Is religion the same thing as crime ? (Bit of a long one sorry.)

In many ancient cultures there was no name for religion. Even though, we generally think today, that religion must have been important in ancient times, and perhaps before philosophy and science even more so than today?

A clue to the reason for the omission of that word, is of course found in the other word I just used, 'culture'. Which is also, perhaps surprisingly, a very modern word, not really used in its modern sense before the twentieth century. Because of course, in ancient times, there was no need for such words, your culture and religion, were the same, and simply the way things were done, an undivided whole. The two being completely integrated, and before literature, motorized transport, or hard state boundaries with passport control etc., cultures merged slowly and seamlessly across the world. So that ancient pagan cultures often saw other religions as just variations on one theme. “The people of such and such a place call our goddess, by another name, and have a different story to tell about her.” Being the commonplace.

Gradually however, thanks perhaps, to nation states, literature, sailing boats, wheels and horses etc. people became more aware of the vastness of the world, and its diversity. Terms such as “Our way”, and “Our Law”, as early primitive ways of saying 'culture', start to appear, along with the nation states themselves, as people begin to recognize differences between their many ways of thinking and doing things. So that eventually a stage must have been reached where people began to think about their distinct cultures, and realized that, the other people were not just bad at pronouncing the name of the goddess, but that, it really was another goddess, with quite another name and another set of laws.

At which point with their growing awareness of multiculturalism, people must also have become for the first time aware of the possibility of conflict existing between cultures. A culture clash, if you like. And that there was, simply no longer, just one way of doing things.

How then do you resolve conflicts between different culturally received truths, and or, decide what is truth and what is not, now that you have more than one claimant. The obvious way to go, was to use reason and debate, perhaps the problems could be resolved by appeal to reason and logic, or by asking the wisest people, who could be found among the wider population, using the legal style of debating system. At which point of course, philosophy was born, and with it the idea, that if truth was not always clearly derived from the received wisdom of established cultural norms, then the appeal to reason and open debate could resolve matters. And it is plain from the histories we know, like that of the classical world, that philosophy did emerge as a major thing, shortly after literacy and multiculturalism.

Eventually however, it was found that debate and reason alone were not sufficient checks, and that clear falsehoods were still arising, even despite many good rules of epistemology and debate having being developed. And so, as time went by, perhaps in small ways, from the very beginnings of philosophy, another extra check on received information was added. By appealing not just to logic and rhetoric, but also by requiring first hand observation and experimental evidence. Which movement, eventually grew, as we know, to be the discipline called Natural Philosophy, eventually renamed science.

What is important to notice however, is that neither philosophy nor science removed any part of existing cultures, nor disputed with any part of them, they merely introduced additional measures, checks and tests which could be used when anomalies were found.

Why then would you need to give, religion, philosophy and science different names, are they not one culture ? One reason is of course, that religion may persist as a separate entity, because many people choose and prefer, culturally received truths which have not been passed though the filters provided by reason, open debate, observation and experimental evidence. But why ? Why would you choose religion, which lacks such things, over philosophy and science as your route through culture, and to finding truth ? If you buy a car, why buy the two door model without a radio, when you can get the four door with a big range of extras ? The reason is of course that just as you may not actually like some of the extras on the car. So likewise, you choose religion, exactly because, it does not have those extra checks and safeguards. And why would you want to do away with checks and safeguards ? Because, you know that what you want to say, or to do, would not get past them. Religion thrives and attracts exactly because it lacks checks a safeguards, because it facilitates deception, because it is the one way, more than any other, that you can lend respectability, prestige and weight to any untruths, (lies) you wish to promote, without being asked to justify them against any measure such as logic, reason, evidence etc.. It is in short popular with many, exactly because it is the great facilitator of deception.

Which is what explains the deep fundamental, inevitable, and growing link between crime, and religion. And indeed why the two, in a post philosophy, science and human rights world, are destined to be forever one and the same, synonymous, at least until civilization ends.

( I take crime as also synonymous with untruth. You can argue that with me if you wish, but you won't find me very interested. )