Just spotted this soundbite from Jesse “The Body” Ventura over at another weblog:

“Organized religion is a sham and a crutch for weak-minded people who need strength in numbers.”

I know this is an extremely common sentiment held by a lot of people who are actually really smart and together. I’ve ever said similar things myself in the past. But today, something struck me as wrong about it. Actually a few things.

First of all, it’s not only weak-minded people who need strength in numbers - it’s ALL people. Certainly there are a lot of weak-minded people who join religions so that somebody else will do their thinking for them, but there are just as many in secular social organizations as well.

Secondly, isn’t that exactly what politics is: weak-minded people who need strength in numbers? Isn’t the whole process of elective government basically the admission that: “Hey, I’m either not smart enough or interested enough to take care of this myself, so I authorize you to take care of it on my behalf.”

This quote actually made me curious about something else entirely. Where and when did this anti-organized religion sentiment really start catching hold in the modern era? I’m guessing that it happened around the same time as the rise of extreme nationalism. If you go back to the Reformation, Protestantism largely took hold because kings and princes in European nation states were trying to consolidate their power. And by kicking the Roman Papacy out, they got to seize their property and authority, setting up sobordinate state religions in the name of Protestantism. But that’s still organized religion, so the switch-over must have happened later than that. I’m guessing in the late 1800’s though I’ve not got anything particular to back it up at the moment.

I think the real threat of having organized religion in a nation-state is that it represents an alternate power structure from the authorized political one. I think this is partly why people like Jesse Ventura say the things they do against religion. Of course, I recognize the argument that secular government is better than religion, but I personally believe it’s just a replacement of one religion for another. It’s not necessarily better or worse. I think everybody needs religion; I think everybody needs to be around other people who share their cultural context, beliefs and goals. It’s got nothing to do with weakness, except insofaras it’s a source of strength. Rather than belittling it as a method of competing method of social organization, people interested in politics would probably be better served by using it as an example.

[Disclaimer: by that I don’t mean that liberals should start using Jesus to trick people, as I’ve argued elsewhere.]