Religion is Like a Prescription Drug

I read recently about a young Pakistani man who believed that his spiritual hero had the ability to raise people from the dead. So he volunteered to be killed and resurrected. You can guess how this turned out (see article here).

Let me try this simile: Religion is like a prescription drug. Like a prescription pain killer or antidepressant, it can have its beneficial uses in making people more altruistic or happier. But, if overused or misused, it can have devastating effects, making otherwise good people into destructive zealots and completely disrupting their ability to reason about or even see the reality right in front of them. Also, like many prescription drugs, religion may not be the best medicine for what ails you. And religion is clearly addictive, like many prescription drugs. I know this from personal experience with prolonged withdrawal from fundamentalist religion.

Also, like a prescription drug, religion should only be administered by people who know what they are doing. Many drugs can only be prescribed by a certified physician and dispensed by a certified pharmacist, and only after the drug has passed through much expensive research.

In some cases, religion is similar: it is dispensed by people who have carefully studied it and who know its strengths and weaknesses. Scholarly theologians, and clergymen trained by them, are examples of this. But such cases are very rare. Anybody can preach and get people to follow him or her. They can use psychological means of advertising that are illegal for every other product on the market, especially drugs. They can lie and make stuff up, even while waving a Bible that does not say what they say it says. The Pakistani religious leader who slit the throat of a volunteer is an extreme example, but there are millions of less extreme examples. Religion today is at the same point that drugs were back in the days of snake oil and “patent medicine” salesmen.

Maybe we need to have some kind of Board certification for dispensers of religion—to have it dispensed by the equivalent of doctors and pharmacists. However, I think many of you would agree that we do not want the government deciding how religion should be dispensed. Republican lawmakers or administrators would validate only those forms of religion that confirm them as God’s chosen leaders. Maybe instead we should have an independent scholarly Review Board that will investigate religious claims and either proclaim them to be safe (not necessarily true, just safe) or dangerous. Maybe we could call it RATS (Religion and Theological Safety)? I would nominate John Shelby Spong and Bart Ehrman to its board of directors. As a non-governmental organization, it could keep out the people who wrap oppressive politics in a sheepskin of religion. Maybe some churches would actually like to have the RATS seal of approval?