[TLDR (too long didn’t read): This Reader is about proponents and detractors of the role of religion in the fight for human rights. For a quick overview, just read the bolded text].
A. Arguments on the trusting side
[I have gathered here bits and pieces on what better minds have had to say]
–If God is a mere illusion of man, should not man be a disillusion of God? (Albino Gomez)
-Do the people receive religion and the nation’s laws (as well as money matters) without really questioning them? (paraphrasing Voltaire)
1. Maybe, as human beings, we invent our gods so we can exist closely connected to something, to some entity; maybe we need those gods to be able to feel that we are not that alone with our imperfections and our eternal desire of being complete. (Gloria Clavero)
2. When asked in an interview if he believed in God, Ricky Gervais, the English comedian and writer, replied: “Which God? there are around 3,000… I do not believe in your one God, so we both do not believe in the other 2,999”.
3. Islam, Christianity, Buddhism and Confucianism all posited that what was important to know about the world was already known. The great gods (or the only almighty God) or the sages of the past had wisdom that covered everything that they derived from scriptures and oral traditions. All that the great gods or the sages of the past did not care to tell us what, to scriptures, was of no importance. But there were always persons that argued that here were important things that their religious tradition ignored. But then, these persons were marginalized or pursued. (Yuval Harari)
Is the proof of the existence of God in the human mind?
4. Being imperfect, the human mind is only capable of such a conceptualization because somebody implanted it in their minds. Did the real presence of God become the presence spread by his intermediaries –prophets, missionaries, pastors and cathedrals? In the process, God was humanized; was also denaturalized –and with him (her?) the human beings that conceived him/her. But we do belong to nature; nature does not belong to us. So then, nature was disqualified with Capitalism transforming it into a natural resource unconditionally available for human beings to exploit. Nature was also disqualified so that colonialism and patriarchy could subjugate and exploit human beings considered inferior to exploit those resources. Is it then that God became a good and perennial consolation available to all of those that became the wretched of the earth of Franz Fanon? (Boaventura de Sousa Santos)
Man finds God in front of each door that science manages to open (Albert Einstein)
-Science is not the royal road to truth.
5. So, have the laws of the market replaced the laws of the church and the laws of science and of technology? (It facetiously looks to me that, these days, in science, if it is not profitable, it is not investigated…). Somehow, there is a widespread belief that science and controversy (including religion*) do not mix. To the contrary, as Kuhn taught us, they go hand in hand. (Ted Greiner)
*: All along history, not even the Church has been able to impose consensus in matters of dogma; take, for example, the dogma of the infallibility of the Pope… (Louis Casado) or facetiously, as one comedian said: “The dogma ran over my karma”.
6. Science, the system of belief founded securely on publicly shared
reproducible knowledge, emerged from religion. But is there any reason to suppose that science can deal with every aspect of existence? (Peter Atkins) No. Religion ought surely, for example, put an end to neoliberal economics, the all-out scrabble for material wealth and dominance. (Colin Tudge)
7. The ideas of science in turn are translated into ‘high’ technologies — the kind of technologies that can arise only from high-flown scientific theory giving rise to what might properly be called ‘uncritical technophilia’, i.e., the belief that high tech will be able to dig us out of whatever hole we dig ourselves into. [This has led to equating high tech with progress thinking, eventually, that it will make us omnipotent: “We will span the universe like gods”. (C. Tudge)
8. Many backers of the key role of technology in development regard traditional religions as sources of subjugation rather than enrichment, as atavisms rather than sources of meaning and morality. [A new organization called ‘A.I. and Faith’ is looking to change that though. They are working to use their religious traditions toward advancing social justice and combating the worst impulses of capitalism. If we are to make real progress on the question of ethics in technology, they contend, perhaps we must revisit the religions and spiritualities that make up our oldest kinds of knowledge. (New York Times)]
Today, many embrace the protection of new religious groups
-Also today, so many Catholics are as further away from their fellow beings as atheists are far away from God. (A. Gomez)
9. In Latin America, (but also in the US) rightwing politics has gained foot in the discourse of the neopentecostal churches. But their discourse is not circumscribed to the religious sphere. The evangelics are today an influential political lobby. They are racist**, lobby against secular sex education, feminism, gender tolerance… trying to gain voters in a social niche that has traditionally not had their support, namely, those rendered poor. They also have some of their backers join street manifestations (…and more?: e.g., Jan 6, 2021, Washington DC). (A. Aharonian)
**: Extreme-right movements have accepted their fate: they do neither mind nor deny racism.
B. Arguments on the ‘rising to fight’ side
10. What ensues, in a way, illustrates what I mean —human rights very much at the core of it all…:
- “I ask all the great pharmaceutical laboratories to release the patents. Make a gesture for humanity and allow every country, every people, every human being, to have access to the vaccines. There are countries where only three or four per cent of the inhabitants have been vaccinated.
- In the name of God, I ask financial groups and international credit institutions to allow poor countries to assure ‘the basic needs of their people’ and to cancel those debts that so often are contracted against the interests of those same peoples.
- In the name of God, I ask the great extractive industries — mining, oil, forestry, real estate, agribusiness — to stop destroying forests, wetlands and mountains, to stop polluting rivers and seas, to stop poisoning food and people.
- In the name of God, I ask the great food corporations to stop imposing monopolistic systems of production and distribution that inflate prices and end up withholding bread from the hungry.
- In the name of God, I ask arms manufacturers and dealers to completely stop their activity, because it foments violence and war, it contributes to those awful geopolitical games which cost millions of lives displaced and millions dead.
- In the name of God, I ask the technology giants to stop exploiting human weakness, people’s vulnerability, for the sake of profits without caring about the spread of hate speech, grooming, fake news, conspiracy theories, and political manipulation.
- In the name of God, I ask the telecommunications giants to ease access to educational material and connectivity for teachers via the internet so that poor children can be educated even under quarantine.
- In the name of God, I ask the media to stop the logic of post-truth, disinformation, defamation, slander and the unhealthy attraction to dirt and scandal, and to contribute to human fraternity and empathy with those who are most deeply damaged.
- In the name of God, I call on powerful countries to stop aggression, blockades and unilateral sanctions against any country anywhere on earth. No to neo-colonialism. Conflicts must be resolved in multilateral fora such as the United Nations. We have already seen how unilateral interventions, invasions and occupations end up; even if they are justified by noble motives and fine words.”
(Pope Francis on October 16, 2021 on the occasion of the Fourth World Meeting of Popular Movements).
11. I rest my case.
Claudio Schuftan, Ho Chi Minh City
Your comments are welcome at schuftan@gmail.com
All Readers are available at www.claudioschuftan.com