Anat Biletzki, past chairperson of the Israeli human rights organization B'tselem, recently suggested in the NYT blog ("The Sacred and the Humane") that "religion, even when indirectly in the service of human rights, is not really working for human rights." Given B'tselem's long history of working with organizations like Rabbis for Human Rights, I find her argument puzzling, and as a religious human rights advocate myself, I philosophically disagree with Biletzki.
Biletzki argued that there is a profound difference in the way that the secular and the religious approach the source of authority for human rights, and that, ultimately, the person of faith's defense of human rights is inferior to that of the secular person's. She believes that the source of authority for the secular person is, "her claim to reason, her proclivity to emotion, and her capacity for compassion ... leaving us open to discussion, disagreement, and questioning," whereas the authority for the religious person is God's commandment. What she concludes is that there is no real "human right" under God's commandment because if God commands us to renounce human rights, then that is required. As she says, "Had God's angel failed to call out -- "Abraham! Abraham!" -- Abraham would have slain Isaac."
Can it be true that religious people are a sort of automation for God's whim? Would a religious person abandon his or her conscience to ignore the pain of human beings should God command it?
While I can't speak for all faiths, the answer is clearly, "No." Within Jewish tradition there are clear precedents of arguing with God. Contrasting the account of Abraham's blind obedience that Biletzki references, there is another story in Genesis 18, where we find Abraham arguing with God about the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, demanding of God: "Will not the Judge of the earth do justly?" In the Torah portion that Jews read just last week, Parshat Pinchas (Numbers 25:10 - 30:1), we learn about five young women, who challenged an inheritance law in the Torah. God admitted the justice of their claim and changed the law. In the Jewish tradition, starting in the Torah, there is a strong current of approbation for the faithful Jew who challenges God.
If religion doesn't make us automata, does the secular world offer a better basis for morality and "true" human rights? Philosophers in the field of ethics have not been terribly successful at pinning down a rational basis for ethical behavior. Secular morality hasn't any more to do with reason -- and perhaps less -- than those of the religious person. Each and every one of us lives in a society that determines our feelings of what is "natural," "right" and "rational." These cultural biases are difficult to examine because they are like water to a fish -- so ubiquitous and so pervasive, we simply do not notice them. Are the norms of one's society,which are so deeply embedded within us that they feel "natural," a compass toward what is right and good?
Religion offers us a place to stand and examine the cultures in which we live. When we live and breathe the ways of our faith, it gives us a compass by which to measure societal norms as separate from ourselves. In contrast, examining the beliefs of one's society without chalking them up to what is "natural" is like trying to rebuild a boat while it is sailing. Perhaps that is why it was people of faith who led the fight for universal suffrage in the U.S., why Gandhi is revered for his nonviolent revolt against the British in India, and why the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. is a hero to people of all colors throughout the world for his stand to unionize African-Americans and support their fight for dignity and civil rights. Certainly, in the west, the struggles for equality and dignity are deeply rooted in the Abrahamic traditions of law and justice. Would our societies be places in which the fight for human rights was possible if we did not have a tradition of thousands of years asking, "Will not the Judge of the earth do justly?"
Finally, if God commanded (for example) a faithful Jew to do something immoral, would that person do so? If, in general, the Judge of the earth does do justly, then if a command seems unjust, we must think deeply about whether the command is actually immoral. If we conclude that it is, then we must also ask if we have misunderstood it. And indeed, we find that the history of Jewish law, is not just the text as written in the scrolls of the Torah, but rather is a development of a body of law that responds to history via those scrolls, constantly asking: Is this right? Is this just?
Religious practice is based on the assumption that God desires the just and the good. Thus, suggesting that the religious are bound to do whatever God says even if God commands us to do something immoral makes no sense. It is, as the philosophers say, a counterfactual. Given that we are humans prone to mistakes, we may err in our understanding of what is just, but such a command cannot exist. I hope it is not too presumptuous to suggest that this may be true for other faiths, as well. My faith tradition commands us, over and over, that we must be holy because God is holy, that we must do justly because God is just, and that we are obligated to provide for the poor, lift up the weak and free the bound. Is that not a basis to speak about human rights?
Far more powerful than choosing to guard human rights, the religious have an obligation to protect them.
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Too many people want to question God and God's will today. We either serve trusting Him to guide us in the right direction, or we question God and end up stranded on a dead in road in the middle of the desert. It took 40 years to get the children of Israel to the promised land. Because they questioned God so much along the way, most of that initial group never got to see it.
No, I believe I'll just trust in God to lead me where I shall go. He's never let me down.
I see from some of the other posts here that your parallels between Christianity and the Soviets have been addressed from the standpoint of a utopian society. Do you know of any governments that do not opearate with your Leninist fashion ?
When we speak of culture, we are not talking about a single factor. We are talking about human values within the soceity that pertain to social, economic, political, and application of force. Religion contributes to the pie, but it is not the end-all, be-all.
Secular ethics and morality has more to offer than religion does any day. Mainly because secular ethics and harden and soften, take on different shapes to meet the needs of the moment to avoid constant inequity. It can also unite everyone under the common banner of Humanity. You can be a Kansan, an American, a Catholic, Budhist, Muslim, Hindu, etc. etc. But by placing the banner of ethics under Humanity. Taking the conversation into the realm of consensus and all inclusiveness (as opposed to according to the Muslim/ Christian/ Hindu/ ad nauseum faith). Because we are all Human. Take religion out of the equation and you will find that we all want the same things.
Secular Ethics, like everything else in the world, will have its problems. But these are the problems caused by humanities subjective interpretation of all things and the incredible and detrimental ability to justifiy and rationalize any course of action. You cannot remove this from Humans as it is what makes us Human.
I would prefer the detractors have a better reason than simply bleating, "it is the will of my deity."
Just take the issue of slavery, which has been much discussed on this blog. Were the societies of the North & the Confederacy in possession of a "consensus & all inclusiveness" as secular societies about the issue? Could the society of the South merely be reasoned with to accept the "common banner of Humanity" & free their slaves through the persuasive arguments of secular morality? If this were possible, why was the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960's necessary? Why weren't the defeated Southerners willing to embrace their "common Humanity" with the freemen? Why did it take more than a century of oppression & struggles for the descendants of slaves to gain a modicum of equality & freedom under the laws of a secular society?
Never let it be said that atheists don't have faith. They have faith in a utopian secularism.
Not one person who is a proponent of secular society has even remotely stated what you claim we have. NOT ONE OF US IS THAT NAIVE.
And, your diatribe about the Civil War actually proves that religions were poisonous in regard to this issue. The United States may have had a secular government at the time, but the populace of the country was probably 95% Christian and motivations on both sides were justified by and informed by religion. The Bible was used quite well by Southerners to DEFEND slavery and to DEFEND their civil war, a war which killed over 600,000 Americans.
A secular government and a secular society are NOT the same thing.
Now about the North and the South, that was quite a long time ago, and we have grown since then. The prevailing "moral" forces in the world at that time was religion. Same for the time the civil rights movement happened. Today, the secularist voices are becoming stronger, but are still being drowned out by the religious jostling-to-remain-relelvant.
As stated in my original post, you cannot fix humanity, there will always be strife, dissent, and those that do not wish to exist in an ethical manner. The difference between secularism and religion is that secularism leaves little to fight about.
For the religious mind, identity is strongly tied to what community they belong to; "I am a catholic/muslim/etc." These identities have a terrible time adapting and working together because they are mired in dogma and deity measuring.
Secularism brings all under one identity. Humanity. Can you deny that you are Human or your neighbour is Human? Then your identity is safe and secure, you need not worry that you will lose it by following a secular measure of ethics.
But you do not wish this flexible form of Secular Ethics where humanity can make a consensus on what is right and what is wrong, because your identity requires that you be "X" and rooted in dogma that cannot be changed. Thus we have come to the first hurdle.
But honestly. 'The passive-aggressive god of the old testament wasn't doing horrible things - we just misunderstand him, because he must be good, because the bible says he is.' That is logic of a sort with which I am unfamiliar.
The author may be misremembering our long relationship with human rights. The definition of those rights changes almost daily. Women are largely no longer considered 'property'. The list goes on. Presumably, god's commandments don't change over time. He is not likely to publish a follow-up volume clarifying his commandments for us today. I'm sticking with the compassionate, evolving human brain, and the freethinkers who are using it.
The grand master creator of the universe, or the bible god, failed to inform early humans that slavery was a violation of human rights, he supposedly murdered nearly every living thing on earth, and then he had his only son brutally sacrificed.
It is no surprise that the god of the bible is just as immoral as the primitive people who invented him.
--Arthur C. Clarke
"She believes that the source of authority for the secular person is, 'her claim to reason, her proclivity to emotion, and her capacity for compassion ... leaving us open to discussion, disagreement, and questioning,' whereas the authority for the religious person is God's commandment."
So, again, her authority comes from reason, her proclivity to emotion and a capacity for compassion while the religious authority comes from the Easter Bunny? No, I mean, Santa Claus. No, no, I mean Little Bo Peep. Hmm, that's not it, no, no, it comes from Zeus and Thor, or, maybe, Dog. Oops, God.
....aaaaaand your entire fantasy filled argument goes down the drain.
www.un.org/events/humanrights/2007/hrphotos/declaration%20_eng.pdf -
http://chronicle.com/article/Science-Fraud-at-Universities/914
This is not available except through subscription but there is a good excerpt with the following astonishing and disturbing statistics:
"Extrapolating from the survey findings, the authors offered a 'conservative' estimate of 2,325 possible instances of illegal research misconduct nationally per year. Of those only 58 percent, or roughly 1,350 incidents, were reported to institutional officials. The authors call this small percentage 'alarming.'”
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/plagiarism.htm -
That, my friends, is an epidemic. Now, are we to believe that most or all of those scientists committing fraud every year are religious?
http://ori.hhs.gov/research/intra/documents/gallup_commentary.pdf
http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0005738
And if you really want to get into it, just google science + fraud + universities, and you'll have a view of the problem at the campus level.
Evidence for scientific fraud in higher ed is easily found in chronicle.com. Did you do a search for yourself?
Oh I agree with you that corruption exists in religious societies, no argument there. In fact I think in some cases secularism has reduced corruption in formerly religious societies. But I don't agree that secularism itself is corruption-free now or ever was in the past. Nope. No proof of that. Unless you care to provide some? : )