|
When President Bush told The Washington Post's Bob Woodward that he consulted a "Higher Father" before going to war in Iraq, he unintentionally offered what has always been one of the most common and revolting rationalizations involved in one war after another. "God wills it." "A mighty fortress is our God." How do you argue with that?
There I was, looking forward to the entirely secular box of chocolates I fully expect to receive on Valentine's Day, when a malicious cupid from "On Faith" asked me to speculate about why sex is sacred in some religions and sinful in others. One might as well ask why our commercial culture uses words like "sinful" or "guilty pleasure" to describe chocolate.
As an atheist and a freethinker, I cannot offer any contribution to the dialogue between people of faith about the position of gays within their religious traditions. I must say, though, that the spectacle of Episcopalians approaching a schism over this issue is, well, unholy.
We live in the age of the non-apologetic apology. In public and private life, Americans have become accustomed to the debasing spectacle of meaningless, responsibility-shifting mea culpas, followed by pleas for unearned forgiveness, always omitting any mention of exactly what the miscreant intends to do to make amends to those who have been hurt.
I did not originally intend to respond to this question, because its underlying premises--first, that it is, a priori, a good thing to "keep" faith and second, that war poses a unique challenge to faith--seem to me irredeemably flawed.
This question was undoubtedly inspired by the many disturbing reports about doctors and pharmacists who place their personal religious convictions ahead of patients' wishes by refusing to provide legal services and products --from abortions to contraceptives -- and, even worse, by refusing to refer the patient to another doctor whose religious beliefs do permit such medical services.
I take this question as a welcome opportunity to fall silent and fall back on the words of those who have given voice to the noblest human sentiments and aspirations. All of my favorite works of literature are distinguished by their reverence for the natural, not the supernatural.
"Don't ask, don't tell" is an immoral policy for hypocrites and cowards. And that's true whether we are talking about a secular institution like the United States Army or a church.
Never. Torture cannot be justified, nor can parsings of the meaning of torture, such as the evasions about waterboarding before the Senate Judiciary Committee by President Bush's nominee for attorney general. Any senator who votes for the confirmation of Michael Mukasey is disgracing his or her office, in both a moral and constitutional sense. How is it possible that my country now holds itself to such a low moral and legal standard?
This is a profound moral and psychological question--no less so for an atheist than for a religious believer. It is both a personal issue and, as demonstrated by Bishop Tutu's efforts toward reconciliation in South Africa, a social issue of vast importance. In the United States, however, the very word "forgiveness" has been cheapened by both secular and religious psychobabble implying that unconditional forgiveness, even when unaccompanied by any acknowledgment of responsibility on the part of the wrongdoer, is an absolute good.
The American obsession with sex scandals--as opposed, say, to political scandals involving serious violations of individual liberties, abuses of government power, or torture--is often thought to be a product of our Puritan heritage. That's unfair to the Puritans, who actually cared a good deal more about integrity in non-sexual matters. Our preoccupation with the sex lives of public figures is simply one more manifestation of America's broader cultural immaturity.
I've always been interested in the seven deadly sins--in purely intellectual fashion, of course--because so many of them are not sins at all unless taken to excess and extremes. Pride, for example, is not necessarily a sin (or a moral offense, in secular terms) in my book, but it can be an enormous moral failing when it leads to a reckless overestimation of one's abilities and a reckless undervaluation of the cost to others. Does anyone remember a president who declared, "Mission Accomplished," and the huge death toll that came afterward? This was nothing more than overweening pride--the sort of pride that makes you stupid--in action.
Since I am not a theologian, the question of whether greed is ever morally justified doesn't much interest me. Like vindictiveness, greed is a base but probably ineradicable human instinct that must, for the good of society, be restricted not only by moralizing rhetoric but by law. We cannot live in a society in which greed is allowed to operate without limits, and the real civic and economic question is not the morality or immorality of greed but what legal restrictions we are prepared to place on greed--whether it manifests itself in usurious credit card interest rates, golden parachutes for executives of failing corporations and brokerage houses, the abandonment of pension and health care promises to retired workers, or moves to cut taxes for the richest 1 percent of Americans.
What Islam Really Says About Violence, Rights and Other Religions
Gomaa, Fadlallah, Mubarak, Khan, Siddiqi, Ellison, others | On Faith
Comments (106)