Version below is the latest version... i deleted the other ones to prevent any confusion
Latest version posted 12/8
History has recorded terrible atrocities committed in the name of religion, as well as religious differences and conversion attempts. Bribery, coercion and the destruction of culture are just a few of the consequences that are the result of religious conversion attempts. Any conversion attempts that use bribery, coercion or destroy culture are immoral. Therefore religious conversion attempts that use these methods are immoral and should not be practiced.
In the context of this essay, I will be setting aside the debate if bribery, coercion or the destruction of culture is inherently wrong. Instead I will focus on why it is wrong to use these methods to try and influence the change of religious beliefs. I am also assuming in this essay, that these three concerns are never used for the cessation of any physical harm. Examples of physical harm would include slavery, cannibalism, or drug abuse. Bribery in relation to religious conversion is immoral because it clouds the individual?s judgment and persuades them to act contrary to their convictions regarding the decisions to be made about religion. Coercion used in religious conversion attempts is immoral because the people being coerced through either physical, moral, or mental means are not changing their religious beliefs based on their own free will. In the context of this essay, culture refers to the literature, artwork, songs, music, language, oral traditions and customs of the indigenous peoples. The destruction of these items is immoral because it erases hundreds of years of uninterrupted cultural development. Some of the aforementioned arguments may apply to attempts at changing values, but I will focus on these arguments in relation to religious conversion in this essay.
Religious conversion attempts use bribery to get their point across
Missionaries and other religious figures prey on impoverished people in their time of need. Since these people are vulnerable, these religious figures often swoop in and disperse money but only after the victims agree to get converted. In witnessing a missionary descend on a village in India, Mahatma Gandhi remarked, ?Only the other day a missionary descended on a famine area with money in his pocket, distributed it among the famine stricken, converted them to his fold, took charge of their temple and demolished it. This is outrageous.? The question that should be asked is: Are these people really converting because they believe that a new religion will change their current misfortunes in life, or are they converting because a missionary visited their town and handed out a bunch of money to anyone willing to convert?
The bribery isn?t limited only to people in need, it is also applied to people who cannot rationally make a decision about their faith. There is a group called the Good News Club run by the Child Evangelism Fellowship, an evangelical organization who goes into schools and targets children between the age of 4 and 12 in order to ?persuade small children to be born again.? The tactics used to attract children to attend the meetings and bring friends along play directly into the wants and desires of children. ?To sustain interest in the club, leaders use every imaginable child enticement: colorful Jesus dolls, cheery songs and mountains of sugar. The Pleasant Gap school session starts with a round of cookies?. Children get $1 in fake money for coming and $2 for bringing a friend. Every few months they can redeem the ?money? for ? guess what ? more candy.?
Young students can become confused and not recognize that the messages and viewpoints of these meetings are not condoned by the school. ?Ashley, a Pleasant Gap fifth-grader who has attended Good News Clubs for four years, does not appear to realize that the club's warnings about damnation are not made by her public school. She says the club is led by "my teachers and members of my church." And in her case, as with some other clubs, she is not entirely wrong--one of the club leaders is also a full-time teacher's aide.? Since the lines are blurred between what the club and school says, students have the potential to ostracize and cause conflicts with their classmates who either have different opinions, or who don?t attend the after school meetings.
Most of the children who attend these meetings have obtained permission from their parents. This still leaves a number of students whose parents are unaware that they are attending such meetings. Even for the children who are allowed to go, the conversion attempts are still immoral because the children are being enticed to attend with candy, cookies, pizza and toys. The children are also so young that they cannot rationally make a decision concerning their faith. Rosalie Potter, head of evangelism and church development at the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) was quoted as saying, ?It would be hard to expect a child of four or five to have a conversion experience with integrity.? An ominous sign of these meetings is that children associate religion with the treats and junk food that they receive at meetings. When a father forbade his son Kenny from attending any more of these meetings, Kenny responded, ?Why do we have to be Jewish? All the other kids get pizza and toys.? The above examples illustrate how bribery is used to persuade people to act contrary to their convictions regarding religious ideas.
Religious figures coerce their intended converts to get them to switch religions
History has been a witness to some of the terrible atrocities committed in the name of religion. The Spanish Inquisition lasted in Spain from 1478 until 1834. The first targets of religious conversion also known as Heretics, were the Jews, followed by the Muslims and Protestants. To properly influence the accused, the Catholic Church used various techniques.
Any accused heretic could be thrown into prison without a trial where he or she was left to languish at the whim of the Church. ?Or again, a prisoner who refused to confess his heresies would be left in solitude and darkness for weeks, months or even years?.. There are many cases where three, five or even ten years elapsed between the first hearing and the final conviction of a prisoner, during all of which time the accused rotted in his dungeon; and even greater periods are reported.?
Languishing in their cells was not the only sort of treatment that heretics received. Terrible physical torture was done to these poor victims as well. One item of torture was known as the pear, a small metal pear shaped object that expanded in the body cavity of a victim. ?They are forced into the mouth, rectum or vagina of the victim and there expanded by force of the screw to the maximum aperture of their segments. The inside of the cavity in question is irremediably mutilated, nearly always fatally so. The pointed prongs at the end of the segments serve better to rip into the throat, the intestines or the cervix.?
The rack was also popular and one of the most famous items for torture. Victims were laid down on a board and had their hands and feet bound by rope. At the turn of a wheel, the victims were slowly stretched out. The agony could last for days, as the victims were often left alive to increase their suffering. Over time, the victim?s body would become more elongated as a result of every joint in the body becoming dislocated. These two methods of physical torture only touch the tip of the iceberg. Whipping, mutilation of limbs, burning at the stake, and being hung in iron cages until death were some of the other methods used. These terrible acts were committed because of differences in religion, and in the case of Protestants, the wrong sect of a particular religion.
A common form of religious coercion today is practiced by fanatical Muslims. They wage a Jihad or holy war upon the people they view as non-believers of Islam. These attacks are demonstrated not only by bus bombings in Israel, or the September 11th attacks in the United States, but also against other Muslims who they believe aren?t strong enough believers of Islam. The past couple of months in Iraq have seen several different high ranking Muslim Clerics killed in various bombings as the different Muslim sects fight one another. In Iran, morality squads patrol the streets to make sure that women are dressed within the dress codes according to Islam. Punishment for showing too much skin or wearing makeup is punishable by 76 lashes, a monetary fine, or up to a year in jail. These examples illustrate how religious figures coerce individuals or groups through pain or the implication of punishment in order to subvert their free will concerning their religious choices.
Religious figures destroy culture when they convert people
When Spanish missionary Fray Diego de Landa arrived in Mexico to convert the Mayan Indians, he denounced their works of literature as works of the devil and burned almost everything. Only three original Mayan pieces of literature survived. ?Tonight, eight centuries of Mayan literature turn to ashes. On these long sheets of bark paper, signs and images spoke: They told of work done and days spent, of the dreams and the wars of a people born before Christ. With hog-bristle brushes, the knowers of things had painted these illuminated, illuminating books so that the grandchildren's grandchildren should not be blind, should know how to see themselves and see the history of their folk, so they should know the movements of the stars, the frequency of eclipses and the prophecies of the gods and so they could call for rains and good corn harvests.?
The destruction of culture is not limited to purely physical items. In the early 1930s, Australians started prospecting for gold in New Guinea. With the prospectors came missionaries who were eager to enlighten the native population about the glory of God. Before the missionaries arrived, the natives would celebrate and rejoice over the acquisition of a single pearl shell. Since the natives found these shells so valuable, the missionaries imported them to help pay for items with the natives. Problems arose when the missionaries imported shells by hundreds of thousands. ?The steady influx of shells brought about a gradual devaluation, but basically there was no upper limit to the demand.? This increased demand lead to native women turning to prostitution and husbands selling their wives for more shells. Prior to the arrival of missionaries, this sort of behavior had never occurred.
The goal of missionaries was to convert as many people as possible. To accomplish this goal, they focused on traveling and preaching to a wide array of people. Religious scriptures were also an important tool in converting people. The problem with relying on religious scriptures is that most natives and other indigenous peoples cannot read; much less speak the language in which the scriptures were preached. A Spanish missionary would naturally teach the natives Spanish, or a French missionary would teach the natives French. These teachings lead to the suppression of the native language. Indigenous peoples were forced to learn a new language while being reprimanded for speaking in their native tongues. As encouragement or better perhaps as an effective tool to mandate the change, old manuscripts and records were burned so that the older language was erased. On Easter Island, missionaries destroyed the wooden Rongo Rongo tablets inscribed with the native language when they arrived. As a result, so few tablets survived that the language of Easter Island will never be deciphered. Examples such as these are why missionaries are often viewed as cultural imperialists for their constant attempts at religious expansion. ?If there were a single group most commonly held to exemplify the operation of cultural imperialism in modern history, it would have to be Christian missionaries.? These acts of cultural destruction are evidence to how religious figures destroy culture to further their religious motives.
Objections to My Arguments
Missionaries and religious organizations have done some outstanding work in improving the lives of people around the world. One of the most famous missionaries was Albert Schweitzer. He was a well-known humanitarian during the early part of the twentieth century in Africa. Despite being briefly interned in a prison camp in France, Albert Schweitzer was able to set up several hospitals in Africa where he treated thousands of Africans for leprosy and other diseases. For his efforts toward improving lives, he was awarded the Nobel Peace prize in 1952. There are also several aid organizations such as the Samaritan?s Purse that establish programs in impoverished countries to help improve the quality of life. They are a highly successful organization where 90.5 percent of all money taken in goes to the different programs that the organization runs in over 100 countries worldwide. Some of the programs that the Samaritan?s Purse supports include: emergency relief, community development, medical assistance and AIDS programs.
The tactics used by the Good News Club are often quite common in teaching with young children. Giving out rewards for participation or good behavior is commonplace in teaching. Most teachers (73%) used candy as a student incentive/reward, and more than one-third (34%) used candy at least two or three times a month. Other commonly used items included cookies/doughnuts (37%), sweetened drinks (35%), and pizza (28%). The only difference is that since classroom attendance is mandatory, teachers don?t give out incentives for attending class the way that the Good New Club gives out candy and treats for attending their meetings.
Another important group to consider is people who wish to have a change in their spiritual lives. Could these people then go and see a minister, rabbi, or cleric? Would it be then immoral for their religion to be changed?
Response to the objections to my argument
There are several other non faith based world charities that provide assistance for the needy. UNICEF is an international organization that also focuses on nutrition, education, immunization and childhood development. It currently has locations in over 161 countries worldwide; that is 60 percent more countries than the Samaritan?s Purse has a presence in. UNICEF is also efficient with 89 percent of all donations going toward the children and families that need it the most. An important difference between UNICEF and the Samaritan?s Purse is that almost five percent of the total program money used by the Samaritan?s Purse goes towards Christian education and the religious conversion of people that the Samaritan?s Purse is trying to help. Their website states, ?Advancing the Gospel of Jesus Christ is the singular objective of our financial conduct.? The humanitarian efforts made by the Samaritan?s Purse in my opinion amount to nothing more than bribery. In war torn Liberia, the Samaritan?s Purse has stepped in with other aid organizations to provide relief to the impoverished people. ?Samaritan?s Purse is providing hundreds of ?family survival kits??buckets packed with essential items such as cooking utensils, hygiene items, blankets, lanterns, and Bibles.? The fact that the Samaritan?s Purse includes Bibles with their ?family survival kits? proves that they are using their influence as an aid organization to push their religious agenda. This attempted advancement of their religious beliefs through aid work constitutes bribery because they are clouding the individual?s judgment concerning religion when they push religion and aid to people in times of need. The distribution of aid should be restricted to organizations that do so without preaching religious messages because distributing aid with religious messages is using that aid as bribery to further a religious agenda.
In turning to the rebuttal concerning the actions of the Good News Club, the distribution of candy and treats for attendance and participation in the Good News Club?s meetings is on a much different moral plane than a teacher giving out candy to her students when they get math problems right. ?Religious beliefs are very personal matters. They depend on a person's inner convictions. They are important because they shape character and influence behavior.? The distribution of candy and treats to students for attendance and participation at the Good News Club?s meetings is in my opinion, an attempt to persuade the children to act contrary to their convictions, or to influence the formation of their initial ones. Since the goal of using bribery in conversion attempts is to persuade people to act contrary to their convictions regarding a particular religion, I consider the tactics used by the Good News Club to be bribery and therefore immoral. Religious people also view the words of their God or Gods as absolute truths. In their opinion, these truths can be taught for they are facts, just as any other mathematical formula. I do not believe that there are such truths concerning religion for their ideas can be neither proven nor invalidated. These ideas of truths vary based on location and religion. The teachings of the Bible as absolute truths in Mecca would cause an uproar, just as the teachings of the Koran as absolute truths in Salt Lake City would.
Concerning the people who seek out religious leaders for conversion, I would not consider it immoral for religious figures to convert people who wish to be changed. If a person walks directly into a synagogue, mosque, temple or church and asks how they can become converted then they are looking for a change in their spiritual lives and I would say that it is perfectly moral to convert these people. My disagreement comes with actively seeking out new members for conversion, both from non believers, and other religions as well. The definition of actively seeking new members that I am using refers to a person preaching on the street about how all gays are going to hell, or another who shows up on your doorstep and immediately starts preaching the ideas of their religious beliefs. In my opinion, actively seeking out new members forces the particular religion in question upon the potential new member and exposes them to at least one of my three main concerns of bribery, coercion or the destruction of culture. Activities such as handing out flyers and pamphlets, a Mormon asking if they could talk to you about your religious beliefs or getting asked if you would like to attend a service by a friend are acceptable and do not count as active recruitment because you have the opportunity to opt out of the activity at any point, or to never take place in it initially. If any potential new members decide to participate in these few examples, they are then doing so out of their own free will and they will not be subjected to any of the three concerns that I have listed. Since these people are demonstrating an interest in change in their spiritual lives, the conversion would be moral. However, actively seeking out of people for conversion will always expose them to at least one of my three main arguments, making their actions immoral. Therefore, the only acceptable form of conversion is of people who are looking for a change in their spiritual lives.
Religion or the lack thereof, is important because it shapes character and influences behavior. It is an important part of what makes an individual unique. Influencing religion through bribery, coercion or the destruction of culture forcibly changes a part of the individual and undermines their free will. Using these methods to influence religion is immoral. This is why using bribery, coercion or the destruction of culture to influence or change an individual?s religion is immoral because it changes part of an individual and undermines their free will.
Latest version posted 12/8
History has recorded terrible atrocities committed in the name of religion, as well as religious differences and conversion attempts. Bribery, coercion and the destruction of culture are just a few of the consequences that are the result of religious conversion attempts. Any conversion attempts that use bribery, coercion or destroy culture are immoral. Therefore religious conversion attempts that use these methods are immoral and should not be practiced.
In the context of this essay, I will be setting aside the debate if bribery, coercion or the destruction of culture is inherently wrong. Instead I will focus on why it is wrong to use these methods to try and influence the change of religious beliefs. I am also assuming in this essay, that these three concerns are never used for the cessation of any physical harm. Examples of physical harm would include slavery, cannibalism, or drug abuse. Bribery in relation to religious conversion is immoral because it clouds the individual?s judgment and persuades them to act contrary to their convictions regarding the decisions to be made about religion. Coercion used in religious conversion attempts is immoral because the people being coerced through either physical, moral, or mental means are not changing their religious beliefs based on their own free will. In the context of this essay, culture refers to the literature, artwork, songs, music, language, oral traditions and customs of the indigenous peoples. The destruction of these items is immoral because it erases hundreds of years of uninterrupted cultural development. Some of the aforementioned arguments may apply to attempts at changing values, but I will focus on these arguments in relation to religious conversion in this essay.
Religious conversion attempts use bribery to get their point across
Missionaries and other religious figures prey on impoverished people in their time of need. Since these people are vulnerable, these religious figures often swoop in and disperse money but only after the victims agree to get converted. In witnessing a missionary descend on a village in India, Mahatma Gandhi remarked, ?Only the other day a missionary descended on a famine area with money in his pocket, distributed it among the famine stricken, converted them to his fold, took charge of their temple and demolished it. This is outrageous.? The question that should be asked is: Are these people really converting because they believe that a new religion will change their current misfortunes in life, or are they converting because a missionary visited their town and handed out a bunch of money to anyone willing to convert?
The bribery isn?t limited only to people in need, it is also applied to people who cannot rationally make a decision about their faith. There is a group called the Good News Club run by the Child Evangelism Fellowship, an evangelical organization who goes into schools and targets children between the age of 4 and 12 in order to ?persuade small children to be born again.? The tactics used to attract children to attend the meetings and bring friends along play directly into the wants and desires of children. ?To sustain interest in the club, leaders use every imaginable child enticement: colorful Jesus dolls, cheery songs and mountains of sugar. The Pleasant Gap school session starts with a round of cookies?. Children get $1 in fake money for coming and $2 for bringing a friend. Every few months they can redeem the ?money? for ? guess what ? more candy.?
Young students can become confused and not recognize that the messages and viewpoints of these meetings are not condoned by the school. ?Ashley, a Pleasant Gap fifth-grader who has attended Good News Clubs for four years, does not appear to realize that the club's warnings about damnation are not made by her public school. She says the club is led by "my teachers and members of my church." And in her case, as with some other clubs, she is not entirely wrong--one of the club leaders is also a full-time teacher's aide.? Since the lines are blurred between what the club and school says, students have the potential to ostracize and cause conflicts with their classmates who either have different opinions, or who don?t attend the after school meetings.
Most of the children who attend these meetings have obtained permission from their parents. This still leaves a number of students whose parents are unaware that they are attending such meetings. Even for the children who are allowed to go, the conversion attempts are still immoral because the children are being enticed to attend with candy, cookies, pizza and toys. The children are also so young that they cannot rationally make a decision concerning their faith. Rosalie Potter, head of evangelism and church development at the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) was quoted as saying, ?It would be hard to expect a child of four or five to have a conversion experience with integrity.? An ominous sign of these meetings is that children associate religion with the treats and junk food that they receive at meetings. When a father forbade his son Kenny from attending any more of these meetings, Kenny responded, ?Why do we have to be Jewish? All the other kids get pizza and toys.? The above examples illustrate how bribery is used to persuade people to act contrary to their convictions regarding religious ideas.
Religious figures coerce their intended converts to get them to switch religions
History has been a witness to some of the terrible atrocities committed in the name of religion. The Spanish Inquisition lasted in Spain from 1478 until 1834. The first targets of religious conversion also known as Heretics, were the Jews, followed by the Muslims and Protestants. To properly influence the accused, the Catholic Church used various techniques.
Any accused heretic could be thrown into prison without a trial where he or she was left to languish at the whim of the Church. ?Or again, a prisoner who refused to confess his heresies would be left in solitude and darkness for weeks, months or even years?.. There are many cases where three, five or even ten years elapsed between the first hearing and the final conviction of a prisoner, during all of which time the accused rotted in his dungeon; and even greater periods are reported.?
Languishing in their cells was not the only sort of treatment that heretics received. Terrible physical torture was done to these poor victims as well. One item of torture was known as the pear, a small metal pear shaped object that expanded in the body cavity of a victim. ?They are forced into the mouth, rectum or vagina of the victim and there expanded by force of the screw to the maximum aperture of their segments. The inside of the cavity in question is irremediably mutilated, nearly always fatally so. The pointed prongs at the end of the segments serve better to rip into the throat, the intestines or the cervix.?
The rack was also popular and one of the most famous items for torture. Victims were laid down on a board and had their hands and feet bound by rope. At the turn of a wheel, the victims were slowly stretched out. The agony could last for days, as the victims were often left alive to increase their suffering. Over time, the victim?s body would become more elongated as a result of every joint in the body becoming dislocated. These two methods of physical torture only touch the tip of the iceberg. Whipping, mutilation of limbs, burning at the stake, and being hung in iron cages until death were some of the other methods used. These terrible acts were committed because of differences in religion, and in the case of Protestants, the wrong sect of a particular religion.
A common form of religious coercion today is practiced by fanatical Muslims. They wage a Jihad or holy war upon the people they view as non-believers of Islam. These attacks are demonstrated not only by bus bombings in Israel, or the September 11th attacks in the United States, but also against other Muslims who they believe aren?t strong enough believers of Islam. The past couple of months in Iraq have seen several different high ranking Muslim Clerics killed in various bombings as the different Muslim sects fight one another. In Iran, morality squads patrol the streets to make sure that women are dressed within the dress codes according to Islam. Punishment for showing too much skin or wearing makeup is punishable by 76 lashes, a monetary fine, or up to a year in jail. These examples illustrate how religious figures coerce individuals or groups through pain or the implication of punishment in order to subvert their free will concerning their religious choices.
Religious figures destroy culture when they convert people
When Spanish missionary Fray Diego de Landa arrived in Mexico to convert the Mayan Indians, he denounced their works of literature as works of the devil and burned almost everything. Only three original Mayan pieces of literature survived. ?Tonight, eight centuries of Mayan literature turn to ashes. On these long sheets of bark paper, signs and images spoke: They told of work done and days spent, of the dreams and the wars of a people born before Christ. With hog-bristle brushes, the knowers of things had painted these illuminated, illuminating books so that the grandchildren's grandchildren should not be blind, should know how to see themselves and see the history of their folk, so they should know the movements of the stars, the frequency of eclipses and the prophecies of the gods and so they could call for rains and good corn harvests.?
The destruction of culture is not limited to purely physical items. In the early 1930s, Australians started prospecting for gold in New Guinea. With the prospectors came missionaries who were eager to enlighten the native population about the glory of God. Before the missionaries arrived, the natives would celebrate and rejoice over the acquisition of a single pearl shell. Since the natives found these shells so valuable, the missionaries imported them to help pay for items with the natives. Problems arose when the missionaries imported shells by hundreds of thousands. ?The steady influx of shells brought about a gradual devaluation, but basically there was no upper limit to the demand.? This increased demand lead to native women turning to prostitution and husbands selling their wives for more shells. Prior to the arrival of missionaries, this sort of behavior had never occurred.
The goal of missionaries was to convert as many people as possible. To accomplish this goal, they focused on traveling and preaching to a wide array of people. Religious scriptures were also an important tool in converting people. The problem with relying on religious scriptures is that most natives and other indigenous peoples cannot read; much less speak the language in which the scriptures were preached. A Spanish missionary would naturally teach the natives Spanish, or a French missionary would teach the natives French. These teachings lead to the suppression of the native language. Indigenous peoples were forced to learn a new language while being reprimanded for speaking in their native tongues. As encouragement or better perhaps as an effective tool to mandate the change, old manuscripts and records were burned so that the older language was erased. On Easter Island, missionaries destroyed the wooden Rongo Rongo tablets inscribed with the native language when they arrived. As a result, so few tablets survived that the language of Easter Island will never be deciphered. Examples such as these are why missionaries are often viewed as cultural imperialists for their constant attempts at religious expansion. ?If there were a single group most commonly held to exemplify the operation of cultural imperialism in modern history, it would have to be Christian missionaries.? These acts of cultural destruction are evidence to how religious figures destroy culture to further their religious motives.
Objections to My Arguments
Missionaries and religious organizations have done some outstanding work in improving the lives of people around the world. One of the most famous missionaries was Albert Schweitzer. He was a well-known humanitarian during the early part of the twentieth century in Africa. Despite being briefly interned in a prison camp in France, Albert Schweitzer was able to set up several hospitals in Africa where he treated thousands of Africans for leprosy and other diseases. For his efforts toward improving lives, he was awarded the Nobel Peace prize in 1952. There are also several aid organizations such as the Samaritan?s Purse that establish programs in impoverished countries to help improve the quality of life. They are a highly successful organization where 90.5 percent of all money taken in goes to the different programs that the organization runs in over 100 countries worldwide. Some of the programs that the Samaritan?s Purse supports include: emergency relief, community development, medical assistance and AIDS programs.
The tactics used by the Good News Club are often quite common in teaching with young children. Giving out rewards for participation or good behavior is commonplace in teaching. Most teachers (73%) used candy as a student incentive/reward, and more than one-third (34%) used candy at least two or three times a month. Other commonly used items included cookies/doughnuts (37%), sweetened drinks (35%), and pizza (28%). The only difference is that since classroom attendance is mandatory, teachers don?t give out incentives for attending class the way that the Good New Club gives out candy and treats for attending their meetings.
Another important group to consider is people who wish to have a change in their spiritual lives. Could these people then go and see a minister, rabbi, or cleric? Would it be then immoral for their religion to be changed?
Response to the objections to my argument
There are several other non faith based world charities that provide assistance for the needy. UNICEF is an international organization that also focuses on nutrition, education, immunization and childhood development. It currently has locations in over 161 countries worldwide; that is 60 percent more countries than the Samaritan?s Purse has a presence in. UNICEF is also efficient with 89 percent of all donations going toward the children and families that need it the most. An important difference between UNICEF and the Samaritan?s Purse is that almost five percent of the total program money used by the Samaritan?s Purse goes towards Christian education and the religious conversion of people that the Samaritan?s Purse is trying to help. Their website states, ?Advancing the Gospel of Jesus Christ is the singular objective of our financial conduct.? The humanitarian efforts made by the Samaritan?s Purse in my opinion amount to nothing more than bribery. In war torn Liberia, the Samaritan?s Purse has stepped in with other aid organizations to provide relief to the impoverished people. ?Samaritan?s Purse is providing hundreds of ?family survival kits??buckets packed with essential items such as cooking utensils, hygiene items, blankets, lanterns, and Bibles.? The fact that the Samaritan?s Purse includes Bibles with their ?family survival kits? proves that they are using their influence as an aid organization to push their religious agenda. This attempted advancement of their religious beliefs through aid work constitutes bribery because they are clouding the individual?s judgment concerning religion when they push religion and aid to people in times of need. The distribution of aid should be restricted to organizations that do so without preaching religious messages because distributing aid with religious messages is using that aid as bribery to further a religious agenda.
In turning to the rebuttal concerning the actions of the Good News Club, the distribution of candy and treats for attendance and participation in the Good News Club?s meetings is on a much different moral plane than a teacher giving out candy to her students when they get math problems right. ?Religious beliefs are very personal matters. They depend on a person's inner convictions. They are important because they shape character and influence behavior.? The distribution of candy and treats to students for attendance and participation at the Good News Club?s meetings is in my opinion, an attempt to persuade the children to act contrary to their convictions, or to influence the formation of their initial ones. Since the goal of using bribery in conversion attempts is to persuade people to act contrary to their convictions regarding a particular religion, I consider the tactics used by the Good News Club to be bribery and therefore immoral. Religious people also view the words of their God or Gods as absolute truths. In their opinion, these truths can be taught for they are facts, just as any other mathematical formula. I do not believe that there are such truths concerning religion for their ideas can be neither proven nor invalidated. These ideas of truths vary based on location and religion. The teachings of the Bible as absolute truths in Mecca would cause an uproar, just as the teachings of the Koran as absolute truths in Salt Lake City would.
Concerning the people who seek out religious leaders for conversion, I would not consider it immoral for religious figures to convert people who wish to be changed. If a person walks directly into a synagogue, mosque, temple or church and asks how they can become converted then they are looking for a change in their spiritual lives and I would say that it is perfectly moral to convert these people. My disagreement comes with actively seeking out new members for conversion, both from non believers, and other religions as well. The definition of actively seeking new members that I am using refers to a person preaching on the street about how all gays are going to hell, or another who shows up on your doorstep and immediately starts preaching the ideas of their religious beliefs. In my opinion, actively seeking out new members forces the particular religion in question upon the potential new member and exposes them to at least one of my three main concerns of bribery, coercion or the destruction of culture. Activities such as handing out flyers and pamphlets, a Mormon asking if they could talk to you about your religious beliefs or getting asked if you would like to attend a service by a friend are acceptable and do not count as active recruitment because you have the opportunity to opt out of the activity at any point, or to never take place in it initially. If any potential new members decide to participate in these few examples, they are then doing so out of their own free will and they will not be subjected to any of the three concerns that I have listed. Since these people are demonstrating an interest in change in their spiritual lives, the conversion would be moral. However, actively seeking out of people for conversion will always expose them to at least one of my three main arguments, making their actions immoral. Therefore, the only acceptable form of conversion is of people who are looking for a change in their spiritual lives.
Religion or the lack thereof, is important because it shapes character and influences behavior. It is an important part of what makes an individual unique. Influencing religion through bribery, coercion or the destruction of culture forcibly changes a part of the individual and undermines their free will. Using these methods to influence religion is immoral. This is why using bribery, coercion or the destruction of culture to influence or change an individual?s religion is immoral because it changes part of an individual and undermines their free will.
