Dwayne Monroe wrote:
>
>
> Religion makes people happy.
>
> It creates community; it gives us comfort during
> difficult times; it provides hope of life after death.
> Religious people feel that ultimately, there is indeed
> justice in the world: God's judgment.
Perhaps -- but certainly this is _not_ its universal effect. There are too many unhappy believers in the world - some of whom are _made_ unhappy by their beliefs. (See for the classical expression of this William Cowper's "The Cast-Away.") Within the local support group for depressive/bipolar patients the overwhelming proportion are religious. Most of these are, however, only religious when religion is the topic. Of the others, some seem to be helped by their religion, but for quite a few religion only adds to their misery by posing intellectual/emotional contradictions that they cannot handle.
Also, the formula, "Religion makes people happy," does not cover the cases of sophisticated believers, many of whom would be neither more nor less happy were they unbelievers, and who in any case _claim_ (and I see no reason to challenge the claim) that their belief is rationally based. We have at least two on the list from this group.
> This is powerful stuff which meets fundamental human
> needs - both material and emotional.
Probably -- but this is imprecise. Too many satisfy those needs _without_ religion; and too many believers fail to have those needs satisfied. I have met three people in the local depressive support group who had been in effect expelled by their church on the grounds that there must be something immoral about a person who can't find a cure for depression in Jesus.
For LBO purposes, though, I think there is a subtext (two can play the subtext-game) operative in the discussion of religion: the implication that Islamists can be rational and Islam is the enemy of the human race. But it is overwhelmingly obvious that there is NO necessary or direct relation between religion and political position, since one can find _all_ political positions represented within _any_ faith one chooses to name. And there are endless ways in which such believers connect their religious and political beliefs.
Question for some future historian of early 21st c. u.s. culture: why did so many u.s. intellectuals feel that they _had_ to always make clear that they were for freedom everyplace, including particularly places far from their own experience? There is a moral purism operating amongst the exposers of Islamo-fascism that I just don't understand. I think I would connect with the anxiety of many always to show that they are above this or that musician or writer; _they_ wouldn't be caught dead listening to Springsteen.
Carrol