Good God! At Least We Hope So

JB

I wanted to add one small thought to the discussion Brian Tamanaha and others have been having over whether belief in God is necessary to, helpful to, or irrelevant to belief in human rights. Much turns on the sort of God one believes in and what that God asks of human beings. If, for example, one's God teaches that members of the true faith are morally superior to other members of other faiths, then belief in religion will not necessarily conduce to universal human rights. Quite the contrary, it might conduce to policies of conquest, forced conversion, or systematic oppression. Similarly, if one believes that members of other faiths are entitled only to lesser rights by virtue of their faith, for example the status of Jews under the Papal states, or the special protected status of Jews and Christians as dhimmi under Muslim law, strong belief in God will not necessarily ground universal human rights. Rather, religious belief may justify various forms of differential treatment. And then of course, there is the question of equality between men and women. Some types of belief in God promote equality between the sexes, but, historically many more have promoted the opposite view.

That is to say, the thesis has assumed that belief in God is good for human rights because God himself approves of universal human rights, religious tolerance, and human equality. But that is not generally true of what people thought God wanted historically, even within the Judeo-Christian tradition. Throughout most of human history, God (and different gods) have been remarkably partial, at least if we credit the moral and political beliefs of people who professed to believe most fervently in Him throughout the ages, and who justified their practices based on their belief in Him.

For religion to ground universal human rights in the very attractive way that the previous discussion has assumed, that religion must be of a very special sort, and, I would suggest, it must be of a form that arises most commonly following the Enlightenment, when older versions of religious belief were repeatedly questioned and reshaped by religious strife, political necessity, the rise of modern secular institutions, and the growth of science; these historical phenomena-- and not simply belief in God per se-- led to increasing religious tolerance between sects and increasingly capacious and generalized conceptions of human liberty and human equality. That is to say, the sort of belief in God that most strongly undergirds the discourse of universal human rights as we understand it today is the sort of belief in God that has been chastened by and reshaped by several centuries of modernity, secularism, and religious skepticism.

I am sure that God, watching down from heaven, is no doubt amused by the irony of this development. But, as we know, He works, and always has worked, in mysterious ways.
Posted 9:22 PM by JB [link]