Is dhw Safe??? (Introduction)

by dhw, Sunday, August 21, 2011, 21:44 (4843 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: This problem is in the US as well as Britain. Laura Ingraham wrote a book, "The Pornification of America", commenting about the lack of religiousity, among lots of other issues. Humanists will claim that they are just as moral, and I know that to be true, from my friends among them. But humanists are a small group who do not influence many people. Here is a wonderful commentary by Rabbi Sacks. Britain's chief rabbi.-http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111903639404576516252066723110.html?KEYWORDS...-This is a very clever article, such as one would expect from such a very clever man, but to this far less clever man it seems deeply flawed. Does he honestly believe that Judeo-Christian societies have ever been any more moral than the sceptical societies of today? Was Catholic Germany under the Nazis any more moral than the Soviet Union under the godless Communists, and did His Holiness Pope Pius XII lift a finger to prevent the Holocaust? Are we to take the church-going slave-owners and the Christian upholders of apartheid as our models, or the great land-owning families who built chapels on their estates, paid for by those who ... as Rabbi Sacks puts it ... worked under "inhuman conditions"? Or should we emulate the God-fearing George W. Bush and Tony Blair, who blasted their murderous way into Iraq? And how about the priests who abuse small children while the Church does all it can to cover up the offences?-There is a stock answer to all of this: the perpetrators of these evils were disobeying the Word of God. But there are two stock answers to this stock answer. First of all, who is in a position to tell us the Word of God? People interpret God's wishes according to their own. How else could God-fearing Catholic Nazis and God-fearing Boers and God-fearing lords and ladies and God-fearing politicians live with their consciences?-Secondly, if the practitioners of religion are not to be our models, what are we left with? The answer is the moral principles. But is there any social code that is not based on the overall good of society? And has there ever been a society in which every member stuck to those moral principles? What Jonathan Sacks' argument boils down is so obvious that it is barely worth saying, but it needs to be said because his argument is so cleverly disguised. If everyone behaved properly, everyone would behave properly. Put it differently: if everyone followed Jonathan Sacks' interpretation of the teachings of Moses (Jesus, Muhammad, the godless Buddha, the godless humanists, Mrs Doasyouwouldbedoneby) there would be no more crime, no more riots, and we would all live happily ever after.-He is right that there are many fine people and institutions based on religious foundations. We should not ignore them, any more than we should ignore the corruption and destructiveness that is also associated with religion. But for many of us, the God of the religions has lost all credibility, not just through his "representatives" on Earth but also through his all too obvious indifference to human suffering. One can justify this philosophically ... he has given us free will ... but if there is no sign of his caring about us, why should we care about him?
 
The social welfare systems that some western countries enjoy today are based on an increasingly humanitarian view of the world. In my country, many of the changes came about not through religion but through Socialism. The immediate postwar government under Clement Attlee introduced a vast range of reforms, and the principles of Socialism (of which Communism is one version) are based fairly and squarely on social justice. "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need." The Church, like all of us, throws up its hands in horror at the atrocities performed in the name of Socialism, but the same argument applies to both: do not judge the principles by those who purport to practise them.-Jonathan Sacks is right about the evils of today, such as the breakdown of the family. But not so long ago in our Judeo-Christian world single mothers were cast out of society (though not the fathers), debtors were thrown into prison, homosexuality was a crime, medical treatment was available only to those who could afford it, loss of your job meant loss of all means of livelihood. The pendulum, in my view, has swung too far, and a dose of David's "tough love" might help us find a middle way in which society cares for those genuinely in need and forces the rest to stand on their own two feet. But human nature ... as created by God or by Mother Nature ... is not going to change, there will always be good and bad, and our best hope lies in a humanistic approach to education, in which the young are taught the values that will enable society to run smoothly and fairly. If I were dictator of the world, I would give my blessing to those who find comfort and communal pleasure in religion, so long as they did not interfere with the rights of others. But my educational system would be based 100% on love of my fellow humans and all my fellow creatures, and in my view that principle has no need of any God.