Religion deserves no respect
Chen Shen
Lisa Freeman [“All deserve respect,” November 13] conveniently mentions that the Roman Catholic Church is the second largest provider of antiretroviral drugs, but fails to confront the real problem raised by Graham Templeton [“Religion never changes,” November 5] — that of the Catholic Church contributing to much of the disease to begin with. They may be providing medicine, but the medicine that they provide would never have been needed if proper preventative measures were taken. Spreading the misinformation that condoms cause AIDS effectively destroys any shred of usefulness in said prevention measures.
The rest of Freeman’s article is devoted to the same unoriginal defenses of religion that have been tried and defeated many times over. When she asserts that religion is typically blamed for all the evils in society, I suppose she really means that religion is typically blamed for those evils by infidel atheists who eat Christian babies and drink Jewish blood. Because I certainly don’t meet any religious person who blames religion for any evil — indeed, they tend to attribute only the good parts to religion. Given the percentage of theists in the world today, one could hardly claim that religion is “typically” blamed for evils. The fact remains that religion is responsible for much more evil than is actually attributed to it.
She goes on with an attempt to distinguish the so-called “fundamentalists” from the “mainstream” believers who act like real people. Oh it’s not us doing all these horrible things, it’s them! That’s true, but the mainstream is shielding the fundamentalists from criticism. The mainstream acts as an enabler. There is a commonly held belief that religion should be exempt from rational examination, that it should be immune to criticism. As if faith were some kind of virtue. Guess who’s propagating this belief?
But, Freeman says, it’s not fair that you judge all religion based on the fundamentalists! You’re right — it’s not, and we don’t. We don’t have to. We judge your religion by your holy books. Who’s to blame that the protagonist in your book is, as Richard Dawkins put it, “jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.” Have you ever considered that those you call “fanatics” are really the ones who are getting the book right?
Now to save you the troubles of pointing out that Christians supposedly no longer follow the Old Testament, keep in mind that it is Jesus who — in his gracious kindness — introduced the idea of eternal suffering as a consequence of not praising a human torture which occurred years before you were born, and which you had absolutely no say in. Perhaps I should correct professor Dawkins: Jesus, not the God of the Old Testament, is the most unpleasant character in all fiction.
There seems to have been some confusion about the meaning of the word “slander.” Slander is only when an individual intentionally harms another individual’s reputation using false information. To tell the truth is not slander, regardless of your distaste for it. After all, nobody has a right not to be offended. So saying something like “homosexuality is a disease” is slander, saying “blacks and women are stupid” is slander, but saying, “the Catholic Church contributes to STDs” is not.
Lastly, Freeman seems to think that religion is somehow deserving of respect. Nothing is deserving of respect. Respect is earned; it is earned based on merits. Faith — the fundamental tenet of religion — is, by its very nature, devoid of merit. To believe something without a single shred of proof is not a virtue — it is ignorance. As Dan Barker said, “Faith is a cop-out. It is intellectual bankruptcy. If the only way you can accept an assertion is by faith, then you are conceding that it can’t be taken on its own merits.”
Best regards, sapere aude.