By STEVE ZARA
Added: Sun, 28 Nov 2010 14:40:36 UTC

There is an American politician called John Shimkus. He hopes to become chair of the House Energy Committee. That's a powerful position. One might expect someone who aims to fill such an important position to ensure that they have a solid understanding of the issues. That they have consulted experts on the complex subject of, for example, global warming and climate change.

Speaking before a House Energy Subcommittee on Energy and Environment hearing in March, 2009, Shimkus quoted Genesis: 'As long as the earth endures, seed time and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night, will never cease.' Shimkus insists that we should not be concerned about climate change because of God's promise to Noah that the Earth would remain fertile.

Meanwhile, the debate over the correct approaches to religion by rationalists continues, with supporters of accommodation and their opponents being occasionally as vociferous as ever. The debate almost always deals with matters of science and whether religions' claim to 'other ways of knowing' should be respected.

I believe that situations like that I described above mean that a new debate is needed, about the nature of religion and its place in our societies, about what we are and are not prepared to accommodate. This debate is not about science, or philosophy, but about ethics, about what is acceptable in the public sphere in a supposedly civilised society. At the centre of this debate should be a new position regarding the status of religion. This position should be that religion itself is immoral. That seems to be a very strong statement, but it is justified. Our daily lives depend on the acceptance of reason as the foundation of the way our societies operate. If we are the victims of a crime, we expect an investigation based on evidence, not the casting of runes. If we are in a plane thousands of feel in the air, we expect the pilot to judge a safe course based on an analysis of weather information, not entreaties to Thor. If we are seriously ill, we expect a thorough diagnosis using modern medical techniques, not a reading of the entrails of a freshly killed animal. Indeed, if such practices were found to have taken place, those participating would be subject to legal action.

The same standard should be applied to the use of religion. If a politician uses religion rather than reason as the basis for policy decisions, they should be subject to penalty. Irrationality must become no more acceptable in politics than it is in medicine or aeronautics. And what of the priests and imams, the vicars and bishops, the cardinals and popes? They are as much purveyors of quackery as the homeopaths and chiropracters, only with vastly more power and so more dangerous.

Rejecting accommodation with religion as a source of truth isn't enough. Not even the rejection of the accommodation with religion as a source of morality goes far enough. We need to promote the view that religion itself is immoral, because it is immoral to encourage the rejection of reason.

TAGGED: ACCOMMODATIONISM, ATHEISM, IRRATIONALITY, POLITICS, REASON, RELIGION