Verified by 
Peace sign with several world religions
Suppose that I wanted to know whether Judaism permits the eating of pork. How would I go about answering this question? Would I look toward my Jewish friends to see whether they eat pork? Many of these individuals do not take kosher laws very seriously and as such I might come to the erroneous conclusion that since the majority of my Jewish friends eat pork, “moderate Judaism” has nothing to do with this food taboo. The correct approach in this case is to examine the relevant religious texts. The answer does not lie with individual Jews who may or may not adhere to the religiously sanctioned food taboo but in the religious edicts that define the practice of Judaism. Anecdotal evidence regarding your friend Solomon Goldstein’s love of pulled pork is utterly immaterial. Judaism forbids the consumption of pork. Jews who eat pork are doing so in violation of their religious teachings.
Reason and science allow us to properly think about the necessary data that are required in order to answer a given question. This is precisely why the scientific method is the most powerful framework for understanding the world. Given a research question or posited hypothesis, one must establish which data to collect and how to analyze it in order to weigh in on the matter. This brings me to a topic that has become part of our collective conscience, namely establishing whether a given religion is peaceful or not. Before we attempt to answer this question, let us examine another specific religion: Jainism. A central defining feature of this faith is the adherence of nonviolence toward living organisms. Practicing Jains who fully abide by this edict will walk with a broom and will sweep the floor prior to taking a step lest they might inadvertently kill a bug. If you know of a Jain who has been convicted of animal cruelty, this would not be indicative of the fact that Jainism permits such evil acts rather the person in question is simply not following the teachings of his faith. Again, a scientific mind allows one to establish the relevant data needed to test a given hypothesis. Jainism preaches nonviolence even though a specific Jain might be violent.
If we wanted to establish the peaceful/violent nature of a religion, there are many sources of data that can be used to address this issue. Here are a few examples: 1) we could examine the historical records since the founding of a given faith to establish the number of individuals that have been slain by its adherents (in the name of their faith). This would allow us for example to establish whether Christianity has yielded greater bloodshed than Jainism; 2) we could delimit a given contemporary time period (e.g., the last 50 years) and tabulate the number of terrorist attacks that have been committed in the name of various faiths (see the University of Maryland's Global Terrorism Database). This would allow us to establish whether there have been a greater number of Christian-inspired anti-abortion attacks than say Jihadi-inspired attacks. The data are there. We simply need to collect them and conduct the proper analyses; 3) we could identify various contemporary terror lists (e.g., the FBI Most Wanted Terrorist List) or governmental lists of terrorist organizations (see the Canadian government's list), and gauge the extent to which various faiths are represented as central elements of the terrorists' raison d'être. This would allow us to conduct the appropriate statistical analyses to answer the question: Do Mormon-inspired terrorists outnumber Judaism-inspired terrorists? No need for sophistry. Let the data speak. There are innumerable other sources of data that one might use to establish a religion’s peaceful/violent credentials but let me identify the most obvious one. If you wish to know the extent to which a religion preaches peace/violence, conduct the appropriate analyses on its religious texts. Social scientists have the precise methodology to answer such a question and it is known as content analysis.
In several of my books (The Evolutionary Bases of Consumption; The Consuming Instinct: What Juicy Burgers, Ferraris, Pornography, and Gift Giving Reveal About Human Nature) and other publications (cf. Saad, 2012 as well as my earlier Psychology Today article on brand mentions in song lyrics), I have shown how cultural products (e.g., song lyrics, literature, movie plotlines) could be content analyzed in order to establish key features of our shared human nature. For example, if you wish to know the attributes that men and women look for in a prospective mate, conduct a content analysis on song lyrics. The lyrical contents of troubadours from a thousand years ago are not that different from those of contemporary rappers. Content analysis is the tool that allows social scientists to quantify in an unbiased manner, the semantic contents of a given document (e.g., a song, religious text, magazine, or movie). How often do the Old and New Testaments preach love and tolerance? How often do they condone acts of violence? When acts of violence are promoted, who are they most likely to be directed at? A content analysis leaves little to chance. To answer these questions does not require one to be an expert in Aramaic, or a Harvard-trained biblical scholar, or one of the twelve apostles of Jesus. Reason and the scientific method are all that is needed.
Let us apply content analysis to an important ongoing debate: Is Islam a religion of peace? Dr. Bill Warner, a former professor of physics, has spent many years studying the contents of the three foundational Islamic sources: the Qur’an, the Hadith, and the Sira. He has applied the tools of content analysis to tabulate statistical figures that speak to this issue. As in any scientific exercise, one could debate specific methodological choices that he might have made. Were the translations that he worked with the definitive ones to use? Which coding scheme did he use in deciding what constitutes a passage of peace or violence, love or hate, plurality or supremacy? I will leave it to the readers to visit his website (Center for the Study of Political Islam), listen to his lectures, and read his books and published analyses, and arrive at their own conclusions. Let us all rely on the illuminating light of the scientific method to guide us through these difficult but necessary discussions. Those who shout the loudest or carry the largest guns should never win de facto these profoundly important debates.
Subscribe to my YouTube channel, like my Facebook page, and follow me on Twitter (@GadSaad).
Source for Image:
