Amaan Baloch

Clarissa Pulley
PHIL 1400
10/20/17
The Unethical Nature of Organized Religion

In this paper, I will take the stance that imposing organized religions onto any undesired

person is unethical. First, I would like to define organized religion as any religion, which

encompasses the use of any combination of the following: revelations, scriptures, institutions,

and prayer. In order to uncover the true function of organized religion, I will critique its validity

through my arguments.

Before addressing why imposing these religions through any means onto uninterested

individuals is unethical (such as missionary work or baptizing a child), I must first explain why

the concept of organized religion as a whole is flawed and define the deist and naturalist

philosophies I will be drawing inspiration from. Deism is “…the rejection of any revelation,

reliance on reason, [and] cynicism concerning religious institutions, [rooted in] philosophical

naturalism.”1 Deists are those who hold the belief that “…God is distinct from the world as an

engineer is separate from his mechanical constructions. God is outside or beyond the world, the

two being quite distinct.”2 An important distinction to note is that I will not be confirming nor

denying the existence of a supreme creator of the universe, or God, as this is not relevant to my

argument. In order to critique organized religion through a lens of practicality, I will reference

solely the Abrahamic religions, as they are the most prominent in our country and modern era.

To begin, I will critique the validity of these scriptures in regards to Islam. The Qu’ran was

written and compiled approximately 1,400 years ago under the reign of Abu Bakr’s Caliphate.3

This scripture was compiled through men who had

1. Welsh, “A Note on the Meaning of ‘Deism’,” 165.

2. Mandivega, “Revealed Religion: Lord Herbert’s Deistic Attitude,” 54.
3. Class Lecture, Dallas Headquarters Ismaili Religious Education Center, Dallas, TX.
memorized and could orally recite Prophet Muhammad’s messages from God (or “Allah” in

Arabic). Scribes had the responsibility of writing down whatever bits and pieces men could

remember of Muhammad’s teachings, and compiled them in a logical manner, which led to the

creation of the holy book. Seeing how common miscommunications arise between people, is it

plausible to believe that a scripture which was compiled through word of mouth by numerous

secondary sources over a millennium ago has been assembled correctly and retains its meaning?

More fundamental than that, it would be implausible to believe an individual who died hundreds

of years ago and claimed to have the ability to directly communicate with God when this act is

not replicable. If replication ensures validity, as stated in the scientific method, then religion

could not be further from the truth. As stated previously, I am not confirming nor denying the

existence of a divine creator. However, this brings into question what exactly separates one’s

belief in God from a belief in religion. I believe the answer is human intervention.

A belief in God requires that one only believes in God, but a belief in religion requires

that one trusts not only God for moral guidelines, but also humans. The matter of the fact is that

humans, not a divine creator, created religion. This is the reason why despite the Abrahamic

religions claiming that there is only one true God, there are three religions: Judaism, Islam, and

Christianity. All three of these religions discuss this same God with the three different names of

Yahweh, Allah, and God, respectively. Humans are imperfect, illustrated by our conjoined

efforts as a society to value virtues such as honesty yet be in conflict with our propensity to lie

out of self-interest, the motivation for human rationality. Therefore, I would suggest that religion

is an imperfect creation made in the image of the imperfect human, just as the Bible claims we

are made in God’s image. I believe this is why organized religion contradicts itself many times,

just as we as a species do. For example, Muslims believe Islam is the one true religion, Jews
 BALOCH 3

believe they are God’s chosen people, and Christians believe non-believers are subject to

damnation, yet all three of these religions reference the same God. If each religion claims its

followers are the only ones capable of truly worshiping God and attaining a pleasant afterlife,

then how can we confirm which one is correct? Inevitably, followers of a respective religion

attempt to disprove other religions as a means to give their religion more validity. While it is true

that religion unites individuals under a set of common beliefs and practices, it simultaneously

alienates those who are not followers of that religion and creates tension between these groups as

exhibited from the Holy Crusades to more modern conflicts such as Islamic extremist groups.

Thus, out of organized religion’s intention to promote harmony arises conflict and competition.

Now that I have established that religion does not truly fulfill the purpose of providing

valid moral guidelines due to the imperfect human hand at play, I would like to examine the true

function of religion. Firstly, religion was an institution created with the purpose of stratifying

members of society to more easily govern them. With this power, organized religion attempts to

utilize human constructs such as gender and race to create a social hierarchy. For instance,

scientist and philosopher, Charles Darwin, commented that the notion that all living beings were

created separately, such as distinctive human races, is a notion that underpins racial prejudice.4

Despite scientific evidence proving that all life descended from a common ancestor, people at the

time decided to believe the Bible, which we have already discussed is a flawed creation of

human beings. Elaborating on Darwin’s observation, the idea that all living things had separate

evolutionary stories discussed in the Bible underpins racial prejudice in order to assign humans

an unwavering amount of social power based on their skin color. As noted by Appiah, the

beneficiaries of this system have incentive to keep it in place in order to maintain power, 5 giving

historically and currently mistreated groups of people no means to combat these privileged

4. Brooke, “Charles Darwin on Religion,” 71.

5. Appiah, “Racisms,” 270.
entities, since social power is finite in this hierarchy. By increasing one group’s social presence,

all other groups are put at a disadvantage. In regards to gender, Hinduism explains the creation of

women by placing men in the center of attention.6 Hinduism, like other religions, such as the

story of Adam and Eve depicted in the Bible, states that women were created to give birth to the

children of their husband and fulfill strictly domestic roles. The notion that men are placed at the

center of religion assigns women the subordinate role in this binary hierarchy of gender.

Disregarding the emphasis on monogamy and Hinduism’s own social stratification system of the

caste system7, this hierarchy of gender created by organized religion has persisted. As a way to

respond to these issues, movements such as feminism have risen. This furthers the claim that

organized religion not only creates a competitive environment between religions, but even

amongst the people of its own religion through the institutions of gender and race.

Ultimately, organized religion attempts to govern humans through sets of moral

guidelines, but proves to be invalid due to human intervention. It ensures that at the end of our

lifetime awaits an eternity of happiness in exchange for obedience to these moral guidelines,

because without them many humans would hurt others to satisfy their self-interest. The idea that

life has no set purpose or meaning would throw many into disarray, so religion attempts to fill

this void by stating humans exist to obey and worship the intervening creator, God. Therefore,

any individual seeking to impose organized religion on others through missionary work is

committing the moral act of lying. According to Kant, any maxim that cannot be universal law,

in this case the invalid truths of organized religion, should not be acted on at all.8 In conclusion,

it would be immoral to practice organized religion and even more immoral to impose this

institution on any undesired entity.

6. Mitra, “Women in Hinduism,” 3.

7. Mitra, “Women in Hinduism,” 2.
8. Kant, “The Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysic of Morals,” 81.
 BALOCH 5

Bibliography

Appiah, Kwame Anthony. “Racisms.” In Anatomy of Racism 1990, edited by David The

Goldberg, 263-280. Minneapolis, Minn.: University of Minnesota Press, 1990.

Brooke, John Hedley. 2009. "Charles Darwin on religion." Perspectives On Science And

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EBSCOhost(accessed October 16, 2017).

Class Lecture, Dallas Headquarters Ismaili Religious Education Center, Dallas, TX.

Kant, Immanuel, and Thomas Kingsmill Abbott. 1949. Fundamental principles of the

metaphysic of morals. New York: Liberal Arts Press.

Mandivenga, Ephraim C. 1973. "Revealed religion: Lord Herbert's deistic attitude." Journal Of

Theology For Southern Africa 4, 54-58. ATLA Religion Database with ATLASerials,

EBSCOhost (accessed October 17, 2017).

Mitra, Kana. 1983. "Women in Hinduism." Journal of Ecumenical Studies 20 (4): 585-

601. https://libproxy.library.unt.edu:9443/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.as

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17, 2017).