By Lawrence JC Baron
The need for religions in the 21st
Century
Religion is a topic we have covered
in various contexts in the past. Religion and religions are relevant to
philosophy because of their methodology and logic that is applied to persuade
people to abide by the will of the religious leaders many times contrary to
their personal conviction.
Let us be clear, the methodologies
applied by religions to justify their authority are not philosophical or
scientific methodologies. A methodology that excludes within its set of beliefs
the possibility of a proposition to be false is not a philosophical or
scientific methodology. In this respect we cannot say that the set of beliefs
of a religion are about statements of facts in our universe. And we only have
access to our universe.
However, this is not to say that
“religions” cannot be the subject of philosophical investigation. Firstly because the question of our topic is
asking us to make a value judgement on the need of religions this century.
- The most important philosophical
aspect of investigating religions is that religions are based on a set of
beliefs (descriptive beliefs) that purport to claim facts about the world or
our universe as I said earlier. (god is omnipotent).
- Religions justify their
prescriptive tenets by appealing to the descriptive veracity of propositions
about our universe. (Obey the will of god).
- Tenets based on the set of
beliefs of the religion are given the status of physical imperatives. (Obey god
or else you will be stoned).
- Although religions are inherited
cultural memes they present themselves as holders of political power or
influence out of right. In effect religions, through their prescriptive tenets,
compete with the legislative power of the state. (Abortion is wrong even though
parliament recognises this right).
Unfortunately, there is another set
of concepts that religions employ to exclude themselves from the realms of
empirical reality and these are basically: spirituality, transcendence,
supernatural, divine etc (see Wikipedia); and I’ll call these the spirituality
set. But the most important claim made by religions is that they and only they
have the key to morality. And since morality is about value judgments this is
clearly a philological domain.
So by excluding such ideas as
spirituality and divinity from religions, by virtue that they cannot be subject
to falsifiability since these concepts are the source of the descriptive set of
propositions of religion and not propositions themselves: god is omnipotent
because he or she is supernatural. The supernaturality of god is what gives and
confers the properties of godness. Compare this with all swans are white. This
is a proposition purporting to claim something is a fact in our universe and,
therefore, falsifiable. “Swans are animals because they are part of biology,”
the concept biology is not falsifiable because it is not a statement about our
universe but a function of our language.
But by excluding the spirituality
set from our analysis we are open to widen our scope of what is a religion. If
a religion is a set of untested and unverified (or falsifiable) set of beliefs
that purport to be the source of physical imperatives then we can include as
religions such things as: political ideologies, economic models, membership
organisations such as the free masons and so.
Focusing on the traditional meaning
of religions, to answer our question we have to look at what we mean by “need”
and why the 21st Century. In a way, philosophy has little to say about what I
have been calling the descriptive set of beliefs. People can believe whatever
they want and whatever their brain tells them to believe.
Our domain as I said is the
prescriptive and imperative tenets of religions because these purport to have
special claims to morality and political power. Religions do not have any
automatic legitimacy to morality and political power without being subjected to
a methodological verification process and being subjected to falsifiability.
Normative and practical ethics cannot
be based on human conceptual beliefs (eg divine, spirituality) but on
verifiability methodologies to ascertain the validity or not of religious
prescriptive tenets.
Let us take the narrative of the
Ten Commandments in Christianity; seven of these commandments are practical
tenets which no self respecting rational person would question. Thou shalt not
kill, steal, commit adultery etc etc are principles that can easily be verified
as valid rational principles. In a way we do not need to invoke any
supernatural power to confirm their validity. But the commands do not tell us
anything about self defence, mercy killing, capital punishment and so. The set
of prescriptive beliefs in Christianity, although some are valid, they don’t
cover all aspects of human life.
Compare these seven commandments
with the other concept of charity. Indeed many religions justify their virtue
by their proclamation to offer charity to the needy; see for example, Why Give?
Religious Roots of Charity (Harvard Divinity School)
https://hds.harvard.edu/news/2013/12/13/why-give-religious-roots-charity# .
If we look at the Hebrew Bible
injunction, "love thy neighbor as thyself" later mentioned by Jesus
in the parable of the Good Samaritan we see a common moral principle which
today we also call the golden rule/categorical imperative. The problem with
this rule is not that we should or shouldn’t help others, that’s not even in
doubt, but that I (subjective person) am hardly the gold standard of how people
should be treated. If it was up to me all fresh dairy products or lactose
additives will be prohibited because I am lactose intolerant; but even I
recognise this is absurd. Except today many people who are seriously allergic
to common day products such as nuts fall victims of maybe negligent producers
who include these ingredients without warning.
The golden rule not only fails because
it does not treat people as individuals with different needs and conditions but
also employs the bad methodology of creating a universalisable principle from a
subjective sample of one! This is why we have a myriad of legislation
controlling quality standards and information on goods we buy. In effect the
golden rule has today been replaced by scientific evidence and judicial duty of
care. Today the Good Samaritan would have been helped by a phone call to the
ambulance and police authorities and in a civilized country the victim would
have been medically treated for free and not first asked for a credit card.
The following document from the
Purdue University site by Darlene Ann Levy December 3, 2012
(https://www.purdueglobal.edu/blog/social-behavioral-sciences/helping-those-in-need/
) gives a very brief outline on the idea of charity in different religions.
What is clear here is that charity is a well established religious imperative
either as a law or as a moral principle.
The problem with imperatives is
that they do not question the facts or the alternatives. Help the poor, does
not question the idea why are there poor people who need charity? The principle
does not consider the possibility that some people are poor because their human
rights are being abused or at the very least not protected by their government.
Nor does the principle offer an alternative such as setting up a more equitable
wealth distribution in a country. Why do we collect money to provide food for
the poor, but not to take companies to court to pay people a reasonable
remuneration for their work?
In conclusion what we need in the
21st century are prescriptive ethics and morality based on accepted and proven
methodologies and not on unaccountable tenets. In the 21st century we are still
entitled to our beliefs but we are not entitled to impose our beliefs on others
without proper accountability and justification.
Best Lawrence
The Need for Religion(s) in the 21st Century –by- Ruel Pepa
The need for religions in the 21st Century –by- Lawrence JC
Baron
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