Motomynd: Is there a case for religion? Unfortunately yes

[Without prior discussion and before I heard from Ken Marks on the subject, Motomynd submitted the first draft of his own answer whether there's a case for religion.]

Moristotle, in a comment on your article "A Declaration of Animal Rights," you quoted Genesis 1:26 and reported that the King James Bible’s translation and a number of parallel translations all expressed the sense that mankind was to have dominion over the rest of creation. I wonder whether the Hebrew word rada, which is apparently at the core of the original "dominion" concept, was mistranslated by all of them.
In the traditionally accepted translation—and conveniently the most useful to humankind–rada does mean to have dominion or power over all. In modern research there is apparently considerable question as to whether rada was supposed to imply power over or at the heart of.
    Not being a trained translator of Hebrew, I can't argue it one way or the other, but I know which translation feels like it makes the most sense. Those with power, adults for example, are supposed to look after those without power, children for example. That much is generally accepted: rampant child abuse, international trafficking of children for sex and alleged pedophilia cover-ups in the Catholic Church and at Penn State non-withstanding. And it has long been the way of many cultures to believe that since they have power they should look after victims in other countries who don’t have power: France helping a fledgling North American democracy win its freedom from England, for example. That way of thinking begat the United Nations, after all, and inspires the United States to spend as much on military might as the rest of the world combined.

So are we to believe that humanity has this duty to look after those who can’t help themselves, yet be supposed to brutally utilize animals, who are the most innocent and absolutely least able to help themselves? And are we to believe this because someone, somewhere, sometime, was allegedly inspired by some mythical being to have a thought, and that thought was at some future time allegedly to be perfectly translated to stone or paper or a slab of wood, then to be retranslated perfectly every time a village was destroyed or a culture was lost for a few hundred years?
    What if the person chiseling in the rock was left handed? What if the person doing the translating was dyslexic? Maybe dog really is our co-pilot, instead of just a family pet or a menu item in too many restaurants around the world.
    Some people love to accept long-held dogma on faith, but if you actually stop and think about it, how does it feel?

When we try to bring factual, accurate translation to ancient religious texts,  are we arguing a point as inconsequential as why don't light sabers cut each other in half in Star Wars battle scenes since they slice and dice everything else? What point is there in conducting a factual investigation of a possible mistranslation of some nearly prehistoric word that may be based in fantasy with as much scientific and historic proof as the tales of King Arthur or the legend of Bigfoot?
    If the world suffers a disaster and the only remnants of our time that survive are a VHS player and a Beta version of Star Wars…or Cinderella…think of the mistranslation that could create. Eons from now people could be choosing between the worship of Darth and Luke, or between fairy tale princess and wicked witch. It could be the horrors of "The Inquisition" all over again. Or Disneyworld in August. Either way it will be really bad news.

Take accurate records out of the equation and the facts can quickly get murky. Even with reams of newspaper and magazine print and thousands of hours of broadcast footage clearly stating that no one in Iraq had anything to do with 9/11, ten years later something like 30% of Americans still believe Saddam Hussein was involved in it. Can you even begin to imagine how twisted that tale could be after several thousand years if no one ever wrote it down?
    So, to answer the question you posed at the end of the cited comment: Is there a case for religion? Even for a street-level practical thinker such as myself, yes, there is a strong case for religion. Religion must exist so that people of power can shape it to their benefit and use it to help justify and achieve their goals, and so that people of little or no power can use it to rationalize their own way of living rather than making the effort to live better. Without religion how do people stomach the daily mini-atrocities they commit? Can you imagine the chaos if people actually had to take an honest look in the mirror and hold themselves accountable instead of being able to pass the buck on to some mysterious something?

In 1971, Ian Anderson, of the music group Jethro Tull, summed it up nicely in these three paragraphs of album notes preceding the lyrics to the song "Aqualung":

In the beginning Man created God; and in the image of Man created he him.
And Man gave unto God a multitude of names, that he might be Lord of all the earth when it was suited to Man.
And on the seven millionth day Man rested and did lean heavily on his God and saw that it was good.

    Do these paragraphs have the backing of any great religious thinker? No. Were they intended for any reason other than figuratively poking a stick in the eye of establishment thinking? Probably not. Did Ian Anderson himself even take them seriously? Maybe not. Do they have at least have more chance of being documented accurately than what some person or some mythical being allegedly said, or allegedly inspired some person to think thousands of years ago? Absolutely.

With a different roll of the dice our feature holiday meal might be the only fresh grasshopper we have found the past two days. Some believe that with another roll of the dice we could be the turkey on the table rather than the person sitting at the table with gleaming carving knife in hand. Yes, there is a case for religion, but less dogma and much more strong, logical and independent thought offers far greater hope for the future of humanity, animals and the world.