Guest opinion: Keep religion out of 2008 campaign
By Dr. Gilbert D. Shapiro
Tucson Citizen, Tucson Arizona, February 21, 2008
The infusion of religion into what should be a secular undertaking - the presidential election - is very unsettling to many nonbelievers.
The Center for Inquiry Community of Southern Arizona takes exception to presidential candidates who reinforce the common misperception that the Bible is the unique source of good morality.
Jan. 15, Mike Huckabee said, "It's a lot easier to change the Constitution than it would be to change the word of the living God. And that's what we need to do - amend the Constitution, so it's in God's standards rather than try to change God's standards so it lines up with some contemporary view of how we treat each other and how we treat the family."
Good morals are the fruits of human growth and experience over many thousands of years.
Common human decencies (a secular humanist term) came first and were much later codified into various scriptures.
Were murder, stealing, adultery, lying, etc., not known as bad behaviors prior to the Ten Commandments?
Are human actions good because they are inherently good or because God says they are good?
The answer is clear when we acknowledge that things considered "good" by the Judeo-Christian God include genocide and rape (Numbers 31:17-18), slavery (Exodus 21) and repression of women (Genesis 3:16).
The Bible commands death to women who are not virgins on their wedding night (Deut. 22: 20-21), to those who work on the Sabbath (Exodus 31:15) and for everyone in the city in which you live who worship any other god (Deut. 13:12-15).
These Ten Commandments, we can only conclude, were for us, not him.
Fortunately, humans have always made moral judgments (absurd-dogma overrides) independent of divine dictates.
This gift from thousands of years of human development has kept most of us out of prison.
Shame on those who cherry-pick only positive scriptural passages such as "So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you." (Matthew 7:12 - the Golden Rule) to prove the good morals of the Bible yet willfully ignore these hideous directives.
Religionists will claim that totalitarian regimes, such as those of Stalin, Pol Pot and Mao, murdered millions of people because they were devoid of religious morality.
Their morality was severely lacking, but this was due to a different kind of fanaticism, not shared by secular humanists.
We feel fully capable of criticizing such regimes and at the same time questioning the notion that morality must have a religious origin.
We recall the Crusades, the Inquisition and 9/11, when blood was spilled precisely because of religion.
Critics will still insist any morality other than "absolute morality" produces an "anything goes" mentality.
We wonder why a significant percentage of the public is convinced good behavior is only possible because a deity is watching their every move and will punish them for any missteps. Do they really think they would lie, cheat, steal and murder if this were not the case?
If so, wouldn't those incarcerated be mostly atheists? Reality check: Just the opposite is true!
And by what measure of absolute morality did these believers' God look down on his human creation, which by all scientific estimates has existed for at least 100,000 years (creationists' estimates: 6,000 years), and decided only 2,000 years ago to offer the possibility of redemption, forgiveness and relief from suffering, the absence of which his creation had endured to that moment?
And by what measure of absolute morality does he allow unnecessary suffering to continue, especially among his believers, if he is all powerful as he claims?
Religionists also should reflect on a question we secularists frequently pose but that has yet to be rationally answered.
What positive moral statements can be made or actions done only by believers but not by nonbelievers?
The Center for Inquiry Community of Southern Arizona urges presidential candidates and the public to accept that good morals are products of our biological and cultural history.
Gilbert D. Shapiro, a foot surgeon and podiatrist, represents the Center for Inquiry Community of Southern Arizona. E-mail: gdshapiro@ comcast.net
