Does the Human Habit Of Blaming the Victim Begin with our Belief in God?

[AthenaAwakened]

Think about it.

God is the omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent, and omni-benevolent, right?

Yet, in his creation there exist evil, torment, and strife (not to mention boy bands)

So some very popular revealed religions came up with this concept of sin, stuff we mortals do that for some reason god can stop or help himself but to punish us for, and thus blame us for the imperfections in in his otherwise would be perfect creation.

Now to me, that sounds an awful lot like what rapist, wife beaters, child molesters, and Klansmen say.

 

[dx713]

I don't think so. Early gods weren't tri-omni, they were more like glorified super-heroes.

I classify it as a cross between our tendencies to look for causality and a defense mechanism against anxiety.
We want to have an explanation, and we don't want the explanation to be that we set up a flawed system and it could happen to us randomly. So, the victim must have done something to cause the outcome, and it must be something bad that we would never do ourselves.

(now, the parallel might be that religion is a defense against anxiety too)

 

[AthenaAwakened]

I don't think so. Early gods weren't tri-omni, they were more like glorified super-heroes.

And how did that effect early believers? Were they not blamed for offending the gods and thus evoking punishment?

I classify it as a cross between our tendencies to look for causality and a defense mechanism against anxiety.
We want to have an explanation, and we don't want the explanation to be that we set up a flawed system and it could happen to us randomly. So, the victim must have done something to cause the outcome, and it must be something bad that we would never do ourselves.

Oh I think that is a big part of it too.

(now, the parallel might be that religion is a defense against anxiety too)

 

[dx713]

And how did that effect early believers? Were they not blamed for offending the gods and thus evoking punishment?

You've got a point.
A lot of myths or genesis stories have vengeful gods. See Prometheus, for instance. Or the Babylonian genesis.
But the Christians went one step farther in having an omnipotent god do it, and comdemning manking for suffering expressly for disobeying her, despite loving them greatly.
The early gods were more like "we created you because we need slaves, and don't dare insult us or try to rise above your condition". That's evil too, but less twisted than the "I love you but you made me punish you" that I read in the Bible.

 

[Sarpedon]

Its simple laziness and selfishness.

If the victim is at fault, I don't have to help him. And...Done.

 

[Keith&Co.]

Its simple laziness and selfishness.

If the victim is at fault, I don't have to help him. And...Done.

yeah, it doesn't require a deity to condemn the victim.

If the lion got Charley, it's not my fault for getting ot the tree first, it's his fault for not running as fast. Or for not getting a good grip on the branch. He did something wrong, and got eaten.

That's more comfortable than trying to imagine that it could just as easily have been me, and that there's nothing i could have done to prevent it.

 

[bigfield]

Its simple laziness and selfishness.

If the victim is at fault, I don't have to help him. And...Done.

People also blame themselves when they are they a victim of something or someone: 'If only I'd done/not done _______ then this would not have happened to me.'

 

[repoman]

This is a text message I got concerning a former manager who just died at the age of 31. Relevant background is that he was a bit of an idiot and a jerk and he got the sister of the person I texted fired a couple of years ago from her assistant manager job as well as another very good assistant. Note the religious tinge to the text:

Yes, what goes around comes around. Perhaps he thinks too much on other people's business that his own health. May god forgive his sins and his bad karma among people that he hurt most while he was alive, I bet it was many of them. Hopefully they forgive him too, so he can rest in peace. AMEN.

 

[repoman]

Take something like infectious disease, it is sensible to balance caring and kinship ties to the infected and the risk of getting the disease yourself. And for a person not in your group - no reason at all not to steer clear of them. In fact we may be selected to be this way - because people who didn't readily ostracize and demonize the sick died more often.

No one knew how these diseases happened before. Why not assume that some of it was the fault of the infected. And when the black plague hit note how they fervor of victim blaming was at fever pitch. Easy for us in this modern age to ignore these past limitations of knowledge and technology.

 

[Angry Floof]

Athena, have you read The Authoritarians (free ebook)? The right wing authoritarian follower mentality will agree to punishment of any group so long as whatever authority in their heads says it should be so. God is only one form of authority. It could be political party, law enforcement, or whatever.

(In an interesting twist in the research, those high on the RWA scale said they would agree to punish themselves! It was presented to them as a group with the traits of RWAs, not by the name, but still, they were looking at a description of themselves and agreed they should be punished.)

Add to that the tendency for wealth to foster a sense of entitlement.

 

[Cheerful Charlie]

Think about it.

God is the omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent, and omni-benevolent, right?

Yet, in his creation there exist evil, torment, and strife (not to mention boy bands)

So some very popular revealed religions came up with this concept of sin, stuff we mortals do that for some reason god can stop or help himself but to punish us for, and thus blame us for the imperfections in in his otherwise would be perfect creation.

Now to me, that sounds an awful lot like what rapist, wife beaters, child molesters, and Klansmen say.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just-world_hypothesis
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The just-world hypothesis or just-world fallacy is the cognitive bias (or assumption) that a person's actions are inherently inclined to bring morally fair and fitting consequences to that person, to the end of all noble actions being eventually rewarded and all evil actions eventually punished. In other words, the just-world hypothesis is the tendency to attribute consequences to—or expect consequences as the result of—a universal force that restores moral balance. This belief generally implies that in the existence of cosmic justice, destiny, divine providence, desert, stability, or order, and has high potential to result in fallacy, especially when used to rationalize people's misfortune on the grounds that they "deserve" it.

Ir seems to run a bit deeper than that.

 

[Clivedurdle]

Some religions claim a monopoly on morality. Actually, they have institutionalised and in many ways prevented humans learning to love and care for and with each other.

We are all quite able to act to build our common wealth, religions actually prevent experimentation and testing things out, working things out together.

So actually religions are very powerful ways of institutionalising awful ways of living together! They didn't cause that, but they make it extremely difficult to just muddle along for this brief spell here.

 

[credoconsolans]

The world was polytheistic back then.

With a "you help me, I help you" arrangement.

Say one person had a disaster. Yes, society could blame them by assuming that person or family had a falling out with some god or another. But if a disaster fell upon an entire community, they might try to placate the gods, but - and this is the important part - if the god or gods failed to respond or deliver them or failed to protect them, the society might just stop worshipping that god and move onto another.

It was only when societies started moving into the monotheistic stage that that was no longer an option and the blame the victim game became more intense.

Look at the Hebrews. Their priests were canny fuckers. No matter how strong their god was supposed to be, every time the Hebrews got mown down by disease or invading armies or enslaved by invaders, the priest cult never let them abandon their god - they'd be out of a job at best or lynched at worst.

So rather than let the people blame Yahweh and doubt him and decide to move onto another god, the priests put the blame on the Hebrew people for not keeping their end of the Covenant. An everyday person can never feel truly pious, right?

And the monotheists have been falling for that line ever since.

 

[Bronzeage]

Think about it.

God is the omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent, and omni-benevolent, right?

Yet, in his creation there exist evil, torment, and strife (not to mention boy bands)

So some very popular revealed religions came up with this concept of sin, stuff we mortals do that for some reason god can stop or help himself but to punish us for, and thus blame us for the imperfections in in his otherwise would be perfect creation.

Now to me, that sounds an awful lot like what rapist, wife beaters, child molesters, and Klansmen say.

I think it has more to do with the natural human tendency to deny that bad things could happen to ourselves. This means we do not want to identify with a victim and find things which sets then apart from us. We want even more to believe we can control our own behavior, which will protect us from the predators.

 

[Underseer]

Think about it.

God is the omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent, and omni-benevolent, right?

Yet, in his creation there exist evil, torment, and strife (not to mention boy bands)

So some very popular revealed religions came up with this concept of sin, stuff we mortals do that for some reason god can stop or help himself but to punish us for, and thus blame us for the imperfections in in his otherwise would be perfect creation.

Now to me, that sounds an awful lot like what rapist, wife beaters, child molesters, and Klansmen say.

Your hypothesis presumes that the idea of god existed prior to the human tendency to blame others. I'm not sure that is the case.

 

[AthenaAwakened]

Think about it.

God is the omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent, and omni-benevolent, right?

Yet, in his creation there exist evil, torment, and strife (not to mention boy bands)

So some very popular revealed religions came up with this concept of sin, stuff we mortals do that for some reason god can stop or help himself but to punish us for, and thus blame us for the imperfections in in his otherwise would be perfect creation.

Now to me, that sounds an awful lot like what rapist, wife beaters, child molesters, and Klansmen say.

Your hypothesis presumes that the idea of god existed prior to the human tendency to blame others. I'm not sure that is the case.

Not necessarily blaming others, but blaming the victim. And if it didn't start it, it sure has legitimized the practice.

 

[Underseer]

Your hypothesis presumes that the idea of god existed prior to the human tendency to blame others. I'm not sure that is the case.

Not necessarily blaming others, but blaming the victim. And if it didn't start it, it sure has legitimized the practice.

Or maybe religion is just another example of the human tendency to blame the victim.

 

[dx713]

Your hypothesis presumes that the idea of god existed prior to the human tendency to blame others. I'm not sure that is the case.

Not necessarily blaming others, but blaming the victim. And if it didn't start it, it sure has legitimized the practice.

Or maybe religion is just another example of the human tendency to blame the victim.

It's a positive feedback, vicious circle, of a blame-the-victim exemple becoming powerful enough to legitimate further blame-the-victim !

 

[Tom Sawyer]

It's a positive feedback, vicious circle, of a blame-the-victim exemple becoming powerful enough to legitimate further blame-the-victim !

And, I have to add, this whole vicious cycle really is the victim's fault.

 

[Perspicuo]

AthenaAwakened, your OP is absurd.

Religion was not imported from outer space. It is not only human but very human. Religions embody human impulses and ideals, and in turn they reinforce them.