BYSTANDERS ARE RIFE IN RELIGION AND THEY JUST LET THEIR FAITH WREAK HARM

When you are in a group and you are all attacking others you feel less bad for you feel it is not just you. In that sense it is not all you.  In other way it is.  If all that is stopping you is a feeling that you deal with by trying to diffuse responsibility you are inwardly as bad as if you were doing it alone.  You are hurting others in the name of cowardice.

 You are to blame for what your religion does.  Sadly we do need politics but we do not need organised religion so the issue is more serious when it is religion doing harm.

Blame is not incurred just by refusing to try to do something about the bad actions.  Failing to disavow them strongly and consistently is another and deeper way to become partly to blame.  The partly is a serious thing.  It is because of the partly that some get the strength to go out and wreak religious terror on others.  Partly in no wise minimises anything.  Religionists won't walk out of services or protest or tell off the leaders enough.  That is where the problem lies.

Religion gives a cover of virtue to standing by and turning deaf ears to the pain of the victimised.

The bystander effect is interesting. People will not help a person even who has been stabbed if there are some other people around.

The bystander effect can come about a number of ways:

+ The rank and respect you have for the other who will not react – you look up to them thus you are influenced by what they do

+ The number of the bystanders which must be at least two – you feel it is not much about you when you are not the only one who will not get involved: diffusion of responsibility 

+ Anything that makes you see the victim as not being a proper member of society – eg an unborn baby or outcast

+ The feeling that most other people would not help either

+ The feeling that good will come from the harm you witness - faith

We can see how having a sense of God’s presence can lead to you feeling not responsible or not very responsible. Indeed it should lead which is why the doctrine is intrinsically bad. And more so when religion sees evil more in terms of lawbreaking than in terms of a person being hurt. The slate cannot be wiped clean though religion lies that it can.

If you feel responsible at the time, faith can soothe that and have you telling yourself: “It is in the past and I am no longer to blame for I cannot go back and fix it.” And you can tell yourself, “And why would I worry when it was not just me?”

With the bystander effect it takes one person to help before anybody else will do it. The reason is that we don't feel very responsible for what happens to the victim if other people are around. We feel that responsibility is shared among us all. That is cognitive dissonance at work.

One person among many who does not help is no more or less responsible than if he were on his own. If you do not help, you are the cause of that person's suffering as much as you would be if you were the only person there. The presence of others is not even relevant. Your responsibility is not reduced by other people being around. You are all individuals who can act. Our failure to recognise this is the number one reason why dangerous political parties and religion thrive so well. The members stay in them instead of looking for something better. That makes them complicit in the risk of harm and the harm done. Unless they are doing a lot to challenge the evil and the problems, they are complicit.

There is enough to promote the bystander effect without religion. To be in a religion is to help others to embrace the lack of responsibility that shared responsibility offers and it is to pave the way for their victims to suffer.
 
We all have the delusion that bad things happen to others and not us. Feeling that God protects you and that the religion blesses you makes it worse. Believers even imagine that the Hell of eternal torment is for other people and not them. Even those who do terrible things feel like that. They may live in sin with somebody's wife or husband and think that it is other people who commit this sin that have to worry about Hell not them. What is wrong with that? It means they think others should go there and they should not. Not nice!
 
Religion makes us feel less responsible if a baby dies because we preferred to spend the money that might have saved her or him. We will feel that way if our family and friends worry as little about the baby as we do. But we will be worse if our family and friends are part of a religion that we consider good.

Faith, religion, spirituality all lead to systems and behaviours that try to rationalise a supposed power that knows what it is doing letting bad things happen to innocents.  Walk.  And walk now.