On Morality, Science and Religion

            

      On Morality, Science and Religion

        One of the most pernicious and divisive effects of many religions is that they tend to separate concepts of morality from the reality of human and animal suffering. Religion allows people to imagine that their concerns are moral when they have nothing to do with suffering or its alleviation. In point of fact, religion allows people to imagine that their concerns are moral when they are highly immoral—that is, when pressing these concerns inflicts unnecessary and appalling suffering on innocent human beings.

        This explains in large manner why many professing Christians evidence more concern and expend more "moral" energy opposing abortion than fighting genocide. It explains why some are more concerned about human embryos than about the lifesaving promise of stem-cell research. And it explains why many can preach against condom use in sub-Saharan Africa while millions die from AIDS there each year. They believe that their religious concerns about sex have something to do with morality. And yet, efforts to limit and define the sexual behavior of consenting adults are rarely geared toward the relief of human suffering. In fact, relieving suffering seems to rank farther down the list of priorities. The principal concern appears to be that the creator of the universe will take offense at something people do while naked. This prudery contributes daily and in huge measure to the surplus of human misery.

        Consider human papillomavirus (HPV), one of, if not the,  most common sexually transmitted disease in the United States. HPV infects over half the American population and causes nearly five thousand women to die each year from cervical cancer; the Center for Disease Control (CDC) estimates that more than two hundred thousand die worldwide. We now have a vaccine for HPV that has been shown to be both safe and effective. The vaccine produced 100 percent immunity in the six thousand women who received it as part of a clinical trial, yet Christian conservatives in our government resisted a vaccination program on the grounds that HPV is a valuable impediment to premarital sex. These pious men and women want to preserve cervical cancer as an incentive toward abstinence, even if it sacrifices the lives of thousands of women each year.

        There is nothing wrong with encouraging teens to abstain from having sex. But, in truth and beyond any doubt, we know that teaching (and preaching) abstinence alone is not a good way to curb teen pregnancy or the spread of sexually transmitted disease. In fact, kids who are taught abstinence alone are less likely to use contraceptives when they do have sex, as many of them inevitably will. One study found that teen "virginity pledges" postpone intercourse for eighteen months on average—while, in the meantime, these virgin teens were more likely than their peers to engage in oral and anal sex. American teenagers engage in about as much sex as teenagers in the rest of the developed world, but American girls are four to five times more likely to become pregnant, to have a baby, or to get an abortion. Young Americans are also far more likely to be infected by HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases. The rate of gonorrhea among American teens is seventy times higher than it is among their peers in the Netherlands and France. The fact that 30 percent of our sex-education programs teach abstinence only (at a cost of more than $200 million a year) surely has something to do with this.

        The problem is that many monotheistic believers are not principally concerned about teen pregnancy and the spread of disease. That is, they are not worried about the suffering caused by sex; they're worried specifically about sex itself. 

       Reginald Finger, an Evangelical member of the CDC's Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices who served on the CDC's Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices from 2003 to 2006, stated categorically  that he would consider opposing an HIV vaccine—thereby condemning millions of men and women to die unnecessarily from AIDS each year—because such a vaccine would encourage premarital sex by making it less risky. This sort of doctrinal rigidity transforms religious beliefs to genuinely lethal public policy. Fortunately, the “good doctor” no longer is a government employee but remains active with “Christian” Medical and Dental Associations both locally and nationally, continuing to work toward his vision of a closer connection between Christian medicine and Christian higher education. Apparently, this includes a side order of “Let ‘em die!”

        In the more recent era, VP Mike Pence, now Coronavirus-czar, then Indiana governor, took much the same tack during an HIV crisis in Indiana, nixing the idea of needle exchanges to minimize the spread of HIV among addicts. His attitude distills down to the same “I’m morally superior to these poor folks, let ‘em die.”

       The Pence approach to HPV vaccines was similar. He publicly reprimanded the state health commissioner for speaking about the HPV vaccine at Indiana’s National Coalition Conference, later demanding that  all public-health employees submit their presentations about vaccines to his office for approval prior to any speaking engagement. Then he prohibited the release of a document by the Indiana Cancer Consortium that included information on cervical cancer, the only known cause of which is HPV.

        Qualms about embryonic stem-cell research are similarly obscene and ill-intentioned.  Factually, stem-cell research is one of the most promising developments in the last century of medicine. It offers, and continues to promise, therapeutic break-throughs for every disease or injury process that human beings suffer—for the simple reason that embryonic stem cells can become any tissue in the human body. This research may also be essential for our understanding of cancer, along with a wide variety of developmental disorders. In fact, it is difficult, nay, almost impossible to exaggerate the promise of stem-cell research. It is true, of course, that research on embryonic stem cells entails the destruction of three-day-old human embryos. This is what worries those who oppose such research.

        Consider the details. A three-day-old human embryo is a collection of 150 cells called a blastocyst. There are, solely for the sake of comparison, more than 100,000 cells in the brain of a fly. The human embryos that are destroyed in stem-cell research do not have brains, or even neurons. Consequently, there is no reason to believe they can suffer their destruction in any way at all. By contrast, in this context, when a person's brain has died, we currently deem it perfectly acceptable to harvest his organs (provided he has donated them for this purpose) and bury him in the ground. If it is acceptable to treat a person whose brain has died as something less than a human being, it should be acceptable to treat a blastocyst as such. If you are concerned about suffering in this universe, killing a fly should present you with greater moral difficulties than killing a human blastocyst.

        Perhaps you think, as some profess to believe, that the crucial difference between a fly and a human blastocyst is to be found in the latter's potential to become a fully developed human being. But, considering recent advances in genetic engineering (cloning), essentially every cell in your body is a potential human being. Every time you scratch your nose, you (theoretically) commit a Holocaust of potential human beings. This is a fact. The argument from a cell's potential is devoid of merit. This leaves one with “But I believe…..!”  And you have every right to those beliefs, just as many of the rest of us have the right to be unaffected by them.

        But let us assume, for the sake of discussion, that every three-day-old human embryo has a soul worthy of our moral concern. Embryos at this stage occasionally split, becoming separate people (identical twins). Is this a case of one soul splitting into two? If this and similar issues are troubling, then don't have an abortion. That’s your personal choice. However, don't ever, ever, benefit from any medical advances "stemming" from stem cell research. Of course, that’s another issue, since in the former you’re simply arbitrarily dictating the behaviors and restraints imposed on others with no real-world consequence to yourself, while the latter is your life!

       For political evangelicals, their statement of faith is written first by their political ideology and only a distant second by what the Bible says. Evangelicals are more likely to be Republicans than Democrats, and their religious beliefs can be interpreted to support conservative views on climate change. “As a Christian, I believe that there is a creator in God who is much bigger than us,” Republican congressman Tim Walberg said in 2017. “And I’m confident that, if there’s a real problem, he can take care of it.” This “do nothing and hope for the best” attitude has already failed numerous groups of true believers hoping for divine intervention over two millennia. Six million Jewish lives are a lasting monument to the fallacious nature of this approach.

        The nice thing about living in a free society is that we all should have the right to do or not do what we find morally acceptable or repugnant so long as it doesn't injure or impose our strictures on others who don't share our particular world view. The problem is that there are those who would impose their framework of morality upon us all because they have all the answers and feel duty bound to force us to do as they say. The human consequence  of this thinking has spawned the Inquisition, the Crusades, The 911 attacks, lynchings across the South, The genocidal attempts of Columbus, Hitler, Stalin, Milosovic, caging of immigrant children, et al.

      Feeling love and caring for others should be one of the greatest sources of our own happiness; it entails a very deep concern for both the happiness and suffering of those we love. Our own search for happiness, therefore, provides a rationale for self-sacrifice and self-denial. There is no question that there are times when making enormous sacrifices for the good of others is essential for one's own deeper well-being. Nothing has to be believed on insufficient evidence for people to form bonds of this sort. At various points in the Gospels, Jesus message is interpreted as “love can transform human life.” This is hardly unique to Christianity. We need not believe that an itinerant apocalyptic Arab preacher was born of a virgin or will be returning to earth as a superhero to take these teachings to heart.

     In summary, the next time you want to legislate your version of morality to the entire body politic, consider that those whose beliefs differ from yours have as much right to disbelieve (and more proof) than you do.