Religion is selfish, blinkered and immoral

A.C.Grayling

Если политики начинают обращаться к священникам за советом по вопросам морали и нравственности - значит, дело плохо. Возможно, это просто свидетельство полного банкротства политической мысли. А может быть, политики пытаются натянуть маску святоши, чтобы покрыть свои неблаговидные дела. Но хуже всего, если политический истеблишмент и впрямь принимает за чистую монету все, что говорят ему служители культа.

Both of Britain's main political leaders have turned to religious figures lately, Tony Blair to the maverick Catholic theologian Hans Küng, William Hague to a vocal figure of America's "Religious Right" who believes that public welfare provision should be replaced by private charity. Hague's aim is simply to find new packaging for old right-wing policies. Blair's case is more troubling. He has genuine religious convictions, which prompted him to say at Küng's Tübingen conference yesterday: "A society where there is religious faith will always, in my view, be inherently more likely to pursue the good of mankind." His view is troubling because it is false: religion is precisely the wrong resource for thinking about moral issues, and indeed subverts moral debate.

Это происходит потому, что религиозная мораль не ориентируется на практические вопросы этической жизни современного общества. Среди основных ценностей современного человека - личная независимость, достижение материального благосостояния, обеспечение семьи, возможность сделать сбережения на черный день, получение вознаграждения за успех. Ценности, проповедуемые христианской моралью, прямо противоположны вышеперечисленным. Христианство учит человека, что истинно верующий обязан раздавать свое имущество бедным. Оно предупреждает, что состоятельному человеку непросто попасть на небеса, и проповедует смирение перед Господом. Очевидно, что такая мораль противоречит основополагающим моральным нормам современного общества.

It is also irrelevant to modern sexual attitudes. Almost all religions confine sex to marriage, and their more orthodox members oppose homosexuality, contraception and abortion, and restrict women to the domestic sphere. Most people ignore the contrast between such views and today's ethos, and the churches accordingly either temporise or contradict their own earlier teachings.

Однако религиозная мораль не просто выглядит неуместно в современном обществе. Она еще и антиморальна, поскольку зачастую глуха к основным этическим проблемам сегодняшнего дня, среди которых защита прав человека, война, нищета и неравноправие богатых и бедных. В странах Третьего мира каждые две с половиной секунды от голода или болезни, которая поддается лечению, умирает ребенок. В то же время в развитых странах прихожане дружно предают хуле секс без брака и с жаром обсуждают, могут ли разведенные пары вторично венчаться в церкви. Размениваясь на пустяки, церковь причиняет тем самым большой вред делу сотворения добра на земле.

But religion is not only anti-moral, it is often immoral. Elsewhere in the world, religious fundamentalists and fanatics incarcerate women, mutilate genitals, amputate hands, murder, bomb and terrorise in the name of their faith. It is a mistake to think that our own milksop clerics would never behave likewise, for it is not so long in historical terms since Christian priests were burning heretics at the stake or mounting crusades against them, whipping people or slitting their noses and ears for having extra-marital sex… To this day adulterers are stoned to death in certain Muslim countries; if the priests were still on top in the once-Christian world, who can say it would be different? If one looked to religions to provide historical examples of the moral life in practice, one would have to forget a great deal of immorality.

Рассуждая бесстрастно, можно признать, что практически все религиозные этические системы похожи друг на друга. Моральные принципы христианства также нельзя назвать новаторскими. Ницше (Nietzsche) указывал, что Заповеди Блаженства (the Beatitudes), в которых утверждается, что смиренные, униженные и нищие блаженны и будут вознаграждены после смерти, обнаруживают признаки рабской психологии. (Говоря это, философ имел в виду опыт, полученный евреями в Египте до Моисея.) Можно добавить, что на протяжении всей истории эти заповеди служили нуждам тех, кто был хорошо устроен: они помогали богатым смирять бедных и не давать им поднять голову.

Немногие позитивные моральные директивы, предусматриваемые христианской моралью, целиком позаимствованы из иудаизма. Но все же иудео-христианская этика не идет ни в какое сравнение с богатством и широтой "языческой" этики древних греков или современной концепцией прав человека, которая не только гораздо шире, но и гораздо тоньше, чем предписываемые религией моральные принципы.

Moreover, concern for the welfare and rights of people, animals and the environment motivated by a sense of the intrinsic worth of these things, and not by divine threats and promises, is the only true source of morality.

This last point is a clincher. Religious ethics is based on a sanction of posthumous rewards and punishments. It makes goodness the diktat of a supernatural being. You do good, by the lights of your religion, in order to achieve eternal bliss. If there are indeed supernatural powers in the universe, it might be prudent to do what they require in the interests of saving your neck; but the motivation is not a moral but a self-regarding and self-interested one. If I see two men do good, one because he wishes to escape punishment by a supposed supernatural agency and the other because he respects his fellow man, I honour the latter infinitely more.

The Independent,

July 1, 2000

Exercise 2. Give a summary of the text.

Exercise 3. Write a letter to The Independent challenging the author’s point of view. Give your arguments and examples.

Exercise 4. Discuss the issue with the group. Prepare a 2-minute talk. Share your ideas with other students. Challenge opinions you don’t agree with.

“Do people still need religion in the 21^st century?”

Exercise 5. Render the article taken from Seattle Times.

Teens' complex query intrigued Dalai Lama

By Jennifer Lloyd

When the Dalai Lama solicited questions from the thousands of visitors during his recent visit to Pasadena, Calif., one of the six he selected was posed by three students from Seattle's Hazel Wolf High School.

It was a complex question, so complex that the Dalai Lama spent 30 minutes answering it — so complex that he returned to it later, citing specific religious quotations to help answer the question.

Over the course of the conference, held April 13-15 at the Pasadena Civic Auditorium, about the "60 Stanzas of Reasoning," the students say they frequently were confused, philosophically challenged and spiritually stirred.

Their question posed to the Dalai Lama: "How can you have the self-confidence to be selfless without being an individual and still know that you are doing the right thing?"

Tuesday night at the private school in Seattle, two of the students and their teacher presented what they had learned to fellow students and parents.

Robin Jacobs, a soft-spoken 10th-grader, sat with her arms folded in her lap during the presentation, her hair in a ponytail, her feet in socks with teddy bears dressed as Santas. She tried to encapsulate the Dalai Lama's response.

"He said that you must first have compassion for yourself, and then you can have compassion for others," she said.

Phillip Collins, an 11th-grader with long legs and braces on his teeth, further explained: "Through honoring your existence, your hobbies and desires, you should also honor all others' existence and their hobbies and desires."

"I've never done such hard thinking in all my life," their teacher, Morna McEachern, said of the Dalai Lama's teachings.

To prepare for the trip, the students (including 12th-grader Daichi Hirata, who is in Pennsylvania for an internship and was not at Tuesday's presentation) studied the Dalai Lama's autobiography, "Freedom in Exile," for a month, and discussed the work during their lunchtime with other students at the school.

When their teacher chose three students, none of whom are Tibetan Buddhists, from the group of 12 who had been studying the book, Jacobs and Collins were late to the meeting.

"They almost missed the Dalai Lama for being tardy at the morning circle," McEachern said.

Before the conference, the students looked up some of the text that would be covered in the lectures.

"We got completely confused, which sort of prepared us for the next couple of days of being completely confused," said Collins.

Jacobs and Collins joined in Buddhist chants without knowing the language. They also met and questioned Buddhist monks, including a mandala painter and a healer. They discovered why Tibetan monks leave their right arms bare (because it's a centuries-old tradition).

According to the students, one monk said, "I can tell you're American teenagers by your clothes. It's the style. You can tell I'm a Tibetan monk by my clothes. Every 500 years or so, we change our style."

The Dalai Lama Tenzin Gyatso, born in Tibet, is 68 and recognized by his followers as a reincarnation of Avalokitesvara, known as "the Buddha of Compassion."

Though he spoke Tibetan during the conference and used an English translator, the Dalai Lama also speaks English. According to the students, at one point the Dalai Lama was laughing and told the translator to explain his laughter.

"His holiness says I forgot to tell you why he was laughing. He says, 'Here I sit on a throne and I'm supposed to explain what all these things mean to you, and right now my head is spinning in circles.' "

Exercise 6. Read the text and summarize its contents.Copy out the words and word combinations related to Islam.

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