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Published Date: 20 May 2008
It is interesting that, in discussing the human embryology bill (your report, and editorial, 19 May), prominence is given exclusively to the Catholic Church's view as the prevailing "religious" one. This ignores the fact that Judaism supports the bill. Rabbis from every shade of Judaism – from reform to orthodox and liberal – have not only backed the embryo hybrids but have also condemned Cardinal Keith O'Brien and his colleagues for their ill-informed and histrionic com
So, there is more than one religious position. One faith sees an acute moral dilemma while another, ironically predicating the first, sees no moral dilemma at all.

This is further proof that looking to religious belief provides no solution at all to setting out society's ethical position.

ALISTAIR McBAY

National Secular Society

Atholl Crescent, Edinburgh





Page 1 of 1

  • Last Updated: 19 May 2008 7:34 PM
  • Source: The Scotsman
  • Location: Edinburgh
 
1

BJGlasgow,

20/05/2008 07:27:23
What is also interesting is the prominence given to your views from the non-religious community. I know non-religious people who do not share them, but are more on the side of the cardinal.
2

George.,

20/05/2008 08:30:29
Something common characterizes the Book of Genesis, the ancient Vedantic writings, the Indo-Aryan tales of the Mahhabharata, the end of days and the great war of "fire mushrooms," even the Norse tales of Ragnarok.

We always find the last straw that finally unleashed God's wrath was the attempt by mankind to corrupt the original seed of man, made in the image of God, by mixing it with demons and beasts to produce abominations.
In all these writings there is the same consistent theme found each and every time - man is a special and unique creation who is a child of God and when he grew so wicked he sought to p e rve rt his genetic inheritance, the creator moved to close the curtain on that era. God intervenes to prevent human beings from moving themselves so far from his original design they can no longer be considered human and therefore beyond salvation.

In all these ancient books, such efforts by the children of evil are cut short when heaven ends the cycle of life with a great and terrible Ragnarok.
3

Maximus,

Roberton 20/05/2008 08:34:38
Thank you No1.

Yesterday’s rulings were very sad – May God forgive us, I humbly pray.
4

A McBay,

Edinburgh 20/05/2008 08:44:52
Maximus, there is no need for 'God' to forgive us. As I point out in my letter, and if you read the article in the Jewish Chronicle from 28 March, God will actually be very pleased that, to quote one of the rabbis in the JC, man is "using his 'god-given' skills in the noblest of causes".

You miss the point, BJGlasgow. I don’t claim to represent the non-religious community in the same way the Cardinal claims he represents the Christian community. Second, Scottish newspapers have given far too much prominence to the RC view as the position of the faithful. Yet it is clear from the Jewish perspective I cite above that an appeal to god gives one Abrahamic faith the message that there is a moral dilemma, while it gives another Abrahamic faith no moral dilemma at all! How can this be – different answers from the same God? There is in fact no good reason to trust either view, but why have the media ignored the Jewish one? In the interests of balance, more media coverage should have been given to the Jewish position, if only to show the danger of believing any one sect is right when it claims “god says this” or “god is on our side”.

The point is that any appeal to a god or gods for definitive stance on a moral issue takes you further away from the solution, not closer to it. As Bishop Richard Holloway said in his book Godless Morality, invoking God to resolve moral issues is so complex as to be worthless. It is human experience that determines our ethics, not what individuals interpret as coming from their chosen god or gods.
5

Shrink,

Dundee 20/05/2008 08:57:33
#4 - are you suggesting that appeal to human reason can only result in one correct answer to any moral dilemma? if not, then it suffers from the same weakness as appeals to religious truth i.e. that people can use human reason and come to different conclusions.

Therefore if you want to reject appeals based on religious truth, to be consistent, you should also reject appeals based on human reason...but that would be silly wouldn't it.
6

A McBay,

Edinburgh 20/05/2008 09:21:37
#5

"are you suggesting that appeal to human reason can only result in one correct answer to any moral dilemma"

No.

You use the expression "appeals based on religious truth". But what is "religious truth"? If you saw Channel 4 Dispatches programme on the fundamentalist christians in Bristol last night, you would have seen 6 years olds in a school being told that people really did turn to pillars of salt in biblical times because it says so in the Old Testament, and children doing science - yes, science - tests that ask questions like "how many days did God take to make the world". You would have seen the school headmaster saying that when you looked at the evidence, the bible was right in saying the earth is only 6000 years old. Is that "religiou truth"?

The problem is there is no such thing as religious "truth", only religious belief". It is this appeal to supersition that complicates raaher than solves moral isues, and should be rejected.
7

Gilbert McAdam,

Manila 20/05/2008 12:35:39
Mr McBay -
1. "prominence is given exclusively to the Catholic Church's view as the prevailing 'religious' one." -- Am I wrong in believing that almost fifty percent of actively religious persons in Scotland are Roman Catholics? How many are practising Jews? When we that the Roman Catholic view is shared by a great many conservative Protestant Christians, must we not conclude that the Roman Catholic church's view almost certainly IS the prevailing religious one. Why should it not be reported as such?

2. "So, there is more than one religious position." -- Indeed: just as there is more than one secular one. If you feel so strongly about it, why are you not drawing out attention to secularists who disagree with your position?
8

Shrink,

Dundee 20/05/2008 12:49:23
#4 & 6 - as you are not suggesting that appeal to human reason can only result in one correct answer to any moral dilemma then it suffers from the same weakness as appeals to "god or gods" i.e. that people can use human reason and come to different conclusions.

Therefore if you want to reject appeals based on "god or gods" because they can reach contradictory positions, to be consistent, you should also reject appeals based on human reason...but that would be silly wouldn't it.

now that I am quoting you directly rather than paraphrasing you, do you want to answer the main point of my post rather than ranting on a side issue?
9

Jehovah,

20/05/2008 14:58:25
Folks - to date, nobody has discovered any evidence whatsoever that God exists.

That's why His views are as relevant as those of the Tooth Fairy and the Bogieman Under The Stairs.

SWITCH ON YOUR BRAINS!
10

A McBay,

20/05/2008 15:01:27
Shrink, in your desire to see a rant where there was none, you seem not to grasp the key issue.

The point about religious arguments is the basis on which they are made, namely the unproven and unprovable assertion that a supernatural entity or entities (in theory the same one in this case) has decreed that human/animal hybrids simultaneously do present a moral dilemma and do not present a moral dilemma. Of course people may use reason and reach different conclusions, but these conclusions have at least the merit of being arrived at through an evaluation and interpretation of Evidence and Human Experience, and not because of contradictory superstitions or interpretations of what aforesaid supernatural entity wants, in the complete absence of evidence that this is so. There is in effect no more reason to listen to arguments for or against human/animal hybrid embryos from cardinals and rabbis than to listen to arguments from the Chief Pastafarian from the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster - if those arguments are based on non-evidenced superstition.
11

A McBay,

20/05/2008 15:10:06
James, you seem to want to paint this debate as one between believers and unbelievers, and admittedly that is how religion likes to divide society up - infidels and believers, righteous and unrighteous, saved and damned, one lot set against the other for all eternity.

But real life is rarely so simple. There are many religious believers who see a secular society, neutral on matters of religion in the public sphere, as our only hope for the future, and an increasing number who see unmerited privileges like faith schools being socially exclusive, divisive and hypocritical. It is no surprise therefore that I can refer to support for secularism from religious quarters. And the opposite also happens, where secular principles are singled out by the religious as more socially acceptable than Christian ones. Sir Stephen Wall, former Principal Adviser to Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, said in the Tablet in 2007 that:

“The (Catholic) Church portrays itself as the victims of aggressive secularism, but is actually heading towards an aggressive fundamentalism that is further from the Christian ideal than secular ideology.” Wall also said the Vatican was wrong to oppose gay adoption and IVF: “It (the RC church) is using, or abusing, its own moral absolutism to deny to people, whose way of life it stigmatises, the civil rights that a more generous state recognises as basic to their status as citizens”.

The whole point of the embryology debate and others like it is that human beings must reach ethical decisions based on their shared experiences and evidence that can be interpreted, and not because rabbis, gurus, imams or bishops interpret any aspect of morality as what their personal god demands. As we see, they can't agree on it anyway.
12

Shrink,

Dundee 20/05/2008 15:34:35
#11 - your comments in #11 bear no relation to your main arguement in your original letter(I assume you are the letter writer). I am asking a question about what seems to me a fundamental inconsistency in your original letter which you still haven't answered.
13

A McBay,

20/05/2008 22:42:34
Haven't time to answer all your points, James, but your claim about the Tablet is irrelevant. The point is who the quote came from, not which paper it was in. As it came from Cardinal O'Connor's former Principal Adviser, it carries some weight, even if it had been in the Sun.

Other devout Catholics have contradicted the cardinals over the bill, notably the most senior RC scientist in Britain, Sir Leszek Borysiewicz, who made a passionate defence of it in the Times last month and said the Church was wrong to conduct its campaign in emotive language that misrepresented the research's nature and purpose. The article says his 'conscience' told him that it was right to support research that promised therapies for devastating diseases such as Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s, and thus to ease human suffering. He said that many Catholics shared his views.

“I was brought up as a Catholic at home, both my parents are Catholics and I have continued to be a member of the Church. I go to church but I have had considerable issues with some of the stances the Church has taken on a variety of health-related issues. My conscience tells me very firmly that I should support the Bill as it stands" he said.

He said: “My view would differ from the views that are proposed by the Church on all elements of when life begins. I’m afraid I just differ, just as [views differ] in any large organisation. Maybe that makes be a bad Catholic, but then so be it. These are views I hold in all conscience."

Are you going to accuse this devout Catholic of 'wilfully' misrepresenting the Church's position?


 

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