The Psychology of Religion, Chapter 24: Behavioural Restrictions

In some cases, religious groups prescribe particular foods, particular styles of dress, and particular behavioural expectations that are only loosely related to a moral issue—if they are related at all. Sometimes these practices can be understood as ordinary cultural variations with obscure origins. But often there is a sense that the rules are rigid and imperative, such that veering away from them is treated as an offence—either against the religious community or family, or against God. At times these restrictions make it difficult to live freely or comfortably in modern society.

One major function of these rules, in practice, is their signalling value: they remind others (and even oneself) of group affiliation and loyalty. This is comparable to other mechanisms groups use to bolster cohesion. When there are visible styles of appearance and behaviour that clearly mark membership, it becomes easier to find fellow members—and easier to be suspicious of outsiders. Over time, people can become fond of these behavioural symbols. They can evoke powerful feelings associated with the religion, and can function like wearing a ring with special significance every day and night for years, beginning in childhood. People may then feel uneasy or even guilty without it, and feel relief when they encounter others wearing the same symbol.

But if the “ring,” so to speak, becomes massive and cumbersome—if it begins to hinder ordinary life—then what once felt meaningful can become a kind of burden. (It starts to resemble the peacock’s tail: a costly display that signals loyalty, but at a real practical price.)

We see similar dynamics in modern culture in many settings—uniforms, subcultures, and corporate branding. Often these are harmless variations. The darker side appears when people do not wish to participate, when the rules become tools of control, or when symbols are used to suppress ordinary human behaviour—and when the person faces rejection or punishment from peers for noncompliance.

A related dark side of religious dogma is doctrine-based condemnation or discrimination against people whose lifestyles are not endorsed by the group. Often, at root, this is an ordinary human tendency—present in many non-religious settings as well—to exclude or denigrate people who are different, even when they are not harming anyone. But the best of religious texts call people to rise above this: to be inclusive, non-judgmental, and unfailingly loving toward everyone, not only toward those who share the same beliefs or lifestyle. There are various Biblical stories, for example, of reaching out in a loving, accepting way to members of groups that were widely vilified in their own time.

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The Psychology of Religion, Chapter 23: Eschatology

Many religions have a view of the “end times”—what happens after death, and, in some traditions, how history itself will end. This is called eschatology. In some communities there is an almost excited anticipation of the world’s ending, paired with the idea of a glorious ascent of the worthy up to heaven (there’s that spatial metaphor again, taken quite literally by many, as though heaven must be “upwards”). Of course, those with this view usually assume they will be among the worthy. In turn, some people cultivate a kind of passive resignation about trying to improve the world’s problems: they say these are the “end times,” so why bother. And to some degree this kind of thinking can shape how people relate to society and politics—sometimes pulling them away from the work of changing the world.

I realize, of course, that eschatology doesn’t always produce passivity; in some forms it can motivate people toward reform or activism. But when apocalyptic belief becomes an excuse for disengagement—or an indulgence in catastrophe—it becomes a bleak and cynical example of what happens when dogma is taken literally. At its darkest, it can spill into extreme behavior, such as the Heaven’s Gate mass suicide in 1997. Even if the world were ending, it seems profoundly dishonourable to adopt passive resignation—let alone a smile of anticipation—about helpful action. It would be like watching a burning building with no attempt to help the people trapped inside, quietly nodding to yourself that heaven is getting closer.

I think most of us would agree that the most noble and beautiful actions humans are capable of are helpful and altruistic: working to improve a situation even when it is bleak or seemingly hopeless. A truly noble person would not be motivated by thoughts of a glorious heavenly reward upon death; they would be motivated to do good because of the intrinsic goodness of the action itself.

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The Psychology of Religion, Chapter 22: Heaven and Hell

Many religions have concepts of Heaven and Hell: Heaven an eternal state of perfect happiness, and Hell an eternal state of punishment. Religious doctrines often advise that people live appropriately during their lifetime on earth, and after they die they will be judged and sent to one place or the other. In some doctrines, the criteria are not even that you live a good life (for example, to be kind, to not hurt others, to contribute to society, to make the world a better place, etc.) but rather whether you profess belief in a very particular way. Thus, one could be the kindest, most helpful person in human history, but still go to hell if the appropriate beliefs are not endorsed. Or one could commit the worst atrocities in history, and just be an all‑round hurtful person, yet go to heaven afterwards if the appropriate beliefs are endorsed.

This concept functions as a powerful engine of group affiliation using a combination of threat and reward. It is like a company offering permanent safety and support if you sign a lifetime membership, agree to promote the brand, and guarantee not to deal with competing companies. But the same company would also threaten to ruin you permanently if you broke the deal. There would be frightening rules in the contract, such that the act of challenging company policy would be branded with words like “heresy” or “apostasy,” discouraging anyone from questioning the status quo.

Such a system is in contradiction to the spirit of fairness, grace, and justice—the striving toward mature morality—present in religious doctrines at their best. An infinite punishment for a finite set of crimes does not make sense. And the idea of punishing someone not for a crime, but for having an idea, belief, or thought that does not conform to a prescribed norm, is contrary to most people’s concept of a healthy society, and contrary to the “bill of rights” ideals that many of us—religious or not—value highly.

In the world, on average, roughly two people die every second—about 7,200 deaths per hour, and on the order of five million per month. Only a fraction of these people follow any one particular religious belief system. Therefore, if one holds a strict doctrine of Hell tied to a strict interpretation of “correct belief,” it would follow that thousands of people every hour—including many who lived gentle, kind, generous lives—would be banished into eternal punitive suffering because they did not endorse the right beliefs.  Conversely, many who behaved cruelly all their lives could receive an infinite reward if they endorsed the correct beliefs at the last moment.  Imagine an all-powerful divine creator, pushing about one person every second--many of them kindly elders who simply didn't happen to endorse the appropriate beliefs--into a flaming inferno. 

If one truly believes this is the fate of countless people, one would be forced into a grim psychological choice: either adopt indifference to unimaginable suffering, adopt a horrific view of how reality works, or devote one’s life to converting as many people as possible so as to save them from hell. It would not make sense to devote one’s life to rescuing people on a smaller scale (being a firefighter, a physician, a therapist, a humanitarian worker), since this would distract from the colossal task of saving people from an infinitely worse fate than any earthly accident, illness, or war could impose. Proselytizing would seem to be the only fully rational altruistic activity. And if you wanted to “save the most people efficiently,” you would focus your efforts on those with shorter life expectancy, since their impending eternal suffering would arrive sooner. If one’s own friend or child strayed from the perceived correct religious involvement, it would be understandable—within this belief system—to view this as the most horrifying contingency imaginable, perhaps even more devastating than losing them to illness, assault, or accident, because the imagined suffering would be permanent.

This is one reason the Heaven-and-Hell framework is so morally destabilizing. It incentivizes fear, coercion, and tribal control, while undermining the best ethical themes that religions also sometimes teach: compassion, humility, grace, and love.

There is a sentiment attributed to Mother Teresa that I find ethically beautiful: that if Hell existed, the truly loving response would not be triumph or indifference, but a willingness to comfort those who suffer there. I think we should all strive towards such transcendence of character.

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The Psychology of Religion, Chapter 21: Historical Atrocities

Humans have engaged in all manner of atrocities, and despite the horrors of the past century, we see repeatedly—across earlier centuries as well—how easily cruelty can be normalized, ritualized, and justified. The human capacity for harm is ancient. What is especially sobering, though, is how often major institutions—including major religions—can make cruelty feel righteous.


Many historical atrocities have occurred under the banner of religion, especially when religious identity fused with conquest, state power, or tribal domination. Charlemagne’s campaigns against the Saxons (772–804 CE), for example, fused military conquest with coerced Christianization; forced conversion was backed by severe legal penalties, and there were episodes of mass killing in the course of suppressing Saxon resistance, most notably the Massacre of Verden in 782, where 4,500 Saxon prisoners were reportedly executed in a single day. 

The Crusades (1095–1291) likewise included mass slaughter justified in explicitly religious terms: the Rhineland massacres of 1096 saw the destruction of Jewish communities in Speyer, Worms, and Mainz by crusader mobs, and the Siege of Jerusalem in 1099 ended with the indiscriminate mass killing of Muslims and Jews within the city walls.

The Thirty Years’ War (1618–1648)—driven in significant part by religious divisions between Protestant and Catholic states in the Holy Roman Empire, became one of the most devastating catastrophes in European history. Ending with the Peace of Westphalia, the conflict resulted in deaths in the millions, decimating up to a third of the population in some German territories, many due to famine and disease rather than battlefield combat, and leaving a legacy of psychological trauma and social ruin. 

The Spanish Inquisition (established in 1478 and lasting until 1834) created a terrifying machinery of coercion and intimidation, with religious motives explicitly invoked; the exact numbers are debated by historians, but the core point is not: it was a system designed to enforce conformity (targeting Jewish conversos and later Protestants) through fear, punishment, and (in many cases) execution.

Colonial movements in more recent centuries often deployed religious language—“civilization,” “salvation,” missionary uplift—as moral cover for economic extraction and domination. The Congo Free State terror under Leopold II (1885–1908) is one of the most infamous examples of colonial exploitation and brutality, resulting in the deaths of millions through forced labor and systemic violence. 

The transatlantic slave trade and slavery (spanning roughly the 16th to the 19th centuries) were likewise justified by many religious leaders and institutions in their own time (often citing the biblical “Curse of Ham” as a theological rationale), even as other religious figures became central to abolitionist movements. The point is not that religion uniquely causes exploitation, but that it has repeatedly been recruited to sanctify it.

The same pattern appears in Canadian history. “Christianization” was one motive—alongside state assimilationist policy—behind the Residential School system (which operated federally from 1883 until the last school closed in 1996). In this system, more than 150,000 Indigenous children passed through church-run, state-funded institutions characterized by coercion, cultural destruction, and extensive abuse, with many children dying and records often incomplete. 

The Spanish conquest of the Americas (beginning in 1492 and intensifying with Cortés's campaign against the Aztecs in 1519) similarly involved catastrophic Indigenous death and cultural devastation. While infectious disease accounted for much of the mortality, religious institutions were at best entangled with the colonial project and at worst active participants in its dehumanization, often reading the Requerimiento—a demand for submission to the Pope and Crown—to uncomprehending Indigenous populations before launching attacks.

Of course, in human history, violence and atrocity have occurred without religion, and secular ideologies have also justified horrors. But it is very clear that religions have not been reliably protective against the worst destructive drives of humanity. Worse, religious certainty has often been deployed to justify abuse, discrimination, and war—to lend the aura of sacred duty to actions that would otherwise look like what they are: cruelty, domination, and theft.

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The Psychology of Religion, Chapter 20: Religious Abuse

Abuse is unfortunately common. It affects every type of community and family. I have seen numerous cases in which religious texts or elements of religious faith were used as tools to abuse innocent children. (To protect privacy, identifying details have been altered, and some examples are composites.)

This includes one of the worst cases of emotional abuse I have seen in my career.

In this case, a teenager with a gentle, intelligent, altruistic personality—living in an affluent household—was subjected to forced “family sessions” late at night. She would be made to sit for hours in her bedroom while various family members recited Bible passages in a formal, prosecutorial tone, directed by a brutal, controlling father. The purpose was not moral guidance; it was humiliation and intimidation.

The teenager was, in fact, actively involved in altruistic leadership at a church. But the family accused her of hypocrisy and of being a “false disciple,” citing passages such as Matthew 7:21–23 and Matthew 23:13–20, and repeatedly telling her, “God has abandoned you,” alongside threats that she would go to hell. 

Then the family would pivot to the Old Testament, including Deuteronomy 21:18–21, which describes a “stubborn and rebellious child” being stoned to death by the community.
Because she was religious herself, this experience was not merely frightening; it was  torturous—permanently traumatizing—especially in combination with the family’s other abuse and neglect.

These episodes were interspersed with the family’s evangelical outreach efforts in the community, “to spread the word.” As is often the case, the parents were seen as pious and respectable by others. Of course, abusive behavior has complex causes, and in the absence of religion these parents might have weaponized something else. But in this family, the abuse worsened as religious involvement intensified. Congregants who were aware of what was happening were horrified, but they did little to intervene beyond offering prayer.

In another example, children of a very religious mother experienced profound daily neglect and emotional abuse for years. Once again, members of the religious community did little to change the situation other than pray. When one of these children later lived in a different environment with the other non-religious parent, her quality of life improved dramatically. She grew into an intelligent, kind, outstanding young woman—though she still carries post-traumatic symptoms from that earlier phase of life.

In another, a family had previously been happy and well-integrated with the extended family, but as they became more involved in extreme fundamentalist religion, their personalities seemed to change. They became dark, angry, and suspicious, eventually estranging themselves from the rest of the family. Threatening posters appeared on their property with scriptural warnings about hell. Attempts to reach out with kindness were met with scolding condemnations about religious differences. A particular low point was an angry, rambling religious rant delivered during the funeral service of a family elder. These changes tracked with the family becoming more insular and more committed to extreme beliefs and practices. To this day, I feel for the children who had to grow up in that environment.

I have seen numerous examples of estrangement: religious parents ostracizing, shaming, or shunning children over lifestyle or belief differences—sometimes with these actions encouraged and applauded by the religious community. In other cases, religious adults shunned their aging parents, depriving them of access to grandchildren, again with some pious explanation. As always, there are contributing factors beyond religiosity—personality traits, trauma histories, rigid family systems—but it is hard to deny that dogmatic belief, combined with community endorsement, can make these problems deeper and more entrenched.

One phrase I have heard from abusive religious parents is: “turn or burn.” I find this a concise epitome of a belief that often lurks in the background: if you don’t follow my belief, you deserve to be tortured forever. It is offered as an “invitation,” but it functions as a threat. It may even be well‑meant in some warped way, yet it violates the moral foundations the religion claims to represent. Surely, if a way of life is divinely inspired, it should be compelling because it is beautiful and ethically coherent—not because it terrifies people into compliance.

It can be clarifying to hear accounts from people who have escaped abusive religious communities. Megan Phelps‑Roper is one example. One of her most useful insights is not a clever argument against dogma, but a relational one: what helped her most was sustained contact with outsiders who treated her with compassion and respect—people who were willing to build a human connection before trying to debate her beliefs.

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