If you’re going to proclaim that you govern based upon your values, I will demand that you define your values and the foundation of your values. Is it the Bible or reason? If it is the Bible, as you have claimed, when an American subscribes to values that are in opposition to those expressed in the Bible will you feel disinclined to support their claim to liberty and human rights as well as equal treatment under the law? Are your religious values superior to their secular values?
We point proudly to the long tradition of tolerance as an aspect of our American legacy; we are a moral people with a deeply ingrained sense of fair play. This is in fact, a legacy, not of our Judeao-Christian foundation, but, in spite of, and even in opposition to the evils of organized religion that were the fallow ground for the enlightenment to germinate.
What is referred to as the Old and New Testament is a deeply paradoxical set of beliefs. The Old Testament, or as you would have it, “The Word of God” is to a large degree, a set of prohibitions, guides, rules and laws that constitute an extortion letter wherein God says “If you don’t do x y and z, you and yours will suffer the consequences: stoning, banishment, total devastation of your land, cities and people, fire and brim stone, eternal damnation to hell etc. (as well as a few juicy, scatological and racy passages that are too obscene to be repeated on the public airwaves lest someone’s delicate sensibilities be offended). On the other hand, if you do these things, you’ll experience the good that I can bestow, it’s your free choice.”
This is in diametric opposition to the Bible 2.0 (the New Testament version of “The Word of God” ) which throws out the whole intimidation factor and says “You have been told that an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. But what I tell you is this; do not resist those who wrong you. If anyone slaps you turn and offer him the other cheek also.” (Matthew 5: 38-39). Instead of smiting your enemy and conducting a campaign of total war, a scorched earth policy, you are now commanded to “Love thy enemy” (Matthew 5:43)
It seems that there are a few bugs to be worked out. The word of God contains some contradictory dictates and as such it doesn’t seem too good for settling differences. It is this very range of interpretations that allows one to selectively pick and choose from a wide array of opinions. As such it is a defacto demonstration of moral relativism, a quality you loudly decry as a cause of this nations moral decay and something endemic to those secular humanists. I would say that is a pretty big plank in your eye (Matthew 7: 3-5).
Either way it makes no difference because your behavior is coerced . They aren’t freely chosen because it is “self evident" but because you want to get into heaven or avoid hell; not simply because it is good to be good, but because of fear. You have to get your guidance from the Bible because you don’t know what is good; it has to be imposed upon you.
Reasoning, on the other hand provides a fairly tried and true method of resolving differences. I, using my “God given” capacity to evaluate my circumstances and arrive at decisions that are in my best interests, am able to behave in a “moral” fashion without the reliance upon a collection of writings gathered up over the course of several centuries by a bunch of highly partisan mortal men with, in some cases, very specific political agendas. I reason, it is “self-evident” that I can best look after my own affairs. I am free. In exchange for not doing whatever I choose to regardless of the consequences, I receive your reassurances that you won’t do whatever you want to regardless of the consequences. This is the essence of what philosophers refer to as the “social contract”. In my case the express name of the social contract is “The Declaration of Independence, The Constitution of the United States of America” and the amendments made to that document referred to as “The Bill of Rights.” These documents were arrived at through the exercise of our “God given” capacity to reason-not a collection of ancient texts of uncertain origin, human constructed, long held, traditional spiritual values that shamelessly assert themselves as truth, the one true faith. It is precisely because the Founding Fathers couldn’t agree upon religious matters that we have the first clause of the first amendment.
For someone to assert that I am not entitled to the same rights that the social contract affords others on the basis of their opinion that that my behavior is “an abomination before God” because it says so in your Bible, well, fuck you. And if you feel that you shouldn’t have to explain to your child why two men are kissing and that you resent me parading my “perversions” in front of your eyes, ramming my “sinful life” and values down your throat with my “homosexual agenda” by demanding that I be treated with respect in the courts, classroom, the field of battle, hospitals and every other arena of the public sphere, fuck you. When you, at every turn decry the decay of morality in our culture and claim threat and fear as your justification for what in effect is a process of dehumanization, fuck you. When you attack, threaten, assault, demean, intimidate, degrade, and kill on the basis of fear and God, fuck you.
When I go into a classroom and see your extortion notes “carved in stone” placed up on the wall as a “moral guide“, you are ramming your value system down my throat, rubbing your values in my face; when I go into the court of law to receive justice and see your values in a position of state sanction in the form of your Ten Commandments, you are rubbing your values in my face. When you prevent me from upholding my end of the social contract by defending my country on the field of battle because of my “immoral behavior” you arerubbing your value system in my face. When you deny me the opportunity to be with and care for some one I am committed to on the basis of your “Judeao-Christian traditional values” as expressed in our legal code you are rubbing your values in my face. If your “faith” commands you and provides you with justification for intolerance, your “opinion” is actively corroding the fabric of the social contract. When one party fails to adhere to the terms of a contract both parties are released from their contractual obligations. The contract is null and void. I will put you in my verbal and intellectual cross hairs to defend my life and liberty. Fuck you.
If, as the gun nuts assert, the second amendment is what makes all of the others possible (specifically the first amendment: rights to free speech, freedom of assembly, freedom of the press, freedom of religion, freedom to petition the government), isn’t that in and of itself all the justification I need for the above arguments? Is it in fact only through the threat of force that all the others are possible? Is this not exactly what your God is doing? Telling all of humanity “Do what I say or else!” It kind of throws all the Christians, (Evangelical, Mormon, Baptist, Catholic, Presbyterian, Episcopalian and every other doctrinarian hair-splitting sects) moral arguments in a weird kinda light doesn’t it? You’re not being moral because it is “self evident” that it is good to be good, you’re doing what you do because of fear. Fear of “eternal damnation”. This is love? Swell guy, that God of yours.
Rights are never given, they are only taken. It is not within anybodies purview to grant me something I am already in possession of. The only thing that can be done is that they can be taken from me, and only then with my consent. By virtue of my humanity I am endowed with “inalienable” rights. To take them from me has the effect of dehumanizing me. Rights exist before government. Government does not grant, bestow or create rights. Rights exist; human beings come together to create a system of government to protect them. That is the function of government. The Presidents role and responsibility is to defend those documents from those, within and without our country, who would attack them. You, Mr. Romney are attacking them. You, Mr. Huckabee, are attacking them. And so is every single person who supports you.
If the Bible, and your selective interpretation and reading of, it is the foundation of your beliefs and values, and you are going to lead this country from that position, you are not fit to govern these United States of America.
The system we have developed in this country has been exceptionally effective at protecting liberty because our cultural foundation was such that there was an understanding that was fairly widely held that we are all ‘created equal and endowed with the rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness’ (in spite of many reasonably effective and enduring efforts on the behalf of kings, ‘holier than thou’ priests, violent thugs and ignorant, self-righteous politicians.) These are in fact, “self-evident” truths. The Judeo-Christian-Islamic tradition believes that we (human beings) were all created in the image of God (I need to point out that they were neither the first nor were they the only religions or cultures to do so) and this basic belief underpins, in many ways even gave birth to, the cultures that allowed the Enlightenment to ferment. It does not follow however that the ideas contained in all their sacred documents are the sound foundations upon which to form a government. Perhaps the enlightenment would not have come to pass were it not for the three monotheistic religious traditions, and with it the American Revolution but we would still have developed morality and reasonable behavior- in spite of faith. Moral behavior is not the exclusive domain of the West or the three great monotheistic traditions, nor is reason. Both are human qualities; any examination of human history makes this abundantly clear.
It can, and has been, very soundly argued that it is precisely the beliefs contained in the Bible that have been responsible for so much of the tragedy that has been European history and more recently the devastating abuses to our environment . (However ,in another example of why the bible is such a bad basis for decision making and a glorious example of the Christian Right’s capacity to rationalize and twist ‘the good book’ it is also now used to justify protecting the environment as well.) Genesis claims that the whole of the earth and everything upon it is for man to use because God made us lord over all, that mankind has the freedom to choose to do anything we want to, good or evil. But ultimately mankind is above it all in a hierarchical sort of way, separate from the natural world. This is what makes it possible to behave with such disregard for the world around us. Additionally, when you see others as less than or not fully human all manner of hideous acts take place. Witness Islamic suicide bombers, witness fundamentalist Christian abortion clinic bombers and assassins, witness slavery (indeed it was the biblical support for slavery that led to the creation of the Southern Baptist Church). When God sanctions your behavior because you are with him, when you’re his chosen people, you can do anything you want, God will back you up because you’re doing as He commanded.
This nation finally abolished slavery because it is morally reprehensible even though your Bible condones it. We do not use the Bible as the basis of our social contract, we use reason.
Your church and its followers, Mr. Huckabee, exercised it’s freedom of choice and liberty to disagree. Are you still in the thrall of those twisted readings of “the good book”?
Your church and it’s followers, Mr. Romney as recently as 1977 discriminated against people of “dark skin”. Are you still in the thrall of those twisted readings as well?
No. Because it is morally reprehensible, in spite if what it say in the Bible.
Are these changes in official religious policies not self- evidently worth doing? Apparently not because you both had to get it from a book of directions, from official authority.
The Bible isn’t grounded in reason; it is an article of faith. Reason and faith-diametrically opposed means of understanding the world around us. To the extent that the Bible is, as I have already said, essentially an extortion letter, it is an embodiment of the same tried and true dynamic that underlies the declaration and constitution; law backed up by the threat of force. You are not behaving in a moral fashion when you use your faith to discriminate against me. Get your ‘values’ out of my face.
Do you have enough respect for me to ‘do unto me as you would have done unto you’?
Yours in democratic enlightenment,
Steve
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1 comment:
Well, and forcefully in places, said.
Gail
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