Religious Moral Inconsistency

7 to 8min read

Mitigation for religious crime

Traditional faith does provide laws that people are expected to abide by, but there is hypocrisy. For example, such as when an individual believes God has commanded them to do something contrary to the norm. Now, what should be done, when someone does something socially unacceptable in the name of a deity that lands that person in trouble with their religious leader?

You see, the Christians honour Abraham, the biblical character who prepared to murder his son Isaac, after hearing God command him. Today, however, no Tom, Dick or Harry who blames a divine command for their bad behaviour faces a spiritual type mitigation. In all fairness Tom or his two friends, could commit crime and appeal to similar scenarios mirroring themes seen in the bible, which, going on the faithful mustn't be questioned—it is a bit of a paradox.

Delusion and reality...

From a secular viewpoint, imagine if a person called Islamic extremist commits a claimed religiously justified murder for Allah. Let's just say, he kills a corrupt politician who might have started world war III, had it not been for God commanding the Islamic devotee. A holy prevention of skynet, so to speak. How can the world truly ever know?

The only measured practice we wave around for such things is psychiatric assessment, evidence gathering. There is no litigation charged with validating or falsify claims of a divine interaction in criminality. These things really are down to expert psychiatric opinion, because, when fellow believers doubt Islamic terrorists experience of Allah commanding him, they also doubt key teachings in the Quran, including the phenomena of divine command.

If then, let's say, a religious A forgives Religious person B for horrendous crime C, on the virtue of God speaking to her, for example; it follows A, is also expected to forgive the historical genocide Yahweh ordered against the Amalekites? This suggests sometimes genocide is valid, yet, though shall not kill and you should turn the other cheek?

Incapacity to verify divine nature...

We would never expect any religion to provide empirical evidence, especially to prove how their respective God is responsible for anything. The Pope cannot ascribe responsibility to God for anything outside of his faiths dogma, such as someones car insurance quagmire, crypto currency or the Higgs field. So, divine command has limitations, compartments, denomenation, and no one has a need to test the 'commanded' populace for signs of God or command.

Inconsistency...

There is real potential for inconsistency here in religious moral reasoning. The Quran teaches the sanctity of life. You may have heard an Islamic saying something similar to this: ‘to kill one person is to kill all humans’ meaning suicide is a denial of this teaching, and pretty frowned upon. Allah might hold authority on such things in holy text, but some modern Muslims contradict those scriptural teachings whenever they opt for becoming a suicide bomber or cut off a cartoonists head. However, motives and virtues are often applied postmortem to those who do kill themselves; words like martyr or self-sacrifice, music genius and freedom fighter might not necessarily portray the suicides view of themselves, or even, correctly support the objective history of events. Perhaps some musical geniuses end their lives with narcotic concoction and alcohol, because they genuinely feel utterly miserable? Catholicism condemns suicide while worshipping a man who committed suicide-by-law in a Roman province under Gods command. Things like this do raise questions about consistency, not to forget, divine commands test the faithful because all this God and afterlife stuff needs interpretation; if worshippers fail to believe in divine commands what is the point of them or the belief system?

Essentially, what can be done here to rectify things? Inspect every future ominous individual case who hears God's voice just in case? Or perhaps, simply clear out all the old irrational and hypocritical dogma that makes no sense? Can we interpret and contextualise this old ancient scripture to meet modern life in a way that does not create problems?