Religion and Commerce

Secularism has traditionally referred to a kind of matrix, within which a variety of religions are tolerated. Thus, the U.S. government is a secular government - it is “separate from religion…not being exclusively allied or against any particular religion” (wiki). But “religion” isn’t neatly defined, and religious beliefs often do conflict with the laws which the government upholds. This has always occurred.

An interesting thing to me lately, though, is governments holding religious teachers and institutions accountable for their claims as if they are selling something. Religious critics have of course always claimed that religious figures and institutions are “selling something”, but they haven’t traditionally acted on this claim. In another thread recently I posted this excerpt from a recent NYT article:

The Angolan presidency blamed the church to some degree for the deaths of 16 people, due to false marketing.

Another NYT article, A Psychic’s Legal Problems Grow, Perhaps Not Unforeseeably, provides evidence of this same trend of holding people accountable for what they claim to sell. Psychics will of course be rejected by many as not truly religious, but they share the trait of promoting belief in claims that can’t be substantiated.

What does this trend (I see it as a trend, but maybe it’s nothing new at all) mean for the future of 1) faith, and 2) noble lies (i.e. “untrue” stories that serve a function)? After all, that is the question at the heart of this whole thing, isn’t it? I assume most religious people would agree that a greedy religious leader, with no interest in spirituality, who runs his religious organization as a business whose sole purpose is to make money, should be held accountable and pay the price (i.e. perhaps some jail time for swindling people). But religious institutions, in order to survive, must make money. And direct donations are the lifeblood of most such institutions. I don’t think they make most of their money selling trinkets, like Virgin Mary statues or prayer beads. Also, psychics are usually protected by the fact that they make so little money and can always claim that their business is a form of entertainment. Is there, then, a limit to how much money they can accept from people, before it becomes obvious that there is a victim, who can make a claim?

If this method for regulating the claims of religious leaders and organizations gains traction, how would religion as currently practiced have to adapt? And would this adaptation be a good thing or a bad thing (or neutral)? Again, what will this mean for the future of faith, or if you believe that religion involves noble lies - say, “belief in heaven creates harmony on earth, therefore it is a good belief to hold, whether or not it is true” (whether the claim that belief in heaven creates harmony on earth is true or not is beside the point here, point being that it is a reasonable claim that can’t be falsified)?

(forward note…I’m making pretty sweeping generalizations here, so these statements aren’t absolute, nor universal…just pretty common)

We’re in the middle of a form of cultural revolution.
This one is the one that pulls religious sectors of secular societies up to speed to the times of the people, rather than continuing to leave them silently off and ‘ignored’ (by “ignore”, I mean that they are often discounted from involvement in most official avenues of governmental requisites of societal debt and balance; typically [imo] because it has functioned to just not bother the nest of would-be very angry wasps, as people tend to become rather emotionally angry if they perceive any threat to their religious culture on mass).

Why is it happening now?
Well, for one (and not the only factor, but a rather large one), while religions were off being officially ignored, there is a record, which just about every religious affiliation has left in their wake, of not staying out of attempting to be involved in societal governance evaluation and sway.

So on one hand, they are left alone because they are conceptually in an abyss of non-society, but on the other hand, the reality eventually surfaces that there is no such thing as an abyss of non-society, and the constant interest of religious institutions to have a governmental voice while at the same time lacking societal debt through governmental check equally eventually, and logically, doesn’t sum up too well to a balanced sheet of good societal budgeting.

After a considerable time, the societal concept of harm starts to work its way into the counter-voice against the societal debt exempt religious institutions, and eventually that voice starts to even get louder as each event of harm arises and serves as another example for the demand for societal balance of responsibility for action.

It’s tedious because on one hand, the idea is that the individual is the responsible individual for choosing to follow the adherence and allegiance to the institution, while on the other hand it is often (in history, not just now) raised and pointed out that the institutions of religion themselves are a sociopolitical force that, if left unchecked by any measure, can spread ideologies counter to the good of the society in which they reside, and therefore serve as a societal detriment rather than a societal advantage.

So what happens if these institutions start being held to tighter responsibilities than current (which seems to be the question that you are interested in exploring, anon)?

In my opinion, based on what has happened in history, some form of unrest typically happens.
It usually comprises of one group being comprised of the religious institutions, even possibly in contention over each other and not unified into a singular group (sort of like all of Feudal Japan’s territories all screaming at the Emperor for their individual recognition, while at the same time demanding negligence of recognition for all other representative and fragmented parties), and the other side being that of the government in question.

In the past, what tended to happen more often than not, was that the governments would select one winner and ban the rest, and then institute some form of legal tie between the selected religion and the government…except for the Mongols.

About the only clear cut relatable concept of a sort of religious institutional debt separate from the government in history that is more or less reasonably documented would be the Chinese concept of the so-labeled “Mandate of Heaven”, where the leader would be tossed (in some manner) if everything went bad. Why? Because it was conceived that they were the representative of the people to the divine and if they performed poorly, then their sales pitch was in poor form to societal debt and therefore the heavens would remove their blessing of them so that they could be tossed or taken over.

(Again, I’m being rather sweeping and general here as it was far more complicated than this…as history always is)

Anywho…so that’s about as close as we get to a working example…so what would it mean if people cannot make claims for people to follow along with, which contain the possibility of harm within them (e.g. religiously prescribed medical negligence that in turn causes avoidable death), without equally being held accountable for those claim’s reactions?

Well, if history has any sort of example to offer, via the only closest proximity (“Mandate of Heaven”), then what it has the potential to cause to happen is what eventually happened in China with Wen of Han who more or less is representationally the “golden boy” of the Confucian “Mandate of Heaven” system because he avoided doing anything that could potentially tick off the divine as much as was possible.

Again…a sweeping generalization…because before that you also had a ton of really nasty and corrupt stuff taking place.
But, what was interesting about all of it was that all of these leaders were compelled to justify every action rather than simply just doing it without justifying anything at all (sometimes winning, and sometimes losing their pleas of justifications).

So what will happen, given this kind of example?
Allot of kicking and screaming and eventually a massive ton of legal cases, and also sermons that have about 100 asterisks akin to those late night commercial programs offering products which are not approved by the FDA for the claims in which they make, and are regularly accompanied by a sub-clause in tiny print of, “results not typical”, for most of the extraordinary claims.

At least…that’s my opinion on the matter.

Can you maybe expand on this, Jayson? I’m not familiar enough with the subject, and I think because of that I’m not understanding your final point. Your post as a whole was a good read, so I’m definitely interested in how you wrap it up.

Churches should be taxed with exemptions for charity. That would affect the televangelists who solicit the pensions of the elderly who have been frightened into believing they can pay for their sins.
You can’t separate church and state. People vote their religious convictions.

I don’t know. Let’s add one more NYT article to the mix: nytimes.com/2011/03/25/busin … d=all&_r=0

People join political party’s out of religious convictions. In fact, belonging to a political party is very much like a religious conviction.

Religion is always given a “pass”. If you spent time looking at all the exemptions granted churches for their activities, you’d be amazed at how far we’ve bent over backwards to provide preferential treatment of all religious organizations. The dubious activities of televangelists is proof in point. They rake in millions of dollars “selling” promises they have no way of keeping. Beyond that, if we applied the same administrative cost/charitable work yardstick to religions as we apply to other non-profits, there wouldn’t be a church group that could stand the test. The Salvation Army might be the only exception. The incidents of fraud and corruption in the religious media are too numerous to mention. Televangelists might be the poster child, but they’re the tip of the iceberg. The millions raked in selling trinkets, CDs, DVDs, and books are the largest part of selling religion. It’s a business and a damned BIG business.

The issue of religious belief in society is a far more complex issue. In the main, responsible government must remain staunchly secular, not only to protect those of religious conviction, but those who reject religion. It is to be expected that people will vote their values, but religion should be practiced in the home, the church, temple, synagogue, of choice. It should be the responsibility of every religion to avoid promoting their particular ideology any place where general society is affected. If you want freedom of religion, it follows that you must be capable of granting freedom FROM religion as well. Obviously, almost all religions fail that test.

The mandate of heaven was a Chinese political philosophy for validating the legitimacy of the rulers.

The short and sweet of the system was that if good things were happening, then the ruler’s societal methods were divinely right, and therefore no one could overthrow them. If bad things were happening, then the ruler’s societal methods were divinely wrong, and therefore someone could overthrow them.

Originally, it is viewed through the historical lens, the Zhou dynasty established the Mandate of Heaven simply to justify why they were justified in taking over the Shang dynasty. So originally it was a terrible thing, because it was just yet another emperor declaring that they were divinely right, and retroactively (and fictitiously - because the accounts they claimed were of impossible conditions since their predecessors didn’t believe in divinities as they did) declaring all before them were errant and that was why it was OK that they just killed your leader and now are in control of you.

But what eventually happened was that it turned into a political check and balance system (OK…more or less. We all know there’s no such thing as a perfect checks and balance system as people will find ways to abuse any system for control), whereby the rulers, over time, ambitioned more and more to be the emblem of Confucianism (as it was held that the ideal of Confucianism was what the divine approved of the most), and that meant ruling with the ideals of Confucianism…which, on the whole, was a pretty good philosophy for political rule (Confucianism, that is).

So it gave the “people” (translation: rich [mostly] male land owning population) power to claim that the emperor was a pile of crap and overthrow them, by claiming that they abused society and violated the mandate of heaven; and therefore brought suffering upon their people.

This eventually popped up a “golden boy” (as mentioned before) of the system who reigned perfectly…I mean…you couldn’t get more crunchy (in the Chinese way) than this guy.
He always consulted with the ministers and never disrespected their wisdom, and always took them very seriously into consideration. His wife, Empress Dou, was devoutly Taoist (she was said to be absolutely obsessed with Lao Zi’s writings) and openly influential in compassion (in the Taoist way of non-action form of compassion), and she eventually even taught her son to be as his Father and rule with all the great ideals of the Chinese “golden age”.

But the point is that all of this was a sort of check and balance of rulers where previously there wasn’t really any check and balance except for that they were heirs and no one had killed them yet.

The comparison being drafted is that, in regards to religion, we don’t really have an example of what we are gearing up for.
We have this history of a religion getting picked and championed and the rest wiped out; or all religions being wiped out and the government being absolute in enforcing secularism on the personal level.

Neither of these approaches has panned out very well, so I doubt any modern society of massively culturally mixed societies are in a rush to institute either of these options (considering after installment, the given society typically only lasts around a hundred or some odd years and then everyone is so pissed off with being told how to existentially feel that they just let slip all sense of their responsibility scales to society…more often implicitly than explicitly).

So, to me, the closest we have in comparison is this mandate of heaven bit in China’s golden age.
It wasn’t a separation of “Church and State”, directly, but it is an example of a massive claims which people would believe in fully being counter-checked against the one making the claims - something the Western Culture hasn’t really seen religion (as a whole) do…well…really, ever.

So if we go forward and start demanding that religious institutions are to be held to their claims in responsibility, then I would assume a similar form of human behavior would eventually arise as what arose in China under the Mandate of Heaven.
That is to say, the level of disregard would go down, and self-awareness of the societal responsibility to fulfill claims as proclaimed would be increasingly more common as more and more court cases began to arise in a newly permitted system of religious claim accountability.

It wouldn’t remove all bad behavior and corruption any more than the Chinese Mandate of Heaven did, as those attributes will always exist in every facet of human society as long as humans exist in mass numbers as a single society.

However, what it would do is increase the motivation to be more careful about encouraging people to follow along with extraordinary claims that have any potential of harming the individuals, especially as “harm” from such interactions gets a wider birth of legal definition (as is beginning to take place).

Somebody has to fleece the sheep.

Soooo… what’s your plan, Stan? :sunglasses:

I plan on not getting fleeced … any more.

How about U?

I gave it up in my teens. Shaggy dog story: My mother was a dedicated hellfire and damnation sort of christian. As a teenage smartass, I decided to poke her in the ribs a little. One sunday morning I tuned the TV into some televangelist show and turned the sound off. I asked mom to watch for a few minutes and then I asked, "How is what you’re watching any different than the Ed Sullivan Show? I got nothing but a stare, and ended up fixing my own dinner. She was not amused. I fought the war with the rest of family for another 10 years or so before they gave up.

Oddly, I married a girl who was a regular church goer, but not a religion pusher. I made sure that each of my children attended church with mom every Sunday until it was clear that they weren’t satisfied with what they were seeing. Why? Because they needed to have something to compare when they began asking about dad’s Taoism. It worked out OK for each of them. The wife still teaches Sunday School and I go about my business as usual. We accept each other’s spiritual nature and we DO NOT talk religion…

It seems very odd to me that they should be considered more to blame due to what drew people to the event, rather than simply to blame for not organizing well, providing the right security or whatever.

Look out politicians because your rallies at least should be next.

So if they had promised a free chicken to everyone and 150,000 came and got chickens they wouldn’t be to blame?

One can test most psychic claims.

i don’t think you can put people in jail for not having their heart in the right place. If they break the law, then…

Let’s put this in perspective. Very few people have gone to jail for the financial crisis that radically damaged the lives of certainly thousands of people, and damaged the lives of millions and millions of others. There was systematic crime. But only a few really extreme, flashy criminals were prosecuted. It was a system of lies. Let’s start with them.

If some psychic tells you you are going to meet a tall dark stranger before Christmas and you don’t, who cares. If they tell you to give them all your money or you will not meet the stranger, send them to prison.

Moreno,

The issue at hand that makes a difference is that of questioning, not just the example cases, but the general status of offering people a religious solution that ends up causing harm.

The reason that it is in question is because the standard up until now has been to leave it on the shoulders of those adhering, and to have no specific laws for religious institutions regarding their claims and whether or not they can fulfill those claims.

Let’s just toss the two examples out for the moment and address the general concept.

Religious institutions generally are left alone when their prescriptions and claims do not work out for an adherent. This permits the environment whereby the religious institutions are free to make any claim, regardless of the outcome, and the fallout is generally left upon the feet of the adherent.

In commercial marketing, there is generally a set of laws regulating the ability to make claims that are incapable of being rendered in guarantee.
Because religion is seen as a willful act of the individual to adhere to culturally, it is generally not seen as the same as a marketed product.
However, there is no real difference between the two when harm comes into the result.

It doesn’t really matter whether banks or politicians are or are not held accountable in like fashion in a given country, as to whether or not religious institutions should or should not be held to some fashion of responsibility for the claims in which they prescribe to an adherent.

Whether we think the individuals are idiots or not, they are trusting the provider to prescribe a successful remedy for their existential ailment in some fashion, and the provider is not required to adhere to a form of ethos regarding the general safety and care of the adherent due to the results of their prescriptions.
In fact, if the adherents are gullible suckers or idiots, then that is more of a reason to hold the one making the claims and prescriptions accountable; unless they too can prove that they are equally as ignorant of the consequences as the adherents - in which case they should be held accountable for offering prescriptions and practices without full knowledge of their trade.

I can easily start up a spiritual center and offer remedies for depression and link it to evil energy, and then prescribe people to change their diets and choices in their quality of living in the assertion that it pleases the divine right of good energy.
This may all seem benign, but I can also then later declare that I received a revelation from the divine energies that homosexuals were the absolute worst energy that will suck your soul dry and cause you all the ill in your life.
I can prescribe that every adherent do everything in their will to remove homosexual individuals from their lives so to attain right energy.

Now a bunch of adherents, after getting everyone emotionally invested at great length before the anti-homosexual decree, are going to cut off friends and family members from being part of their life.
I, the prescriber, have destroyed social unities by a claim.
The claim also asserts that in destroying social unity, the individuals will find good energy and be rid of their depressions.

Now, if even a single adherent increases in depression because they have an actual physiological variation of clinical depression and the adherence to the order to rid homosexuals from their lives removed them from proximity with their only remaining parent and caused them much suffering as a result, all the while believing that they will be alleviated from their suffering as a result of following this very difficult path that I repeatedly assure them is gainful spiritually for them, then it should stand to be of good measure that I should be held accountable for the harm caused by my reckless prescription which did not alleviate their existential suffering, but instead increased it many fold; not to mention damaged a portion of social stability in the community.

I don’t see any fault in holding such laws, and I’ve always thought that it was odd that such laws were absent, considering the ramifications of unchecked cultural prescriptions on merely the grounds of unverifiable metaphysical authority for the alleviation of existential suffering.

All the telefundies have to say when you did not get your miracle is that you lack faith.

Jayson,

I think that makes sense to me. What I see happening now is a basic process of moving from crudeness (“separation of church and state”) to a much closer and more subtle examination of what this slogan means and how it can occur in a politically and philosophically consistent way. And what that might lead to is something similar to yet different from what you’ve described as happening in China, i.e. “enlightened rule”: a natural and justified place for moral and intellectual virtues in the public sphere, with the extravagant claims of religions brought down to earth – a coming together or a finer parsing, depending on how you look at it. I believe that given the framework of “separation of church and state”, claims regarding right and wrong, causes of happiness and suffering, and probably all metaphysical claims, will always be protected given the current language of the Constitution. But claims regarding healing, for instance, may become untenable, given that money is changing hands (though the transaction is typically indirect). The “not enough faith” clause that Ierrellus points out might not hold up to scrutiny. In other words, a doctor and a priest may both fail to heal a person, but the priest, in recommending that the doctor is not consulted, may in the future be held responsible. I suppose this would depend on the kinds of tactics used by the priest – it is these tactics which would help a judge or jury determine whether any particular person is a “victim” or whether it is simply a lifestyle choice and the person in question subsequently changed their mind about their values and decisions.

Tentative,

What kinds of promises, though? That’s the important point, I think. I don’t really know what televangelists promise. Promising an eternal afterlife seems protected to me, unless it can be reasonably shown that a person has been a victim of illegal methods of mind control. You could say all methods of mind control are bad, but I think that’s far too broad a statement to be anywhere close to reasonable. We expect people to have a certain healthy amount of independence and integrity.

I don’t know about this “yardstick”. What is it? Also, can you clarify for me how the government regulates the sales of CD’s, books, etc. by religious organizations? Is the government hands off about it? Or do they regulate that aspect of the organization as a normal business like any other?

I’m confused by the bolded sentence. My religion (Buddhism) consists of certain beliefs, for instance that certain kinds of actions are healthy, wholesome, and lead away from suffering, while other kinds of actions are the opposite (I believe in karma). So far, so uncontroversial. But I also sometimes believe in a more or less literal version of reincarnation. The least controversial way of stating this? - genes and memes. The most controversial way of stating this? – “I” didn’t begin at birth, and “I” don’t end at death. Are you saying it is my responsibility to avoid promoting such beliefs in public? I’m not a missionary or anything – yuck – but you could say that just by having a discussion about such things on a website like this one I am “promoting” my “particular ideology”.

Moreno,

I think it’s reasonable to place blame on the conscious lying and manipulation that contributed to the death of 16 people due to greed – even if it’s that special kind of greed that can be defended as “doing what it takes to keep on doing (some other) good”.

I don’t think so, in general. The nature of the claims is completely different. A politician claims to try and do what he can to solve messy problems, and his power is inherently compromised. Read again what that church claimed. Maybe it’s because we’re so used to such claims that we can’t see them with fresh eyes and see how completely disgusting they are.

It depends. There are various factors and pieces of the puzzle that lead to any judgment of culpability. The various aspects of the situation present an overall picture – it is on the basis of such an overall picture that some decision is made. This is almost always true. For instance, criminals who provide strong evidence of a harsh upbringing will often receive a lesser sentence – in effect, more forgiveness.

And? Are you saying that they should be held accountable for false claims? Interestingly, police departments have been known to consult psychics to help find missing persons.

I think maybe you misunderstood what I was referring to. Let’s take noble lies. This psychic may have changed her client’s jar of water to black using some additive. But maybe she knew something about this relative and used this deception in order to give good advice. And that advice just happened to cost a hell of a lot of money. So… was this deception legal? And, whether legal or not, was it right? Was it a good thing to do?

Perspective is fine, but this subject happens to be what I decided to post about.

What if they charge $10,000, and you’re a millionaire?

Excellent points Jayson, and I agree with you in spirit - but legally, isn’t the claim that homosexuality is wrong exactly the kind of claim that is most specifically (currently) protected?


In no way would I support curbing your beliefs or public discussion of the same. BUT… when you attempt to control others through political action based on your religious beliefs, then the government should have the responsibility to shut that down. You believe in creationism? OK. But pressuring law makers to pass laws forcing the teaching of creationism in schools? Supporting the passage of laws restricting gays from marraige because of your religious convictions? Your privately held values should remain silent when it infringes on others. In a pluralistic society, it is the responsibility of government to represent and defend ALL it’s citizens - not just those of a particular religion. Religions that fail to honor their “freedom” to hold and teach their religious values in the home and church and at the same time, demand by law that others follow suit is wrong - dead wrong.