According to the law of God
Religion has nothing to offer to morality, because religion as such adds nothing to moral reasoning. Religion as such is an obstacle to moral reasoning, because it injects elements that are irrelevant and false – irrelevant because they are false. Randall Terry on abortion for instance.
George Tiller was a mass-murderer…Abortion is still murder. And we still must call abortion by its proper name: murder. Those men and women who slaughter the unborn are murderers according to the law of God.
Randall Terry has no idea what ‘the law of God’ might be, and neither does anyone else. Billions of people think they do, but in fact no one does. No one has any reliable knowledge of what the law of God might be, or if it is something human beings could and should endorse or not. For all Randall Terry knows God is a vicious sadist who loves watching animals torn apart screaming and people swept away in floods. But Terry thinks he does know, and he thinks God thinks what Terry thinks, and so Terry approves the murder of a doctor.
This is why religion is so inimical to women and to anyone else who is not born to one of the top spots in the hierarchy. Once people become convinced that they know what the holy law is, then that law becomes difficult or impossible (depending on the numbers and the ferocity) to change. If enough people are firmly enough convinced that God wants women to be the property of men and shut up and do what they’re told, then women are essentially slaves, and that’s that. If enough people are convinced that the foetus is far more important than the woman carrying it, then women of child-bearing age can never really own their own lives. That’s the law of God for you.
Terry is wrong in so many ways. Here’s a big one: Murder is unlawful premeditated killing of a human being. Abortion is legal in the US, not unlawful. It is not murder. (Of course in some circumstances carrying a child to term could constitute murder, if we want to decide what is lawful and what is not).
And in Kansas, the medical services that Dr. Tiller provided were completely legal. A doctor treating a broken toe or ear ache is legal. Not saying that abortion is the same as a broken toe, only that both are completely legal, and doctors are allowed to provide that care to their patients. Abortion is a lot more scary than a broken toe considering the dangerous, marginally sane Christians who picket clinics and harass patients.
Did I mention that abortion is legal in the US? Accordingly, it is NOT murder. Period. No matter what any imaginary floating things supposedly whisper to the deluded. I am filled with despair at the murder of Dr. Tiller. Does God Hate Women? Doesn’t matter. Randall Terry, Bill O’Reilly, the Pope, and millions of other cowardly men do. One might wonder why some being as fabulous as god is supposed to be would have the least interest in communicating secret knowledge to these male worms.
Still, Claire, it appears that there must be some way to describe murder without addressing its legality or illegality. In American law, abortion is not murder. But there are, conceiveably, jurisdictions in which acts that we rightly regard as murder are not indictable as murder. They may fall under the head of ‘honour killings’, for instance, though to us they remain murder. It is in this sense that anti-choice advocates call abortion murder, that, regardless of the law of the land, some acts which are permitted by law are actually murder.
The interesting feature here is that, in both cases, where what is being called murder (abortion), and what is not being called murder (honour killing), the determination is made on the basis of religious belief. The striking thing is that, not only does religious believing deliver contrary prescriptions, but cannot provide evidence for the prescriptions that are made. That’s why I look forward to Ophelia’s and Jeremy’s new book, because they ask the right question: Does God hate women? How could we possibly know? How can anti-choice activists be so sure that they are right when others disagree, and how can so many Muslims speak of and treat women as chattel slaves, when, contrary to the teachings of the Qu’ran, women are just as capable as men of great intellectual, political and moral achievements, and just as deserving of respect and autonomy?
This question is of far more importance than questions about the existence of God, as all the so-called new atheists make clear. Even if it were plausible to postulate some kind of supreme being – and I don’t think it is – it is implausible both to think that we understand specifics about the nature of this being, and that we can know anything specific about its purposes or expectations regarding us and our actions (if it is a mind or intelligence of some sort which is capable of meanings and intentions). And the religious, including those who consider themselves infallible, must be put on notice that merely making claims, using firearms or clubs or passionate language or shouting, do not in themselves constitute forms of moral reasoning, particularly when it comes to matters of public policy.
Not only does Terry not know the “law of God”, but it would not matter if he did. If the law of God is in accord with kindness, mercy, and decency, then it is superfluous, since we already know what kindness, mercy, and decency are. And if it is not, then the moral thing to do is to defy it
Quite. That is of course the essential point of the book. Nobody has any idea whether God hates women or not, but billions of people think they know what God’s rules are, and that’s the problem.
I was replying to Eric there – it looks like a bit of a non sequitur in reply to NB.
The part of this story that is really angering me is the reported widespread approval for this murderer in vicious online comments and some of the religious right media.
Its an act of terrorism, explicitly against not only the secular law and religious laws about murder, but the basic command of the new testament to submit to the secular law.
The extremist ‘pro-life’ justifications are the merest shite in the face of that, and not only the perpetrator but those who encouraged him should be given a fair trial and speedily hanged.
Hanged, of course, in accordance with secular law. To prevent repeats it might be better that they were publicly chained in bondage leather at the bottom of a long-drop outhouse…
Hanging is not a form of moral discourse either, and there is scant justification for it. It is not a deterrent, and too often the wrong person is hanged, especially when done speedily. We can do better than this.
And, of course, I doubt if any of the “believers” would be prepared to answer the usual question about “god’s” abortions …
You know the natural ones, where the egg is fertilised, but does not implant, or drops out after a few days.
These have always outnumbered live births, even without contraception.
But then, that’s a LOGICAL argument isn’t it?