Theocracy VS Secular Governance

Human civilization cannot function without proper governance, because of its extreme dependence on infrastructures such as transportation, roads, highways, railways, airways, airports, waterways and docks; clean water supply, electricity, sanitation and sewage just to name a few; and not to mention the intricacies of international relations.

Besides utilities and many other functions, the government also needs to have the ability to uphold law and order, and with the help of intellectuals formulate the laws themselves.

Under these circumstances a governing body is of utmost importance that can coordinate and facilitate in a centralized fashion the maintenance and development of these infrastructures for continued smooth functioning of civilization as we know it.

The main difference between theocracy and secular governance is that in a theocracy the government simply passes out rules from an old book, whether it applies to people or not, whether people like it or not. There is no concept of people’s choice. This automatically gives rise to extreme prejudices, issues in human rights and many more.

In a secular governance, ideally the government actually surveys what people need and want to see what laws are applicable. The government eventually must take steps to uphold all basic human rights and the concept of equality.

The government is not there to control the population, it is there to assist the development of the people by providing an environment where they are more concerned about how to improve or enjoy their own lives. That’s why people in the secular nations are more educated; they live longer and healthier lives, and usually have a lot more fun 🙂

Theocracies by default are for controlling the masses, their laws and rules are designed to control every aspect of human life including extremely personal matters such as your sex life, your relationship with other human beings and how you should conduct them, your way of dressing and living in general, to give a few examples. Deviating from those norms and rules are punishable by law and sometimes have dire consequences.

Secular governance does not try to control any one. The concept of secular governance is to assist in the development and integration of people of very different backgrounds. That is why, for example, in most secular countries you find people of all religions, creed and color, and they live there without fear from each other for the most part. Whereas in theocracies the minority is either non-existent or live in fear and seclusion.

Secular societies do not impose any control over anything personal to you. You may dress in the hijaab, nikaab, a t-shirt and a jeans or a bikini. Your sex life is your own to deal with, whether you like to masturbate often or go around having sex with people of the same gender or the opposite, have a one on one, threesome or 4-some, its the business of no one else other than the people involved including you.

You can speak your mind, freedom of speech, whether it be because you don’t like a certain government leader or a certain law or if you just feel like venting some frustration and just ramble on some nonsense or draw silly cartoons about Jesus.

You can have any religion you want, freedom of religion and freedom from religion, and be guaranteed to freely practice your religion within certain limits, which is without harming or bothering other people with your religious practices and without breaking any secular laws.

There is no discrimination by law. And so on… Simply put, secular governance is about the people, their rights and their freedom. Whereas a theocracy is not about the people, its usually about what a non-existent god wants, reviled through ancient, ambiguous, and obsolete books.

In a secular society, education is important, few people “BELIEVE” that they are better than others. That is only the case with religious moderate to pure bred extremists, who believe that they are better human beings because god tells them they are, because they have faith.

Today, we have the education system to tell us who is better at what compared to the next person. There is no such thing as “BELIEVING” to be better. For example, I “KNOW” for a fact that I am far better than you are when it comes to understanding computers (I being a qualified computer scientist) and I “KNOW” for a fact that you are far better than I am in understanding the human body (assuming you are a qualified doctor).

In the same way, we “KNOW” the different expertise of intellectuals and who is better than who for a given job, including handling aspects of governance.

Lastly, lets take an example of any theocracy in existence today and make a comparison with any established secular country – Saudi Arabia VS Norway – where would you prefer to live 😀

Theocracy

My Humanities Lecture

Morals – Where do they come from!

I have always been interested in controversial topics; having said that, in this presentation, I would like to discuss morality and explore the different perspectives we have in this room.

As scientists, we ask difficult questions and try to find acceptable answers, such as:

1) Where do moral values come from?

2) What is right and wrong?

3) Are there absolute criteria for such values?

4) What roll does religion play?

5) What roll does society, as a whole, play?

6) What roll can science play in these judgments of values?

7) Is it all just relative, depending on the time and place we live in?

Today I would like to show that there may be objective ways to scrutinize the questions of morality and find potential answers, and at the end of the presentation, I will summarize my standing on the matter of science versus society versus religion, in terms of moral values, to facilitate a forum of debate and discussion on the subject matter.

When we observe nature, we see that all social animals have some form of moral codes ingrained into them. The more sophisticated the societal structure of these animals, the more complex the moral code of ethics observed in them and vice versa.

To give a few examples:

1) Ichneumonidae: is a diverse family of wasps, commonly known as digger wasps

The adult wasps are vegetarian, mostly living on nectar, but the larvae are carnivores. An adult female wasp will first hunt down a caterpillar or similar insect larva, then methodically sting and inject paralytic venom into every ganglion responsible for the motor functions of every segment of the victim’s body, rendering it motionless, but fully conscious and alive. Then it will lay an egg inside the body, so that when the baby wasp larva hatches, it has fresh meat to feed on. The larva is also quite clever, it eats through everything as it grows, except of the vital organs that keep the meat alive and fresh, until it’s time for it to pupate and eat its way out. I leave the moral implications of this creature’s life cycle to the audience!

2) Social insects: termites, bees, and ants

They will lay down their own lives to save their queen and nest, quite similar to how some of us humans would and have done the same for king and country. They also work in complex societies, and achieve great feats of coordination, such as nursing the young, foraging and farming for food, communicating locations and so on; all of which require some degree of moral or ethical code of conducts.

3) Primates: apes and monkeys

Chimpanzees, that cannot swim, have drowned in zoos trying to save others. Given the chance to get food by pulling a chain that would also deliver an electric shock to a companion, monkeys will starve themselves.

With these examples, I am simply trying to show the gradual trend towards human moral behavior from simple beginnings. Having given these well studied examples, I stand by the idea that morality, like everything else about life on earth, has evolved, and changed with time. The traits that we usually universally see as moral (honesty, fidelity, trustworthiness, compassion etc.) are literally embedded into our hardware through evolution; because it has utilitarian value, namely it helps to survive better in the long run.

Now, moving on to more human matters…

I’d like to start the next section by playing this video:

I think religion is not the source of our morals. In fact if religion were the basis of the moral structure of society, that society would be quite immoral indeed by today’s standards, like in the dark ages, or in some parts of the world that are still ruled by religious dogmas.

Exhaustive lists of the breaches in human rights (in terms of secular humanist thinking) that can be derived from just the Koran, Bible or Torah are too large for one small presentation; volumes of books can be written on the topic. I bring this up in the hope that it will provoke some critical thinking by the audience and provide another angle in the discussion to follow.

In my perspective, morality in general is twisted by religious faiths and inheriting moral values from religion will, without a doubt, give rise to truly immoral and appalling acts of cruelty and breach in human rights, as history and sadly even the present day situation with religious groups have shown us.

With time our societies have matured, and are gradually understanding the gravity of universal moral values and trying to formulate answers to questions that have impact on our day to day lives, for example:

1) Is killing animals for food and other necessities right or wrong and if it must be done, how can it be done in the most humane possible way?

2) Is abortion immoral, why or why not? If it is to be done, exactly when and how?

3) Is prostitution immoral, why or why not? What is prostitution?

4) Is cannibalism immoral, why or why not? What is cannibalism?

5) Is euthanasia immoral, why or why not?

There are N numbers of such questions we can ask within the domain of how we live today, which makes the study of morality ever so more important.

I think science has the means to answer at least some of these questions in an objective and reasonable fashion.

Let’s look at those examples from the light of science and see if we can formulate an acceptable answer.

1) We are omnivores; we are supposed to eat some meat from time to time, even though it is possible to live healthily without it, given our advances in medicine, using supplements. Granted that a lot of us eat meat, and a lot of us are concerned about animal rights, science can answer the question of what is the most humane and painless possible way to kill an animal.

2) Is abortion the deliberate killing of a human being? Science can answer the question of when a fetus can be considered as a human being. Science can also answer the question of when a fetus starts to feel pain and distress, before which time it feels nothing and can be aborted without causing any suffering.

Let’s now look at the other examples from a secular humanistic point of view.

3) What is prostitution? When we think about it, it’s much harder to define than not. If prostitution is simply accepting material or monetary rewards or assistance in exchange for sex, then old man John’s house wife is a prostitute.

4) What is cannibalism? Is it the ingestion of human tissue, or cells? Then fellatio, with a happy ending, is cannibalism.

I give these examples to illustrate that some aspects of human society are very difficult to define, let alone come up with concrete ethical answers.

5) Euthanasia is the deliberate ending of a human life! Who is entitled to make that judgment, especially when it comes to an innocent life? Mind you, courts make life and death judgments all the time in some countries. If such a judgment must be made, then science can answer when and how to conduct the procedure to make it as painless and comfortable as possible.

By no means is this presentation complete or exhaustive in its effort to illustrate the problem of dealing with the topic of morality. It deliberately leaves holes and open ended questions to assist discussion and heated debates, which I love so much, in the following hours.

 

Morals

Religion is not the source of our morals. In fact if religion were the basis of the moral structure of society, that society would be quite immoral indeed by today’s standards.

Like everything else in life, morality has evolved, and changed with time. The traits that we usually universally see as moral (honesty, fidelity, trustworthiness, compassion etc.) are literally embedded into our hardware through evolution. Unfortunately, I am not an expert in the science, philosophy and evolution of morality, so this article will instead concentrate on providing some examples of religious moral attitudes in contrast to today’s views.

The religion I am most familiar with is Islam, therefore my examples will have an Islamic context, but the idea or message this article is trying to communicate applies to most major religions in existence today.

I usually try to refrain from quoting the Koran (or any other religious book for that matter), or the Hadith, but feel compelled to, at least, quote some parts of the Koran to veer off some of the claims and accusations that I don’t know what I am talking about. Of course I am well aware that there will always be a few people, extremely ignorant, if not also downright deluded, that will honestly claim and believe that I have no idea of what I am talking about and therefore should shut the hell up. I usually do a good job either ignoring them or pointing out that I have adequate relevant knowledge to argue my perspective unlike most of them.

Moving on to a few examples:

In today’s world it is without a hint of doubt, sexism and slavery are considered immoral, where as in Islam it is not.

1) The entire Koran is talking mostly to the male audience. In most of the cases blatantly commanding what a man should do with his women, which begs the question of whether women are really considered people or just possessions.

2) In [4:34] of the Koran, it is clearly stated that, men are responsible for women, and that all righteous women must accept this arrangement. It further allows a man to beat his wife/wives as a last resort (to put it mildly) if they (the women) do not obey him.

3) According to the Koran [4:11], a man inherits twice that of a woman.

4) Men are preferred as witnesses, and in case men are not available, two women count for the equivalent of one male witness.

5) Slavery is allowed in Islam, so is using slaves for sex, but in a discriminatory manner. Men owning female slaves can use them for sex, but not the other way round.

An exhaustive list of the breaches in human rights (in terms of secular humanist thinking) that can be derived from just the Koran is too large for one article; volumes of books can be written on the topic. I have just barely attempted to scratch the surface in the hope that my article(s) will provoke some critical thinking by the reader.

Having said enough about Islam, Christianity is not really too far off.

Morality in general is twisted by religious faiths and inheriting moral values from religion will without a doubt give rise to truly immoral and appalling acts of cruelty and breach in human rights, as history and sadly even the present day situation with religious groups have shown us.

Why not derive our morals, and means of judgment from the golden rule, “Treat others the way you’d like yourself to be treated.”, instead of relying on age old books and fables that have long been, not only obsolete, but has contributed to human suffering in cataclysmic scales.

Why not live and let live, and simply leave the next person, family, community, nation, continent (and may be eventually the next planet) alone and let them be!

Why not think a bit more carefully, in both depth and breadth, about religion and faith, and what their teachings really imply and how that affects the lives of everyone else who seem to be different, but are they really!

A short video from someone who shares my understanding, but explains it so much better!