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

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 within 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. Now, in the current world, I think there’s no doubt that right now Islam is a source of more violence than a number of the other organized religions. It’s not the unique source of violence.

But I think the problem is just one of timing. Islam is 500 years younger than, say, Christianity. And 500 years ago, Christianity was producing far more violence than Islam ever is today, from the Crusades to the Inquisition. And so it’s not surprising that a younger religion, in some sense, is coming through its growing pains in that regard. The problem is we live in a time where there’s access to much more destructive forces, so you’ve got to worry a little bit about that.

Ultimately, the real problem—the real difference that I see between Islam and, say, Judaism—I mean, the Old Testament is every bit—it’s more violent than the Koran. It’s full of violence, oppression, genocide, hatred. It’s an awful book, and it’s amazing that we present it as a moral standard.

If you actually read the Bible, it’s a disgusting, disgusting document. There’s beauty in the psalms and the poetry of the psalms, perhaps, but it’s every bit as violent, if not more so than the Koran. The fundamental difference, it seems to me, is that we’ve learned even highly religious people take the Bible allegorically. They take it—they don’t—when it says you can stone your children if they disobey you, no one takes that seriously anymore.

The difference is...