Down the Real Rabbit Hole

It has always seemed to me that the thing to really delve into is the common features of all religions that make religions so dangerous, violent, and murderous. Hence I focus on dogma. Not the particular prescriptions of particular dogmas, but the features of dogma itself. My studies in analytic ethics helped me to understand that prescriptivity or prescriptive language is the one feature *all* religions have (yes, including buddhism), as well as all other ideologies. "Prescription" is, roughly, a term for the command function of language about morality. They look like claims of truth, but make no mistake, they are really commands. I found it immediately interesting (and horrific) that some philosophies (most obvious in deontic logic) want us to assume the legitimacy of normative language in ethical systems. "Shoulds," "oughts," "good," "evil," and a host of other words that have command (or "perlocutionary") force. But, even then, it is still not the particular perlocutionary acts that are interesting to me (although they may certainly be pertinent), but the perlocutionary force (as a control-command) of the language. And hence, it boils down to control and the levels of convolution we are willing to implement to enable control systems - like religion. Religion carries baggage, and even those who divest themselves of the god(s) sometimes still carry the baggage. Included in most carried baggage are retributivism-based moral paradigms (Garden of Eden story), normative prescriptivity, and lethal attitudes towards those not in the fold. Buddhism can also be used in this way because it carries the same of functionally identical content. Hence Myanmar. Dogmas almost invariably prescribe their own survival. What islam does is get in your face with their dogma's expansionistic, world domination oriented elements (including the "war of numbers" mentality that informs them to treat women as breeding machines). People reflexively want to defend themselves from it, and seek the ability to muster strength in their own dogma's survival elements. I'm not saying this justifies using the horrid elements of buddhism to suppress islam in Myanmar, but I am saying this is an inevitable result in the modern day - and it is the result islam wants, because it allows its followers to use its own expansionistic elements most forcefully. Whether we will ever be able to unwind ourselves from the need/desire to control is an open question, but if we are to survive as a species, I suspect we must.