Mob Justice

Organized religion is little more than mob justice. If you’re pissed at that statement don’t read anymore; you’re not going to listen to what I have to say and I’m not trying to start an argument, I’m trying to make a point.

At the core of the religion is the belief in a power above reproach and mistake who hands out laws that are to be completely obeyed. Fine – I can neither prove nor disprove the existence of God so I feel I must acknowledge the possibility, though whether or not I choose to believe in the possibility is both my choice and my opinion. The point I’d like to make begins with the fact that we don’t live in heaven, we live on earth. And while God may have his hands busy with keeping the world spinning and picking out the sinners and the saints, we have these little problems on earth that need handling and every time we need an answer we’re told either to pray and leave a message, or to consult our preferred religious operating manual for a solution. Unfortunately for us, life is a little more complicated and can’t always wait for a return call or fall into neat explanations with page numbers. In lieu of an explanation from the source we are left with intermediaries, who though just as flawed and imperfect as we, are somehow more prescient and informed as to be able to correctly interpret and explain the course of action we should take ?

W.T.F

However, despite no evidence to the contrary, what is in actuality one person’s opinion is in reality taken not only as a fact, but also as divine law. Then everyone who hears and believes the message arms themselves not with the opinion of a man, but with the Truth of God. The Truth is not open to interpretation, disagreement or exception because it is after all the Truth. When people armed with and fighting for the Truth come together, they seem to assume they are in the right and therefore can do or say no wrong in pursuit of the Truth. It quickly denigrates into a more civilized, but no less dangerous, form of a mob mentality. Mobs are fine, I have no problems with mobs as I guess they have as much right to exist as anyone else. However, it is when a mob decides to become an agent of its own conception of justice or try to push others to conform to its ideas that I take issue. It leads to things like the Crusades, the Inquisition and the Holocaust. It is what leads people to believe that they can fight and conclusively win against things that have no substance and therefore can’t be “defeated” like “societies morals” or more relevantly “a war on terror.” I don’t believe religion is evil, I believe mobs are evil. No matter how well intentioned a mob, it will naturally devolve – and I believe that any group of people who share strongly held beliefs and have no system for dissention, reflection or compromise will eventually form a mob mentality. Organized religions are the worst kinds of mobs because they answer to no one, and it’s hard to topple an organizational whose leader can’t be found, seen or reasoned with.

If I seem fired up it’s because I am. Today, a woman I worked with started talking about how society’s morals were being corrupted and how certain magazines and images should be censored to stop the degradation. It made me furious and at the same time a little scared, because when you really think about it censorship is the 21st century equivalent of book burning. More specifically, I was furious because I think censorship promotes intellectual regression which stands in stark opposition to human culture, curiosity, and intellect. However, I was scared because when I think of book burning I remember the Heninrich Heine quote, “Wherever they burn books they will also, in the end, burn human beings.”