Brainwashing and Freedom of Religion

by Vijaya Chandrasoma

The terms “Freedom of Religion” and Freedom of Worship” are often used as interchangeable concepts. They are not. The difference in the meaning of these concepts is responsible for much of the religious strife and violence in the world today.

Freedom of Worship is practiced where the government and society will protect the rights of all citizens to practice their religions, so long as they confine their worship to the religion of their birth; a nation whose government or society “encourages” its citizens to believe in the dominant religion, and penalizes those who wish to embrace other beliefs and faiths.

The most extreme examples of this practice of Freedom of Worship are the Islamic nations, which stigmatize, persecute and penalize citizens who convert to a faith other than Islam. A custom which prevails, in varying degrees, in many nations in the world.

Freedom of Religion, according to a 2012 study by George Moses, is the “more expansive term. It includes freedom to worship their own religion, but also protects the rights of believers to evangelize, change their religion, have schools and charitable institutions and participate in the public square”.

As President Obama proclaimed on Religious Freedom Day, 2017, “Religious Freedom is a principle based not on shared ancestry, culture, ethnicity or faith but on a shared commitment to liberty. Our nation’s enduring commitment to the inalienable human right of religious freedom extends beyond our borders as we advocate for all the ability to choose and live their faith.”

The words “ability to choose and live their faith” illustrate the difference between Freedom of Religion and Freedom of Worship.

America’s confusing religious history began with the arrival of the English Pilgrims on the Mayflower in 1620, fleeing religious persecution in England. The constitution of the United States, subsequent to the establishment of a sovereign nation in 1776, provided the framework for the government of the Commonwealth of the 13 colonies.

Separation of Church and State is a legal principle in the United States, but the phrase appears nowhere in the constitution, the closest being “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of (any) religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof”, as part of the First Amendment.

Although Christianity is the dominant religion in the USA, representing 73% of its population, with its motto “In God We Trust” in US currency and the phrase “One Nation Under God” in its Pledge of Allegiance, no one is persecuted or penalized for converting to another faith, or indeed, for practicing no religion at all – which may not be apparent in today’s religious landscape. Politicians of every stripe are outshouting each other as being true, God fearing Christians publicly, while breaking every commandment in the Bible in private. No politician will be elected to the US Presidency today unless he holds a Bible in one hand, an AK 47 in the other, all the while professing enduring support of Israel.

Strangely, American evangelists have also demonstrated their religious hypocrisy in their devotion to a president who has had five children with three wives, been convicted of multiple financial frauds, accused of pedophilia and sexual assault, and broken just about every commandment in the Good Book. They continue to revere such an evil man as “The Chosen One”, in spite of his self-serving dalliance with science and truth, which has cost tens of thousands of American lives through climate change and a global pandemic.

When Russia established a Communist state, Marx’s theory about religion being the opium of the people was embraced. The USSR, in 1922, was the first nation to officially eliminate religion, and to prevent the propagation of religious and spiritual beliefs, with the ultimate goal of establishing an atheist state.

“Atheists waged a 70-year war on religious belief in the Soviet Union. The Communist Party destroyed churches, mosques and temples; it executed religious leaders; it flooded the schools and the media with anti-religious propaganda; and it introduced a belief called ‘scientific atheism’, complete with atheistic rituals, proselytizers, and a promise of worldly salvation”. But, in the end, “a majority of older Soviet citizens retained their religious beliefs and a crop of citizens too young to have experienced pre-Soviet times acquired religious beliefs.” (G. L. Mosse).

Communist China took a different route. The Communist Party of China is officially atheist. Party members are discouraged from publicly participating in religious ceremonies, on the basis that religious beliefs are tantamount to “spiritual anesthesia”. However, China does recognize five religions: Buddhism, Catholicism, Daoism, Islam and Protestantism. While the practice of religions is prohibited, any offence is honoured more in its breach than its observance. The US State Department’s International Religious Freedom Report estimates that there are 650 million religious believers in China, primarily made up of Chinese Buddhists, followed by Christians, Muslims and Tibetan Buddhists. With China’s modernization and economic boom, China’s religious believers are, perhaps ironically, on the increase.

Which goes to prove that there’s no propaganda machine in the world with the capacity to successfully combat infantile and adult brainwashing.

To quote Buddhist scholar and translator, Dr. Alexander Berzin on the Buddhist view of other religions, “Just as there are billions of people in the planet, there are also billions of different dispositions and inclinations. From the Buddhist point of view, a wide choice of religions is needed to suit the varied needs of different people. Buddhism recognizes that all religions share the same aim of working for the well-being of mankind”.

In other words, a person of faith should welcome the world to challenge that faith. Whether the universe was created and designed by a Superior Being, or originated billions of years ago in rapid expansion from a single point of nearly infinite energy density, and evolved to its present state, is a decision to be made by individual faith, reasoning and logic. A free nation, where people are sovereign and encouraged to practice their own religion in all its diversity, is a nation with no official religion at all. Challenging thoughts, beliefs and faith is not meant to be easy or popular. It is meant to make us free.

Just as a newborn child is pure and innocent, with no prejudices of race, caste or creed, it is brainwashed and corrupted from the day it is born. It is a fact that 90% of the world’s population believes in the religion of their parents. If your father is a believer of Islam, you will, almost certainly, adhere to the teachings of the Qur’an. If your mother is a Christian, you will believe in the tenets of the Bible. As the Catholic Church says, “Give us your child till he is seven years old, and we’ll have him for life”, a maxim enshrining infantile brainwashing credited to St. Ignatius Loyola himself. And so with Buddhists, Hindus and every other religion practiced in the world. Not even the sage advice of the Buddha, that every religion should be respected and honoured, has been able to stifle the power of brainwashing, which almost every child in the world has been subjected to, and etched in their subconscious for life. Any doubts that may arise will be overcome by the power of their initial and continuing brainwashing, which is rampant, influencing every age, at every turn; in schools, in places of worship and business, in society at large.

All religions have one goal in common. They have the spiritual well-being of humanity and an orderly, just society at their core; they teach their adherents to follow a path of ethical behaviour, of love, compassion and forgiveness. It is just the reward that awaits you if you follow the path, and the punishment if you don’t, that form the basis of the main differences of all religions.

The need for an afterlife is caused by the denial of the ego to accept the finality of death. The final destination is a testament to the human imagination, and includes a surfeit of virgins, the Pearly Gates, and rebirth. Why is there so much strife, anguish, even violence over a concept that can never be conclusively and logically proved? Science has proved that the light at the end of the tunnel is the figment of one’s own faith. But then, the best minds in the world once thought that the earth was flat, so what do we know?

At least 4.5 billion people in the world identify with one of the four organized religions, and the numbers are rising. Religion remains the most powerful force in society today. And the crimes committed in the name of these religions are also increasing in many countries, democracies and authoritarian regimes alike.

No government has yet been able to quell the human need for faith, a belief in a deity or a spiritual law which has been instilled into the human psyche from birth. As long as people continue to be brainwashed from their infancy, religions will thrive. As will religious wars and crimes in the name of religions.

On the bright side, the concepts of atheism and agnosticism are gaining currency in Scandinavia and Northern European countries, where there is a preponderance of “heathens”. And these countries are known to be the most economically developed and socially just countries in the world. Not coincidentally, they are also recognized as countries where their citizens are happy, healthy and cared for, “from womb to tomb.” The fact that they also have some of the highest substance abuse and suicide rates in the world is another one of those quaint paradoxes of human nature.

Perhaps the evolution of these nations has achieved the “herd immunity” necessary to ward off the twin plagues of brainwashing and organized religion.