Religião como controle mental
Was religion invented to mentally control the population? Some believe it’s true. But if so, how could we know? Where’s the evidence? We need something more than just a statement. After all, a claim so unverifiable and easy to repeat doesn’t make it true. The evidence in support of this proposition that religion was invented to control people has not yet been delivered. After years of dealing with critics, I haven’t seen anyone provide the slightest evidence to support the notion that religion was invented as mind control.
However, let’s go ahead and look at some issues related to that initial question?
Can religion be used to control people?
Yes, religion can be used to control people, as well as institutions like government, schools, universities, teachers, and the military. If religion was invented to control people, how do we know that government, schools and even marriage were not also invented to control people? We can ask all kinds of questions, but how can any of them really be answered? If one is trying to belittle the idea of religion and dismiss it because it is “merely something used to control people”, then consistency should not require that other social structures such as government, schools and the military also be criticized and discarded? If not, why not?
Who is doing the control?
Who is in control of the religions that control the people? If control is being exercised, there has to be someone exercising control. But who is he, or who are they? Also, are all the holy books that were written so long ago really written with the intention of controlling people? Or were they made to be useful and then used by others to control people? The Biblethat was completed 2,000 years ago and written by 40 different authors over 1,600 years was designed to control people? Was the Quran written 1400 years ago also written for this purpose? And the Bhagavad-Gita, the Urantia Book, the Book of Mormon, etc. Different people at different times decided to start religions to control the people in their areas? I don’t see any questions being answered by critics.
Control for what reason?
If it is true that religion was invented to control people, then what are they being controlled to do or not do? In Christianity, are they being controlled, being honest, faithful, not stealing, being polite, loving, patient, kind, etc.? Seriously, to control them for what reason? Is it to keep people passive so they don’t behave badly and don’t rebel, steal or kill? Is it to make them not think and blindly follow what has no scientific merit – as if something scientific were necessarily true? If someone were to give an answer, all you have to do is ask how do I know the answer is correct? In fact, are there answers?
If a person believes in Christianity, what kind of control is he under?
As a believer in Christianity, I am taught to be honest, faithful, not to kill, not to steal, to help the weak, to be kind, to be patient, etc. things to look for. Is this a hold placed on me by some ancient religious guru who decided that in order to get what he wanted from people he had to make them honest, faithful, kind and patient? Does that make any sense?
Are only religious believers under control and not secularists?
Religion is often touted as something that is used to control people. More often than not, it is secularists who raise this issue to denigrate Christianity as well as other religious systems. But they don’t consider that maybe their own secularism can be a form of control when secular society is essentially telling them what to believe about various things like religion, abortion , homosexuality ., evolution, taxes, etc. Thus, government and social structures such as marriage, schools, etc., could be a means of controlling populations. If secularists want to claim that religious systems have control over people, then they also need to claim that non-religious belief systems also have control over people. They must be consistent.
Is the fear of punishment a means of control?
Yes, the fear of punishment is a means of control. But, is it automatically wrong? When a parent warns his child that he will be disciplined if he doesn’t stop kicking the cat, is that wrong? Just because someone complains that fear of punishment means someone is in control, doesn’t mean that fear of punishment is automatically wrong. If pockets of religious control are evident as in cults, does that mean that religion as a whole is automatically false?
A mistake many make is to falsely project a single incident to condemn the whole. It’s fallacious. It is similar to the fallacy of composition, which assumes that what is true of the part is true of the whole. An example would be “That car’s engine is blue. So the car is blue. But for someone to say that as a sect establishes control over a group of people, religion as a whole serves the same thing is illogical. But that hasn’t stopped people from repeating the same logical fallacies over and over again.
Conclusion
To say that religion was invented to control people is a mere statement without facts, without validation, and it raises a number of questions that cannot be answered. It is easy for a critic to make a statement and claim that it is true. It is quite another thing to validate the statement as true.
