Debunking new hatred
Yesterday, New York became the sixth and most populous state in the United States to allow same-sex marriage. It happened with a bipartisan majority, and it happened in exactly the way I have been a proponent of for years … namely by telling religious communities “If you don’t want to marry a couple, you are entitled to say no”. That way, no one is forced into anything they find personally offensive, but people will at least know publicly, whether a religious community supports homophobia or not.
Kudos to New York’s lawmakers for having the guts, and particularly to the Republicans who went against their party’s line of dividing people into first- and second-class citizens. Good on them. Let the books show, in all perpetuity, that they were brave enough to stand on the right side of history.
But this is not about gay rights directly. It is about religious rights. Not my rights, belonging to a tiny religious minority, but actually about the rights of large, well known religions.
It is in part sparked by an angry exchange I had with a colleague a few days ago, and in part sparked by something I see increasingly frequently online.
First things first: The angry argument with my colleague. It started out with her pointing out a case from Denmark, where a young girl from the baltics, nineteen years of age, had been kidnapped and literally forced into sexual slavery in a brothel in Denmark for a week. Not long, you might say, but when the details of the story broke, they were absolutely atrocious. I doubt most people would have survived or at least kept their sanity intact if they had to endure what that poor girl went through for a week. I was as shocked and appalled as the next person, and my first words were “I hope whoever is behind this gets a very severe sentence in court”.
My colleague put, what I thought was a somewhat overbearing expression on her face, and said “It’s Denmark, no way he’ll get punished properly. Look at that recent case of child abuse.”
She was referring to one of the most horrendous cases of systematized child abuse to ever surface in Denmark. A case which ended recently, with two parents of a number of children, being convicted for crimes so awful I can’t even begin to describe my disgust at it. The father was sentenced to indefinite medical incarceration. This is the hardest sentence you can get in Denmark, as it is literally “indefinite”. Life in prison means sixteen years. Medical incarceration usually means either until you’re dead, or until you’re so old and physically and mentally feeble, that you won’t pose any danger to society anymore. It means daily treatment with psychopharamceutical drugs, and constant screenings by psychiatrists. It is what most really hardcore criminals dread the most in Denmark, and the father in this case was quoted for saying he would accept a life sentence without appealing it, but he was terrified at the prospect of medical incarceration.
The mother was convicted on a lesser number of charges, but still got four years in the slammer.
She actually accepted her sentence, and only appealed because of a technicality which meant that since her husband appealed, she -had- to as well. She has made it public that she found her sentence to be both right and fair.
Where am I getting with this? My colleague was saying that she found these sentences to be too mild. But one of the two was the hardest sentence Danish law allows, and the other was still four years in prison, for a much less aggravating list of charges. I asked her in what world that could ever be construed as a “mild” sentencing and she conceded that in the case of the father, it was the right sentence. But not in the case of the mother. I asked what she based that on, and she went on to say she felt the mother should have taken the children and left.
I asked her how. She openly said “I don’t know. But she should have”. So I went on to tell her that I found her ideas to be both dangerous and frightening. In a society ruled by law, a person cannot be convicted on the emotional instability of Vox Populi, but only based on hard evidence in a court of law. She kept arguing that she simply felt the mother got off too lightly, and I kept pointing out to her that while she might feel that was the case, I would like to see her rational argument, her proof and her legal justification for harsher sentences under the law.
In the end, she stormed off in a rage.
Later, she tried to explain to me that she felt I hadn’t respected her opinions and that she had been personally insulted by that. If she was looking for an apology, she didn’t get one. I told her, flat out, that I respected her right to have a different opinion than me, but that I would not respect the opinion itself, because if I did, I would bar myself from disagreeing with her. She’s entitled to her opinion, but I am just as entitled to say I think her opinions are dangerous and that if we were to go with her system of justice, we would suspend Habeas Corpus, and simply hand out sentences willy nilly, based on how angry people got over any given case.
And then I told her I thought it best to end the debate then and there, because I did not see us agreeing on this issue.
What does this have to do with what this whole thing started out with, you ask? I’ll tell you. This argument reminded me of how important the right to disagree is, and how important it is to not always kowtow to politeness. That sometimes, you have to say that while you acknowledge someone’s right to hold different opinions than you, you in return maintain the right to speak up against that opinion.
I know it is politically incorrect, and I don’t give a rats arse, to be honest with you. It is the way I am, take it or leave it.
The second part of this story, comes from the Internet. It deals with angry people, loudly proclaiming that religious intolerance is the bane of all that is good in this world.
I think that is oversimplifying things rather dramatically, but I’ll go along insofar as I too think that religious fundamentalism and intolerance is a great problem and a huge source of societal friction and intolerance. So far I agree.
But the next argument, with increasing frequency, is “all religion is bad”, closely followed by “All religion is superstition”, and then concluded by “all believers in any faith of any kind are mentally inferior to atheists and downright stupid”.
Aaaand the film just broke in Joan’s camera. *sigh*
I hate having to waste time and effort on people who generalize that badly yet again, but if I spend five minutes searching the internet, I can find a list of important, -highly- intelligent and talented people of faith, both contemporary and historical. Let me see …
William Butler Yeats, one of Irelands most important literary figures, was Pagan.
So is the actor Gabriel Byrne, of “The Usual Suspects” fame (I can’t believe I just referenced that movie … *shudder*)
One of the most innovative musicians of the late 20th century, Sting, is Pagan. So is his Irish new wave colleague Enya. Or, if we are to go back in history to find someone who is truly a tower of intellect, then let’s settle on Aristotle, who is still quoted to this day. This list, of course, contains but a tiny fraction of the names available if you go out there and search for yourself, as is the case with the lists below.
Next, let’s take a look at Christians, and let us start with one of the more obscure names on the list, and then take it from there:
Hunayn ibn Ishaq was an Assyrian, Nestorian Christian responsible for the translation of a HUGE amount of ancient greek material into Persian, which saved much of the knowledge that later formed the basis of the renaissance in Europe. Hunayn ibn Ishaq was also a scholar in his own right, and amongst other things is one of the fathers of eye-surgery … and mind you, he lived in the late ninth century A.D.
Or how about Nicolaus Copernicus, the man who changed the way humanity perceived the entire universe, to a heliocentric view? A Catholic believer all his life.
What about my favorite of all, Sir Francis Bacon, the inventor of the Baconian method or “the scientific method” by which all discoveries must be backed by measurable, empirical evidence. Or René Descartes, one of the greatest thinkers of all time, who spent a lot of his time finding ways to reconcile his 17th century catholic beliefs with his prodigous philosophy.
Let’s go on to Islam for a moment and start with one of my favorites:
Abu Raihan al-Biruni, lived a long life from the late tenth to mid eleventh centuries. He was one of the earliest great thinkers in Arabic physics and metaphysics. He was a skilled mathematician, and discovered calculations used to this day. He wrote extensively on geography, including on foreign countries such as India, which he visited himself, and he wrote on my favorite topic of all … history.
Or Ibn al-Baithar, who wrote on medicine, and whose works still influence both eastern adn western medicinal studies today, more than 750 years after his death?
Not to leave out another of my favorites, Ibn Khaldun, one of the first sociologists in this world, who wrote on how economic, social and environmental issues influence the development of human culture. Truisms even today, that no serious sociologist would dream of refuting.
And ending this little rundown with Omar al-Khayyam, whose beautiful poetry includes a favorite of modern day liberal TV-icon Keith Olbermann … and of myself …
“So I be written in the book of love
I do not care about that book above
Erase my name, or write it as you will
so I be written in the book of love.”
And just because I am so THOROUGHLY sick of the whole argument that all religious people are by definition of inferior intellect, let us continue with with some of the great Jewish minds of the ages.
One I have mentioned briefly in this blog before, is Baruch Spinoza who, as part of his philosophy, stated that God and Nature cannot be divided. He was also a mathematician and along with aforementioned Decartes, he was one of the most famous rationalists in history.
Marc Chagall, one of the most important painters of the 20th century was jewish, and his works are cited as hallmarks of postimpressionism and of modernism.
Oh and of course Energy equals Mass times the speed of light in vacuum, squared.
Or more commonly, E=MC2. Albert Einstein was Jewish. ‘Nuff said.
So was one of the forgotten heroes of the 20th century, Jonas Salk, who invented the Polio-vaccine and helped defeat one of the most tragic and horrifying childhood diseases. Oh, and my ultimate boss, Steve Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft is Jewish.
And Yehudi Menuhin … the first classical musician I ever learned the name of, one of the most incredible violinists of all time, is jewish. Go listen to some of his work, it’s beyond breathtaking, it really is.
If you wished, you could go out and find similar lists of Buddhists and Hindus and any number of other religions out there.
And so, back to my original point. Religion does not make people stupid. Not more than a few days ago, I pointed out to someone virulently anti-religious online, in a debate, that as long as religion was a personal matter, and as long as it was not used to dehumanize, belittle or harass other people, it could be a source of personal peace and a means for someone to focus and center themselves. His response? “So can drugs, and we made THAT illegal!”
I left the debate by that time, bowing out and saying I thought it best to agree to disagree like civilized people. I see no point in wasting my time on arguing with people who sink to such a level of argumentation.
Religion holds great potential for doing harm. I’ve often enough inveighed about that, and I maintain that it is a bad, bad thing when it happens. But religion does not magically suck intellect out of practitioners, and claiming that it does is … frankly … as superstitious as these people claim religion is in itself.
But here is the thing. Superstition literally means a belief in that which cannot be proved. Those who will use the word “superstition” as an insult do so without knowing the actual meaning of the word. Yes, religion is superstition. That is the whole point of faith. To believe, without empirical certainty. To not have Sir Francis Bacon and his Scientific Method in your corner, but still believing in something.
I don’t need my world to be full of evidence and proof to live in it. I like it when I have it. In most cases, I certainly need it. But in terms of faith, I don’t. Nor will I ever.
People of faith are not stupid. It has been proved more times than I can count, and will be proven in the future as well. It is proven every single day.
The argument that “all religous people are automatically of lesser intellect than nonbeliever” does, in fact, lack any empirical, measurable evidence to back it up.
Which makes it, by definition, “superstition”.
Ladies and gentlemen, I rest my case.