Lawrence Krauss: Is Xenophobia Inherent in Organized Religion? | Big Think

Is Xenophobia Inherent in Organized Religion?

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Theoretical physicist Lawrence Krauss explains his main gripe about organized religion: "It implies things about the real world that are just not true." Organized religion tends to promote an "us vs. them" mentality that in turn triggers a dangerous form of xenophobia. When people say religion is responsible for much of history's wars and suffering, this is what they're talking about.

Krauss then enters an investigation into holy texts such as the Old Testament, which — taken literally — is a "disgusting document" that most people know to treat allegorically. An issue Krauss sees among some Muslims is that the insistence on treating a text like the Koran 100 percent at face value leads to unnecessary violence.

Religion is strange that way. There are plenty of people who identify as Christians who also don't believe in transubstantiation or the virgin birth or any of the other examples of outdated hocus-pocus. Krauss says we should encourage more questioning of the sacred texts in all religions. We can't allow blind adherence to vastly outdated texts and values to stifle social progress through ignorance and bloodshed.

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LAWRENCE M. KRAUSS:

Lawrence Maxwell Krauss is a Canadian-American theoretical physicist who is a professor of physics, and the author of several bestselling books, including The Physics of Star Trek and A Universe from Nothing. He is an advocate of scientific skepticism, science education, and the science of morality. Krauss is one of the few living physicists referred to by Scientific American as a "public intellectual", and he is the only physicist to have received awards from all three major U.S. physics societies: the American Physical Society, the American Association of Physics Teachers, and the American Institute of Physics.

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TRANSCRIPT:

Lawrence Krauss: It’s hard to lump religion which comes in many different forms, shapes, sizes, and viewed many ways by different people in a single framework. Ultimately, I think religion is a negative force for humanity because what it does — at least organized religion around the world — is it implies things about the real world that are just not true. That are in disagreement with the evidence of empirical testing in science. And while they may provide comfort to people inevitably whenever you make decisions based on something that’s a myth, the decisions lead to bad consequences. Whether you’re teaching children or subjugating women. So religion of course at various times in human history for individuals provides comfort. It has provided opportunities for groups to sometimes do progressive things. But inevitably it’s based on myth and superstition, based on ideas created by Iron Age peasants who didn’t even know the Earth orbited the sun. And ultimately why we should view that as wisdom is beyond me.

The saddest part that’s characteristic of everything including the Koran and I don’t want to label just the Koran in this regard because I think it’s characteristic in the Old Testament and the New Testament in the Abrahamic religions. Is the xenophobia that religion introduces; it’s us versus them. We are absolutely right because we believe this or because we follow these traditions and other people are absolutely wrong because they don’t. And then the question is what do you do to the people who are wrong because they’re not part of your group? Well in many cases you kill them or you ostracize them or you send them to hell. No one mentions hell more than Jesus. Supposedly he was a loving savior, but he uses the word hell more than anyone else in the Bible. So that’s the same kind of xenophobia. In fact it’s worse in my mind. As my late friend Christopher Hitchens would say, you know, Saddam Hussein only condemned his victims to violence and death, you know, until they died. What about a god who condemns you to eternal pain forever? Far worse than Saddam Hussein in the sky. So I think the kind of xenophobia, the fact that people who don’t conform are to be ostracized or killed is prevalent in every religion and I can understand it because these religions were based, in some sense, [on] preserving order within a tribe. They’re all outgrowths of tribal behavior. To preserve order with a tribe, it’s always us versus them. Here are rules that define you as a Christian or a Jew or a Muslim. You do those rules and you’re distinguishable from the other and the other is to be swept away....

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