All This Talk of 'Morals'

[Esquilax]

Religion can have a more subtle effect on people. For example, most of the JWs I know are smart, friendly, hospitable people. What I would refer to as "good people." Kind, caring, generous, and so on. Yet if commanded to do so, they would shun a fellow JW who had been removed from the organization. Note that being removed can be for something like joining a different Christian denomination. They would be shunned even by their closest friends and family, cut off from any communication or companionship. These would be those same smart, friendly, hospitable, kind, caring and generous people, suddenly turned very cold and distant, and in some cases very very cruel. Because they believe that they are helping a person to reconnect with god. That is, to me, the kind of damage that religion can do. Subtle yet devastating, and it turns otherwise wonderful people into very scary people.

Perfectly said: religion can't make a good person bad, but it can make them more susceptible to bad suggestions under the mistaken impression that they're actually serving some greater, inaccessible good. It slides hate in under the skin, by pretending it's somehow worthy in the eyes of god.

That's why it's so difficult to talk about this stuff with the christians here, since they're all so quick to protest that all the christians they know are nice, good people; and they're right... when they're among friends. But the Jesus-switch flips when those people, the ones the pastor said it's okay to exclude, are in sight.