Meditations for the Humanist – Part 1 – Moralism

Oscar Wilde famously said, “a man who moralizes is usually a hypocrite.” According to A. C. Grayling, a moralizer is a “person who seeks to impose upon others his [or her] view of how they should live and behave.” It reflects a coercive and exclusive worldview that is inherently opposed to democratic and pluralistic ideals.

Moralizers want others to conform to their views. They do this through coercive measures such as social disapproval as well as their more preferred option: legal controls. You can see this reflected in our nations history with blasphemy laws as well as more contemporary, hot button, issues such as gay marriage, abortion, religious symbols and text in public areas and prayer in public schools. 

Attacks on liberal policies such as these are expressions of hostility towards lifestyles moralizers personally dislike. Their hostility is brought into the public sphere, often through declarations of religious freedom, and manifest aspects of insensitivity, intolerance, ignorance of alternative interests and needs in the human experience and arrogance in believing there is only one acceptable way of living. They claim to have a “monopoly on moral judgment.’” We can recognize the familiar rhetoric of those claiming to defend the “traditionalist fantasy of ‘family morality’”. But the true attitude underneath moralizers is fear. The moralizer fears policies and practices that allow and encourage diversity in lifestyle and the freedom of choice.

Justification for their rigidly and arrogance comes from so-called religious doctrine and values. This is a pure reflection of exclusivist religion, which I’ve spoken about plenty in previous posts. This fear and its effects are inherently anti-pluralistic and anti-democratic. Diversity of thought is not allowed or encouraged. The demand conformity to lifestyles they see as personally acceptable. The external world, others, must conform to their internal preferences. Compromise is shunned and viewed as weakness. Their religious anxieties compel them to prevent the rest of society from “thinking, seeing or doing what they are afraid to think, see or do themselves.”

Secularism has become the enemy. Atheists and humanists alike are seen as being deviant and unworthy of any serious dialogue. Christianity is seen as being under attack. But secularism, in actuality, does not attack religion just like an umbrella does not attack rain. It provides a platform and foundation for diversity of thought, conscience and lifestyle. It protects all citizens’ right to have equal protection under the law, to have equal opportunity, voice and representation. Secularism encourages an ongoing, ever-evolving, creative process in public policy and societal norms. It sees culture and values as something malleable and dynamic, not fixed and rigid. And most of all, secularism, is not coercive or exclusive. All have a place at the table. Unfortunately, it also allows for the voice of the intolerant and the fearful (See “Tolerating the Intolerant” post).

Grayling, A. C. (2002). Meditation for the Humanist: Ethics for a Secular Age. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 

Santorum's Religious Fundamentalism Part 1

I would like to devote the next few posts to GOP Presidential Candidate Rick Santorum, as he is now a contender for being the GOP front-runner. There are many things that trouble me about Santorum. His social policies on homosexuality, contraceptives, abortion and sexuality should all be extremely troubling to anyone who is not a religious zealot. Speaking of religion, his views on religion are especially problematic as they infuse his positions on social policies ranging from marriage to the environment. Here are a few of his positions:

In the realm of religion and worldview, he has said that Obama’s worldview is a “phony theology,” that its “not an ideology based on the Bible.” This is very concerning statement for many reasons, the first being its arrogant exculsivist attitude. For those not familiar with the term exclusivist, allow me to briefly introduce the idea. Exclusivism is the attitude that “my community, [my nation], my tradition and set of values, are the only correct ones, excluding all others” (Grazer, 1999). This unfortunately is the most common perspective amongst fundamentalists and extremists. My way is the true way and all others are false. This attitude of course brings all sorts of other issues such as truth claims, but I’ll speak about it more in another post. For these purposes, it is sufficient to say that Santorum believes that any ideology not based on the Bible is thus somehow inferior, invalid or false, as it is not wanted in the public sphere. This naturally creates an issue, as this view is not only dangerous for other people of faith, it’s a view that is also un-American. Santorum has said,

“I’ve taken the position that the moral values reflected in the laws should be the moral values that built this country. Which is the Judeo-Christian values, and the laws should try as much as possible to comport with a higher law.”

This quote illustrates a few things. First, that there is a higher law, in this case, Judeo-Christian law, and second that those arbitrary, dangerous, and exclusivist laws should be the basis of our laws and public policy. (Also extremely un-American.)

He has also said, “No other country in the world has its rights based in god-given rights, not government given rights…if rights come from the state everything government gives you it can take away. The role of the government is to protect rights that cannot be taken away.” This is a juicy quote. First it embodies an American exceptionalism that I have little patience for. There are plenty of countries that base their laws and public policy on God and those countries tend to be Muslim.

But Santorum says there is a difference, although he doesn’t really elaborate it: “Unlike Islam where the higher law and civil law is the same. In our case we have civil laws, but our civil laws have to comport with the higher law. As long as abortion is legal, at least according to the Supreme Court, in this country, we will never have rest. Because that law does not comport with god’s law which says…that all life has value. [Because God said] ‘I knew you in the womb’”. So what’s the difference? We cannot allow abortion because it is against God’s law. First of all, it is the pure embodiment of arrogance to say that you know what God’s law is, as there are millions of religious people worldwide that have a different idea of what God’s law is. Second of all, that shows no difference whatsoever between civil law and “higher law”. Civil law, in this case, and in the cases of homosexuality, contraceptives and marriage must conform to his own fundamentalist and exclusivist interpretation of what this higher law states. Going back to the first quote of this paragraph, our rights are in fact outlined in our government. And yes, the government does not always protect these rights as exampled by cases with slavery, race, the equality of women, and state sanctioned discriminations of every kind. But these laws change and adapt, as they must to suit the ever-evolving moral zeitgeist. All rights can be taken away. The role of government is to protect its citizens, to protect the rights that protect its citizens. Never has there been a time in history when more human rights have been elucidated and protected, all due to modernism and secular ideology. Religion, which has had millennia of dominance in state affairs has never been able to come close to this record of human rights protection, in fact, the modern human rights protections come largely in spite of historical religious dominance.

Santorum says we need to understand who we are as Americans. However, once again, the religious right, championed by Santorum forget to recall the Treaty of Tripoli signed by President John Adams in 1797 that says, “As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion.”

Religious In-Group/Out-Group Dynamics

I’ve been reading the spectacular Richard Dawkins. Along with Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens, his book The God Delusion, is a necessary contribution to the atheist discourse on religion, religious violence and the psychology and philosophy of religion itself.

In chapter 7, The ‘Good’ Book and the Changing Moral Zeitgeist, he summarizes a study done by Israeli psychologist George Tamarin, who presented more than a thousand Israeli school children, ages eight to fourteen, the story of the battle of Jericho in the book of Joshua:

“Joshua said to the people, ‘Shout; for the LORD has given you the city. And the city and all that is within it shall be devoted to the LORD for destruction…But all silver and gold, and vessels of bronze and iron, are sacred to the LORD; they shall go in the treasury of the LORD.’ … Then the utterly destroyed all in the city, both men and women, young and old, oxen, sheep, and asses, with the edge of the sword…and they burned the city with fire, and all within it, only the silver and gold, and the vessels of bronze and iron, they put into the treasury of the house of the LORD.”

Tamarin asked the children a simple moral question: ‘Do you think Joshua and the Israelites acted rightly or not?’ They had three choices: A (total approval), B (partial approval) and C (total disapproval). Sixty six percent gave total approval and 26 percent total disapproval, with eight percent giving partial approval.

Here are three examples of a typical answer from the total approval (A) group:

1.    In my opinion Joshua and the Sons of Israel acted well, and here are the reasons: God promised them the land, and gave them permission to conquer. If they would not have acted in this manner or killed anyone, then there would be the danger that the Sons of Israel would have assimilated among the Goyim.

2.    In my opinion Joshua was right when he did it, one reason being that God commanded him to exterminate the people so that the tribes of Israel will not be able to assimilate amongst them and leanr their bad ways.

3.    Joshua did good because the people who inhabited the land were of a different religion, and when Joshua killed them he wiped their religion from the earth.

The reasoning for the massacre was religious in every case. Surprisingly, some in category C (total disapproval) did so for backhanded religious reasons. For example, one girl, disapproved because in order for Joshua’s to conquer Jericho he had to enter it: “I think it is bad, since the Arabs are impure and if one enters an impure land one will also become impure and share their curse.” Two others disapproved because Joshua destroyed the animals and property rather than keeping some as spoils for the Israelites:

1.    I think Joshua did not act well, as they could have spared the animals for themselves.

2.    I think Joshua did not act well, as he could have left the property of Jericho; if he had not destroyed the property it would have belonged to the Israelites.

These children are young and innocent. These savage views must come from somewhere else such as their parents or the cultural group and context in which they’ve been brought up.

Tamarin ran a fascinating control group. A different group of 168 Israeli children were given the same scenario and text but with some key changes: Joshua’s name was changed to ‘General Lin’ and ‘Israel’ replaced by ‘a Chinese kingdom 3,000 years ago.’ This group yielded entirely opposite results. Only 7 percent approved of General Lin’s behavior, and 75 percent disapproved.

Simply put, when their loyalty to Judaism was removed, the majority of children would agree with the moral judgments of most modern humans. However, it looks drastically different from a religious point of view. Religion made the difference between children condemning genocide and condoning it. And this is its immense power: to divide people and foster historic enmities and hereditary vendettas. More to come...