I have always been fascinated, sometimes, piqued, by the man most Latin Americans would consider a "people's man." Indeed, such sobriquet would fit a man who essentially, as CNN would put it, united a nation but divided minds. He was a radical who was actually in power. Changed the Venezuelan Constitution to allow himself to run again, and again. He was also, the "people's dictator." Empowered by the masses to snuff out their own freedoms in exchange for a leader who would champion their needs. And the people of Venezuela got it: Chavez subsidized food, gas and other basic necessities. In addition, he nationalized foreign controlled corporations and limited their power to profit from the Venezuelan consumer. He also send money to various leftist Latin American countries, notably Cuba and Bolivia.
Hugo Chavez was brazen as he was courageous. He called George W. Bush the "devil" in no less than the United Nations. A radical, leftist president without a doubt he was, and his legacy, I believe, will be mixed with the complex panorama that is Latin America. His successor would have to fill his shoes, whether he likes it or not, he will rule under the shadow of a popular president, a popular Latin American head of state, at least for those who espouse a radical, militant political ideology.
So like most dictators, death was his ultimate enemy. Like most dictators, he lived large, he lived high, he lived to enliven, in a good and in a bad way, depending of course on your persuasion, political that is, he was and always will be remembered in that corner of the world as the saviour of the masses. Saved probably from the cycle of poverty, hopelessness and bitterness that is a constant in the developing world.
What will be Chavez's lasting legacy? Honestly, I do not know. For the ideology he espoused was militancy for militancy's sake, radical without being thoughtful, ideological rather than practical. The world is too dynamic for reactionary leaders to plant the seeds of lasting stability. He may have solved for the mean time the pressing concerns of the ordinary man, but did he sow the foundations of a mature, dynamic social order responsive to the percolating enigma of modern life? You decide.
Huwebes, Marso 7, 2013
Miyerkules, Marso 6, 2013
Conversations with a Freethinker
One of my teachers failed to show up for school today, and while waiting for the next class I had a very interesting talk with one of my classmates who I recently learned to be an agnostic. We had a very interesting and educational talk about many things: religion, life, existence, homosexuality, emotions, meaning and death.
Although a BA in Communications graduate, she was more than adept and familiar with many philosophers and thinkers, especially literary geniuses among the likes of Dostoevsky and Goethe. It's always a hundred times more interesting, more enlightening, more exciting and more educational to talk to freethinkers compared to religious believers, probably because freethinkers understand the human situation on an as is basis and not deny or glorify or denigrate the human creature.
In our talk, she encouraged me to create a society or organization or something of that nature in our city as there is currently no organization where freethinkers can congregate and share their ideas, experiences and thoughts on a variety of topics, issues and concerns. Hopefully, come summer, I can have the guts the actually organize the first freethinking group in Tacloban City. That would be a good beginning to a potentially great amalgamation of thinkers in Eastern Visayas.
Gunning for the best this summer!!!
Although a BA in Communications graduate, she was more than adept and familiar with many philosophers and thinkers, especially literary geniuses among the likes of Dostoevsky and Goethe. It's always a hundred times more interesting, more enlightening, more exciting and more educational to talk to freethinkers compared to religious believers, probably because freethinkers understand the human situation on an as is basis and not deny or glorify or denigrate the human creature.
In our talk, she encouraged me to create a society or organization or something of that nature in our city as there is currently no organization where freethinkers can congregate and share their ideas, experiences and thoughts on a variety of topics, issues and concerns. Hopefully, come summer, I can have the guts the actually organize the first freethinking group in Tacloban City. That would be a good beginning to a potentially great amalgamation of thinkers in Eastern Visayas.
Gunning for the best this summer!!!
Martes, Marso 5, 2013
Jurgen Habermas' Ethics of Communicative Action
Jurgen Habermas is one of my favorite contemporary philosophers. I was first introduced to his ideas way back when I was a philosophy student in college. According to wikipedia, Jurgen Habermas is a German sociologist and philosopher who was born on June 18, 1929 in Dusseldorf, Germany. Habermas is known for many notable ideas such as Discourse Theory, Theory of Truth and Knowledge and the Theory of Communicative Action among others.
What attracted me most to Habermas' ideas are his thoughts on Communicative Action, especially as applied to ethics. In communicative action, participants "coordinate their action and pursuit of invididual (or joint) goals on the basis of a shared understanding that the goals are inherently reasonable or merit-worthy." In addition, "communicative action succeeds insofar as the actors freely agree that their goal (or goals) is reasonable, that it merits cooperative behavior." Therefore, "communicative action is thus an inherently consensual form of social coordination in which actors 'mobilize the potential for rationality' given with ordinary language and its telos of rationally motivated agreement."
Habermas' Ethics of Communicative Action (ECA) is therefore a social endeavour, played by the influence of thte populace over social institutions which in turn actualize what is the acceptable or unacceptable standards of conduct. In Habermas' ECA, we find the dynamic and social nature of standards of conduct, the only difference of ECA with religious based ethical standards is that in religious based morality, stability and inflexibility results as it insists on its perpetual applicability and demandability. Cursory check however of religious based morality reveals that it is itself based on the social norms and peculiarities of the culture in which it is based and has in fact in most cases been influenced by the prevailing social norms of the time or in certain cases, as a rejecting reaction against it.
What is therefore the implications of Habermas' ECA in modern life? ECA ensures that social issues, as they become ever more complex, variegated and requires the involvement multiple disciplines, are looked at from and analyzed through multiple lenses of scrutiny. Indeed, modern human life is not as simple as it once was, we can no longer afford to pigeon-hole social problems into cleanly separate bins of categories. Religious based morality therefore has to be slowly relegated to make way for a more open, responsive, democratic, and inclusive meta-framework which will serve as a skeleton as we ponder on the pressing ethical conundrums of modern life.
What attracted me most to Habermas' ideas are his thoughts on Communicative Action, especially as applied to ethics. In communicative action, participants "coordinate their action and pursuit of invididual (or joint) goals on the basis of a shared understanding that the goals are inherently reasonable or merit-worthy." In addition, "communicative action succeeds insofar as the actors freely agree that their goal (or goals) is reasonable, that it merits cooperative behavior." Therefore, "communicative action is thus an inherently consensual form of social coordination in which actors 'mobilize the potential for rationality' given with ordinary language and its telos of rationally motivated agreement."
Habermas' Ethics of Communicative Action (ECA) is therefore a social endeavour, played by the influence of thte populace over social institutions which in turn actualize what is the acceptable or unacceptable standards of conduct. In Habermas' ECA, we find the dynamic and social nature of standards of conduct, the only difference of ECA with religious based ethical standards is that in religious based morality, stability and inflexibility results as it insists on its perpetual applicability and demandability. Cursory check however of religious based morality reveals that it is itself based on the social norms and peculiarities of the culture in which it is based and has in fact in most cases been influenced by the prevailing social norms of the time or in certain cases, as a rejecting reaction against it.
What is therefore the implications of Habermas' ECA in modern life? ECA ensures that social issues, as they become ever more complex, variegated and requires the involvement multiple disciplines, are looked at from and analyzed through multiple lenses of scrutiny. Indeed, modern human life is not as simple as it once was, we can no longer afford to pigeon-hole social problems into cleanly separate bins of categories. Religious based morality therefore has to be slowly relegated to make way for a more open, responsive, democratic, and inclusive meta-framework which will serve as a skeleton as we ponder on the pressing ethical conundrums of modern life.
Lunes, Marso 4, 2013
The Ignorance of an Oligarch: Cynthia Villar and the Filipino Nurse
I have recently come across a horrible, basically reprehensible video posted in Youtube during a question and answer forum involving candidates for senator who will be on the ballot come the May 2013 elections. This one involves, as usual, a main staple of Philippine politics, a classic incarnation of an oligarch who is disconnected, unaware, uncaring, insensitive and essentially removed from the realities of 21st century Philippine social conditions.
When initially asked why the members of a nursing regulatory body resigned en masse for her refusal to close down nursing schools who are essentially milking the Filipino of money for substandard, useless and incompetent instruction, Cynthis Villar gave the answer that in effect essentially meant the errant school's were not closed because money has already been invested in such schools and that money is important more than the good of the Filipino public. On a follow-up question about her seeming preferential bias to the rich (she is indeed very rich, in fact, the richest member of congress!), she in effect, as shown by the picture above, belittled, insulted, degraded and slapped the face of the Filipino nurse, professional's who make-up a significant number of Filipino OFW's. Professionals who, like many Filipinos, have to reluctantly work and toil (and sometimes die) in foreign, most often repressive lands just to live a respectable life for them and their families because politicians like CYNTHIA VILLAR are more concerned about making money, making more money and making even more money for themselves and their business associates, families and relatives at the expense of the suffering, bullied and harassed Filipino populace.
This is an example of how Filipino politicians barely have a reasonable, much less realistic grasp of the realities of Filipino life. The Filipino people should speak with an unequivocal voice, and reject old school politicians so as to usher in a more responsive and grassroots rooted set of political cadre that will truly work for and in the best interest of the Philippines.
REJECT CYNTHIA VILLAR FOR SENATOR!!!!
Linggo, Marso 3, 2013
The Invention of God: Delusions and Psychoses of Religion
In Psychiatry, a delusion is a fixed false belief that is resistant to reason or confrontation with actual fact. Psychoses according to dictionary.com is characterized by a set of symptoms such as delusions or hallucinations.
Religions from the ancient to modern times have always made spectacular claims. These claims vary from the supernatural to the unbelievable to the outright impossible and preposterous. The Abrahamic traditions is most known for making such claims. The Torah, which consist of the first five books of the Christian bible, is replete with claims that are in today's world, plainly untruths passed as absolute facts. If the Torah is to be taken at its plain word, then the god of Abraham is a god who created the world in seven days (why not in an instant if he is that powerful?), who gets angry and jealous (like any normal human being), who sent the flood to wipe out everything that he created in the first place and who commanded a man to stuff all the creatures of the world in a boat 45 feet in height, 450 feet in length, 75 feet in width, made of wood and held 50,000 animals, 2 million insects, 7 people, a 600 year old man and enough provisions for its inhabitants for one year! As unbelievable as it sounds, there are actually people who would take it literally as having actually happened.
Any holy book of any religion is not exempted from such pompous, self-laudatory, fantastically out of this world claims yet none claims such arrogant self-confidence and self-righteousness about its truth than the Abrahamic faiths, most especially the Christian bible and the Islamic Koran. For all its claims of a merciful and just god, such god is also harsh, cruel and even murderous. Take for example the exhortations of god to kill all homosexuals in Leviticus 20:13, the murder, rape and pillage of whole groups of people in Numbers 31:7-18, and actually gives instructions on how to enslave people as described in Leviticus 25:44-46. The Koran is even more graphic, it actually gives instructions on how homosexuals are killed, what to do to disobedient wives among others.
Religions turn otherwise rational, sentient human beings into absolute mindless, obedient, subservient and irrational creatures. It erodes man's sense of humanity in its absolutism and unmitigated cruelty against those who do not conform to its idealized version of the good life.
The systematic slaughter of perceived witches, heretics and simply the different in Christian Europe from the 12th century to the middle part of the 19th century attests to the delusional brutality and psychotic nature of organized religion, especially the Abrahamic traditions. Although Judaism and Christianity have since outgrown their violent and certainly genocidal past, the cudgel has been in modern times been taken by Islamic radicals who envision the forced Islamization of the world.
The lack of dynamic reflection and the active suppression of dialogue in the Islamic world has brought Islam back to its violent, militant and militarist past. As articulated by Ayaan Hirsi Ali, no modern organized religion has implemented a clear goal of establishing its political, social and religious inclinations than Islam. The silence of the vast majority of Muslims, who are against intolerance and violence, been overtaken by the fundamentalist Islamists with their repressive and dictatorial brand of Islam. The delusion is no more clearer than their insistence that their brand of interpretation is the only interpretation. Dissent is violently suppressed, critical thinking is blunted with rote memorization of Koranic verses and infused with the insecure and immature interpretations of a few but nonetheless influential cadre of radical clerics.
Modern society is at a peril from fundamentalism in all religions and in all ideas. Claims of absolutism, be the idea religious or secular, begets violence, engenders fear, provokes wars, births mistrust, stirs animosity and enslaves peoples. When absolutism is claimed by religion, the implications are widened, broadened and deepened because then, any act is possible, all excuses are allowable, no compromise is possible and only its fulfillment is permissible.
Religions from the ancient to modern times have always made spectacular claims. These claims vary from the supernatural to the unbelievable to the outright impossible and preposterous. The Abrahamic traditions is most known for making such claims. The Torah, which consist of the first five books of the Christian bible, is replete with claims that are in today's world, plainly untruths passed as absolute facts. If the Torah is to be taken at its plain word, then the god of Abraham is a god who created the world in seven days (why not in an instant if he is that powerful?), who gets angry and jealous (like any normal human being), who sent the flood to wipe out everything that he created in the first place and who commanded a man to stuff all the creatures of the world in a boat 45 feet in height, 450 feet in length, 75 feet in width, made of wood and held 50,000 animals, 2 million insects, 7 people, a 600 year old man and enough provisions for its inhabitants for one year! As unbelievable as it sounds, there are actually people who would take it literally as having actually happened.
Any holy book of any religion is not exempted from such pompous, self-laudatory, fantastically out of this world claims yet none claims such arrogant self-confidence and self-righteousness about its truth than the Abrahamic faiths, most especially the Christian bible and the Islamic Koran. For all its claims of a merciful and just god, such god is also harsh, cruel and even murderous. Take for example the exhortations of god to kill all homosexuals in Leviticus 20:13, the murder, rape and pillage of whole groups of people in Numbers 31:7-18, and actually gives instructions on how to enslave people as described in Leviticus 25:44-46. The Koran is even more graphic, it actually gives instructions on how homosexuals are killed, what to do to disobedient wives among others.
Religions turn otherwise rational, sentient human beings into absolute mindless, obedient, subservient and irrational creatures. It erodes man's sense of humanity in its absolutism and unmitigated cruelty against those who do not conform to its idealized version of the good life.
The systematic slaughter of perceived witches, heretics and simply the different in Christian Europe from the 12th century to the middle part of the 19th century attests to the delusional brutality and psychotic nature of organized religion, especially the Abrahamic traditions. Although Judaism and Christianity have since outgrown their violent and certainly genocidal past, the cudgel has been in modern times been taken by Islamic radicals who envision the forced Islamization of the world.
The lack of dynamic reflection and the active suppression of dialogue in the Islamic world has brought Islam back to its violent, militant and militarist past. As articulated by Ayaan Hirsi Ali, no modern organized religion has implemented a clear goal of establishing its political, social and religious inclinations than Islam. The silence of the vast majority of Muslims, who are against intolerance and violence, been overtaken by the fundamentalist Islamists with their repressive and dictatorial brand of Islam. The delusion is no more clearer than their insistence that their brand of interpretation is the only interpretation. Dissent is violently suppressed, critical thinking is blunted with rote memorization of Koranic verses and infused with the insecure and immature interpretations of a few but nonetheless influential cadre of radical clerics.
Modern society is at a peril from fundamentalism in all religions and in all ideas. Claims of absolutism, be the idea religious or secular, begets violence, engenders fear, provokes wars, births mistrust, stirs animosity and enslaves peoples. When absolutism is claimed by religion, the implications are widened, broadened and deepened because then, any act is possible, all excuses are allowable, no compromise is possible and only its fulfillment is permissible.
Sabado, Marso 2, 2013
The Invention of God: The Mythology of Suffering
The Abrahamic faiths were born from suffering.
The major theme of the Judeo-Christian tradition is the mythologization of suffering and serves as a gateway to heaven. Indeed, the death of Jesus Christ is a testament to the value given suffering. Candida Moss in her new book The Myth of Persecution: How Early Christians Invented a Story of Martyrdom testifies to this phenomenon. The early Christians made suffering a cornerstone of their faith - to die for Christ. They were so enveloped in that concept that Moss' book shows how they even provoked Roman official's into killing them! Sounds familiar, this is precisely the same reason why during the Intifada young Palestinian men willingly, actually happily blew themselves up apart. To these young men, brainwashed by the machinations of their mullahs as well as the purpose-giving life provided by Hamas and the PLO, dying for Allah means a direct route to heaven and a welcoming committee of no less than 71 virgins. It is also safe to say that these men were as much motivated by the concept of the 71 virgins as meeting god himself, I think even more than god himself. It also shows that these men, more than anything, and despite everything they think they believe, are actually sex starved and sexually repressed.
I was born into Catholicism, and Catholicism is very good at instilling the value of suffering. It actually glorifies suffering in an almost masochistic manner.It's obsession with pain, suffering and guilt is its crowning achievement - it's symbol, the cross, is an unequivocal signpost of Christianity's passionate embrace of pain and suffering.
When I was in college studying for my first degree, philosophy, I went on evening walks for one month with a German SVD professor of mine who gave a few bags of food every night to some really poor people who lived around our school. One night, we visited an old lady in her ramshackle, really nothing more than cardboard boxes for walls, a few used corrugated sheets for a roof and almost nothing else except the clothes on her body. Approaching her "house," which was really more of a toy house in fact, I greeted her and exchanged a few felicitations as is customary in the Philippines. I asked her how is everything and her curt but telling reply was: "I am good, this is what god has given me so I have to accept it." Suffering, again glorified into needless heights in the name of god. This is what religion is, this is what the Abrahamic faiths are good at.
This obsession with suffering, really institutionalized sado-masochism, is sickening and immoral. Karl Marx captured this well when he said that "...religion is the opium of the people." Religion makes suffering ok, to accept it with joy and surrender even. The Islamic faith actually induces its adherents to die if need be, to die to defend Islam, to die to ensure that those who question its tenets die too!
This fetish with suffering engendered by religion, especially by Christianity and most recently, by Islam, is also the root cause of the institutionalization of violence. Violence then becomes a tool, a sacred tool in the defense of the faith. Because suffering is given a pedestal in the pantheon of religious beliefs as incarnated in the bible and the koran, violence becomes a god-instrument in the proselytization process. Although Christianity has outgrown its psychotic, murderous past, Islam has nonetheless taken its place, apostates are fair game. The koran actually encourages their murder, and this is extended to gays, women who disobey their husbands, women who do not cover themselves up (especially in Muslim countries were Sharia law is the law) and those who do not readily convert to Islam.
According to Ayaan Hirsi Ali, if the west adopts a philosophy of life, Islam subscribes to a philosophy of death, and I might add, Christianity believes in a philosophy of pain and suffering. The Abrahamic faiths values and cherishes pain, suffering, and death because of its obsession with an afterlife. That is the fundamental distinction of the "people's of the book." A tradition rooted in the early lives of a largely rural, poor, largely illiterate desert people making sense of the world around it.
As a secular humanist, I subscribe only to the idea that man is what is important, science and philosophy is what will provide us with the best answer to the riddles of existence, the amelioration of our sufferings, the cultivation of our potentialities, the maintenance of the environment and the fulfillment of a meaningful and happy life. As the great French existentialist philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre once said, we are brought into this world to create our own meaning. The meaning we create is what will determine who we become, what we can become, what we are and what we hope to be.
The major theme of the Judeo-Christian tradition is the mythologization of suffering and serves as a gateway to heaven. Indeed, the death of Jesus Christ is a testament to the value given suffering. Candida Moss in her new book The Myth of Persecution: How Early Christians Invented a Story of Martyrdom testifies to this phenomenon. The early Christians made suffering a cornerstone of their faith - to die for Christ. They were so enveloped in that concept that Moss' book shows how they even provoked Roman official's into killing them! Sounds familiar, this is precisely the same reason why during the Intifada young Palestinian men willingly, actually happily blew themselves up apart. To these young men, brainwashed by the machinations of their mullahs as well as the purpose-giving life provided by Hamas and the PLO, dying for Allah means a direct route to heaven and a welcoming committee of no less than 71 virgins. It is also safe to say that these men were as much motivated by the concept of the 71 virgins as meeting god himself, I think even more than god himself. It also shows that these men, more than anything, and despite everything they think they believe, are actually sex starved and sexually repressed.
I was born into Catholicism, and Catholicism is very good at instilling the value of suffering. It actually glorifies suffering in an almost masochistic manner.It's obsession with pain, suffering and guilt is its crowning achievement - it's symbol, the cross, is an unequivocal signpost of Christianity's passionate embrace of pain and suffering.
When I was in college studying for my first degree, philosophy, I went on evening walks for one month with a German SVD professor of mine who gave a few bags of food every night to some really poor people who lived around our school. One night, we visited an old lady in her ramshackle, really nothing more than cardboard boxes for walls, a few used corrugated sheets for a roof and almost nothing else except the clothes on her body. Approaching her "house," which was really more of a toy house in fact, I greeted her and exchanged a few felicitations as is customary in the Philippines. I asked her how is everything and her curt but telling reply was: "I am good, this is what god has given me so I have to accept it." Suffering, again glorified into needless heights in the name of god. This is what religion is, this is what the Abrahamic faiths are good at.
This obsession with suffering, really institutionalized sado-masochism, is sickening and immoral. Karl Marx captured this well when he said that "...religion is the opium of the people." Religion makes suffering ok, to accept it with joy and surrender even. The Islamic faith actually induces its adherents to die if need be, to die to defend Islam, to die to ensure that those who question its tenets die too!
This fetish with suffering engendered by religion, especially by Christianity and most recently, by Islam, is also the root cause of the institutionalization of violence. Violence then becomes a tool, a sacred tool in the defense of the faith. Because suffering is given a pedestal in the pantheon of religious beliefs as incarnated in the bible and the koran, violence becomes a god-instrument in the proselytization process. Although Christianity has outgrown its psychotic, murderous past, Islam has nonetheless taken its place, apostates are fair game. The koran actually encourages their murder, and this is extended to gays, women who disobey their husbands, women who do not cover themselves up (especially in Muslim countries were Sharia law is the law) and those who do not readily convert to Islam.
According to Ayaan Hirsi Ali, if the west adopts a philosophy of life, Islam subscribes to a philosophy of death, and I might add, Christianity believes in a philosophy of pain and suffering. The Abrahamic faiths values and cherishes pain, suffering, and death because of its obsession with an afterlife. That is the fundamental distinction of the "people's of the book." A tradition rooted in the early lives of a largely rural, poor, largely illiterate desert people making sense of the world around it.
As a secular humanist, I subscribe only to the idea that man is what is important, science and philosophy is what will provide us with the best answer to the riddles of existence, the amelioration of our sufferings, the cultivation of our potentialities, the maintenance of the environment and the fulfillment of a meaningful and happy life. As the great French existentialist philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre once said, we are brought into this world to create our own meaning. The meaning we create is what will determine who we become, what we can become, what we are and what we hope to be.
Biyernes, Marso 1, 2013
The Invention of God: Morality and Religion
I have recently discovered a thinker who is actually, or was rather, a former Muslim, African by birth, black and a woman. And for those of us who take the time and effort to read, listen and learn about the smorgasbord of menu on the religious table will have, at one moment or another, discovered by now Ayaan Hirsi Ali. On one of her talks she discusses the rationale as to why Islamic induced violence has been a staple of Muslim history throughout the ages and why Islamic radicalism will stay with modern man for quite some time I dare say.
Moving on to another topic, I would be talking today about morality and religion. Theists would often assert that the lack of a belief in god puts into question an individual's moral life. For them, morality comes from religion and the absence of which necessarily implies the too the absence of any moral life, hence, atheists are prone to violence and a meaningless life.
Of course, it would be easy to say that if religion is really a good source, much more excellent source of morality, then the countless wars,crimes, injustices and violence - especially one directed against women and LGBT's, and still more specifically gays, perpetrated throughout history and are actually still being perpetrated up to now in the name of religion and a god in various scales across nations throughout the world were just anomalies? Any rational, sentient, thinking human being will think otherwise, indeed, a religiously based morality is not only obscene, brutal, insensitive and callous, they are at times even inhuman and yes, immoral.
The Judeo-Christian tradition is replete with violence perpetrated against those that it sees as ungodly behaviors. The Bible for example, under Leviticus 20:13 states: "If a man lies with a male as with a woman, both of them shall be put to death for their abominable deed; they have no one but themselves to blame for their death." Is this the morality that modern human beings really have to follow?
In Deuteronomy 17: 12, it says "Anyone arrogant enough to reject the verdict of the judge or of the priest who represents the Lord your God must be put to death. Such evil must be purged from Israel." Imagine if this were followed to the letter, modern society would be held under the yoke of religious tyranny. There are many other instances were violence is not only encouraged, it even puts the blame on the victims simply because they hold views that are dissimilar to what the Bible considers "moral."
The argument that morality is the exclusive domain of religion finds its absolute death knell in no other organized religion than Islam. As pointed out by Ayaan in the video mentioned at the beginning of this article, the Koran is a book of violence and unbridled brutality, inconsistent with and contrary to, the modern concept of humanism and plain common sense. The Koran (30:21 in Ayaan's video) exactly prescribes for example, how the killing of homosexuals should be done. Is this even morality in the humanistic sense? Is this humane? Just?
Morality is the product of human culture, religion is a product of human culture. In fact, the history of religions is the history of the morality of the places in which such religions were born. Religion itself actually gets its morality in the culture of the place it was founded. Even a cursory reading of the Torah, the Bible and most specially the Koran, one will find the creeping influence of the cultural mores of the people in the places in which those religious texts were written.
Therefore, rejecting religion does not mean a rejection of morality. Morality is the prevailing social mores of a society, and society itself decides its standards. Absolute morality is nonsense, there are however, universal moral concepts like justice, freedom, liberty and respect among others. The manifestations of such moral constructs however, vary from society to society across cultures over time. Religion however, absolutizes a certain moral construct from one period in a people's historical journey.
Jurgen Habermas advocates for an "Ethics of Communicative Action." That is, an ethics borne of reasoning, consultation, dynamic discussion, creative interplay of ideals and experience but always responsive to and ultimately subservient to the fundamental needs of man - the promotion of well-being and the maintenance of justice. That is the morality that is advocated in most part by secular humanists. It is humane, reasonable, democratic and dynamic. It is not hostaged to a rigid worldview of absolutes and eternals but rooted in humanity and caring.
A morality devoid of religion is a morality more attuned to the diversity of the human experience and always takes into consideration what is the best for man, in the historical milieu he is born to and the dynamism that is life itself.
Moving on to another topic, I would be talking today about morality and religion. Theists would often assert that the lack of a belief in god puts into question an individual's moral life. For them, morality comes from religion and the absence of which necessarily implies the too the absence of any moral life, hence, atheists are prone to violence and a meaningless life.
Of course, it would be easy to say that if religion is really a good source, much more excellent source of morality, then the countless wars,crimes, injustices and violence - especially one directed against women and LGBT's, and still more specifically gays, perpetrated throughout history and are actually still being perpetrated up to now in the name of religion and a god in various scales across nations throughout the world were just anomalies? Any rational, sentient, thinking human being will think otherwise, indeed, a religiously based morality is not only obscene, brutal, insensitive and callous, they are at times even inhuman and yes, immoral.
The Judeo-Christian tradition is replete with violence perpetrated against those that it sees as ungodly behaviors. The Bible for example, under Leviticus 20:13 states: "If a man lies with a male as with a woman, both of them shall be put to death for their abominable deed; they have no one but themselves to blame for their death." Is this the morality that modern human beings really have to follow?
In Deuteronomy 17: 12, it says "Anyone arrogant enough to reject the verdict of the judge or of the priest who represents the Lord your God must be put to death. Such evil must be purged from Israel." Imagine if this were followed to the letter, modern society would be held under the yoke of religious tyranny. There are many other instances were violence is not only encouraged, it even puts the blame on the victims simply because they hold views that are dissimilar to what the Bible considers "moral."
The argument that morality is the exclusive domain of religion finds its absolute death knell in no other organized religion than Islam. As pointed out by Ayaan in the video mentioned at the beginning of this article, the Koran is a book of violence and unbridled brutality, inconsistent with and contrary to, the modern concept of humanism and plain common sense. The Koran (30:21 in Ayaan's video) exactly prescribes for example, how the killing of homosexuals should be done. Is this even morality in the humanistic sense? Is this humane? Just?
Morality is the product of human culture, religion is a product of human culture. In fact, the history of religions is the history of the morality of the places in which such religions were born. Religion itself actually gets its morality in the culture of the place it was founded. Even a cursory reading of the Torah, the Bible and most specially the Koran, one will find the creeping influence of the cultural mores of the people in the places in which those religious texts were written.
Therefore, rejecting religion does not mean a rejection of morality. Morality is the prevailing social mores of a society, and society itself decides its standards. Absolute morality is nonsense, there are however, universal moral concepts like justice, freedom, liberty and respect among others. The manifestations of such moral constructs however, vary from society to society across cultures over time. Religion however, absolutizes a certain moral construct from one period in a people's historical journey.
Jurgen Habermas advocates for an "Ethics of Communicative Action." That is, an ethics borne of reasoning, consultation, dynamic discussion, creative interplay of ideals and experience but always responsive to and ultimately subservient to the fundamental needs of man - the promotion of well-being and the maintenance of justice. That is the morality that is advocated in most part by secular humanists. It is humane, reasonable, democratic and dynamic. It is not hostaged to a rigid worldview of absolutes and eternals but rooted in humanity and caring.
A morality devoid of religion is a morality more attuned to the diversity of the human experience and always takes into consideration what is the best for man, in the historical milieu he is born to and the dynamism that is life itself.
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