The Freedom of Religion
How did things get so ridiculous? Let’s focus on the Carrie Prejean controversy for an illustrative answer. The 13-year old cancer patient story is just too damn depressing. Ms. Prejean’s barely intelligible but now infamous answer made it pretty clear that she’s not the sharpest tool in the shed. To paraphrase the name of a popular game show, it’s not likely that she’s much smarter than a 5th grader. It’s equally unlikely that her intolerant opposition to gay marriage is based on any well thought out or logical argument. In fact, poor Ms Prejean stepped into something of a Kobayashi Maru scenario because there really is no logical argument against gay marriage, anymore than logic supports racism or misogyny. At best, justification for such ideals rests on religious belief, a vain and twisted faith in one’s own inherent superiority. Neither Donald Trump nor Mayor Newsom appear as particularly religious people. The lives of both men reflect an imperfect, but deeply held belief in secular public service. Both are highly intelligent, educated and rational human beings. And yet, putting cynicism aside and taking them at their word, both find something admirable in Ms Prejean’s outspoken belief in the cruelly absurd. The implication is that the pleasure of some imaginary deity is the higher moral imperative, over the wellbeing and basic civil rights of friends, neighbors, even children . Hopefully, no kids were paying close enough attention to perceive the subtle perversion. Those who advocate racism, sexism, even child abuse can be praised for the strength of their convictions as long as they make their hideous cants in front of a cross. This same dangerous tolerance for religious excess is what actuated the judge to allowed poor Daniel Hauser to go home with his parents.
On the whole, America is a pretty tolerant country. Women, blacks, even open homosexuals are represented at the national level. But in all five hundred plus congressmen and senators that govern America, there is not a single openly avowed atheist. Despite centuries of bitter experience, America still holds desperately to its old motto ‘In God we Trust’. It would be comforting to think that most troubles come from fanatics and extremists, but the truth is rather different. Most people in California aren’t fundamentalists and yet Proposition 8, a ballot initiative that banned gay marriage, easily passed with well over half the vote. It seems residual religious thinking can pervade even rational minds, justifying subtle prejudices that can turn elections. The view from 300,000 miles up isn’t much better. The entire globe is practically on fire with pointless religious conflict. Fundamentalists make up a small percentage of the faithful, yet the whole species seems infected.
Fascinating and provocative theories about the evolutionary origins of the God delusion and ideas on how to shatter it were elegantly outlined in Richard Dawkins recent book of the same name. But the bottom line is that humans seem to be hard wired for it, a vestigial neuronal shortcut of the mammalian brain that’s now getting the species into all sorts of trouble. It may prove fatal. But if we can learn to look into the eyes of a dying child, a pregnant teenager, or even that annoying fag that lives next door, and come to believe that human dignity trumps the garbled commandments of darkly imagined gods, maybe then, just maybe, on the precipice, this species will change. Perhaps there is a creative intelligence actuating the totality of existence, or perhaps not. Maybe we’re really alone in the Universe. Maybe it’s just us. But certainly there is ‘us’. We exist and we have each other. And that ultimate reality must place the freedom of the human spirit as the moral imperative far above the freedom of any religion.
Dominick L. Auci, Ph.D.
Escondido, California.
