Religion, Dangerous?
I always kind of thought that religions were dangerous in the sense that they lulled people who believed against all logic, into a kind of mental deep-freeze. You know, kind of like sticking your brain away somewhere nice and safe, where it won't have to work too hard, and you don't have to think about things, knowing that someone up there is looking after everything. Total faith. Incredible waste of human resourcefulness.Now along comes this Dr. M.A. Persinger, professor of behavioural neuroscience at Laurentian University in Sudbury quoting from a questionnaire in Robert Buckman's book "Can We Be Good Without God?". Said questionnaire found that 7% of Canadian university students (hot damn! Canadian university students no less, there goes another cherished ideal of education being the cure for stupidity) say they would kill in God's name, if God told them to do so. Puzzling that, in so many ways, for how might these educated kids figure God will communicate to them personally his desire that they GO OUT AND KILL IN MY NAME!, anyway?
But wait: the number approached 20% if the person responding to the questionnaire was um, male, attended a religious setting frequently and showed enhanced activity in the areas of the brain coupled with beliefs. Beliefs? Well, how diplomatic. Let's have it in plain Yinglish, pleeze. Males, presumably adult males since they're attending an institute of higher education (how high? sky-high; isn't that where the supreme being exists?) are extremely susceptible, suggestible, and willing to kill? (ya gotta be kidding) if a) they frequently attend a church, a mosque, synagogue or other (shudder) shelter of god which in and of itself leads to a (swelling of the brain because of religious belief) b) willingness to suspend moral imperatives in favour of a godly one compelling one to commit murder. Yeah, sure.
On second thought, it kind of makes sense. I'd like to think that humans of the female persuasion are more sensitive and sensible, that they generally dislike the sight of gratuitous blood and shun options to create dead bodies. After all, who has to do all the cleaning-up afterward in this male dominated world, anyway? Women, that's who: it falls upon them to bear the generations to come, to assume unto themselves the tedious duty of caring for those ready to depart. Hatch and despatch, and general clean-up.
So, if reasonable, easy-going, and presumably intelligent Canadian males are that ready to commit themselves to snuffing out a life on the presumed requirement of their god, that goes a bit of a way to explaining, proportion- and population-wise the obviously greater numbers of religious nutters whose dark and nasty visages intent on mayhem and worse we've been treated to via the media of late, threatening vengeance (and worse) on those hapless Danes, and the rest of us who don't seem to be able to offer our heartfelt respect in the matter of cartoons depicting Muhammad. For heaven's sake!
Oh look, things can't be quite that universal. Sure there are religious berserkers all over the place, representing every religion imaginable, I guess. (Buddhist excepted?) But what's with all these cheerily irrepressible Muslims? Why so quick to take umbrage OVER A BLOODY CARTOON!!!? Looks like there's a credibility gap in there. Maybe a sensitivity gap too. A vast cerebral gap?
I don't feel like embracing the concept of Allah and his blessed messenger, why should I? I have no interest whatever in the cartoons of note, the original dirty dozen and the additional much dirtier Islamist-derived others, but damned if I think they are really the cause of all this outrage. Can't all these poor brain-starved Muslim believers understand how they're being manipulated? Don't they have anything better to do with their valuable time? How many have made even a tiny effort to look at themselves for a really good laugh? Well, forget that one.
Collectively, it might help if they reached up, hauled those brains down off the disused shelf, and got to thinking. Islam is their universe, it's not universally central to the lives of most people on earth. Get over it.
Guess not.
posted by Pieface @ Tuesday, February 21, 2006
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