The Need for Moral Relativism

Lorenzo Albacete, a Roman Catholic priest writing in The New York Times, has put forth a fascinating if flawed defense of Pope Benedict XVIth’s encyclical “God is Love”. His commentary correctly states that the resistance of many non-believers to religion centers around the idea of the intolerance of Christianity and other religions. “For them,” Albacete writes:

what makes Christianity potentially dangerous as a source of conflict and intolerance in a pluralistic society is its insistence that faith is reasonable — that is, that it is the source of knowledge about this world and that, therefore, its teaching should apply to all, believers and nonbelievers alike.

We non-believers feel this point acutely. So much of life in the 21st century seems dominated by religion that those of us who are concerned about preserving the democracy of truth are voices crying in the wilderness. Albacete’s point cannot be overemphasized.

The problem comes about when Albacete offers his (Benedict’s) solution to this problem–just ignore it. “In a world where the name of God is sometimes associated with vengeance or even a duty of hatred, this message is both timely and significant,” Benedict writes. “For this reason I wish in my first encyclical to speak of the love which God lavishes upon us, and which we in turn must share with others.”

The article goes on to suggest that the way to respond to these charges is to show that God’s love is truth. The spirit behind such an assertion is noble and well meaning but also ineffective and frankly dangerous, for as long as religions make truth claims their believers will permit themselves all sorts of violent and despicable acts (see my earlier post on the Muhammad cartoons) because they claim to know the truth.

The only way religion can cease being the instigator of violence is to stop being the fount of truth. Only when religions assume a smaller and less important role in our lives will the killing and burning stop. One cannot but believe that it was religion and only religion that allowed the murder of abortion clinic doctors or the horrors of September 11th. The burning of western embassies across the Middle East and the death and destruction in Israel and Palestine are the result of a blind and foolish faith, a conviction that religion equals truth. How ironic that the God that brings comfort to believers should bring so much suffering to the rest of us. Every act of violence committed in the name of religion gives us non-believers a greater determination to harden our hearts to its tyranny.

Perhaps instead of being intolerant of non-believers religions should start being intolerant of the evils that result from belief. How much more effective religions would be if those who feel anger and intolerance directed such anger and intolerance against the source of such intolerance–religion itself. To put it bluntly: why can’t religion put up or shut up? In other words, why can’t religion stop preaching about the sins of others, and start focusing on really making a concrete difference in human lives? Where are those who give up wealth and power for service among the poor? Where are bridges built, the schools renovated, the meals made in silent humility before the wonders of God? What happened to turning the other cheek? Why are those of us skeptical of the claims of religion always drowned in its empty rhetoric?

Religion today is showing itself to be merely an ideology, as full of the arrogance and hypocrisy of other passing fads that grab the mind and give it delusions of grandeur. Why does religion claim so much but do so little? Better I think if religion claimed less, if it had the courage to understand that until it proves itself worthy of the name of truth it is simply one way among others. Since it clearly does much harm it must do relatively more good to be worthy of anything more than disdain.

Idea Review

(Photo courtesy of the BBC news website)

Recently several newspapers in Europe published cartoons that criticized the prophet Muhammad. Islam prohibits depictions of the Prophet. These papers have been accused of blasphemy and incitement to violence. Such accusations may well be true, but it’s unclear whether that makes the publishers guilty of anything. As several papers have indicated in their editorials, blasphemy in their view is not a crime.

Indeed, one could argue that blasphemy is a responsibilty for any democratic society. As we’ve seen in Egypt with the Muslim Brotherhood and in Palestine with Hamas, Islamic parties are increasingly finding power through the ballot-box. Whether their ultimate aim is to preserve democracy or not is impossible to guess, but there is little doubt that no country can claim to be free or democratically governed by its people unless it allows blasphemy. Religion historically, but today especially, has always thrived on intolerance. Democracy and religion thus exist more or less at cross purposes. Still, many countries in the Middle East and elsewhere are claiming to be democracies while also officially sanctioning intolerance. The calls of such countries for an apology from the papers betrays their totalitarian tendencies. As the Prime Minister of Denmark said when several countries in the Middle East called for an official apology, “I can’t call a newspaper and tell them what to put in it. That’s not how our society works.” Sadly, however, in some of those countries, that is how society works.

This brings me to the second accusation–the incitement to violence. It is true that in the United States and much of the west “hate speech” is not protected. When the sole aim of one’s speaking is incitement, when free speech becomes invidious, then the balance between what is fair and what is right disappears. When free speech violates civil rights then and only then is its restriction permissible in a democratic society—note that I said “permissible,” not mandated or required in any way. Ideally, democratic societies should be strong enough to endure the free exchange of ideas whatever their content. Those who promote hate speech should not be silenced by law but shamed by their societies. Better still, they and all of us, could learn how to express our opinions in a less offensive way.

Could the Muhammad cartoons be considered hate speech? Unlikely. If the scrawny kid on the playground hurls insults at the bully it is not hate speech. Such invective may be foolish but could never be considered immoral. Islam, to put it mildly, is now a bully. Muslims will respond, with great justice, that the West too is a bully. True, the sympathy towards Israel of most Western governments cannot be doubted. But Middle Eastern governments (and tragically many Western muslims as well) fail to see that the western media are NOT organs of their governments; we are not propaganda machines, despite what the Bush administration may desire. Media represent the very essence of freedom in the West—the right to criticize and through criticism, to bring about improvement. So indeed, the call by Islamist governments in the Middle East to stop the criticism is in fact the best sign of why such criticism should continue; they are calling out, begging for criticism. And for any of us to succumb to such threats is to submit to totalitarianism and to yield to tyranny.

See further discussion about this idea here.