Here’s a little mind-bender for all those folks in the Religious Right who believe that religion is a bastion of moral values, and those without religion are lost:
It seems that, as much as religion preaches at people about moral values, religious people don’t seem to actually follow through on those values in practice. For example, Catholicism, which has been the subject of relentless media adoration since the death of the Pope, relentlessly lectures anybody who will listen (and many people who don’t want to) that abortion, divorce, and euthanasia are awful, terrible sins.
But what do American Catholics actually do? According to a recent study, American Catholics actually have more abortions than other Americans do. American Catholics also approve of divorce and euthanasia more often than the general American population. So, it seems that Catholicism’s methods of teaching its moral values just don’t work.
What do we call religious moral values that don’t actually change anybody’s behavior or moral vision? How about religious moral bankruptcy? It seems that religion provides rather inept moral leadership. If we want to become better people, we had better find other sources of inspiration – or, perhaps, we might step out on a limb and begin to think about moral issues for ourselves, without the crutch of doing something just because some old book tells us to.
Sounds like people already are…
Personally, I think statistics show that there are so many Christians because so many people feel religious and thus assume they’re Christian.
I’ve met a lot. They say they’re Christian, I ask if they actually know what the Bible says and… Surprise, surprise. They get filled in by me and decide that they probably don’t count as Christian.
Perhaps, moral values is an over-used expression that is meaningless when compared against the reality of life. Just because a series of authorities espouse viewpoints about contraception and abortion does mean that everyone believes them to be correct.
Many believe that contraception should be a right — a planned family with limits. Is it more of a personal value about not only sanctity of life but in the quality of life for the family or a moral value? Similarly, due to the explosive numbers about AIDs on a worldwide basis, is a condom more moral than bearing an infected child who will suffer until it dies long before it’s full life expectancy is met?
Many do not believe that the early phases of pregnancy is a baby. At what point does it become a living being with its own rights? This not only involves the use of the morning after pill but of when an abortion is a possibility.
It will remain a modern issue and an issue of the devastating affects of overpopulation that is destroying the environment. When does the “common good” become a more important moral value than an individual choice?
China had to make that uncomfortable choice long ago with its own uncomfortable choices and moral values. Currently, it has far more men coming of marriagable age than women due to the high inidence of abortions based on gender. It will give the women a much bigger stake in their own choices and future.
Oddly enough, contraception and abortion are not dealt with in the Bible at all. To make it a moral value is to focus on the sanctity of life itself, which does not truly clarify that all potential life has the same sanctity.