The biggest problem with religion is the ease with which it is co-opted.
This is a story as true today as it’s ever been, as will always be the case when it comes to matters of the unverifiable. Especially when it involves putting your faith in someone else. Even more especially when there is no way to prove it.
Part of the reason for this is language. We use words to convey ideas and experiences to each other. It works well for the most part – you and I can have extensive conversations about apples where we both leave understanding significantly more about apples, but based on language alone, can never really be sure if your experience of the taste of the apple is the same as mine. Language is not a perfect medium of transmitting understanding to begin with, and the difficulties are increased exponentially when applying it to concepts as nebulous as religion. This leads to the study of hermeneutics; how someone’s perspective of something can inform and shape their understanding of it.
At it’s root, religion is the relationship one has with their understanding of ‘God’ (or gods, spirits, ultimate realities, non-realities, etc). It’s one of the top two things people put their faith in – the other being their understanding of ‘science.’ Many religious people believe God influences daily life, so for many people, their understanding of religion informs their understanding of daily life. It is important to recognize that our understanding of these things, both religion and life, is the bottleneck in the equation.
A quick aside to show atheists can be affected by this as well – for religious people, things involving God often tie back to a higher purpose, an overarching reason for being. In most cases, it serves to put humanity in a context, a kind of starting score to date, and then one’s understanding of God seeks to promote certain behaviours it views as being beneficial – religious morality. Atheists typically use the historical record for their context and then have some form of secular morality that informs their beliefs regarding the rest. The most important part of a religion, or really any belief-structure, is their morality – their beliefs that inform their views not only around what is right, but also how they act and carry themselves, both in their interactions with themselves and others, on a day to day basis.
No one is born with an established understanding of either life, religion or morality. Because of this, the natural tendency is to seek out knowledge from other individuals and institutions as we grow, which starts to inform our experience and provides us with a basis of concepts to start working with. This is as true of math as it is of religion or morality. The act of informing our understanding based on the understanding of another requires an investment of faith in that person. You trust your math teacher knows the math they are teaching you. Math is nice, because it conveniently offers proofs every step of the way, so you can verify the understanding your teacher is imparting. Religion, not so much. A math teacher can teach math without teaching morals. A religious teacher, again, not so much. The end game of any kind of religious or spiritual teaching is to provide maturity of understanding, that will, in turn, inform appropriate action.
The maturity of one’s understanding of any given concept or experience can be determined by one’s awareness of both the extent and the limit of that understanding. The Dunning-Kruger effect is an extension of this – those with immature, or relatively little understanding of a given thing don’t know enough to understand the limits of their knowledge, whereas the wise, in the vein of Socrates, know that they know not – they know both what their knowledge entails and what it does not. Those who aim to co-opt the beliefs of others never intend for them to achieve a mature understanding. Instead, those would-be co-opters often try to keep others as oppressed and subservient as possible, in order to increase the co-opted’s reliance and maximize the co-opter’s influence. At the least, they will distort the teaching in some way that is beneficial to them. For a teacher, the transmission of understanding is the most important thing. For a co-opter, it’s usually influence; power and control.
I say usually because the more insidious the co-option, the more skill and care goes into concealing it, which often involves a much more selective implementation. One common misconception is that if someone is out to abuse others in this way, they will attempt to abuse everyone in this way. If only that were the case – it would be so much easier to identify people with these motives and intervene to prevent harm. However, the truth is that abusive personalities go through much more extensive targeting processes that prime targets through various grooming techniques that leave them vulnerable to further manipulation. The would-be co-opter also tends to engage in a subtle form of triangulation around their victims that involves maintaining a positive facade with other key people in the victim’s life – this fulfills many purposes for them, including preemptively cutting off sources of potential support to the victim when they inevitably reach out for a second opinion on something that doesn’t seem right, and to to create a positive public persona for themselves which further distances them from scrutiny. This is a common thread in abuses, from respected doctors and coaches – Larry Nassar and Jerry Sandusky – through the Catholic Church and Buddhist cultures (Tibetan and Zen examples), rounding out with Bikram and Ashtanga yoga, to name just a few high profile examples.
To put mature understanding into more concrete terms, it’s knowing what to do and knowing when to ask. A skilled mechanic knows when they inspect a car if they can fix it or if they can’t. People who engage in religious co-option are like mechanics who know enough to know there is a problem with your car they can’t fix, and enough to be able to talk to you using the kinds of language you’d expect to hear from a mechanic, all the while recommending costly needless repair after costly needless repair – operating for their own benefit. Just as the mechanic is violating the customer’s wallet and well-being in that example, people practicing in religious co-option are raping the faith and trust of their followers. The difference is that a dishonest mechanic will just screw up your car. A dishonest religious teacher will at best disrupt the development of your worldview and at worst ruin the lives of you and everyone you love.
It is this dependence on others for education that makes the co-option of religion, faith and morality possible. On the local level, this is abusive teachers and leaders. On the global scale, this becomes extremism and oppression. Hanlon’s razor does not apply here – categorically, anyone seeking to co-opt your beliefs has malicious intentions.
This is why it behooves every single one of us to take responsibility for our own learning, to do ‘the work required to have an opinion‘ – to not just accept things we hear, but to do our own homework, be aware of what we don’t know, and to actively seek out own our blind spots, in order to be able to use our own logic and reason to its fullest ability.
This echoes the wisdom presented in the Kalama Sutta:
“So, as I said, Kalamas: ‘Don’t go by reports, by legends, by traditions, by scripture, by logical conjecture, by inference, by analogies, by agreement through pondering views, by probability, or by the thought, “This contemplative is our teacher.” When you know for yourselves that, “These qualities are unskillful; these qualities are blameworthy; these qualities are criticized by the wise; these qualities, when adopted & carried out, lead to harm & to suffering” — then you should abandon them… When you know for yourselves that, ‘These qualities are skillful; these qualities are blameless; these qualities are praised by the wise; these qualities, when adopted & carried out, lead to welfare & to happiness’ — then you should enter & remain in them.”‘
Our beliefs inform our perspective, which in turn affects our understanding of every experience we will ever have. Few things bind us more. The best way to prevent against co-option of your beliefs is through a combination of diversified education and confidence in your own discernment. Know the different forms spiritual abuse can take, brush up on the various fallacies and biases that can clog up your thinking, particularly appeals to authority and other red-herrings (a lot more here), and do your best to arrive at conclusions by reasoning through first principles. Kant’s categorical imperative is also a good litmus test of behaviour – asking yourself – ‘would it be good if everyone acted this way?’ If the answer’s not a wholehearted yes, then you are better to not invest your whole heart in it.