According to "Archbishop Tutu 'would not worship a homophobic God'," the famous former Archbishop of Capetown in South Africa, who was speaking at the launch of a UN campaign for the legal recognition of gay rights in countries where homosexual sex remains a criminal offence, which includes many African countries who use the excuse that it is against their traditional cultures to accept homosexual behaviour or people has said in the strongest language that a god who was homophobic does not deserve to be worshipped, preferring hell to such a morally evil god.
This article caught my interest when I first saw it a couple of weeks ago, since it is very much about the sorts of issues we are looking at in the chapter in Quest on cultural anthropology, so I emailed it to myself for later use, and today seems an appropriate time to respond to it here. First, I very much like the Archbishop's strong stance against homophobia, which does, as he clearly points out, have strong support from many Christians who do still teach that homosexuality is evil because that is what the Bible says. There are Christian groups in the US now who think homosexual acts are evil and should be illegal because that is what the Bible says, and they are right: that is exactly what the Bible says. But the Bible also supports slavery, sexism and other evils, as generations of men in power rightly said when they used it to support their immoral ideas and acts.
On a deeper level, the bishop makes another point that I think is very important: that we should think things are right or moral because any god or other authority says so, but that we must, on the contrary, judge the authority and its rules according to independent moral laws. If some god or holy book, such as the Bible, the Koran, or whatever, says killing people who do not believe in your god is right, that is not a good reason to think such killing is right. It is, on the contrary, a very good reason to think that the religion and its teachings are immoral.
I'm also reminded of a Buddhist example from Thailand. Under Thai law, abortion is illegal, and one reason sometimes given is that this is because Buddhism teaches that abortion is immoral. I hope this reason is wrong, because if it is correct, it means that Buddhist teaching on this issue is immoral, since the Thai laws against abortion on demand are immoral, and they do not become moral merely because some authority, a person, a book, or whatever, says they are.
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When I said above in paragraph 3 that this BBC News story on Tutu caught my interest, that's not the most accurate statement: it stunned me.
ReplyDeleteIt is such an unexpected thing for a respected and famous senior church member to say. Although he does not directly say it, Archbishop Tutu seems to be implying that at least some of the passages in the Bible of the Jews and Christians are morally wrong and must not be taken seriously as written. For decent, moral Jews and Christians, these passages, such as Leviticus 18:22 and (for Christians only) Romans 1:26-27 are often seen as problematic, with most taking the line currently being promoted by the new Catholic pope, Francis, who makes a distinction between being homosexual and actually engaging in sex, the latter only being a sin. But I can't recall any other senior Christian minister making such a strong statement as Tutu has done - it brings further honour to a man whose fight against prejudice has already won him the Nobel Peace Prize.
There is one Buddhist teaching I think it is wise and suitable here. It is called Kalamasutra, the 10 principle of seeking truth. It teaches us to not believe in anything before your own investigation and proof. The interesting ones are number 4, do not rely on scripture, and number 10, do not rely on your teacher (including Buddha himself). I think that Buddha knows that his teaching will not always fit in the next 2000 years or 4000 years society. It can be reinterpret to suit modern context.
ReplyDeletemaybe 2000 years ago, it is more difficult for people to survive, so we need people to have lots of babies. So, being gay may cause the extinction of human population. But, now we have better health care and medicine, it's okay to have gays. Who knows...It's just my thought.
DeleteI like My's thoughtful reply, and in the case of Buddhism, it seems to me to work well. And Christians who are moral and decent people also try to do the same; that is, to reinterpret their sacred texts to fit a more developed world. But this means saying that some things in those sacred texts are wrong, which many of the faithful do not want to do. I admire Tutu's courage in doing so. And the Buddha was very sensible to say the same about himself! I like that.
DeleteMy's reply also explains why I think that the First Precept of Buddhism does require that modern Buddhists normally be vegetarian, even though the Buddha definitely said it was OK to eat meat. Times have changed, and unlike in the past, when eating meat was often necessary for health reasons, that is not so today; therefore, since buying meat in supermarkets or restaurants causes animals to be killed needlessly for no better reason than to enjoy the taste of their flesh, the precept against killing does mean that modern Buddhists should abstain from such acts as buying and ordering meat, which acts do cause death.
DeleteActually, when I wrote my reply, I have a question in my mind that if we can reinterpret the bible or any religion teaching, would it be risky that people interpret it to benefit themselves? Buddha seems to trust in people's intellectual very much.
DeleteAnd I think Buddha must be right.
DeleteIf disagreement and competing, opposing, ideas are not allowed, then ignorance must be certain, and that makes opinions worthless.
Laws against blasphemy and other offensive disagreements on religious, political and social questions do not protect truth: they guarantee ignorance, which makes knowledge impossible, and therefore ensure worthless opinion on the topics being censored, and that is something that good academics cannot approve of, which is why academic freedom is so important in every good university: the freedom to say what is honestly believed, no matter how much some, or many, might hate it.
I definitely agree with Buddha on this one.
I also like his sensible humility in admitting that he was very likely wrong on a lot of important issues. I'm sure I'm also often wrong, as are doctors, scientists and everyone else. The exception is mathematicians and logicians, but they are special because their truths are independent of the reality (perhaps).
And who would trust such people as politicians, school teachers, government officials and the like to be guides to truth on important questions?
For example, since a correct understanding of Buddhist principles, especially the First Precept, would mean that modern Buddhists normally be vegetarian, it is clear that most monks in Thailand do not correctly interpret Buddhist teaching on this basic question. Rather than simply repeating without thinking what their "teachers" before them passed on from tradition, they should do a bit more thinking and check. When things are checked, when accepted ideas are questioned, only then can wrong beliefs, false opinions and misunderstandings be corrected.
DeleteAnd like Buddha, good academics value true over false beliefs, and value knowledge over ignorance, and value the honest quest for deeper understanding over mindless repetition of past certainties.
Aristotle was a great thinker who helped set the Western world on its path to global civilisation in science and politics, but he was totally wrong about almost everything in his science: sadly, though perhaps not surprisingly, it was the Catholic version of the Christian religion that used threats of imprisonment, torture and execution to try to stop the free thinking academics like Kepler, Copernicus and Galileo who sensibly questioned Aristotle and discovered that he was totally wrong. These brave and brilliant academics did us a great service in checking and questioning what the Christian churches, aided and abetted by their princely allies, had for centuries forced everyone to mindlessly repeat without thinking.
And now my morning coffee is finished again.
DeleteMy last comment with the late morning coffee.
ReplyDeleteI usually respond to more recent articles in the news, but this one fits very well both with our topic and related readings in Quest and also with Law's essay, so when I came across it two weeks ago, I emailed it to myself as a reminder to blog later.
And since we've been talking about it, and are about read more explicitly on it, what exactly is a religion?
ReplyDeleteIs Buddhism, for example, not really a religion, as some argue?