Humanism, atheism and other freedoms

We are all capable of being moved by the plight of Haiti. You don’t need to be told – by either earthly or unearthly authority – that the victims of the earthquake need and deserve our help.

Compassion and empathy are human attributes. They are a cornerstone of humanism and the source of morality, in all cultures and at all times. Faiths may claim ownership of moral codes, but for them to assert that their brand of belief is the only route to good and honourable action is as bizarre, arrogant and unjustifiable as claiming that only through religion can you walk on two legs.

We feel because we are human.

And because we are human, we want to help.

And now there is a way of giving for those who want to ensure that their money does not go to aid organisations that confuse faith with compassion.

The Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science has set up a fund that will be distributed to two organisations:

• Doctors Without Borders (Médecins sans Frontières)
• International Red Cross

To donate, go to: Non-Believers Giving Aid

The UK arm of the Alpha organisation has a poll on its website’s home page – does god exist? And when I visited the site, the response was pretty overwhelming: 96% of the 87,602 voters had said … NO.

And that’s surprising, because Alpha is a Christian organisation dedicated to getting people to believe in god. It’s an evangelical outfit with a soft voice, which uses low-key indoctrination techniques to suck in the vulnerable and credulous. It’s love-bombing for the iPod generation.

I’ve no doubt that, soon, the poll will be taken down or, um, ‘adjusted’ somehow. But just so you can enjoy what I experienced, here’s a screengrab (I’ve enlarged the relevant bit to ensure it’s readable):

Meanwhile, the ‘Belief’ section of The Guardian newspaper ran a poll (due to close on 22/10/2009) which asked the question, ‘Can you be good without God?’. With one day to go, the results were that 93% said ‘Yes, of course. You don’t need religion to be morally driven’. So much for ‘no morality without religion’.

Update 23/10/2009: The number of votes is up to 154,500 and the percentage of No votes has increased to 98%! Looks like the Alpha people have their work cut out…

A Brazilian archbishop has provoked a storm of protest through an act of excommunication. He expelled a woman from the faith – and condemned her to eternal torture – for failing to prevent her nine year-old daughter from having an abortion.

This heartless behaviour by Archbishop José Cardoso Sobrinho has itself been roundly condemned by politicians and even some theologians.

The girl was repeatedly raped by her stepfather over a period of at least three years. The stepfather has not been excommunicated. That retribution was saved for those who displayed compassion and understanding towards the girl – her mother and the doctor who performed the procedure.

What is surprising, though, is that people are surprised.

Sobrinho acted correctly – at least within the strictly limited boundaries of his world.

A religion is defined (and differentiated from others) by its belief system – its rules, its doctrine. The particulars of any one religion lie at the root of its claim to be the only true religion. They are what falsify all other faiths.

These rules and boundaries exist because they are the means by which the specific faith declares “this is who we are and what we stand for”. They are claimed as truths before which we must all yield. They are also the framework for the faith’s claim to morality.

This raises a problem. Although religious believers often lay claim to a moral superiority, the fact is that this doctrine represents a straitjacket. It denies the believer many avenues of moral, ethical, empathetic and humanitarian action.

Adherents must act according to these rules, otherwise they are not true believers. In that context, Sobrinho not doubt understood that excommunication, however immoral and uncaring it may seem to the rest of us, was unequivocally demanded. The basic tenets of the faith trump all humanity.

Now, it’s entirely possible that some bigwig in the Roman Catholic church – the Pope himself, perhaps – might override this decision. It’s happened before when such an act of faith has resulted in a PR nightmare for the church. What what would that mean for the religion?

If matters of doctrine become flexible, they also become meaningless. These matters are not defined and guided by reason. They are deemed to be eternal ‘truths’. As soon as they are seen to be alterable, in the interests of good publicity or other less spiritual motives, then they reveal the entire faith as hollow.

This might go some way to explain the diminishing of religions like Roman Catholocism. Either they remain rigid, true to their core beliefs – and thus reveal themselves as uncaring, inhuman and irrelevant to modern life. Or they adapt, and thus admit that the ‘eternal truths’ at the heart of the faith are nothing of the sort.

It’s a stark choice – to be irrelevant or meaningless.