EMPATHY AND ENABLING RELIGIOUS EVIL

Summary

Empathy—the ability to feel and understand another’s emotions—is presented as more essential than love, even toward enemies. Unlike love, empathy doesn't require reconciliation, making it a more honest and potentially transformative response to conflict and suffering. The text challenges religious dogma, particularly the Christian command to love enemies, arguing that such teachings can be toxic and unrealistic. Even if God were to condemn empathy, the author argues it remains a moral good worth defending—even at the cost of defying divine authority. A lack of empathy is identified as a key reason why people tolerate or enable harmful religious and political systems. Without empathy, injustices—especially those that are gradual or distant—are more easily ignored, and this collective indifference enables evil to thrive.

For Empathy

Empathy, feeling what another is feeling and having a good understanding of it, is more important than love, for you can feel empathy for an enemy even without reconciling with them. The emphasis Christ put on loving enemies is just toxic for that reason. Empathy is superior and helps reduce hate, and some hate is not so bad.

What if God hypothetically could command you to not have empathy (maybe He says it is good but not appropriate under current conditions), or even made empathy a sin in itself? The hypothetical test excels and perfects our knowledge of what is really important. Obviously, empathy is such a great good that even defiance of God would be totally justified in either case. Even if it were evil, we should do it, for evil that benefits us is worth it.

People enable oppressive and violent religions and political systems because of a lack of empathy. They may have good empathy in many things, but when it is a religious or political matter, the empathy is gone.

Suppose a hospital treats a baby, and the baby dies through getting the wrong treatment. Empathy may cause enraged people to get it closed down. Empathy can also cause sensible people to try and help the hospital get it right in future.

Empathy works best in directly and obviously frightening matters, such as plagues where people are dropping like flies, and earthquakes. But for more subtle and indirect evils, such as global warming, the empathy will tend to be too weak to be effective in getting people to help. It is because the horror and danger are more hidden and are more gradual. Evils that are in your face will get a stronger reaction than evils that feel a bit far away. Evil doesn't look so evil when it is in the distance.

Those who feel that they must have empathy for all people as themselves will find they soon have empathy for nobody. You simply cannot and will not empathise with a stranger as you would a member of your family.

We enable evil because we feel the responsibility is shared and diluted by numbers. That is why we don't get too upset if we get a severe reprimand if others are being reprimanded with us. Imagine if we had a culture where God or the angels were told off along with us. Each person would lose any fear of being admonished. What if the Bible rule that God must be thought of in all things explicitly at all times were kept? We could end up with that kind of culture.

Enabling bad things to happen by silence or neglecting to challenge them is indicating that you have no objection to these things happening. Enabling is a form of bullying, for it supports those who bully and impedes those who want to stop the bullies. The enabler enjoys having her hands clean—she gets a smug glow. That in itself is bullying. It sends a message to the victim who actually gets beaten up. And the bully won't be inspired by enablers to live better. The bully will feel encouraged to keep up the harassment, even if only by their silence.

When you contribute to the power of an oppressive and dishonest body, such as a religion, by silence or membership, you will not feel responsible or very responsible for the harm done. You might tell yourself that you are keeping out of it, but you are not. Your keeping out of it is consent. You are happy to risk making it harder for those who need encouragement to go and do something about it. Bullying doesn't have to be direct or physical to do lasting damage. Victims of bullies are often more damaged by bystanders and those who let the bully do her or his worst, or those who think the bullying is funny. Standing by tells them that the bully is not the only person who thinks they are worthless and fit only to be made fun of. It attacks the victim's coping skills and makes them think there is something wrong with them that is making the bully be horrible. It can lead to the victim even defending the bully. You are more likely to cope if it is a few people who bully you, but if you see that the community is letting them do it, then coping will be extremely difficult. You are more worried about what you feel responsible for than what you are responsible for. That is why you may go on social networking and message terrible things to people that you would not say to them in the real world.

Empathy is the ability to understand somebody else's thoughts and ideas and fears and emotions and feelings from their own perspective. The book Christianity Is Not Great points out that those who condone Bible and divine cruelty have a lack of empathy which "keeps believers from accepting the truth about their faith." "If you were a slave ... wouldn't you wish the Christian God had clearly condemned slavery? God's defenders simply lack empathy for these people. They refuse to feel their pain." The book asserts, then, that their faith works like an anaesthetic and deadens the pain and sympathy they should feel for the slaves.

Now a person might be horrified at the thought that a divine power lets the innocent suffer horrendously—even little babies. It makes her sick. Her head might tell her God has a plan, but that should have little effect on the horror she feels. So how do believers cope? They work on feeling good about condoning and approving of this God that allows the unimaginably evil to happen. They condone it, and it makes them feel good.

Problems with Empathy

The evidence is that, in serious matters—e.g., with monsters like Myra Hindley or the Menendez brothers—people have empathy. That may outweigh the good it does otherwise.

The evidence is that empathy is a major cause of cruelty and stupidity anyway.

An evil person can try to understand and feel your pain and recognise it in order to hurt you better or more lastingly.

You can have empathy with the wrong person—empathy with Jack the Ripper can lead to downplaying his motives with regard to his killings. You then hate those who condemn him or who want him punished properly.

Empathy for too many people or for one person too often will lead to you becoming ill or negative or fearful.

Empathy can only come about in spite of belief in God, for that belief declares that all chances for you to do good are tests from God. Real empathy cares about the person, not the test.

Empathy too often is about connecting with who you think the other person is. You don't know anybody as well as you think. Empathy can make you too biased in its own right. If you are all about how you feel about another, you have no accurate way to assess that person.

Too often when you empathise with another, it is about you. You think you see yourself in them. So it is too selfish and too self-glorifying and too manipulative to do real and lasting, as opposed to fleeting, shallow good.

If you believe in God and your version of God is a projection of what you want Him to be, then to say you see the other as the image of God is a roundabout way of using the person to boost your ego. If God were not a projection from you, then to see what you think is of God in the other is artificial empathy. It is not interested in who the person is, but how you spiritually want to see them. It is not fair to see the religiously idealised in the person; see the person.

When you assume that the one for whom you have empathy has the same motivations and good points as you have, that is a form of idealising. It is dangerous. Don't idealise anybody, and don't do it because you see yourself in them. Don't see them as an instrument of God, for that is only feeding into the problems. Idealising means you see your idea of what is best in the other, not really what is best. It is the reason why people may claim to want an all-good God, but when you look close, they do not, and want a God who matches their substandard ideal. It is about bias and lying to yourself.

Empathy can stop you caring about those who were hurt by the bad person or make you feel vengeful towards them. For example, when rapists are empathised with, the victim is forgotten about or hated. Empathy is a threat to fairness and to principle.

Empathy is triggered by being asked to show empathy. That is why people will fight for a sick child, even at the expense of ignoring other children who need the help even more.

The believer in God prays for guidance in dealing with others—effectively, they pray for empathy. This is irresponsible because they think somebody is communicating to them how to have empathy and where and why. Empathy is too easily messed up anyway, so that is only asking for trouble. This is not like being asked to have empathy by a flawed human being. This time, you think the all-wise creator of all is asking it. That is even worse. And you know fine well prayerful guidance has turned out wrong, and you told yourself, "Maybe it was still right and best, and I just don't see how." Thus the toxic, irresponsible cycle was kept going.

Empathy is linked to blank-slateism. This assumes people have no nature of their own, but are made by the family, friends, society, and the environment they have. Something from the outside gets inside you and largely sets you for life. You are mostly a biological computer, and you are not the programmer. It is dangerous, for it would mean that if you commit murder, those who influence you the best are to blame more than you, even if they have done nothing obvious. Twins who always lived in the same community disprove blank-slate thinking. How? One may murder, and the other may be a doctor.

Blank-slateism reeks of hypocrisy. It is strange to blame everybody but the culprit for what he or she does. What is so special and exempt about him or her?

Politics may not care if the blank slate is a myth or not. It may consider it a useful model for approaching the issues that press on society. By fighting to make all equal, even artificially, the votes keep coming—or should.

Also, there is such a thing as religious or theological blank-slateism. This time you have a soul in the image of God. It is pure until sinners around you, and Satan and his minions, pollute it. It is associated with "liberal" Christianity, which in fact is just a religious cover for going along with societal fashionable opinions. It surely won't dare suggest that God corrupted Adam and Eve?

Finally, it seems best to seek a vague but real and general and overall empathy for all human suffering. This is very imperfect, but it is not possible to feel proper empathy for each individual, so you need empathy for the whole. One thing that is possible is to be against and disapproving of anybody's suffering. That is easy, for it is about principle, not your feelings. Religion wants you to approve of how God allows suffering. That evil makes dirt of any good it does. If you oppose the principle, then there is no point in caring what you feel about the suffering of another.