Mix religion with power, and you get one hell of recipe of destruction and oppression. History records this very well that religions become corrupt in the course of time. We saw how Christians went with Spanish Inquisition or Islam with their bloody history of caliph feuds*. Today, we can see religious cacophonies elsewhere in this world: Iran, Yemen, Saudi Arabia (with law giving death penalty to apostates,) Indonesia, Pakistan, Vatican (the alleged pedophilia cases, rejections to condom, church inclusivity via Dominus Iesus, etc.,) Lord’s Resistance Army (theocratic Christian militant army with long list of human rights violations in Sudan, Congo, and Central Africa,) Al-Shabaab (Islamic militant army based in Somalia,) Al-Qaeda, right wing Hindu Bharatiya Janata Party in India (who keeps on oppressing Sikhs and Christians,) Laotian Buddhist government (who keeps on oppressing Christians,) and the lists go on**. What should we do to mitigate these? The answer is to contain religion within private sphere of individuals.
Reshaping Individual Realms of Religion
I am always perplexed with absolutism and fundamentalism, given the claim of religion is circularly self-justifying and there is nothing we can verify of such claim from outside of religion. Thus, with the contradictions of what God and heaven look like, and the way to achieve salvation among religions in this world, one can rationally conclude that there is non-zero probability that we pick the wrong religion. Rather than feeling humble in the presence of God, followers of each religion feel superior to others, thinking that they’re the chosen ones. Fanaticism is fed with theologies based on superstitions, erroneous ideas, unscientific concepts, false expectations, and unethical commands. With the vivacity of converting others into their groups – to the extent of offering various versions of heaven or even threatening with forces – religion has grown into divisive teaching. When one thinks that her religion is absolutely correct and the only way to salvation, using violence seems justifiable. When one thinks that her eternal life in paradise is at stake, anything done to achieve it seems justifiable. Instead of teaching tolerance, religion teaches intolerance. Instead of teaching peaceful co-existence, it teaches dominance, and even annihilation.
There are two kinds of religiosity: one in which someone tries to delve into sublime and intimate spiritual depth, and one that treats it as simple economic calculus of “what will I get if I believe in God and what will I get if I don’t.” This Pascal’s Wager-ish sort of discourse renders most people reluctant to dig deeper into their religious teaching, resulting in widespread reticence and ignorant uni-dimensional perspective of religion. As a rational being, of course we have to seek deeper, to question religion and its conception of morality, and to check the infallibility claim of the holy book. As an ex-apologetic, I’ve seen contradictions and discrepancies in two of the biggest holy books, Bible and Qur’an, and this is the view that I’d like to sound: that no religion is perfect.
Here is the thing, although in my view, religion is self-justifying, paradoxical, and contradictory, doesn’t necessarily mean that we as rational being cannot embrace it. As Kierkegaard also noted, to embrace religion is to do the “leap of faith.” But this “leap of faith” cannot be completely devoid of reason. This “leap of faith” must be justified because somehow the religion that we pick is in accordance with our moral sense and our idea of a good life, and therefore shaping our life experiences. As we are all beings in a dynamic society, changes in this moral sense and idea of good life are to be expected, hence, we must revise our belief system according to these days’ moral conception, although this doesn’t necessarily entail outright falsity of our belief system. Since the moral sense and idea of good life of everyone is different, one must also firmly adhere to the notion that one’s religion is justified to her and her only. To each is their religion, and we must not interfere nor judge them as wrong.
It is by opening our mind to other religions that harmony can exist. Interfaith discussion and peaceful coexistence may not be working if people still think that religion is a “sensitive” issue. It is funny that religious liberals who are interested to go against extremism and for peaceful religious coexistence are persecuted and deemed “infidels” by their fellow religious members. It is therefore very important for us to become spearheads for socially disseminating these non-violent religious views, via social media and conversations with family members or friends.
Re-contextualizing and Testing Religions for Morality
One common thing that has always been cited of religion by its proponents is on its status as inerrant and infallible Words of God and therefore the ultimate source of morality (objective moral value, if I may.) But then it’s a shame if such guidance of morality and peace also condone war (see war on Amalekites on Exodus 17 and war on Jericho on Joshua 6, and also Qur’an Sura Al-Anfal verse 60, At-Taubah verse 29.) Should these verses taken literally, you got recipe for religious discriminations and religion-motivated wars, as what I’ve mentioned in paragraph one. A rational being will always re-contextualize religious tenets with current situations***.
However, re-contextualizing religious tenets need moderation, and moderation generally means having some doubts to the claim of absolute validity and inerrancy of religious credence. One must be open to the questions such as: “What if my belief is wrong? Why are there some foundational questions it cannot answer?” This is why it’s important to sow doubt and to force ourselves into coping faith with reason - apologetic-style. The calling for religious war aforementioned, for instance, can be taken as “spiritual war”, between good and bad. Or you can simply contextualize it into the condition of Middle East during that era, with all the hostility, and thus war can be viewed as preemptive self-defense (which is, perhaps, no longer appropriate these days as now we have ICJ to settle international conflicts.) Or, you can also think that actually, calling for war is something that was reluctantly done by God to ensure the continuity of His people; that God basically regretted it (God CAN indeed regret something, viz. Noah flood.) Or you can simply regard that as proof that some of the religious tenets are no longer relevant these days and must be changed, whatever you may.
Christianity was also actually born by re-contextualization of Jewish teaching. If you read what Jesus said in Gospels, it is actually a critic toward a strict and literal application of Torah. Jesus reconstructed everything that in the end, the compassions and love for other human being is equally important to the love for God. Using this as a pretext, the condemnation of LGBT, for instance, can also be re-contextualized****.
So, the question left, if the Words of God are not absolute objective moral source*****, what is it, then? My simple explanation is that we don’t have such absolute objective moral source, yet we don’t necessarily be a fatalist and moral nihilist. We can simply construct morality using our logical and ethical capacity as humans. I always think that morality is related to the intentions and actions whose purpose is to maximize collective well-being of environment and other conscious creatures. Such conception of morality must stand on several tests. One, the test of rationality: what would I, as an average reasonable person, free from bias and mental defect, and have sufficient IQ and information, think of moral value? This is done to establish boundary for the possibility of radically different moral preferences. One that thinks genocide or rape as something delightful must be declared insane.
Second, the test of justice. Borrowing John Rawls’ concept, morality must allow the collective well-being to be maximized through mutual benefit, or, at least a Pareto optimum condition. Should discrepancies occur (for instance, dichotomy between religious majority and minority,) morality must prevail to give the greatest benefit for the most disadvantaged, for the ongoing of social cooperation. This is the duty of civility for every rational being to make a harmonious society.
The Conception of Liberalist Government
With different point of view of what is construed by each individual as religiously moral, one will ponder on how to ensure the stability and the obedience of citizen towards law in a liberal society. The most desirable method in achieving stability will happen if citizens have overlapping consensus, i.e. supporting the same basic law inasmuch for different reasons, e.g. a reasonable Christian doctrine, a reasonable Islamic doctrine, a reasonable atheistic doctrine are all affirming the law supporting freedom of religion using their own perspective. But this is somehow difficult to achieve as some worldviews are exclusionary and often have conflict with each other, that’s why we must go with secularism.
It’s unreasonable for citizens to impose what they see as whole truth to others. Citizen must be able to justify their political decisions using publicly available values and standards (using Rawls’ term: public reason.) Public reason encompasses all aspects of social cooperation. To name some: freedom of religions; equality of women, racial minority, religious minority, and LGBT; efficiency and equality of economy; preservation of environment and public health, etc. Nonpublic reason only incorporates certain values that are internal to certain organizations, viz. bishops have to commit celibacy, Hajj pilgrim must be done in Mecca and Medina, etc.
Public reason is not taken whenever citizen is doing some mundane activities (such as singing) or activities outside of public sphere (such as praying in place of worship.) Public reason must be taken into inquiry whenever fundamental public/political decision is about to be taken or whenever citizen is engaging in some political activities, viz. when she is sitting in House of Representative. Using this, law banning LGBT marriage will violate this public reason, as not all citizen can be reasonable expected to accept Bible or Qur’an as authoritative set of political values and common standard to evaluate public policy. The usage of public reason, especially concerning different religious precepts, will be made possible when the government embraces liberalism.
The conception of liberalist government is then as follows: after relegating religion strictly into the realm of nonpublic reason and coming up with moral judgements that withstand at least two tests I’ve mentioned above, we develop political theory from the generalities of these moral judgements. This political theory then eventually be revised over time according to dynamic of society and be compared to other theories in terms of reasonability, consistency, coherency, and feasibility in accordance to moral judgements that we’ve developed at the very first time (although our moral judgements can also be revised over time.) This government then must also come with severe legal punishment for the violators of the moral judgements and empowerment for the supporters of peace. As the policy of religion often depends on who is the religious leader in power******, government has to ensure that the grip religion have on the political fabric of society be checked and reduced if necessary. Government must also not endorse having no religions above having religions and vice-versa, or endorse having a certain religion above the others.
Religion as Intuitively Good Thing
Religion, morality, and science have one thing in common: that they are, at very best, based on intuitions and concepts that can’t be reduced nor justified. Mathematical axioms are intuitive (see also Godël incompleteness theorem) and sometimes it is very intuitive to help someone in calamity (what if the person I help turn out to be a criminal?) as human knowledge is limited and it’s impossible to attain perfect information of everything and to justify everything (see Gettier problem and problem of infinite regression.) Intuition can also be wrong. We often have intuitive “physic”, but much of our intuition of physic is wrong – with regards to how matters behave, quantum physics, relativity, etc. We often have intuitive “morality”, but much of it is also wrong – with regards to test of rationality and test of justice. But, just because something is intuitive doesn’t mean that it always wrong, otherwise we are afraid to do anything and believe in anything. Although I have left religion myself, I can still see why it’s intuitively good. In my opinion, religion, at its best, is beautiful. There is always compassion, understanding, love, peace, patience, and harmony inside the core every religion. Unfortunately, I see this beautiful core grows weaker every day.
Post Scriptum:
* For further reading, see book by Farag Foda titled “Al-Haqiqah al Ghaybah.”
** Theists often cite the massacre done by Hitler, Stalin, and Pol Pot to show that atheistic persons can also commit atrocity. First, CMIIW, Hitler, Stalin, and Pol Pot didn’t kill in the name of atheism. Second, even if they did, this is not a contest of “who kills less therefore it is right.” This is a classic “lesser of two evil” logical fallacy, as genocide done either by atheists or theists are equally evil.
*** Also called hermeneutic or takwil, as the counterpart of exegesis or tafsir.
**** On the basis of condemning LGBT using Leviticus (particularly Leviticus 18:6 and 20:13,) I can make an objection that is how Leviticus is mostly irrelevant these days. Practices such as marriage is only valid when the woman is virgin; covering women’s head with veil; prohibition on eating pork, getting round haircuts and shaving beards, tattoo, working on Sabbath, wearing mixed garments, are abandoned by mainstream Christians these days. Why not on LGBT?
***** As an objection to divine command theory, how can we, humans that were made in God’s image (thus retaining God’s characteristic – I assume His conception of morality as well) can think that murder on the basis of differences is immoral, yet somehow God who created us think that it’s okay, even endorses it? I think that problem of evil is solved by Alvin Plantinga’s defense of free will, yet the question of how could an all-loving omnipotent God kills via disasters and famine and didn’t answer to Jews prayer during Holocaust, is still unanswered.
****** When the conservative Ratzinger became pope, many Catholics express their concerns as to his stance may reverse the progress of interfaith discussions that had been earlier forwarded and campaigned by Pope John Paul II. We can also observe various ludicrous laws passed by religious authority such as ayatollah in Iran or those in Arab Saudi. Should the leader be more moderate, we won’t find any of these idiosyncratic laws.
No comments:
Post a Comment