Do people use religion or does religion use people (the debate ends here)?

Question

Gosh, I hope I can end this insane debate...at least among the people online today.

"People use religion as an excuse, its not the religion".

Wrong! This assumes that all humans are highly educated and cannot be conditioned like Pavlovs dog. If religion itself can never be the problem, we are forced to believe that every single Muslim child, raised from day one to believe non-muslims are enemies and the Quran is beyond analysis, neverthless have the same chance of accepting people and doing no more violence than the buddhist in Tibet.

The reality is that the human animal can be conditioned. In fact, you can even condition a human kidnap victim to identify and join his captors (see Patti Hurst case).

If humans can be conditioned, and religious doctrines, like any other doctrine, can lay-out forumula for conditioning (ex: pray 5 times in groupthink formation), then indeed, religions can use people, like Nazism did so so successfully. In fact, religions are best at it.

Answer 1

They both use 1 another. You cant brainwash everyone with your beliefs, only the vunerable and the weak, or people looking 4 something more out of life. Strong willed people could never be swayed, i know my beliefs and no matter how hard someone tried ti sway me they couldn't cause i am not looking 4 any answers or any new beginning, just living my life 2 waht i believe in and 2 as good as i can. I was brought up strict catholic but dont agree or belive in what was pumped into my brain cause i see things 4 real and was is possible not what might have been found my life a lot more fullfiling without worrying about who is the right god. Us strong cant be brainwashed.!!!

Answer 2

Most times people DO use religions as an excuse, and then there are the select few who are born and raised into the causes and conditions where religion has become such a way of life that this is all the person knows. Recheck your psychology 101... when a person has the opportunity to choose a religion, they usually do so through the lens of whatever psychological condition they are in at that given time, and any pathologies they have tends to sway them towards one religion or another IN ORDER to use it as a means to their agenda.

Those who are born into a narrow religious viewpoint will naturally become part of that culture until they've been given a choice outside of that, which then returns you to my last sentence above.

We cannot selectively pick and choose only one psychological theory to lob at facts.

_()_

Answer 3

Can religions use people, sure they can. But lets not forget what religions are. They are tools devised by man to explain the world and to control other men. Without man, there is no religion. So when you slice it down to the bare essentials, you are always left with man using religion to control man.

It's rather like the question of do guns kill people. Sure they do, but not without the help of a human.

Before some religous yahoo starts whining about no God or religion, I would point out that my answer does not exclude God in the absence of man, only religion. Religion as we know it is surely the work of man, whether God put us up to it or not. It is a man made tool for sure. I suspect if it were truly of a divine nature, it would be much more effective. As it stands, it appears to be more consistent with the work of the devil. By the tenents of most religions, a majority of us have and will continue to go to hell. God must surely be embarrased, given we were made in his likeness and all.

Religions are not animate objects. They are not living. They are wielded. By man, for man, at the expense of man.

Answer 4

I agree that mostly religion uses, brainwashes people, but many people also use religion.

Answer 5

People use religion.