A CASE CAN BE MADE against certain private religious schools — namely the biggest, most lucrative and most prestigious ones — for exercising a little-noticed form of mental child abuse. Both in the manner and content of instruction, I assert that early childhood education by organized Religions is a form of brainwashing against helpless children long before they reach the Age of Reason. In Catholic catechism classes for example, certain outrageous absurdities are solemnly trotted out as Infallible Truth. The religion textbooks in gilded places such as Ateneo de Manila or De La Salle or Marian Imaculada Schools, the Iglesia ni Cristo and Adventist schools, Muslim madrassahs, Hindu temples, etc, are full of malicious fairy tales and insipid and vapid “dogmas” such as creationist myths, fantastical gods and goddesses and impossible histories of the earth, universe and man. But are these considered “errors in textbooks”? Oh no. It’s Freedom of Religion that has inexorably led to adults worshipping stone-n-wood idols and worshipping at the beck and bell of men in funny hats and silly costumes. This mental illness of epidemic proportions affects most Filipinos, whether they labor as GROs and trike drivers, jueteng or drug lords or as newspaper publishers, extortionists and innuendo-mongers.
What does more damage, I wonder, to the Filipino youth: the absurd but seriously made claims in religion and catechism classes, or some erroneous and badly written science textbooks?
Yet we are all asked to respect and reverence this system of mental child abuse in the name of freedom of religion. In this post I ask only that we, the People, recognize the limits of religious freedom in private and public schools and strictly impose the separation of Church and State, of Morality and Theology in the Constitution. For real. For the future. For the Children.
And please see the recent marvelous discussion on secularism hosted by Benj.
Popularity: 1% [?]
Suicide bombers in Pakistan and Afghanistan are almost exclusively the products of religious (madrassah) schools. The most terrible things have happened all over Asia now because of these madrassahs all the uprightness they are being taught there.
Why is that Danilo?
It must take a fair bit of “God-consciousness and honesty” for a normal human being to blow up innocent men women and children just as the suicide bomber enters Paradise to be with 76 vestal virgins, all of whose costumes change colors every hour!
But just so you know, the Islamofascists are just as evil and insane as the Christian fascists. Why? because they both believe, incorrigibly, that theirs is the One True Faith. And they will both kill for it.
The problem with Mindanao are these Two Religions.
The Human Beings have got to get together and kick them both to Kingdom Come.
But just so you know, the Islamofascists are just as evil and insane as the Christian fascists.
Sigh. Meet Sam Harris. Let DJB speak for himself, Sam!
The Human Beings have got to get together and kick them both to Kingdom Come.
They already tried that, dontcha know? (Hitch and Harris wants to bomb them too.)
“Suicide bombers in Pakistan and Afghanistan are almost exclusively the products of religious (madrassah) schools.”
Wrong DJB! It’s the American double standard, foreign policy, the western domination and imperialism that breed these pool of suicide bombers!
Read Micheal Moore’s Fahrienheit9/11, Dude, Where’s My Country, Will They Trust Us Again? etc.,
Don’t be irrationally lame by your undying belief of bush’s demoncrazy DJB.
“a horrific cycle of crucifixions, scalpings and other “bestial tortures.”
This is the “inherent goodness-minus religion” in man that DJB is talking about and advocating for.
Ah, but Sam Harris would claim that they were No True Atheists, danilo. Dawkins offers a variant of the No True Scotsman thing: They didnt do it in the name of atheism. It’s like saying smoking doesnt kill you because you dont do it in the name of nicotine. ;)
DJB
It’s not just “civic efficiency,” DJB, but the provision cited also includes the phrase, “the development of moral character.”
Anyway, to repeat, catholic parents, in particular, have this “natural and primary right and duty” to keep “their own progeny” safe and sound, away from catholic bashers and their children, who mock and make fun of symbols dear and sacred to one’s religion.
But if Catholic parents and the schools that Catholics maintain lie and deceive, who will teach the children of Catholics “in accordance with their religious convictions”? Will the State who now owns these children and claims to know only the “truth” and never to lie, do the screwing of “the defenseless minds of toddlers”?
BTW, who decides what a lie is?
In any case, one of the many lies I have been teaching my children (I have four and several grand) is RESPECT for the religious convictions (or even the utter lack of it) of others who may also believe sincerely that theirs is the true faith, too.
Like what I said in the other thread, DJB is putting the “cart ahead of the horse” when he tries to mean that man is inherently good minus religion or just corrupted by religion afterward.
It’s that when man goes out of religion, acquires and develops vices, submits to his/her earthly indulgences, s/he thereby debases his/herself and afterward s/he is no more than an irrational beast, or worse than that.
I also said, atheist can have their own moral and ethical values outside of religion. But Will Durant, a historian-cum-philosopher opined in his book “Pleasures of Philosophy” that any moral value without religious foundation or without the backing of religion is very weak and doomed to fail because such is no more than an advice from a friend that anyone has the freedom either to accept or reject it.
DJB.
Yup, I agree, the Bible could be adjudged as “wicked”, in many parts therein. The wickedness however merely portrays the old, old, story of human beings. You could say that the Old Testament portrays a God who is jealous, insecure, wrathful, war-freak, etc and all by his/its great lonesome in heaven. Not in the New Testament though: the descent of God in human form. Now, don’t you think that’s mighty humble of God to do so? Now evolution is just as splendid too — man becoming a god. Incidentally, Jesus Chris said, “Don’t you know that ye are gods?” Not sheep (according to the subconscious techniques of organized religion). LOL.
“Who do you think is responsible for most of the child SEX abuse in this country? Right you are: parents or close relatives of children.”
So, how does this connect to religious teaching? What a stretch in your line of reasoning.
Re: toddlers eating religious fodder. I agree with Blackshama here: it would just be as “truthful” and educational and even religious to show a kid how human beings are say, related to single cell protozoa or to the chimps. Parents and the society in general know to really drive home the point that we are one, which is the motivating force of true religions: kids are taught to love animals, plants, the birds and bees, etc — and anyway, all kids instinctively do (well, save for those with pyschopathic tendencies).
BrianB,
“Madonna, if we ditch the religious teaching of the Bible, why bother teaching it at all… because it’s great literature.
Depends on how you define “religious” or religion. Incidentally, religion means becoming one or uniting or binding, at least to me. I said and suggested that read it in a way that we read literature: poetry and fiction. Not because it is great literature per se.
“It is great but it’s not open to literary interpretation like Homer and Shakespeare.”
Says who? The language and poetic forms pa lang are absolutely fantastic.
“There’s a lot of the meta-textual–archeology, history and social psychology–involved.”
Now, that’s the purpose or perspective of scholars or critics. I first read it as a scholar would (read: literal) but later, as a junkie of literature. Now, where does the religious fit in there? LOL, not certainly during the first time.
Following the logic presented in this post’s title that “Religious Education As Mental Child Abuse”, it can also be said that education (no matter what kind) is a form of mental child abuse.
If educating young minds in religion is an abuse, what makes educating them in science (or arts, or music, etc.) exempted from also being called an abuse?
Just because some people do not believe in God that it give them some sort of superior level of authority to judge those who practice religion as wrong? In some sense, just because some people believe in God that it give them some sort of authority to judge those who do not believe in God as wrong?
It is when one believes that what he believes is the only right thing that intellectual arrogance asserts itself.
No one has the full grasp of the whole vastness of knowledge that there is to be learned in the entire universe. That people argue just about anything under the sun is a demonstration that we all are partly educated with something and mostly ignorant of the rest of the things.
“You could say that the Old Testament portrays a God who is jealous, insecure, wrathful, war-freak, etc and all by his/its great lonesome in heaven. Not in the New Testament though: the descent of God in human form. Now, don’t you think that’s mighty humble of God to do so?”-Madonna
Now, now, Madonna. I’ve read somewhere that the bible was written by God, or “the words of God”…to that effect. Are you now implying that, God, somewhere in between those two Testaments, was able to see the light, and changed his mind?
Bert,
The crucial thing here is if you believe that the book was literally written by God — or humans, say, under “divine” inspiration. Just decide for yourself.
Korek ka dyan, someone saw the light eventually. But it was not God. LOL. It was the human race.
Also, just be quite sensical here. If you are in possession of great power to affect, to hurt and to change destinies, you don’t offer information to children or to people for which they are not quite ready for. Ika nga, there’s a time for everything — the right time. That’s not the same thing as of feeding them BS though. Just an exercise of respect and responsibility.
Question: The subjects of the Public School Curriculum are five in number: English; Filipino; Math; Science; and Makabayan.
But no Religion subject. Why?
Is Religion not necessary for moulding good citizens under the Constitution?
Is Religion not essential to instill Morality in public school graduates.
If not, then why do the private schools insist on teaching it, on top of the Basic Education Curriculum of the PUblic schools?
If yes, then why isn’t it in the BEC?
Are public school graduates inferior to private school graduates for not having been indoctrinated in some Organized Religion’s faith, liturgy, pomp and circumstances?
Non-malignant, You ask a fair enough question:
I know what you are thinking, I think, and I agree: simply educating a young mind is not in and of itself “mental abuse” even though it is true that in so doing we are in fact “taking advantage” of the fact that this human being is in no position to resist our transmission of some kind of information to him or her at that young age (say four or five or six years old).
So why is teaching Science any different from teaching Religion to young defenseless minds? Aren’t they both forms of taking advantage of children and therefore both mental abuse?
What makes it mental abuse, in my humble opinion, is the nature of the information that is being inculcated by religious instruction, in Catholic catechism classes and Islamic madrassah schools. They are a pack of seemingly benign lies that we only tolerate because we are blinded by the promise of producing religion-believing teenagers and adults out of helpless human beings below the age of reason. Well of course they succeed and it still remains for civil society to enforce a modicum of morality where the fantabulists have simply lost the youth and are out of both explanatory as well as inspirational power.
To observe a particularly stark example, consider the Quakers, who would rather see their children die than let a hospital give them a blood transfusion…on religious grounds. They of course inculcate such beliefs in each other from a young age, all under the protection of Freedom of Religion. But I doubt that anyone here would too avidly defend such a form of religious education.
Madonna,
If Religion is such a wonderful and permanent influence on human beings, what would be wrong with Catholic schools voluntarily withholding religious education until say the age of 12?
As MasterCard would have put the debate:
Faith without Reason, Clueless.
Pure Reason, Hubris.
Phil Manila,
I can imagine no educational activity that is a matter of purer reason than ‘Rithmetic. So, is it hubristic to teach children addition, subtraction, multiplication and division?
I have never claimed that Religion is Faith without Reason. For me, religion is reasoning based on false premises, namely revelation, sacred tradition and pure superstition.
The Bible is a wicked book in both its parts. Hell is not invented or made an article of “salvation” until the New Testament. At least in the Old Testament they stuck to murdering or enslaving the enemies of Yahweh or his Chosen People, raping their women and taking their land — but they do not torture the dead for all eternity in unending cauldrons of fire and brimston
The Bible is not divine revelation but human vanity. The Bible is Man creating God in his own image. And the Q’uran is much the same, especially the parts that are plagiarized from the Bible.
Looking only at the thing that one is not in agreement with or does not believe in while ignoring or forgetting to look at one’s own convictions is again a form of intellectual bias and denial.
Just as there are bad or wrong beliefs in religion, so also there are bad or wrong ideas of science (or any other intellectual discipline for that matter).
The set of beliefs and principles that one adheres to is really what makes his religion.
Isn’t science in a sense a form of religion? And isn’t it not through science that the most devastating weapons of mass destruction that could wipe out humanity was invented?
What is it that causes one to show some sort of concern for “…the Quakers who would rather see their children die than let a hospital give them a blood transfusion…”? Morality (religious or secular)?
The universe is so much more than a vast ocean of knowledge to be learned. It is up to every individual person to swim his way through that unlimited expanse of information using intellect to navigate himself around.
It is somewhat futile to attack some intellectual disciplines other than what we adhere to in some way intending to assert the supremacy of one’s own “religion” over the others.
If one believes in the good fruits of his “religion”, then let him nurture it that it may bear that fruits that will be benefit him and the others who are of the other “religions”.
DJB,
I’m not questioning your beliefs as I could see you have very deep convictions. Was just re-stating Kant…
Faith without reason is ignorance (blind). Reason without faith is empty.
Phil Manila,
May I suggest that the “detente” between Religion and Science which you (and Kant) seem to want, is now largely over. It has to come to an end because the religious attitude is getting in the way of human survival. It is wishful, magical thinking that we can not afford to take very seriously any more because there are better sources for its real wisdom without the utter bunko.
One deep conviction or “article of faith” I do have is that human beings can be perfectly good and moral beings (in the most ideal sense of the democratic constitution) without recourse to theology, that belief in God is completely unnecessary for a person to be good.
Whoever wrote and ratified the Philippine Constitution evidently shares my faith since they wrote Freedom From Religion into it without writing Freedom Of Religion out of it. Yet they impose a comprehensive and strict secular, civil morality.
Madonna, I know I’m not deep so had difficulty understanding what you meant by your last answer to me.
Just trying to clarify on what you wrote about the Old Testament portraying God as jealous, insecure, wrathful, etc., whereas, you said, the the New Testament (seem to changed tact) where Jesus (who is the same God as the old but younger) became humble.
Anyway, it’s just very trivial and actually written sort of tongue-in-cheek only that I don’t know how to insert that smiley thing you guys are so adept at doing so me just content on my own heheh. heheh.
one day i dreamt i was sent to a science school during my kindergarten.
“good morning, teacher,” i greeted her.
“give me a precise and accurate measure of how good the morning is, which is the only thing indisputable at this time of the day,” she commanded me.
i woke up from this dream with a terrible headache.
Bert,
Sorry if I scrambled your thoughts further. I’m not really here to promote my own religious beliefs. So my thing is just for you to read the Bible (or whatever, whatever, whatever), if you are up to it, and decide for your own.
DJB,
Sadly, you are an extremist in this issue. There are a lot of factors why science as you put, has not become a “religion” yet. You know your stance reminds of totalitarian regimes whose leaders probably started out with noble intentions but ended up in a horrifying way with massacres of the human beings they actually wanted to liberate by wiping out wholesale the cultural aspects of the “old” order.
And in the other thread you branded me as an apostate — thanks for the label. And you predict that I would be an atheist soon. Well, too late, I’ve been in that road before — you could say I’ve been an atheist, agnostic, pagan, all the labels in between. This is the great weakness of science in truth-seeking: it has no room for ambiguity, for the unnamable, for subjectivity (it resorts to algorithm, the system which runs our computers and robots).
Let me be strictly logical here: if science is religion and a religion has its set of beliefs or mythology (but in the case of science as religion there is none because beliefs are not “objective” per se, then if none, there is none eh?). Ergo, science as religion is operating out of nothing: a void. You know, they say, when you come to the heart of evil, there is nothing there. Not saying that you are evil ha. Have you watched the film Gattaca? Now that is a society ruled by “scientific” morals, where one is either a “valid” or “not valid”.
inodoro ni emillie,
gets ko. hehe.
“…they wrote Freedom From Religion into it without writing Freedom of Religion out of it.” djb@ 9:50pm.
another “gem” from our resident (self-taught) constitutional expert. i have searched the 4 corners of the constitution and found no provision specifically ‘freeing’ anyone FROM religion, as if religion is some kind of coercive incarceration.
religious freedom is the result of the constitutional prohibition against the state passing a law “establishing” a state religion or curtailing its free exercise. simply stated, belief, doubt and total absence of faith are not to be interfered with by the state. the law is neutral, treating one’s persuasion/non persuasion as it finds it. if a religion violates the penal laws, e.g., concerning public order, public policy, national security, good customs or morals, the law steps in and “religious freedom” cannot be used as a shield or immunizing factor.
so, what kind of animal is this “freedom FROM religion”?
btw, djb and other atheists here, if i were you, i would watch my language against particular religions (as juridical persons) and their faithfuls. one word – libel.
that’s ok with me. just trying to be with the crowd ’cause it’s lonely here.
and learning something from the ‘masters’ in the process. up to my limits, of course.
“Says who? The language and poetic forms pa lang are absolutely fantastic.”
Madonna, let me just continue this very interesting topic by saying the meta-literal interpretation, the phology, the archeology, the history, the psychology that is now embedded in the Bible by being read throughout history as a historical and religious artifact more than overshadows the literary value. As written fiction or non-fiction, the Bible is unreadable. Imagine reading genesis and interpreting it as a creation myth. Why, genesis is a mere footnote compared to other creation myths. Most of the Gospels, not even comparable to a fine short story by Boccaccio. Get my meaning? Luke, The Ecclesiastes, Psalms may survive as masterpieces but much of the old Testament like Deuteronomy are just unreadable as literature. Weird nga eh, if you’re not into the Judeo-Christian religion.
I mean meta-textual, not literal.
someone mentioned something about memes.
imo, that’s the bottom line. “may the best meme win.”
gallant effort DJB. but, we are all different, and will always be. right now, more humans are for religion, and that is “because it should be right now.” but who knows what the future brings. nature will take its course.
OO nga eh. I’ve told DJB that many times. The religion meme has won and will continue its dominance. I was involved in an online memetic experiment back in the late nineties. Conclusion was, even a group of well-educated, well-read (may mga PhDs kami) will find a common myth the majority can subcribe to. In my own opinion, life isn’t an essay or non-fiction but a story or fiction.
“And the Q’uran is much the same, especially the parts that are plagiarized from the Bible.” – DJB
Hahaha! Can you specifically point out to me DJB where in the Qur’an is that? Who among the Muslims plagiarized the Bible? Is the whole chapter in the Qur’an magnanimously allotted for Mary part of that plagiarism?
Do you know about the science of fingerprinting? It is written in the Qur’an:
“Nay, I swear by the Day of Resurrection! Nay, I swear by the self-reproaching spirit! Doth man think We cannot assemble his bones? Nay, We are able to put together in perfect order the very tips of his fingers.” (Qur’an 75: 1-4) Or, Oceanography where different waters do not join and merge together though in constant contact:
“He has let free the two bodies of flowing water (sweet water and salty water), meeting together. Between them is a barrier which none of them can transgress.” (Qur’an 55:19-20); and, “And it is He Who has let free the two bodies of flowing water, one palatable and sweet, and the other salty and bitter; and He has set a barrier between them, and a partition that is forbidden to be passed.” (Qur’an 25:53)
Among others, these are all taught in the madrassah DJB. Were these copied and plagiarized from somewhere else? I pray, please prove to me if you are truthful.
DJB, if all those taught in madrassa were nothing but some form of “child abuse’ and thereby tie them up into the prism of “scientific ignorance,” then who was Ibn Sina? Who was Muhammad Musa al-Khwarizmi? Abu Raihan al Biruni? Etc., etc.,? Who were the forebears of universities? Wikipedia give you the list of some known Muslim men of science. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Muslim_scientists.
Do you know how Islam values knowledge and the constant pursuit of seeking and teaching of it to mankind DJB?
Prof. Dreiker of New York State University in his book ‘Dispute Between Science and Religion,’ “The engagement of Moslems in the world of knowledge goes back to their early days when they occupied the city of Alexandria in 638 A.D. that is six years after the death of Mohammed. Two centuries later, they had gone through all the reference books of the Greeks and give them their due care and attention. When al-Ma’moun ascended to the Caliphate in 813 A.D.., Baghdad became the leading center of learning all over the globe, and the Caliph provided it with innumerable books, surrounded himself with scholars, and treated them with great affection and greeting…If I were to trace the various results which this great movement led to, the space of my book would be too short to hold them. Arab Moslems promoted ancient studies and researches to a great extent and founded new fields of knowledge which had not been known before.”
He further went on, “Moslem universities were opened to all European students who came seeking further knowledge, and European kings and princes went to Moslem countries even for medical treatment.”
On the other hand, in his “History of the Arabs,” Professor Sedillot wrote: “In the Middle Ages, Moslems held the leadership in the field of science, philosophy and arts. They spread these wherever they went, and from them, knowledge passed over to Europe.”
Meanwhile, a sociology professor Dr. Gustav Lobon wrote in his book ‘Arab Civilization’: “With this, I shall move on to prove that the influence of the Arabs over the West was as great as it had been over the East, and the European civilization came entirely from an Arab origin…In fact, one cannot conceive the role the Arabs played in the West, unless one considers the state of Europe before the Arabs brought their civilization over it. If one goes back to the ninth Century A.D., when the Arab civilization in Spain was in full bloom, one finds that the cultural centers in the West were more like towers inhabited by savage feudal princes who took pride in their illiteracy and inability to read… “
BrianB,
“the meta-literal interpretation, the phology, the archeology, the history, the psychology that is now embedded in the Bible by being read throughout history as a historical and religious artifact more than overshadows the literary value.”
Okay, I get your drift. Yes, for a majority of people, it is a religious/historical text. But I read it as a piece of art/literature (my mode of absorbing its “truth”) because that’s the only way it could be “religious” for me. About creation myths — of course there are a lot, some even written more compellingly or convincing than Genesis.
Thanks, I’ll check out Bocaccio one of these days. Not really into short stories — I like novels and poetry.
Memes never die. They are just defeated, subjugated or absorbed by some more successful meme. Like genes, memes also mutate, grow, merge, make alliances and combinations, evolve.
As a meme or memes, Religion (its names are Legion) is an incoherent lot of squabbly, mutually contradictory churches, cults, sects and individual, which are however essentially unassailable from the inside or the outside because of the “Bencardian Principle” that Faith is unreachable with Reason, which he insists applies only to “ordinary human affairs”.
I claim that the Philippine Constitution and the Moral Principles it represents are entirely congruent with “ordinary human affairs” and therefore that it contains what ordinary human citizens need to become good moral human beings. Likewise how else are we to interpret the Principle of the Separation of Church and State, but that those Moral Principles do not depend explicitly or even implicitly on any one Religion, or its gods and goddesses. Despite this, the Constitution affirms the right of people to worship whatever they want, even a bit of bone or wood or stone. Or Yahweh or Baal or Allah or Shiva.
In a sense Freedom of Religion is the balm applied by Democracy to the wound it creates in the body of Religion by taking away Theology as the determiner of Human or Civil Morality and replacing God with the Word of the Constitution, the People’s Free Will.
Bencard,
Thus it is Morality itself is given Freedom FROM Religion by the democratic Constitution. What is moral does not depend on any particular theology as far as the Constitution is concerned.
Do you deny this simple assertion?
In a sense Freedom of Religion is the balm applied by Democracy to the wound it creates in the body of Religion by taking away Theology as the determiner of Human or Civil Morality and replacing God with the Word of the Constitution, the People’s Free Will.
Good gravy, DJB. Endless repetition of this mantra, this myth of Democracy, isnt going to make it come true. The idea of liberty and justice and the worth of a human life didnt come from democracy. It came from religion. The Christian religion to be exact. You should come to grips with this reality and move on instead of trying to rewrite history. Accept it and move on, man.
Im posting these links again:
Here’s your fellow atheist John Grey, Professor of European Thought at the London School of Economics and Political Science (retired in 2008).
Here’s another atheist philosopher Jurgen Habermas, quoted in this article:
Your mythologizing Democracy aint cuttin’ it, DJB. Science aint cutting it. Science says we are not created equal; the fittest survive, the weakest perish. The Creed says ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness,’ and you reduce this Creed to mere poetry? You hold this piece of poetry above Science? Of course you dont. Because you recognize the Creed. It is only by a transcendent source that the Creed makes sense, for if it were mere poetry, then Science, your religion, says we are NOT created equal and we should be living by that creed instead.
Move on, DJB. Accept that liberty and justice came from a transcendent source, a Creator — theist, deist, whatever — and move on. You can say, ‘I believe they came from a Creator but we dont need him anymore since we humans have learned all we can from him’ if you like. This is much better than your mythologizing Democracy. Democracy is tyranny of the majority without the Creed. Democracy is NUTS without the Creed.
As always, last word is yours.
djb,
for as long as man stares in great wonders at the twinkling stars in the deep dark night, experiences the awe of watching the sun changes hues, feels very small in the vastness of the universe yet big and marvelous in his existence, these “religious” experiences of bewilderment will never kill the meme called religion.
if there’s any meme that i want to kill, it’s this ugly sounding dawkinian term called-”meme”. i-meme na yan six feet under. no wonder his book god delusion did not catch fire. he cannot even comprehend how memes can be transmitted successfully–why, at the tender age! thus his effort to convert adult believers into atheists with this book went dud. all hype no bite. now let me get back to re-reading harry potter–superstitious stuff that had the children the world over reading books again.
but i agree, faith without reason is immature.
jeg,
how could djb be an atheist? he believes in the existence of monster spaghetti. that makes him a deist–a believer in superstring theory. ;D
So Jeg, if this is true we would be forced to conclude, for example, that before Moses came down from the mountain with the Ten Commandments, the Jews were a bunch of immoral savages who were into murder, robbery, rape, lying, cheating, etc. all of which changed when they organized themselves into a Religion in Covenant with Yahweh?
I dareask, did the Jews only develop Morality when they started to get circumcized?
Jeg,
Applied to the Philippine Constitution, so you think Catholicism gave Filipinos the idea of justice and liberty, in the sense that before Catholicism the ideas of justice and liberty were alien and unknown to the ancient Filipino savages?
Tell me it ain’t so, Jeg!
Mother of pearl. Sabi ko nga last word, tapos may tanong ka pa pala. Haha.
Religion, as I used the term, is ‘belief in a transcendent being’, the opposite of your faith. Deist, Theist, it doesnt matter. Jefferson believed that the Creator laid down laws of morals as well as the laws of nature, and then leaving us with the tools of reason, let us find our own way. That is a religious faith.
The answer to your question is No, they werent, and there is a Christian explanation for that. Im sure you already know this since you were a good little Catholic boy. But just in case you forgot, Christianity teaches that God’s ‘law’, his morality if you will, is written in the hearts of men no matter what religion or un-religion they have. This was expounded by Paul in Romans, I believe. Another Christian teaching is man’s fallen nature, also expounded by Paul in Romans: he knows the right thing to do but does the wrong thing, and the wrong thing that he shouldnt do, that he does, oh wretched man that he is.
So no. Morals preceded Moses. Last na yan ha? ;)
Tell me it ain’t so, Jeg!
It aint so, DJB.
Jeg,
And even IF these ideas came from Religion, Religion itself has been written out of the foundations of morality in a democratic society. Is this not scintillatingly obvious? There is not a shred of Theology in the Revised Penal Code!
That is what you folks will have to live with. What do we call it?
Freedom of Religion! (Consuelo de religioso!)
‘Religion itself has been written out of the foundations of morality in a democratic society.’
Again, in discussing political theory do not ignore history. The Babylonian Code of Hammurabi (2000 BC) preceded Greek political thought (500BC), the latter being the foundation of Western Civilization’s democratic ideals.
Already, Hammurabis’ Code contained some treatise on fundamental laws. From Wikipedia:
‘The code is often pointed to be a primary example of even a king not being able to change fundamental laws concerning the governing of a country which was the primitive form of what is now known as a constitution.’
Phil Manila, Jeg,
Okay, I am willing to stipulate that all you both have claimed, historically, is true.
But the Constitution is meant to be a largely “stand-alone” document.
It makes no appeals to anything more than distillation of the moralities that seem to be reasonable consequences of all the faiths, but in practice ends up with none of them.
I think Democracy in effect peels off the masking layer of organized religion and theology to get at a more primordial human moral sensibility that is in fact independent of that overlain calculus of alleged Revelation and Sacred Tradition.
Take the matter of Justice, which cannot be rendered without two ingredients: the Truth and Fairness.
Religion would be a spanner in the ironworks of Justice because religious standards of truth would not hold in Court of Law! And fairness can also me a matter of prejudice, which Religion is full of, by default.
Thus it was absolutely necessary for Democracy to excise Theology from the process of rendering Justice, since religion cannot guarantee “truth” acceptable in “ordinary human affairs” since religious faith is Bencardian (untouchable by reason).
I am willing to stipulate that perhaps the Founders came by these notions through their religious convictions, which were however Deist, i.e. a Noninterventionist God that writes the laws, sets them in motion, but largely goes away.
This “going away” of Deism’s God prefigures the removal of Theology from “Constitutional Morality”.
All I am really saying then is that the Constitution’s Morality is a Secular Morality that makes no appeal to any particular God or Religion. It cannot if it, paradoxically, intends to guarantee a certain Freedom of thought that is natural to people and which they need not give up for any other reason than scientific enlightenment, which we cannot in fact force on people, because it is too hard to become Scientific, truly scientific. It requires intelligence and concentration. You cannot brain wash people into loving Mathematics or Physics enough to actually be good at it. All religion requires is acquiescence and blind faith, the effort at unquestioning acceptance and obedience.
Jeg,
Does the Jeffersonian Constitution require us to become Deists?
Or Anglican? Or Catholic? Or Protestant? Even if the Founding Fathers were all of these, did they not lay down their Theologies at the Continental Congress’ Door for the sake of civil amity?
Whatever the Founding Fathers themselves believed in the purely religious realm, none of it should be in the Constitution.
There are no Gods in Democracy’s cathedral of morality.
Democracy itself –as a MEME — is atheist when it comes to Morality, even if it upholds Freedom of Religion as a basic human right.
Only by being atheist can a Democracy be neutral towards all Religions. [this has the force of a mathematical theorem!]
The 1987 Constitution of the Republic of the Philippines proclaims:
“PREAMBLE
“We, the sovereign Filipino people, imploring the aid of Almighty God, in order to … establish a Government that shall … secure to ourselves and our posterity, the blessings of … democracy …”
“ARTICLE XIV (EDUCATION, SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY, ARTS,
CULTURE AND SPORTS EDUCATION”
“(3) At the option expressed in writing by the parents or guardians, religion shall be allowed to be taught to their children or wards in public elementary and high schools within the regular class hours by instructors designated or approved by the religious authorities of the religion to which the children or wards belong, without additional cost to the Government.”
which theorem? russell’s paradox–if atheism is nothing but another form of religion?
inidoro,
Just think, can a “theistic” democracy exist? How can it possibly be neutral to all other theisms?
domingo,
the presence of the word “God” in the preamble should not be occasion for anyone’s particular deity to feel referred to!
Why which “God” is it are you thinking about when you read that passage?
You can teach people, telling them the world is
flat. And, they will believe for centuries. They
may even burn you on the stake for not believing
it.
Politicians can tell you: they feel your pain,
they are for you because you are poor, they
promise even the moon to you, etc..
It is your fault for not using your head, or
common sense. If you believe them…
maybe not at all, otherwise why are religious wars waged, right? but can atheism be neutral to other theisms when you promote your own creed of non-belief? when atheism becomes an organized belief, how far is it from becoming a religion intolerant of other religions?
this is an irrefutable scientific fact: people will always hold beliefs. and because our polities are products of our own historicities, the insertion of the almighty god in the preamble cannot be found there outside of its religious context. we: filipino: believers (to atheism’s disdain).
but i agree with you: since the universal law of nature is, well, universal, we could have adopted a constituion minus the preamble, much like australia. but then again, that requires an overhauling of cultural and belief system. indeed, that makes religion the stronger meme.