Patricia Villya Halim

Religion: Discuss the institutions or systems built by people that tend to abuse power
towards its believers. Without critiquing faiths, examine the dark side of religious
institutions. How do religious institutions misuse their authority? Or how do they cast a
shadow to cover underhanded behaviors?
Suppression of instincts
Example: churches that intentionally cover crimes such as child sexual abuse.

What is the first thing that comes to mind when the topic of religion pops up in a
conversation? In the increasingly secular climate of the twenty first century,
some of the stories that supersede the subject of religion are often neither
exemplary nor honorable, something that lies in between religion-driven civil
war in Syria, to multivariate cases of discrimination against the rights of the
LGBT community on the basis of one perplexing religious text written thousands
of years ago, to numerous accounts of indecency and sexual abuse of respectable
priests towards young boys and girls. Not the kind of discussion that our
ancestors expect us to have, for they hold religion as an institution so sacred and
divine, unquestionable in the value of its truth. The modern society has long
surpassed the idiosyncrasies of the past, so they say. We have reached an era
where the ears have become more susceptible to political correctness and
progressive ideology, where lawsuits are brought upon to prosecute ones
religious beliefs. This is an era where atheism has been more of the default
position when it comes to ones beliefs (or in this case, lack thereof) than
Christianity, Islam, or any other major religions in the majority of first-world
countries. What happened? How did we progress from having fear-mongering
religious institution ruling as a state into having their impact so diminished, that
the mere impression of religiosity is often equated with narrow-mindedness and
intolerance? One might possibly argue that humans have come to see better light
of the day, to go above and beyond the shadow and constraint of religion after a
prolonged period of incapacitation of the mind. Is it so?

Religions cast a shadow over us for thousands of years and continue to do so

until this very moment, when people would tend to assume the contrary.
Religions and its power have been so engrained in our daily lives and the way we
think, that we no longer recognize them as a part of religious conducts but as a
part of common sense (whatever meaning this term entails these days). I can
spell out to you a list of terrible religious leaders, cult practices or institutional
abuse of religions alongside each trick that accompany them, but I quite frankly
cannot see how this holds any bearing in the way we may think and conduct our
actions in the future. Besides, why deal with the particular when we can delve
into the underlying? This piece, other than dealing with the way religion truly
casts a shadow over us, is a critique of the value of values of religion. This piece
is, if you will excuse my apparent smugness and immodesty, a brief critique of
religion.

Religion has perpetually invoked certain predisposition against critical thinking.

The reasoning in a faith-based morality is circular; everything begins and ends
with the authority of God. Some actions are permissible or sinful, simply because
God says so. Consequently, it creates a system of moral values that is so lofty and
divine, it is irrefutable. People have come to see religion as the interpretation and
not one of interpretations. After a long period of secularization, the belief of deity
 Patricia Villya Halim

diminishes, although its morality remains long after, overshadowing our

psychological makeup and way of thinking. One primary example is our bad
conscience, originated from the Christian morality. Everyone has felt guilty of his
or her actions, and mostly we reinterpreted them as the voice of our conscience.
What if, instead of a supposed conscience, it was the product of suppression of
the instincts? We have been told to deny ourselves by religions, our animal
instincts that are within us as beings, our instincts for food, shelter, sex, power
and cruelty. We are taught to live by the ascetic ideals by religions, of abstinence,
of self-discipline, and of non-indulgence. We are taught to pity others, to be
altruistic, passive and mediocre. Religious scriptures often show that the poor,
the powerless, the sick are good and they are blessed in their lowliness, whereas
the rich, the powerful are simply wicked, cruel, and damned without the
possibility of salvation. How does this not pry its way into our subconscious and
subsists as the way of thinking, as the common sense? Even long after the
collapse of religious beliefs in the modern society, this doctrine of self-pity
continues, engrained with such depth that a tremendous amount of clarity and
cognizance would be required to overturn our psychological makeup. We are
further, given this outrageous notion of free will, that we have control over our
actions and that we could have acted otherwise. Could we though? Arent our life
choices limited by the natural facts of ourselves, inherited and unchangeable
from birth? In this case, how can we, acting as the Good Samaritans, not
perpetually torture ourselves? We have come to believe that we are sinful and
bad, not worthy of the good of our god and higher being. This internalization of
instincts creates bad conscience, a sickly tendency of people to feel guilty of our
own being, of the way we are, that sprung out right from the Christian morality.
Doctrines of most religions are supposed to be life affirming, but instead, time
and time again, the story we found was mostly life denying, in the way most
religious followers deny this life, this earthly life that is so beautiful in its nuance,
suffering and possibilities, for an after-life that may not be physically or
empirically true. How could anyone flourish to its full potential, given a set of
values that not merely suppresses creativity and subdues the very essence of life,
but also upholds a kind of antagonism against excellence?

Taking my somewhat meta-account to be true, one subsequently may still be

tempted to ask about how does religion form a shadow upon us in the real,
material, physical way (although an astute reader would have already gotten the
point after the last paragraph) and it actually comes down to a very simple
formulation: the abusive power of knowledge by religious authorities. With a
fuller understanding of the psychology of religion and mastery of religious texts,
religious leaders could easily abuse, coerce and manipulate their followers, those
who truly believe in religion of the purest sense with an incredibly charming
naivet. Their followers trust these leaders and instead, their outright confidence
is betrayed in many cases prevalent today. Take the issue of child sexual abuse
by Catholic priests. Three thousands and four hundreds sexual abuse cases
reported from 2004 to 2014. Oh, so much blood, betrayed trust of parents, so
much foregone innocence of the childhood, so much for the subtlest of shadow!
The dark and shady corners of religions also took its turn towards mass killings
and destructions of religious extremists. These religious leaders (or so they claim
to be, although we all know and condemn association of religion to such atrocity)
 Patricia Villya Halim

abuse their powers through tactical manipulation and brainwashing of the weak
to further their own cause. Take the growing Islamic State of Iraq (ISIS) and its
method of destructions. Their attacks and bombings were never random, but
unfortunately based on an extremely harsh and literal interpretation of the
Quran. Their leaders recognized the human psychology and manipulating
through the medium of religion, they found their sheep to further their
monstrous cause. People long to believe in something that sometimes they
would rather believe in anything than not believe.

With so much ambivalence presented, an optimistic rationalist, in the light of this

discussion, would probably ask, Yes, if such and such are so, what do we do
next? What to do is always a harder question to answer than what is wrong. A
short excerpt will not suffice to answer this, hell they may never be enough
words to explain the right thing to do. If I may, though, humbly, offer my main
takeaway. This is not a straightforward advocacy for atheism. This is also not a
complete rejection and distaste for religions. This is simply a pure attempt from
ones love to play devils advocate, in the slightest hope of provoking mindfulness
of people. This should be seen as a chance to reflect upon ones values and
reassess the merit of these values that have been left unquestionable before. This
is however, an aggression against conformation to the custom and conventions,
an aggression against blind faith, no matter how pure and good does the faith
warrants. This is a promotion of sovereignty of the mind and championship of
human flourishing, an attempt to see beyond what the impaired eyes can see and
ultimately, to conquer the shadows casted upon us.