Karen Armstrong says that all religions have compassion at their core and that they should all be looking for issues where they can converge, and converge on the enlightened values and laws of secular democracies too; secular values enshrined by such documents as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR).
We have to support the UDHR to the hilt, but I would argue that rather than using the opportunity of the anniversary of the UDHR to beat the rationalist drum, we should be reanalysing UDHR and broadening it into a commonplace of humanity. We should be looking at the underlying syncretisms between different ethical codes and in the light of these syncretisms, finally bring as many people on board the UDHR bandwagon as possible.
What chance is there then that an evangelical atheist can agree on the need for convergence between secular and religious principles? A concept of human rights that ignores religious belief is exclusive, not inclusive. Convergence has far more real potential for changing society for the better than the new, puritanical and holier than thou atheism.
And the space where religious and secular ideas converge around the issues of social justice is interesting too. It is no coincidence that even the extremist Islamists often use the need to redress social and political injustice as a justification for their actions. When Khomeni first came back to Iran from Paris, he promised to give Iran back to the poor - according to dissident Iranians Khomeni is recorded as saying that there should be free health care, the abolition of unemployment and good wages. But now, anyone who possesses a tape of that partiular speech will find himself in an Iranian jail.
By 1979, the murder of Iranian nationalism, the loss of human rights, robbery and exploitation of Iranian natural resources, the loss of traditions and identity and torture and repression were all associated by Iranians with the USA, and to a lesser extent with the UK - both of whom were upholders and originators of the UDHR.
The Muslim revolution bottled Iranian resentment, sugared it with promises of social justice and sold it like the fizzing yoghurt Iran drink. And the population bought into it because they wanted their country back and because they wanted social justice and the freedom to practice their religion. The Iranians were duped of course. There are echoes of religion as anti-capitalism we can hear throughout the world. In attacking religion the New Atheists try to banish the symptoms of the failure of their own, essentially pro-capitalist, ideology. One of the symptoms is religious extremism.
"Today, a surreal event will take place in London. The Foreign Office is holding an open day "to highlight the importance of human rights in our work as part of the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights". There will be various "stalls" and "panel discussions", and foreign secretary David Miliband will present a human rights prize. Is this a spoof? No. The Foreign Office wants to raise our "human rights awareness". Kafka and Heller have many counterfeits."
(The Guardian 2/12/08)
As for the Christian antecedents to UDHR listen to Antonio de Montesinos on Christmas 1511, preaching to the Spanish colonialists in a small church:
"This voice [of Christ tells you] that you are all in mortal sin and you live and die in it because of the tyranny and cruelty you use against these innocent people. I tell you, with what law and by what right do you hold these Indians in such cruel and horrible servitude? With what authority have you waged such a detestable war against these people living peacefully in their lands, where you have committed such crimes and caused such suffering, unheard of before? How can you keep these people so oppressed and exhausted…Why do you kill them to exploit them and get gold from them every day? Are these not men? Dont they have rational souls? Aren't you obliged to love them as yourselves? Don't you understand this? Don't you feel this?"
As a result of the petitions of Antonio de Montesinos, Bartolome de la Casas and other priests to Pope Paul the III, the Pope finally issued a Papal Bull in 1537 called Sublimis Deus where he clarified the fact that the indigenous people of America were, of course, rational, spiritual and human beings and that their lives and property were to be protected - long before Thomas Paine and J.S. Mill.
J. S Mill had similar things to say to Antonio de Montesinos, but three hundred years later and without Antonio's eloquence. Instead of appealing to Christian precepts like "Love thy neighbour as thyself" Mill made mealy-mouthed appeals to pseudo science. Here he is:
"But the great ethical doctrine of the discourse, than which a doctrine more damnable, I should think, never was propounded by a professed moral reformer, is, that one kind of human beings are born servants to another kind. You will have to be servants, he tells thenegroes , to those that are born wiser than you, that are born lords of you — servants to the whites, if they are (as what mortal can doubt that they are?) born wiser than you. I do not hold him to the absurd letter of his dictum; it belongs to the mannerism in which he is enthralled like a child in swaddling clothes. By born wiser, I will suppose him to mean, born more capable of wisdom: a proposition which, he says, no mortal can doubt, but which, I will make bold to say, that a full moiety of all thinking persons, who have attended to the subject, either doubt or positively deny."
J.S. Mill's ideas on liberty and equality, underpinned by associationism, claimed that everyone was equal because the environment and accident determined a people's progress. His appeal for the equality of the "negro" race is a weak rationalist appeal based on the pre-science of associationism. To paraphrase what Carl Sagan said about Velikovsky. Even if Mill turned out to be right he definitely shouldn't get the credit for it.
What chance is there then that an evangelical atheist can agree on the need for convergence between secular and religious principles? A concept of human rights that ignores religious belief is exclusive, not inclusive. Convergence has far more real potential for changing society for the better than the new, puritanical and holier than thou atheism.
And the space where religious and secular ideas converge around the issues of social justice is interesting too. It is no coincidence that even the extremist Islamists often use the need to redress social and political injustice as a justification for their actions. When Khomeni first came back to Iran from Paris, he promised to give Iran back to the poor - according to dissident Iranians Khomeni is recorded as saying that there should be free health care, the abolition of unemployment and good wages. But now, anyone who possesses a tape of that partiular speech will find himself in an Iranian jail.
By 1979, the murder of Iranian nationalism, the loss of human rights, robbery and exploitation of Iranian natural resources, the loss of traditions and identity and torture and repression were all associated by Iranians with the USA, and to a lesser extent with the UK - both of whom were upholders and originators of the UDHR.
The Muslim revolution bottled Iranian resentment, sugared it with promises of social justice and sold it like the fizzing yoghurt Iran drink. And the population bought into it because they wanted their country back and because they wanted social justice and the freedom to practice their religion. The Iranians were duped of course. There are echoes of religion as anti-capitalism we can hear throughout the world. In attacking religion the New Atheists try to banish the symptoms of the failure of their own, essentially pro-capitalist, ideology. One of the symptoms is religious extremism.
The other side of the UDHR coin is the hypocrisy of western governments in their current incarnations; people like David Miliband.
To quote John Pilger:
To quote John Pilger:
"Today, a surreal event will take place in London. The Foreign Office is holding an open day "to highlight the importance of human rights in our work as part of the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights". There will be various "stalls" and "panel discussions", and foreign secretary David Miliband will present a human rights prize. Is this a spoof? No. The Foreign Office wants to raise our "human rights awareness". Kafka and Heller have many counterfeits."
(The Guardian 2/12/08)
As for the Christian antecedents to UDHR listen to Antonio de Montesinos on Christmas 1511, preaching to the Spanish colonialists in a small church:
"This voice [of Christ tells you] that you are all in mortal sin and you live and die in it because of the tyranny and cruelty you use against these innocent people. I tell you, with what law and by what right do you hold these Indians in such cruel and horrible servitude? With what authority have you waged such a detestable war against these people living peacefully in their lands, where you have committed such crimes and caused such suffering, unheard of before? How can you keep these people so oppressed and exhausted…Why do you kill them to exploit them and get gold from them every day? Are these not men? Dont they have rational souls? Aren't you obliged to love them as yourselves? Don't you understand this? Don't you feel this?"
As a result of the petitions of Antonio de Montesinos, Bartolome de la Casas and other priests to Pope Paul the III, the Pope finally issued a Papal Bull in 1537 called Sublimis Deus where he clarified the fact that the indigenous people of America were, of course, rational, spiritual and human beings and that their lives and property were to be protected - long before Thomas Paine and J.S. Mill.
J. S Mill had similar things to say to Antonio de Montesinos, but three hundred years later and without Antonio's eloquence. Instead of appealing to Christian precepts like "Love thy neighbour as thyself" Mill made mealy-mouthed appeals to pseudo science. Here he is:
"But the great ethical doctrine of the discourse, than which a doctrine more damnable, I should think, never was propounded by a professed moral reformer, is, that one kind of human beings are born servants to another kind. You will have to be servants, he tells thenegroes , to those that are born wiser than you, that are born lords of you — servants to the whites, if they are (as what mortal can doubt that they are?) born wiser than you. I do not hold him to the absurd letter of his dictum; it belongs to the mannerism in which he is enthralled like a child in swaddling clothes. By born wiser, I will suppose him to mean, born more capable of wisdom: a proposition which, he says, no mortal can doubt, but which, I will make bold to say, that a full moiety of all thinking persons, who have attended to the subject, either doubt or positively deny."
J.S. Mill's ideas on liberty and equality, underpinned by associationism, claimed that everyone was equal because the environment and accident determined a people's progress. His appeal for the equality of the "negro" race is a weak rationalist appeal based on the pre-science of associationism. To paraphrase what Carl Sagan said about Velikovsky. Even if Mill turned out to be right he definitely shouldn't get the credit for it.
Isn't it ironic then, for the evangelical atheists, that a Papel bull, Sublimis Dei, published 300 years before Mill wrote "On Liberty", was more forthright and clear:
"The enemy of the human race, who opposes all good deeds in order to bring men to destruction, beholding and envying this, invented a means never before heard of, by which he might hinder the preaching of God's word of Salvation to the people: he inspired his satellites who, to please him, have not hesitated to publish abroad that the Indians of the West and the South, and other people of whom We have recent knowledge should be treated as dumb brutes created for our service, pretending that they are incapable of receiving the Catholic Faith.
We, who, though unworthy, exercise on earth the power of our Lord and seek with all our might to bring those sheep of His flock who are outside into the fold committed to our charge, consider, however, that the Indians are truly men and that they are not only capable of understanding the Catholic Faith but, according to our information, they desire exceedingly to receive it. Desiring to provide ample remedy for these evils, We define and declare by these Our letters, or by any translation thereof signed by any notary public and sealed with the seal of any ecclesiastical dignitary, to which the same credit shall be given as to the originals, that, notwithstanding whatever may have been or may be said to the contrary, the said Indians and all other people who may later be discovered by Christians, are by no means to be deprived of their liberty or the possession of their property, even though they be outside the faith of Jesus Christ; and that they may and should, freely and legitimately, enjoy their liberty and the possession of their property; nor should they be in any way enslaved; should the contrary happen, it shall be null and have no effect.
http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Sublimus_Dei
"The enemy of the human race, who opposes all good deeds in order to bring men to destruction, beholding and envying this, invented a means never before heard of, by which he might hinder the preaching of God's word of Salvation to the people: he inspired his satellites who, to please him, have not hesitated to publish abroad that the Indians of the West and the South, and other people of whom We have recent knowledge should be treated as dumb brutes created for our service, pretending that they are incapable of receiving the Catholic Faith.
We, who, though unworthy, exercise on earth the power of our Lord and seek with all our might to bring those sheep of His flock who are outside into the fold committed to our charge, consider, however, that the Indians are truly men and that they are not only capable of understanding the Catholic Faith but, according to our information, they desire exceedingly to receive it. Desiring to provide ample remedy for these evils, We define and declare by these Our letters, or by any translation thereof signed by any notary public and sealed with the seal of any ecclesiastical dignitary, to which the same credit shall be given as to the originals, that, notwithstanding whatever may have been or may be said to the contrary, the said Indians and all other people who may later be discovered by Christians, are by no means to be deprived of their liberty or the possession of their property, even though they be outside the faith of Jesus Christ; and that they may and should, freely and legitimately, enjoy their liberty and the possession of their property; nor should they be in any way enslaved; should the contrary happen, it shall be null and have no effect.
http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Sublimus_Dei
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