the tyranny of religion within democracy

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so this isn't a post to chastise organized religion...but rather to point out something and get some opinions on it (where better place to get opinion, eh?).


well here's the thing...democracy thrives on the basis of a free market of ideas, correct? you look at two things and eventually come to a consensus.

with religion there is no such free market of ideas. instead, you grow up and are told "this is how it is and there's no other way" (paraphrasing). now my question on that is....with such a way of bringing up kids...doesn't that immediately defeat democracy by trying to indoctrinate children into a certain mindset? i mean i know i could approach probably 20 or 30 parents, ask them if i could teach their kids about a religion other than their own and they'd probably say no. especially if it was something that's rather off the beaten path like satanism or hare krishna. now...if one really lives in a true democracy, then shouldn't such indoctrination be discouraged by the government and education on all religions be given and all religions be taught in a fair light so that the kids can best grow up to make their own decisions?

i mean, essentially what ends up being created is a tyranny of religion under a facade of freedom of religion but with the nudge nudge wink wink of judeo-christians being the truly free ones....at least in the united states, anyways.
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so....any well thought out responses or development on the established idea? (i don't say mine because it was a friend of mine who is a professor who pointed it out and i thought it was an interesting observation).

I agree entirely.

The basic nature of religion does not permit divisive ideas. In the milder religions anyone that disagrees with the basic concepts is theoretically punished after death. In the less permissive religions any individual proposing basic disagreement is slaughtered. Democracy is outside the conceptual capability of religions. Parents that indoctrinate their children into their religion are only, from their point of view, protecting their children from dire consequences.

The thing that I find strange is that Canada, my country, does not have a separation of church and state. According to the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, it is founded "under the supremacy of God," and the national anthem mentions God as well. Yet we Canadians are less religious than Americans. Our government behaves - despite the constitution - as if it were actually secular and takes great care not to upset anyone who isn't religious.

The same trend is even more pronounced in countries that have state churches, like Norway and Denmark. These countries are some of the most secular in the world, yet the church is controlled by the state.

On the other hand, in the United States there is a separation. The country, whether in spite or because of that, is the most religious in the Western World.

So I ask, assuming that these same trends apply equally to the US: if the Religious Right managed to get their version of Christianity installed as the state religion in the US, would the country secularize over time as people become disaffected and disillusioned with the church's teachings? If so, would it be better for America to just get rid of the separation so as to let all that pent-up religiosity run its course and eventually peter out? Could it be a way of "purging" the system of a blockage much in the same way one takes a laxative to relieve constipation?

I don't consider that to be the be-all and the end-all politically or ideologically. I just think it's an interesting idea worth pondering.

Last edited by Stockton on 02 Oct 2007, 12:12 am, edited 1 time in total.

You are on to something Stockton.

Here it was survival of the fittest, churches survived by making their memes more aggressive to try and rile up religious feelings and get their all important donations.

With a church and state combo there is no need to try and survive, the religion becomes fat and lazy. The memes it wields lose power and peter away.

So it could be said the US is so religious because here it's a full blown business, "God Is Greed" basically.

There's a reason the joke goes "if God had intended us to be rich, he'd have made us televangelists"...

Actually, the tendency of freedom of religion to lead to highly competitive religious activities is something already pointed out by economist Gary Becker, it is sort of interesting. It is also noted after the American Revolution as the evangelists swept through causing people to become Baptists and Methodists, something that actually confused Jefferson who thought that religious freedom would cause people to become deists rather than be among the more emotionally driven theists.

Frankly, I don't see this problem with religion for one simple reason: most moral or metaphysical assumptions cannot be disproved. There is no reason for competition, competition only works if there is a measure of success and these beliefs have no way of being truly measured at all. There is the market place of free speech, where people can have their ideas of being questioned, however, dynamism seems unimportant here except for its own sake or for the sake of some ideal that should be questioned on its merits. For children to indoctrinate their children is merely a sign of parental rights and the freedom of individuals and families to go their own path. It is anti-democratic, but not because it denies the ability for the ideas to be tested, but rather because it sets a certain area of life away from control by other powers. The government should not do anything about religious beliefs in any form or fashion. People will make their own decisions on their ends, the entire idea rests upon a faulty notion of religious truth-finding. Religion isn't truth, it is faith. One may find that their faith is true, however, by the nature of these beliefs, they often cannot truly be disproven.

The issue I see that you speak of ties culture to freedom and denies that freedom of association is against freedom. I disagree with both. I can see how you might disagree with the direction that our democratic government is going, but democracy has nothing to do with the aims of the voters but rather with following those aims.

Frankly, I disagree with this point greatly. It confuses democracy with liberalism, democratic theocracy has actually been common in America in the past. It also puts an area of privacy and personal relations up to a public light and in its own way calls for a counter-indoctrination instituted by the government, and I strongly disagree with any measure towards this end as being illiberal. Finally, the point on the facade of freedom doesn't define freedom that well, as it ignores that religiousness of a population doesn't necessarily remove negative liberty, and that the issue is democratic control which only highlights an issue of democracy vs liberality, which is a problem, but illiberality is not a legitimate way to create liberality. Frankly, I just say that we weaken democracy and governmental powers, have parents select schools for their children, and leave the theists and atheists to go their own paths by recognizing our society to be a collection of individuals rather than a collective mass that needs to be ruled over.

This is not simply "parental rights." Instead, it is how cultures and societies perpetuate themselves. If parents didn't do this, there would be no government, and certainly no concept of what America is. The system would collapse.

I agree with much of what Awesomelyglorious says but certainly not all of it.



America is one of the most cosmopolitan places on earth. What needs to be achieved is an understanding that if one doesn't like the culture where one lives, one can simply pack up and go somewhere else if they feel strongly enough about it. If more hysterial liberals understood fully and took advantage of this freedom to set up their own communities in their own places under their own systems, they would not be as absurd as they often are.

Well, technically parenting and indoctrination are hard to separate given the nature of culture and how inseparable it is from our thoughts. I really don't care much about government or the concept of America though.

Heres a thought. With the exception possibly of Vatican City, the UK is pretty much alone in the fact that its head of state (The Queen) is also defacto head of its church. The Church Of England was founded by the state, and yet is not particulary intrusive on matters of government. In fact, our christians seem to be a lot less forthright and outspoken as American ones, and a lot less caught up in the politics of the state.

Admittedly this was not always the case, and christian influence was more widely felt when the monarchy had a more direct role in governance, but it seem strange that a country with such intrinsic links to its own religion should be less "religious" in terms of government than a country theoretically founded on a colony used as an escape FROM religious persecution.

What of the Church of England and it's head the reigning monarch and the issue of Ireland?
Seven Hundred years of persecution on religious grounds?
The protestant establishment has been complicit in the genocide of the Irish people, the persecution of Catholics and the theft of lands, not to forget the enslavement of tens of thousands of Irish Catholics and their deportation to the West Indies as slave labour under Cromwell or the barbaric succession of laws intended to criminalise and thereby legitimise their effective enslavement as convict labour in the antipodes, all of this was done in complete collusion between the Church of England and The English aristocracy/business community.
Let us never forget the misdeeds of anyone in the past, nor ignore them in the present, peace j

As I said, it hasnt always been the case, though noticeably the Cromwellian activities took place after our civil war, when a distance had been achieved between monarchy and state. Its possible that this event is what started the sidelining of the church of england, given that the monarch is its titular head. Too much collusion between church and state would be suggestive of collusion between government and monarchy, which would of course upset the apple cart all over again. The one is intended to balance the other, or at least that was the idea.

Whilst the irish question was for a long time one of religion, it has long since moved on to be much more politically based. Thats at a high level, rather than street level. Though religion was the reason given, its probable that most of the desicions taken over Ireland have been for profit and gain. (Think Weapons Of Mass destruction vs Oil. What we are told vs what actually happened.)

The main problem is the indoctrination of children. You can get a child to believe anything if he's young enough. Perhaps if we could outlaw teaching of religion to children until after they are 18, they would be mature enough to make rational decisions about what to believe and they would be able to be better citizens of a democracy.

I don't see it as a major problem. You can get a child to believe many things, such as the virtues of America, democracy, the evils of unregulated capitalism and of socialism, the ability of anyone to succeed, the ideal of perfect love, etc..... To call religion some strange different creature than all of the millions of other indoctrinating influences that pervade our society is not to look at the issue clearly. There is an even deeper problem that is ignored with your very suggestion, religion IS world view, to deny a person the ability to teach a child religion(something inherently ambiguous as any statement on belief could be considered teaching) is to deny parents ability to raise their child. The issue is that if a serious examination of this is given then we find that the entire doctrine is nonsensical, heck, I almost would see it as the warring desires of another theology given how many assumptions that are held as true without examination. There is a complete failure in fact in even recognizing the nature of belief if we are going to posit "rational" belief given the fundamental nature of these foundational beliefs, as these foundations cannot be purely reasoned as they are meta-rational in some ways.

Well argued, however perhaps the role of parenting could be seen more as a communal affair and more guardianship and mentoring than dogmatic and indoctrinating. Surely the role of any civilised society is to teach the young how to think rather than what to think? How to rationalise and maintain a dynamic and adaptive state of being rather than entrenched and limited by dogma, dualism or denial?
peace j

Nope, not at all. If I have children then they are mine, if you dare to mess with them without my permission then I kill you. That might sound extreme to you, however, the dissolution of the family to form this communal state that you desire signifies to me the end of my freedom and what I see as my rights and duties, both of which have sacredness to me as I am certain some ideals have to you. You might not understand or you might, I don't know, but suffice to say that there are some things that I would die for. If it is my child then I brought him/her into this world through my efforts, through my sacrifices, and for my ends, to even posit that society should own my child is in effect to say that society should own me because of the significance of that investment. The community controlling children also makes me think of dystopia novels as well because that seems to indicate greater centralization of power and standardized indoctrination, both of which I must oppose.

I would really tend to say that there is no society but only collections of individuals though, and I say that because to me only individuals can possess liberty and liberty is something I care deeply about. However, to get back to the point all parenting must do both as not all things can be thought out such as morality which has no proper derivation, but independent thinking processes must exist for the child to exist away from the parents and thus even basic ones such as rote patterns do exist. Really though, most people are caught in dogma and denial no matter what as we all use our strategies to confirm our biases and deny opposing views, dualism really depends on the cultural background though. Not all dynamism and adaptiveness can be taught nor can we know what dynamism and adaptiveness should be taught as amoral opportunism is very dynamic and adaptive but also often commonly shunned. Also, finally, if this is done with an eye for parental freedom then you will not likely get the effects you want as like parents will have their children raised by other like parents, in the end, I only see this as being effective if done in a more perverse fashion.