Religion must not be allowed to creep into or influence politics
THIS question, 'Is there a place for God in public morals debate?' appears as the headline of the article written by Ms Chua Mui Hoong (ST, May 18).
The answer, in my opinion, has already been made clear in several areas of her arguments; for instance, her viewpoints expressed in the following paragraphs:
'Those who want to advance public discussion must make use of public reason, and put up public justifications for what they believe in.
'Most important of all, it requires a willingness to consider that one's private morality, based on one's own religious beliefs, need not be the basis of public law.'
Singapore may be 85 per cent theistic, but we need to understand that religion, any religion, is just a belief system, privy to the individual(s) concerned.
Is there a common definition for the term 'God'?
Can anyone give a definition of God that is acceptable to all?
The answer, as obvious as it seems, is a resounding 'no'.
'Does God exist?' is a question that has gone through extensive debate over the years with the jury still being out.
Can anyone argue that religion is the reason for our morality?
I found myself agreeing with American author Sam Harris when he said in a commentary he wrote that was published in the Los Angeles Times and republished subsequently in The Straits Times:
'If a person doesn't understand that cruelty is wrong, he won't discover this by reading the Bible or the Quran - as these books are bursting with celebrations of cruelty, both human and divine. We do not get our morality from religion. We decide what is good in our good books by recourse to moral intuitions that are (at some level) hard-wired in us and that have been refined by thousands of years of thinking about the causes and possibilities of human happiness.
'We have made considerable moral progress over the years, and we didn't make this progress by reading the Bible or the Quran more closely. Both books condone the practice of slavery - and yet every civilised human being now recognises that slavery is an abomination.
'Whatever is good in scripture - like the golden rule - can be valued for its ethical wisdom without our believing that it was handed down to us by the creator of the universe.'
The views expressed by Harris appear to reflect those of Dr Yaron Brook of the Ayn Rand Institute who allegedly said:
'The idea that morality is impossible without faith in God must be challenged. It implies that man has no reason or purpose to be moral; it implies that no rational standard of morality is possible; it implies that in questions of morality man must suspend reason and blindly submit to faith or blindly obey some authority's 'revelations' or 'mystical insights.' To imply that we have no earthly reason to be moral is profoundly immoral. The purpose of morality is to discover and teach the principles that lead to life, achievement, happiness, success, joy. There is only one means to discover and understand these principles: reason. A proper morality, one for living on earth, requires rationality and independence of soul, not faith and obedience to self-appointed interpreters of an alleged omnipotent being. A proper morality looks not to the supernatural but at man's nature and the reason why he needs values - and then defines the values he must reach and the virtues he must practice to reach them. Properly understood, not only does morality not require faith in God - morality is incompatible with faith in God. The moral is the rationally accepted and chosen, not the mindlessly believed and followed.'
In a multicultural society - Singapore is a prime example - religion must never, ever be allowed to creep into or influence politics.
We would be going down a dangerous path should we ever allow that to happen.
History is replete with destructive events resulting from politics playing second fiddle to religion, or from religion playing a crucial role in the lives of politicians.
Richard Woo Khiah Cheng
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