Hu graduated from UCLA in 1996 with bachelor’s degrees in
economics and history. Â Illustration by GRACE HUANG/Daily
Bruin
By Yang Hu
Having read Ben Shapiro and David Rizkalla’s, (“Tolerance
makes for false god,” Daily Bruin, Viewpoint, Feb. 13 and
“Society needs to live by moral standards provided by
religion,” Daily Bruin, Viewpoint, Feb. 14,
respectively), I can understand why they might be a bit upset that
their religions are cast as the bad guys. Religion cannot be held
accountable for all the ills of the world ““ it has been
responsible for some pretty good things.
These two writers overstated their collective case. Religion,
apparently restricted to the Judeo-Christian-Islamic flavor, is not
all bad. But, it is not the panacea that they claim it to be.
For example, Shapiro suggests that homosexuality “is an
abomination” (Leviticus 18:22), and for him the Bible is the
correct moral guidebook with respect to homosexuality. Of course,
had Shapiro read a few more lines, he would have noted that the
Bible also says that people who are gay should all be killed
(Leviticus 20:13).
In other words, according to Shapiro’s
“morality,” the two men who killed Matthew Shepard
should be honored for following God’s words.
Rizkalla’s statement, “Hitler should be our
hero,” is as much of a strawman as it is sheer hysteria based
on a theory of secularism. How is secular society in any way or
form a celebration of anti-Semitism?
Had Rizkalla done some reading, he would have realized that the
role of religion regarding Hitler is not a settled issue. Christian
theologian, Clark M. Williamson, observed that
“Hitler’s pogrom, for all its distinctiveness, is the
zenith of a long Christian heritage of teaching and practice
against Jews.” After all, it was Martin Luther, and not
Charles Darwin, who once penned a sermon titled “On Jews and
Their Lies.”
Speaking of Darwin, the preferred boogey man of the religious
right, I found Rizkalla’s potshot at Darwin silly. Rizkalla
asserts that many people believe that Darwin’s theory on
evolution was prompted by his need “To rid himself of the
itch that told him he did something evil and that he would one day
answer to a higher power for his deeds.”
What does this have to do with anything? Is this supposed to be
an attack on the veracity of evolution? Is this hearsay supposed to
be taken at face value? Many people also believed that instead of
being crucified, Jesus went to Japan, married, had kids and died a
happy old man. So what?
Additionally, Rizkalla claims that religion was solely
responsible for the abolition of slavery. Well, that’s not
exactly true. If Rizkalla had actually read the Bible, he might
have come across Colossians 3:22, that says “Slaves, obey
your earthly masters in everything” (NIV). Not exactly a
ringing endorsement to the ideal that “All men are created
equal” is it?
In fact, while some Christian denominations such as the Southern
Baptists were defending the practice of slavery on Biblical grounds
(and more recently in “The Southern Partisan” ““ a
journal John Ashcroft was apparently a big fan of) during the
antebellum era, it was Charles Darwin ““ that “evil
agnostic” ““ who was the abolitionist.
Finally, Rizkalla asks that “If there are no absolute
standards, whose right is right?” And since Rizkalla’s
absolute standard is the Bible, I wonder what he thinks about the
morality of the following “absolute” laws:
“If a man happens to meet a virgin who is not pledged to
be married and rapes her and they are discovered, he shall pay the
girl’s father 50 shekels of silver. He must marry the girl,
for he has violated her. He can never divorce her as long as he
lives” (Deuteronomy 22:28-9 NIV).
“When you go to war against your enemies and the Lord your
God delivers them into your hands and you take captives, if you
notice among the captives a beautiful woman and are attracted to
her, you may take her as your wife” (Deuteronomy 21:10-11
NIV).
This, of course is not a wholesale repudiation of religion. Some
people such as Martin Luther King, Jr. and Alan Paton have achieved
greatness because of their faith, spreading the ideals of
compassion and tolerance. (Oops, that’s a dirty word for some
of you.) And the Bible is a great piece of literature in its own
right.
But it’s one thing to appreciate religion and faith, and
it’s another to commit lobotomy with it. Alan Dershowitz,
despite the claims of his conservative detractors, is quite
religious. His relationship with his personal God is that of a
conversation. His midrashim is an ongoing process where he
questions and argues against his personal God, so that he may bring
out the humanity hidden within the various facets of the Bible.
For him, chutzpah k’lapei shemaya ““ chutzpah even
against heaven ““ is an act of piety, because by doing so he
is involved in an active dialogue between him and his personal
God.
It is this constant reevaluation, rather than the Taliban-like
adherence to some bygone rules, holy writ or otherwise, that leads
to human progress. Rizkalla may pine for a world without
uncertainties, but that’s not how the universe works.