Reply To Hugo

Judge Cherie seems to be on the same page as the Pope on this, in believing that religious belief gives you a sort of super, better morality, which outweighs everything else. The NSS, equally unsurprisingly, seems to find this quite offensive. My instincts are with it. Annoyingly, though, and as my philosophy degree taught me in week one, it’s only Cherie’s lot that make conceptual sense. There’s no such thing as abstract morality. It doesn’t even make any sense. If God isn’t the ultimate answer, what is?

Well Hugo, hardly a day goes by without another demonstration of the religious morality that you recommend so heartily. Today, for example we have a story about a teenager from Turkey who was buried alive by her father because, “ friendship with boys had brought shame and dishonor to the family.”

The details are truly horrific:

"The autopsy result is bloodcurdling," an unidentified official told the Anatolia news agency Thursday, Agence France-Press reported. "According to our findings, the girl -- who had no bruises on her body and no sign of narcotics or poison in her blood -- was alive and fully conscious when she was buried."

Now let there be absolutely no doubt - this act was motivated by fanatical religious belief. The problem for you seems that on the face of it, you must concur with this sort of behaviour (you apparently agree with discriminating against non-believers in a court of law, so the suggestion isn't really that far fetched). After all, if the values of the society which sanctions such deviancy is derived from religious texts handed down from God then that must be the last word on the matter!

Of course I don't believe for one moment you are any less shocked by any of this than I am. But the point I am making is that religious people pick and choose which bits of their religion to obey or disregard with the result that religious values vary enormously, not only from country to country but even street to street!

That is hardly what I would call absolute or even consistent, yet you have the nerve to lecture everyone on the deficiencies of, “abstract morality” as if a species that can build a space shuttle, a hospital or a library filled with books is totally incapable of determining such matters for itself, without reference to incomprehensible and absurd religious texts. Complete, I should add, with all the intolerance, nastiness and just shear unadulterated evil (see above) they seem to breed.