Religious ritual converts secular values into sacred ones that harden conflict

Evidence

This charge wasn’t simply, or even primarily, about religion. As John Esposito explains, “For the Pope, the call to the defense of the faith and Jerusalem provided an ideal opportunity to gain recognition for papal authority and its role in legitimating temporal rulers, and to reunite the Eastern (Greek) and Western (Latin) churches.” Religion became the screen behind which social and economic conflicts were played out. To be sure, it was not just Muslims who were killed by the crusaders: systematic pogroms were carried out against Jews in Europe, and Christians in the Byzantine Empire were also mercilessly slaughtered. — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 61 (#exemplifies, via linked claim)

Humans define the groups to which they belong in abstract terms. Often they strive for lasting intellectual and emotional bonding with anonymous others, and make their greatest exertions in killing and dying not to preserve their own lives or to defend their families and friends, but for the sake of an idea – the transcendent moral conception they form of themselves, of “who we are” (Bowles & Polanía-Reyes 2012). This is “the privilege of absurdity; to which no living creature is subject, but man only” of which Hobbes wrote in Leviathan (Hobbes 1651/1982, Pt. 1, Ch. 5). In The Descent of Man, Darwin cast it as the virtue of “morality … the spirit of patriotism, fidelity, obedience, courage, and sympathy” (Darwin 1871, p. 66) with which winning groups are better endowed in history’s spiraling competition for survival and dominance. Across cultures, primary group identity is bounded by sacred values, often in the form of religious beliefs or transcendental ideologies, which lead some groups to triumph over others because of non-rational commitment from at least some of its members to actions that drive success independent, or all out of proportion, from expected rational outcomes (Atran & Ginges 2012). — Nicolas Baumard, A mutualistic approach to morality, 264 (#expands, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Reducing sacred values to material ones worsens conflict; Sacred values’ interpretive ambiguity allows peace-oriented reframing; Religion can override political rights and material gains when believers hold it inviolable (+15 more)

Related

• Religion bundles separable traits whose conflict roles must be disaggregated (similarity 0.81)
• Ritual participation plus perceived threat converts disputed preferences into sacred values. (similarity 0.81)
• The Crusades used religion to mask social and economic conflicts (similarity 0.80)
• Sacred values’ interpretive ambiguity allows peace-oriented reframing (similarity 0.79)
• Sacred values bind group identity and give groups advantage through non-rational commitment. (similarity 0.79)
• Sacred values resist material incentives and are best countered only by rival sacred values. (similarity 0.79)
• Sacred values and resource scarcity create an irreconcilable tension in social life. (similarity 0.78)

Broader Connections

• Reducing sacred values to material ones worsens conflict #expands (0.85)
• Sacred values’ interpretive ambiguity allows peace-oriented reframing #complicates (0.80)
• Religion can override political rights and material gains when believers hold it inviolable #corroborates (0.80)
• Sacred values bind group identity and give groups advantage through non-rational commitment. #expands (0.80) — Nicolas Baumard, A mutualistic approach to morality, 264
• The Crusades used religion to mask social and economic conflicts #exemplifies (0.80) — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 61