway in competition with other cars, or asking a girl out in competition with other boys, etc. But "I-Thou" thinking is also possible: real concern for the other person. Growing up in the home of a small businessman with employees, I saw that this was possible. And whether working in a state or private business, the challenge of seeing those under me -- teachers or students -- as human beings with whom I can enter into a spiritual relationship, is really not that different.

So what's the difference between slavery and private enterprise?

The very fact that the master-slave relationship is not free, corrupts on both sides. Douglass makes this extremely clear. The master beats the slave for being "lazy" because he faints from heat stroke, because he knows the slave has no financial incentive to work hard, and so must be incentivized with punishment. The slave cannot change masters, cannot choose her own mate, cannot raise her own children, works for the benefit of another, eats and dresses poorly, and dies without honor or love.

You may say, employees are also often poor and unloved.

But the market system creates incentives in both directions. The worker has the chance of doing better, because her hard work makes more money for her boss. Therefore all things being equal (though of course they are not always equal), the boss is forced to share the benefits of produce, to treat his employees more and more like "thous." He is competing for good workers, as the workers are competing for good salaries and benefits.

And if you treat someone like a "thou," you may begin to think of them as spiritual beings holy in the sight of God, as well. Slave society covers up for the bosses even when they kill "their" property. It must do so, otherwise the slaves would rebel, and the society would fall apart. But in a market economy, even a boss can generally be arrested for murder.

So while people may treat one another functionally under any system, and generally do, the incentive structures of slave and capitalist societies fundamentally point in opposite directions. Personally, I have almost always gotten along well with my bosses and with my subordinates. Yes, we laborers were "commodities," and sometimes my bosses made it clear that that is how they saw us, for the most part. And frankly, sometimes that was appropriate. But I think capitalism tends, by its nature, to create more incentive for genuine human relations than either slavery or statism.

Hierarchies are, as Jordan Peterson points out, and Burke before him, inevitable in any system.

Another Response to Richard Carrier's Scholarship (sigh)

I'm not sure who (introduction, please?) but someone keeps asking me to refute various comments Richard Carrier has made about the historical Jesus.  I'm happy to be of help if I can.  But with a few stipulations: (1) I don't want to watch any videos; (2) or budge in on an argument between, say, Carrier and Tim O'Neill; (3) or discuss what I regard as trivial details, like how much of Josephus' famous two passages on Jesus are really from him.  Also (4) I may not have time to answer everything!  

And since I have already proven Carrier's flaws as a scholar pretty thoroughly, I think, I don't want to beat that dead horse too much, either.  Also, Jesus is No Myth: The Fingerprints of God on the Gospels makes my positive case not only for the historicity of Jesus, but for the accuracy of the earliest accounts of Jesus' life.  Carrier attacked that book with amusing futility: I got the impression he skimmed it while drunk, and wrote his "rebuttal" at 3:00 the next morning, with an aching hangover.  (Or, I theorize elsewhere on this site, while green, having metamorphized into Hulk Carrier.)

I may shoot from the hip a little here.  But let me see what I can do, before getting back to class prep:  

"It begins with Mark having Jesus say literal stories that are false are told to keep the secret allegorical truth hidden that will only be told to initiates. Just as Plutarch says the Osirians did with the biographies of Osiris."

These comments are too occult for me to attempt to tease any sense out on a sunny day.  Carrier seems to be viewing some obscure connection in his head, but not explaining it clearly: let it rest there for the moment.  

"Then Matthew “embellishes” Mark’s technique by adding allusions to the things he is saying fulfilling scripture, thus further disguising the truth but making it now look like scripture."

This is confused.  To offer allusions to a text is not to make your work "look like" that text.  Augustine's Confessions are chock-full of allusions to Scripture, which does not turn a psychological autobiography into, say, a gospel or an epistle to the Corinthians.  Matthew obviously does not "look like" the stories in I King about David.  Carrier misunderstands what an allusion is and does. 

But Carrier's implications are clear.  He thinks Matthew must be making stuff up, because he keeps on saying Jesus fulfills Scripture.  But that begs the question: 

(1) What if Jesus really did fulfill Scripture? 

(2) Mark says he did, too, after all, and so did other early Christian writers.  

(3) I show, in True Son of Heaven, that Jesus also fulfills Chinese Culture.  Carrier tried to answer a few of my arguments, but just showed he doesn't know much about China.  If Jesus could fulfill Chinese culture, that shows that fulfillment does not demonstrate something is made up for that purpose.  Early Chinese like Lao Zi were not, of course, writing to show Jesus fulfilled the core images and truths of Chinese tradition, and yet he does.  

(4) Can Carrier point to any other text that employs the "fulfillment motif" in such detail and depth as Matthew shows Jesus fulfills the Jewish tradition?  I wonder if that would even be possible.  I wonder if Carrier has even realized just how rich that motif is in Matthew.  In Fulfillment: A Christian Model of Religions, I describe twelve such pervasive patterns in Matthew alone.  (Not twelve details, but twelve patterns, most of which contain multiple instances.) 

"Then Luke takes this a step further and instead of making the allegory look like scripture, he makes it look like actual history, using all the markers of historical writing, but still never explicitly saying that what he is preserving is literally true rather than the correct allegory (the correct version of “the parable” of Jesus)."

The confusion here drops further into the deep. 

In fact, the very first chapter of Mark is already chock full of the sorts of details one finds in historical records: we have historical locations (Judea, River Jordan, Capernaum, Nazareth, Galilee), known historical characters from outside the Bible (John the Baptist, Herod is coming up, and of course Jesus), customs and texts from the place and time (Isaiah, baptism, synagogues) and concrete, realistic activities (fishing on the Sea of Galilee). 

So the sequence begins, not ends, in what appears -- and I show that it appears far more deeply after being tested forensically -- to be history, not "allegorical truth to initiates."  The rest of this is all empty bloviating.   

"Then, for the first time ever, John comes along and outright says it’s not allegory, it’s literally true, and you’d better believe it because it’s literally true."

Hogwash.  Mark places Jesus in historical time, with historical figures, doing historical things.  Matthew pays closer attention to Scriptural links, but adds more depth which, I show, increases the historical credibility of the story in many ways.  Luke is an intellectual who has probably read Thucydides, maybe Polybius, and uses those historical tools to tell a story he says he has researched to ensure accuracy.  

Then John is the first to claim "literal truth" for the story?  How absurd!        

"That’s the sequence of events.  The story gets more concretely historical over time."

Perhaps Carrier is afflicted with the same condition that many scholars of religion suffered from in the 19th Century: they could not help but read their evolutionary paradigms into the histories of religion.  Carrier wants to see development from "allegory" to "history," but Mark and Luke don't oblige his delusion for anyone who lacks his eyes of faith.  

"Which is the opposite of what we should expect. We should first have mundane memoirs and letters about Jesus and his impact and the controversies about him among those meeting or confronting him. Then this evolves into more elaborate mythical legends. Just as happened with Alexander the Great. Instead we get elaborate mythical legends right out of the gate. Skipping everything else. And then gradually those legends are wrapped more and more to look like history, and then finally are insisted upon as history."

I dare anyone to read the Alexander Romance, and claim it looks like any of the canonical gospels.  I analyze it in Jesus is No Myth.  That is, indeed, what a gospel should look like though, on the skeptical theory.  The desperation of skeptics looking for a credible fictional parallel to the gospels is actually rather touching, and amusing.  I also find this scramble through ancient texts quite helpful: all those unbelievers scurrying around proving the truth of Christianity, seizing on vain analogies that fall apart at the lightest touch of common sense, shows just how unique the gospels actually are.  I often suspect they are simply gambling that no one will read the Life of Apollonius of Tyana, the Descent of Ishtar, or the "Gospel" of Thomas, and see how threadbare the analogies they grab at in futile desperation actually are.  

"No, Mario, the same standards do not lead to doubting the historicity of Alexander the Great.

"This has been extensively explained already. Read the damned book. It’s very affordable. If you keep making arguments showing you haven’t even read the book, and keep failing to respond to those arguments, I will permanently ban you from making blog comments."

I read it, and refuted it.  "Easy as turning over your fist," as the ancient Chinese put it.  Carrier's temper tantrums and complete inability to accurately read my rebuttal and show he understood it in response revealed how futile his thinking had become.    

"You’ve been warned.  Everything you just said, Mario, is false.  You’ll discover that fact when you read my section on the evidence for Alexander in OHJ.  But you won’t get to comment on it further here. You are banned for persistent misbehavior against repeated warnings."

Poor Mario.  Or maybe, lucky Mario.  Plumbing is a more profitable business than reading Richard Carrier, anyway, Mario.  

Richard Carrier Scrawls in Crayon on the Gospels

 I've been asked to respond to the following comment by Richard Carrier, historian (etc, etc):

"John is historicizing Jesus’s divinity. Mark allegorized it. Matthew turned it into a scripture. And Luke is the first to represent it as a history. And John is the first to insist everything he says is literally, historically true. That’s all fact. That’s the sequence. Denying it is denying reality.

"Meanwhile, John did not add anything not already in Paul. And Mark is based on Paul. So there was no progression 'to' John’s Jesus. The only difference between John’s Jesus and Paul’s is John is repeatedly insisting Jesus was really on earth. That’s it."

To be frank, this is skeptical baby-talk for the masses.  It the lazy, imperious, impressionistic scrawling of a crayon on a cathedral wall.  

(1) I refuted Carrier's argument against the historical reality of Jesus in a couple chapters of Jesus is No Myth: The Fingerprints of God on the Gospels.  That part of the book was easy; Carrier is sloppy and a vulnerable target, as were Reza Aslan and Bart Ehrman.  After that chore, in the more important part of the book, I showed how thirty traits in the gospels, including Mark, Matthew, Luke, and John, demonstrate their historicity in a deep and inimitable way.  

Then I controlled that main argument by comparing the gospels on those 30 traits to "alt-gospels" that skeptics, including Carrier, have claimed resemble the first four books of the New Testament.  It turned out that not one of those "fake gospels" remotely resembles the real ones when it comes to these historically-relevant traits.  The desperation even of renowned scholars in offering such poor analogies reveals how unique the gospels remain.  (Tim McGrew particularly enjoyed my take-down of Ehrman's attempt to find a parallel to Jesus in early-modern Poland, of all places!  Perhaps Ehrman was hoping no one would take the trouble of reading the chief early source for the life of the rabbi he foolishly picked as a potential Jesus clone!)  

The gospels are, one might say, a cathedral of words, patterns within patterns, parables and metaphors and quips, dramatic dialogues, frames, miracles rising from stone like living gargoyles, sculpted into forms quite different from the "wonder-works" of mystics or legends (Apollonius, Sai Baba, the apocryphal Jesus), with a dozen different kinds of link showing Christ as fulfillment of the Old Testament (not just in Matthew, but in all the gospels), simple, elegant words which have changed the course of civilization.  

Carrier's mythicism is a childish scrawl across those stones: "Nah-ah!"   

Carrier then "reviewed" my book in a long, rambling piece which got a hundred or so things wrong -- almost every single comment he made about it was completely off, even when he tried to describe my thesis.  He thought the book was about his own scrawling, not about the cathedral.    

2. Some analysts don't even think that was the order in which the gospels were written.   Carrier would, no doubt, dismiss their arguments contemptuously.  

3. I'm not sure what the distinction is supposed to be between Luke presenting the Gospel as history, and John saying it actually happened.  That sounds like the same thing, to me.  Luke clearly insists what Carrier says John is the first to say: that he had looked closely into the facts, and found them to be as follows.   

4. And how is Mark not telling history as well?  He names names, beginning with John the Baptist, who is known from Josephus as well as the gospels.  He describes locations, beginning with Israel's longest river, the Jordan, and with Galilee, and Capernaum, none of which is Wonderland or Middle Earth, but known features of the landscape in the Middle East.  He talks about a synagogue and fisherman.  He gives them names which we know from ossuaries were, in fact, common in the 1st Century in Palestine.  He describes customs which were common among the Jews of Palestine at that period.  All that, in the first chapter alone.  

That's history.  Carrier may not admit that it is true history, but even if Mark doesn't do any of the navel-gazing historiography of Thucydides or Polybius (as Luke does, to some degree), he is clearly at least pretending to tell a story about something that happened recently in real places to actual people.  Yes, he says Jesus does miracles, but those who study history closely, know that real people in real history (including some people I have known) also report miracles.  (As Craig Keener showed in two long books on the subject.)  

(5) The gloss "Mark is based on Paul" is, again, a child's crayon scratching marks on a cathedral wall.  

Carrier himself argues that actually, Paul never mentions the historical Jesus.  Paul mentions Jesus' brothers, but didn't mean biological brothers (he says), so that doesn't count.  And so on. 

How can a detailed description of the life, actions, teachings, death, and (yes, promised four times before that death) resurrection of Jesus be "based on" an author who allegedly never mentions an historical Jesus?  

One would, no doubt, need to read the rest of this particular scrawl to figure out how where precisely it begins in cognitive space.  But one does not need to trace every gimlet and hinky of a child's smear to recognize it as such.  Carrier is reducing Mark to an instantiation of something he finds in Paul.  So he simply wipes away all the concrete details of the book.  "Nothing to see here, folks!  Walk by quickly and don't look!" 

Which can be refuted merely by reading the book.  Gaze at the ramparts.  Watch the figures in light.  Here the life of the most vivid and powerful figure in history stands, for all to see, and no, you will not find this in Paul, as Carrier himself insists elsewhere.   

Or you can go more analytical, as I did in Jesus is No Myth: The Fingerprints of God on the Gospels.      

(6) The same is true of John's Gospel.  "John did not add to anything not already in Paul?"  What does that even mean?  Presumably Carrier means Jesus is presented as divine in Paul, then also in John.  That is true, and is true of all 1st Century Christian literature.  But obviously, John "added" lots to that skeleton, which is all that Carrier allows to Paul.  Even sensitive readers like AN Wilson are shocked to find John so concrete, detailed, and historically-credible, even as his Christology soars like a cathedral. 

John doesn't add anything to Paul?  Only the life, wisdom, miracles, death and resurrection of the most famous, startling, and transformative man in history?  

Surely one can find better sense in most children's scrawling!  

In short, I don't think these comments really need to be refuted.  Like other forms of reductionism, they may sound plausible at first sight, because simple theories have a kind of a jarring resonance, like the note of a bell.  Simple theories are always plausible so long as you simply listen to the ring, and ignore contrary evidence.  

I remember walking along a river in China where for more than a mile, great poetry of China and the world had been hung on the wall protecting the city from floods.  I caught a sudden scrawl, and recognized the style immediately, out of those hundreds or thousands of works: Chairman Mao!  

Mao, like Carrier, was a clever man, and his bold style, which ignored Chinese poetic convention for filling spaces, was distinctive and eye-catching.  But his reductionistic theories were too simple, and his revolution against Chinese tradition ultimately failed, because there was too much great stuff in that tradition for the Chinese to let go.  His scrawl proved eye-catching for a moment, but his revolution against the "Four Olds" and Chinese tradition ultimately failed.  

Richard Carrier has a bit of the same gift.  He cannot be mistaken for a great historian or philosopher, by those who read other poems.  But his claims are eye-catching.  They can even excite a mob temporarily, when people are in the mood to deface cathedrals.  But Carrier's childish scrawls can never take a Gospel down.  

Thinking Rationally about Religion and Violence

Teaching high school kids how to think and do research sometimes drove me to despair. Not because they didn't get it, but because sometimes they did. And then I look at how "successful" thinkers in the Media and often even Academy argue in public, and wondered if I was wasting my time. 

Maybe, after all, sloppy use of key terms, broad generalizations based on anecdotal and impressionistic "evidence," free employment of logical fallacies, and in short, shoddy reasoning that makes emotional appeals to dupes, is how to make a name for yourself and grab your share of the world's approval and financial renumeration. Maybe I was setting kids up to fail by teaching them how to think and argue rationally. 

Such, at least, was my gloomy reflection upon reading Deidre McPhillip's "Religion Needs a Savior: Most people think religion is the root cause of the world's problems, according to an international study," on the US News website. (And a discussion linked to that article at a secularist website that promotes the "future of reasoning.") 

I told students that one of the first things they needed to do to make a sensible argument, was to define key terms. 

So what is "religion," used twice in the headline alone, that multi-tasking pest which allegedly causes most the world's problems? The term is famously tricky. Sociologist Peter Berger divided definitions of “religion” into two kinds: substantive, which focus on the content of belief, and functional, which key in on the use society makes religion. For instance, you can define religion as "Belief in God or supernatural powers," or as "The overarching ideology which a group of people take as fundamental in establishing rules of behavior." (Or Paul Tillich's simpler "ultimate concern," to give another "functional" example. The sociologist Emile Durkheim was probably the most famous "functional" theorist.) 

People ignore this distinction all the time, though it is critical. Secular ideologies often qualify as “religions” under functional definitions. This makes skeptics uncomfortable, because they want to stigmatize “religious” people as inherently irrational, unlike themselves. Functional definitions level the playing field, reminding us that the same psychological and social forces work on us all, whatever we think about God. 

But an even more important, and obvious, distinction begged by the title of this piece is "Which religion?" As everyone knows, including those taking the survey, some Muslims have behaved badly of late. (I finally post this after Hamas' recent murderous exploits were celebrated widely.) 

Yes, so have some Christians, especially if you go back to the Inquisition -- why did you think of that? Because both Christianity and Islam are “Abrahamic religions“ we are told. 

So it does not even cross the skeptic’s mind that, “Yes, but atheists murdered one hundred million innocent people during our grandparents’ life-times." That is the advantage of implicitly defining religion to exclude their own ideology: they need not be hoist with their own petards. 

Asking if "religion" has done the world harm is misleading not only because "religion" is poorly-defined, but also because either sort of definition covers very different things. A fallacy of composition is committed. It is unfair to ask folk about "religion in general" when they invariably have particular religions in mind. 

"Are Lutheran Brethren the root cause of the world's problems?" No? How about Communism? Capitalism? Technology? 

"Is Islam the cause of most of the world's problems?” 

That question won’t fly in Lahore, or else stones will. Go ask police officers in Beijing if the Communist Party has messed up the country, and with luck, you’ll soon be on a flight home. 

And what does "most of the world's problems" mean? 

Take out a scratch pad and list a few serious ones: 

(a) Death.

(b) Cancer.

(c) War.

(d) Mosquitoes and the diseases they bring.

(e) Ticks and the diseases they carry.

(f) Traffic jams.

(g) Bureaucrats.

(h) The threat of nuclear weapons.

(i) The rise of Artificial Intelligence.

(j) Unmelodic music in grocery stores.

(k) Ugly public art.

Your list may differ. But the problem with the article’s title should be obvious. Clearly, most big problems are not caused by religions, however you define the word. (Unless you count Satan’s temptation to “be as gods, eat the apple” as a “religion.”)

In China, where few of the 1.4 billion citizens has a religion in the sense of belief in supernatural beings, and the public, observable effect of Buddhism and Christianity is negligible (while Islam is suppressed even more heavily), I suspect "dropping my I phone on the sidewalk" would rank higher as a source of heartache. (Never mind "unrequited love" “bad air” or "getting fired.")

So why might people answer "yes" to such an inane question as “Is religion the root cause of the world’s troubles?”

Because polls are intended to let people vent, not think. And who are respondents venting at? Not at themselves, of course. At people of other religions.

So much for “the future of reasoning.”

Anecdotal Arguments Against Faith, plus "Expert" Opinions

The contents of the article exhibit do little more to reassure one that post-religious humanity will think clearly or honestly.

"RAISED AS A conservative, Sunni Muslim girl in Canada, Yasmine Mohammed said she was taught to always be in fight mode. 'The first thing Islam teaches you is to not question, but follow,' she says. And what she had to follow was a 'Muslim supremacy ideology' that called for violence against anyone who fell out of line and full armies prepared to join the fight when the caliphate was to rise. "Systematic suppression of critical thinking is what makes Muslims ripe to join groups like the Islamic State group or become suicide bombers without questioning the motives of their directives, she says."

Not to defend Islam, of which I am not fond, but let us not ignore the fact that, as numerous anthropologists affirm, human nature is fundamentally tribal.

And does critical thinking need to be suppressed, or developed?  If it came naturally, I'd have to seek employment elsewhere. And when it comes to job security, the US News article is reassuring. 

"As a radical sect of Buddhist nationalists persecute the Rohingya Muslim minority in Myanmar, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict wages on and a film challenging the Orthodox Church spurs violent protests in Russia, it seems that asserting sovereignty is the only thing the world's religions can agree on today." 

Take this line of “reasoning,” for instance. Does the author seriously wish to extrapolate from three instances in which groups of "religious" people quarrel (though Israel is one of the least "religious" countries in the world) to argue that there is some sort of general agreement among "the world's religions" to . . . what? "Assert sovereignty?” Claim power over others?

Aristotle pointed out that "Man is a political creature.” Since politics means assertion of power, clearly the use of power is a universal human (also lupine) characteristic.

So we should generalize from three instances to 6 billion people, while implicitly exempting the "non-religious" billion or two people from that generalization? Never mind the power games that New Atheists play among themselves? Or the fratricidal history of Marxism?

My point, of course, is not that atheists are either more or less violent than Shiite Muslims. It is that McPhillip has deceived herself into thinking she has made a rational argument, when she has not come within a country mile of a clear thought. 

But on she treks: 

"In a recent Best Countries survey of more than 21,000 people from all regions of the world, the majority of respondents identified religion as the ‘primary source of most global conflict today.’ Spiritual beliefs create an inherent “us vs. them" scenario, experts say."

Which experts say that? What are they expert in?

Sports and politics also create "inherent 'us vs them' scenarios. Indeed, every assertion of truth, every scientific or historical or psychological claim, every basketball tossed into the air, also creates an "us vs them:” those for, and those against. Society is constantly fracturing along the fault lines of a billion assertions. Any claim "A" immediately creates a default "non-A" at the other end of the court. Ever line in the sand, saying "This is ours" (Rouseau) creates potential for conflict. 

McPhillip's borrowed "insight“ is thus simultaneously both trivial and earth-shaking: if she applied the same standard to ideas in general, she would have to portray them all as dangerous.  (And maybe they are, for her.)

"’When societies shatter, they generally shatter along tribal lines. People are seeing themselves as irretrievably different from their neighbors,’ says Sam Harris, a neuroscientist and philosopher who has published books on Islam and the conflict between religion and science."

The movement Harris briefly helped lead has also shattered along tribal lines. The website Sam Harris and the Future of Reason is a site largely for tribal warfare between atheists who hold differing political opinions.

That's one reason I find it interesting. If everyone offered the same views about the world, it would make me wonder if I were trapped in the world of 1984 or the planet in Madeleine L’Engle where children all bounce their balls simultaneously.

Humans are tribal. Welcome to Anthropology 101.

"The divisions created by religion are deeper and potentially more harmful than those formed through other aspects of identity such as race, nationality or political affiliations because they confront individuals with differing opinions on the ultimate purpose of life, experts say. And more than 80 percent of those surveyed said that religious beliefs guide a person's behavior."

Here come those ”experts" again. Which experts, besides the New Atheist Sam Harris? What are their exact words? What evidence do they offer to back up their opinions?

I'm an expert in "religion." I don't hear my fellow historians, theologians, or students of comparative religion, saying that religion is more dangerous than politics or nuclear physics, for examples.

Indeed, the argument given so far sounds like something a crack-pot psychologist dabbling in comparative religion or intellectual history might say. The impact of ideas in the collective is not a question that can be answered theoretically. (Notice the fudge word "potentially," which is a concession that the author cannot back her point up with solid empirical evidence.)

If you have proof that "religious" people (by whatever definition) are more violent, cruel or mean than people who lack any beliefs or purpose in life, please offer that evidence, so we can crunch the data! 

Or how about if we just cite Swami Sam like good faith-heads? 

"Religion often becomes the master variable," Harris says. "It provides a unique reward structure. If you believe that the thoughts you harbor in this life and the doctrines you adhere to spell the difference between an eternity spent in fire or one spent on the right hand of God, that raises the stakes beyond any other reward structure on earth."

Still just one "expert," Sam Harris (whose expertise lies in cognitive science, not religion), offering armchair theorizing. Odd, if “experts" in general are making this point, that she keeps on citing the same fairly young scholar, whose academic work lay in a field remote indeed from the claim supposedly being supported.

"Tribal tendencies are natural for humans who need groups and community to survive. But the driving forces behind especially alienating, fundamentalist beliefs are a combination of nature and nurture, experts say. 'Any beliefs that concern the sacred are integral to people’s identities,” says Andrew Tix, a psychology professor at Normandale Community College whose nationally recognized research focuses on religion and spirituality. ‘People differ in how much they’re threatened when the sacred is brought into question.’

Maybe we should start a drinking game: bottoms up when the word "expert" is used.

This expert turns out to be a young instructor, not professor, at a community college. 

He does hold a PhD in psychology. But these two comments hardly seem to require one to issue. Your most sacred beliefs are part of who you are! (Bet you didn't know that, Irish Catholics! Or Iranian Shiites! Or Icelandic Wiccans!) And some people get more upset than others when you tell them their religion is wrong! 

Remember, this is expertise talking, so don’t laugh!

"He points to psychology’s Big Five theory in which openness to experience is one of five key personality traits that is influenced by genetics and shaped by experiences. Some people have found ways to 'hold their beliefs more lightly and with a sense of mystery,' he says. They would score high on ‘openness,’ while fundamentalists who hold their beliefs with heavy conviction would more likely score low."

You may want to sit down for these “heavy” revelations. People who are convinced about what they believe, really believe it.

Ponder the implications: if you firmly believe that the Earth goes around the Sun, you will score low in measurements of how open you are to changing your mind to thinking both sun and earth circle the moon. Profound, no? 

But the experts have even more such wisdom to impart. 

"Religious communities teach different ways of responding to criticism of their identity, Tix says, but it comes down to the notion of threatened egotism. ‘The stronger a person’s convictions in their identity – of which religion is often a key part – the more likely they are to be violent when their identity is threatened.’”

You may find it hard to keep up with the flow of earth-shattering profundity. But what this seems to mean is, if you don't care much about your religion, you probably won't lose your cool if someone trashes it.

Are we going too fast?

Also, if you don't care about your country, you probably won't care if someone invades it. If no one cared about anything -- no country to die for, and no religion, too -- why just imagine!

So I am not sure if our experts obtained this vast store of expertise from their PhD studies, or from an old Beatles song. Either way, we soldier on:

"The Muslim identity surrounding Mohammed in Canada's British Columbia was strong. She was beaten for not memorizing the Koran and married to a member of al-Qaida as a teenager . . . But after taking a religion course at college, Mohammed said the unease she had always felt with what she was told to believe finally started to take shape. In voicing her newfound convictions to her family, she immediately became part of ‘them’ instead of ‘us.’ The fight turned against her. She says her family disowned her and threatened to have her killed. She fled to different parts of Canada, changed her and her child’s names and says she feels lucky the death threat has so far only been a threat."

A sad story, indeed.

"It is only in comparison with modern Islam that modern Christianity and other religions appear more benign, says Sam Harris, who is very publicly atheist. 'It’s more than inconvenient that these old [religious] books support things like slavery and the killing of women who are not virgins on their wedding night,' he says. 'None of these books is the best we have on anything we care about. All could be improved with editing, and that should banish any notion that they are the product of omniscience.'” 

I have seen attempts to "improve" the Ten Commandments or the Sermon on the Mount. (Cough, cough.)

But we seem to be straying off the path. Wasn’t someone going to make the case that religion is the root of all evil? The title of the piece was "Religion Needs a Savior: Most people think religion is the root cause of the world's problems, according to an international study."

Nope!  It turns out that this title is a lie. The actual question asked was not about "the world's problems" in general. Rather it asked "What's the primary source of most global conflict today?"

Obviously, "problems" is a vastly broader set of issues than "conflicts," especially if you add the adjective "global," then the chronological modifier, "today."

Anyone who doesn't recognize how dishonest it is to conflate these two, shouldn't stand within ten miles of a keyboard. It is like asking people, "What is the most difficult thing about eating a pineapple?" Then when they say, "Pealing off that hard, greenish-yellow skin," you announce, as your headline, "Most people object to mixed skin colors!"

If one were to focus on the present moment in history, Islam is, arguably, the source of most civilizational friction. One could also make a case for the Woke ideology. Look a few years into the past, and it was communism. Look into the future, and the atheist neo-Confucianism of China looms on the horizon.

But death, taxes, cancer, and traffic are all arguably bigger problems for most people. And most religions don't cause much fuss, even those that are passionately believed (what Stark called “high tension” faiths.)

"But religion is not going away."

And if it did, we wouldn't know, since you haven't defined it yet.

"Estimates from Pew Research Center predict that the worldwide population of religiously unaffiliated people will shrink from about 16 percent in 2010 to 13 percent in 2050. In the same time frame, the share of Muslims is predicted to grow from 23 percent to 30 percent of the world’s population."

Pew Research is an expert on what people think in the present, not the future. We have no idea whether there will even be any human beings 27 years from now, let alone what they will believe. A LITTLE intellectual humility on how our grandkids will identity is advisable.

Few predicted the sudden growth of Christianity in China. In recent years, a phenomenon never seen before has occurred in the Muslim world, too -- millions converting to Christ. But in some other countries, the church has suffered sudden reversals.

What path people follow in the future, is up to them, and predicated on numerous variables, many of which themselves are complex or invisible to any human or computer prognosticator. But just a bit more from “experts” before we (finally, yes, sorry) close:

"EXPERTS agree that finding a human connection at some level can help build empathy and bridge the gap between conflicting ideologies and identities. 'In many Muslim-majority nations, such as Saudi Arabia and Iran, religion is directly tied to national policy and politics.' 

As is atheist ideology in China, and Woke ideology in California. 

"For 18 years, the International Center for Religion and Diplomacy, founded by Douglas Johnston, has facilitated faith-based dialogue to find commonalities in these conflicting sides. ‘What you’re doing is shifting accountability from an ideology or political movement to god. If you do that, you tend to find that people behave nicer,' Johnston says. 'It’s incumbent upon all of us to search our beliefs, our instincts and the rest of it and do what we can to be agents of reconciliation.'”

This quote seems to contradict everything that went before it. "Religion" was the shark in the pool. Now political ideology becomes the real danger, while faith in God can make us kinder and gentler.

Of course, not all religions, especially defined functionally, appeal to God. John Hick tried to get around this by describing a "Real" that is the truth behind surface manifestations in all religions. One eastern critic pointed out that Hick's "Real" was implicitly theistic, while many theists found it rather un-Real. So Hick's attempt to satisfy everyone ended by satisfying almost no one, as such ghostly universalisms usually do.

But I think Johnston is closer to the truth than the other "experts" McPhillip has cited. Of course people can appeal to "Got Mitt Uns" to commit tribal cruelties. Yet anyone who recognizes the image of God on his neighbor, and who hears Jesus tell him that all morality and prophetic writings are summed up in "Love God, and love your neighbor as yourself," cannot go full tribal, then look God in the eye.

I just read part of a doctoral dissertation by an orthodox Jew who noted that the Miao people in China had been fighting the Han people, and losing, since forever. Their conversion to Christianity, he noticed, allowed some Miao to begin to forgive the Han. And his own faith in God seemed to give him something in common with evangelical missionaries and Chinese minorities alike.

So this article fails on all fronts. Religions are complex, varied, and contradictory as the humans they strive to direct. Simple-minded a priori generalizations, inspired by abstract psychological theories and absent careful empirical research discretely analyzed and reported, don't tell us anything. Neither do answers to loaded questions.  

And really, kids, you need to define your terms clearly, make due concessions, quote qualified authorities while recognizing the limits of their expertise, look at the big picture not just a few convenient facts, and think critically about your thesis.  

Which, after all, may be worth learning to do, after all.  

Think critically about religion, and it may not help you get published or elected to office.  But as Kipling put it, do all that, and "You'll be a man, my son."