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| Coming soon to Australia. |
According to James Massola (2016) writing in "Election 2016: Catholic Bishops intervene in election over same-sex marriage," Australia's Catholic bishops have issued a document giving guidance to Australian Catholics on various issues in the upcoming federal election. Relating the various issues such as refugees, abortion and the environment on which this Christian religious group comment is a concern, following Pope Francis, on creating "throwaway culture ... of over-consumption where all kinds of things are thrown away, wasted, even human beings." Massola also reports that the electorally popular move to legalize same-sex marriage is strongly opposed by the Catholic bishops on the grounds that it will "undermine traditional marriage."
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My Yes/No question is:
Is religion a reliable guide to good morals?
My answer is:
No, religion often favours morally bad tradition over good morals.
Since I had been thinking about religion as an element of Australian culture recently in response to Hartmann, this was a timely reading with my morning coffee news browsing.
First, the bishops do get some things right in their statement giving religion based guidance to their followers in Australia. They are right to tell Australians, many of whom hold racist prejudices and do not want to help political and economic refugees, that they should be doing more to help the helpless, not only in Australian society but also the wider human community we all share. This is good moral guidance, although not what politicians or many selfish Australians want to hear.
But when it comes to marriage, as it did with abortion decades ago, the Catholic bishops, and the Christian religion generally are seriously wrong. In opposing same-sex marriage the Christians, who are surely sincere in their belief, are teaching bad morals that violate basic principles of justice. I think that the bishop's language helps us to understand the deep problem with religion in general: it too easily becomes bound to tradition and unwilling to correct mistakes, and those mistakes are often serious. For many years, the greatest supporter of criminalizing gay and lesbian sex were the various Christian churches, and this led to centuries of killing, imprisonment, social hatred and ostracism of gay men and lesbian women in Western culture after the defeat by the Middle East religion of the morally superior ideals of Western civilisation.
Thankfully, in recent decades much progress has been made so that, for example, whilst there are still Christian groups saying that "God hates fags," the US Supreme Court last year made a ruling which effectively legalized same-sex marriage throughout the United States. Amazingly, Australians are also in healthy disagreement with their religious leaders, with about two-thirds favouring changing the traditional laws supported by the Pope, Catholics and other religious groups.
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I always find that sexual discrimination in any term; the inequality between men and women, or the idea of some religions being gay is something totally wrong, is really "disgusting and outdated."
ReplyDeleteSome of the conservative Thais say that gay is the "wrong gender." I really want to hit them back, what is the gender actually means though. We all have a rights to define who we are.
Love is one of the most beautiful things in the world. So if two people, no matter what their genders are, love and care about each others, what is wrong with that? The only wrong thing is the silly idea of the ill-manner who fight against them.
Wish love wins!
I totally agree with your idea. I sounds absolutely right to me. I wish love wins too.
DeleteAfter I finished reading your blog post, I immediately think about my religious, Buddhism and I also find out that Buddhism doesn't talk about marriage of gays or lesbians. However, it says that because in the previous life, you had sexual misconduct, so that you must reincarnate to people who are unusual gender.
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately, some religions prohibit gays and lesbians. For example, with respect to Islam, Muslims can condemn men who do something about sex with each other. Furthermore, In Christianity, it's necessary to live like husband and wife only (not man-man or woman-woman).
Talking about your question, I think many things religion teaches to people are reliable. For instance, in Buddhism, you have to abstain from taking what is not given or stealing or from sexual misconduct. That's correct. But, some rules religions tell to people should be changed like gays and lesbians.
For Buddhism, I think yes. I think if you focus only the core of Buddha's taught, it's quite scientific and you don't need to join any religious ceremony. The core of Buddhism in about self consciousness, meditation is the one way that you can study yourself whether you are walking, sitting or painting.
ReplyDeleteI don't think so, too. I think the religions were in the hard time. They are faded away like the days the primitive traditions were dead in the past. The concept of human right is very new, just only past the first century. They need a lot of time and education from social institutions.
ReplyDeleteI think one day in the future there also might be more new kinds of thought. It might considered the human right as a old kind of thought. For example, A new concept might worship the sexual child abuse, and the concept from our generation would be counted as an primitive school of thought. C'est la vie!