{"id":1439,"date":"2009-01-31T11:03:55","date_gmt":"2009-01-31T19:03:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/secularright.org\/wordpress\/?p=1439"},"modified":"2009-01-31T11:03:55","modified_gmt":"2009-01-31T19:03:55","slug":"spies-like-us","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/spies-like-us\/","title":{"rendered":"Spies Like Us?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Walter, you mention the fact that the spy Robert Hanssen was also a member of Opus Dei, and then go on to comment that \u201cthe oft-mooted prophylactic<\/em> effect of religious enthusiasm against world-league personal misbehavior doesn\u2019t seem to work very well.\u201d<\/p>\n

To draw that conclusion from Hanssen\u2019s betrayal of his country (from what appear to have been a mix of financial and psychological motives) is an\u00a0amusing debating tactic but, I reckon, a bit of a\u00a0stretch. At best one can say that it demonstrates that the prophylactic effect of religious enthusiasm did not work in his <\/em>case, but so what? There are very few\u00a0(if any) religious folk\u00a0who would claim that a belief in\u00a0their creed would always<\/em> be enough to prevent\u00a0its adherents\u00a0from committing a crime, world-league or otherwise. If anything, most religions (the more successful of which are built upon on a shrewd appreciation of human nature) recognize that even the most devout must forever be on guard against the temptations (such as KGB pay-offs) that this world has to offer, a recognition that implicitly and explicitly accepts that there are believers who will indeed stray from, to put it rather biblically, the path of righteousness.\u00a0<\/p>\n

There may be other ways to achieve the same objective, but it would be a mistake, I reckon, to deny that religious faith\u00a0can operate as a brake on personal misbehavior and, indeed,\u00a0often does. Not only that,\u00a0it can be a highly effective device to bring out the best in people (and the worst too, but that’s another topic). If I had to guess, that\u2019s one of the reasons that the\u00a0most widely-followed\u00a0religions have evolved in the way they have, but that too is\u00a0a topic for another time\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Walter, you mention the fact that the spy Robert Hanssen was also a member of Opus Dei, and then go on to comment that \u201cthe oft-mooted prophylactic effect of religious enthusiasm against world-league personal misbehavior doesn\u2019t seem to work very … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":64,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[57],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1439"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/64"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1439"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1439\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1441,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1439\/revisions\/1441"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1439"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1439"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1439"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}