As a student of religion, I try (with varying degrees of success) to be empathetic to the beliefs of others that differ from my own. It is one of the goals of my personal philosophy to reconcile the disparate views of the many human religions towards a perennial “truth” of sorts and establish a common ground. Still, I often find myself very critical of certain practices, not just because they are alien to me, but because they fly in the face of greater principles which I see reflected in all of the worlds cultures and religions.
For example – Christians – at various times throughout history, and into the present, in spite of the principles of good will and universal love scattered throughout their holy text, have been perpetrators of some of the worst crimes ever committed – like burning women at the stake – and in the name of their religion. This is the case made against the religion by the more bull-headed atheists like Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens. Myopic as their views may be, it is easy to understand why someone would be cynical of any doctrine that preaches universal love on one hand and advocates murder on the other.
The truth of the matter is that where doctrine leaves room for interpretation – as it always does – and also intersects with any human deficiency – such as ignorance, fear, greed, malevolence – the interpretations that emerge are likely to be unfavorable. Papua New Guinea is currently stricken with the AIDS epidemic, a threat the likes of which their spiritual and medicinal practices (or ours for that matter) are not fully equipped to contend with. People dying in relatively large numbers for no conceivable reason would seem to have a mystical quality to it, if it were something you nor anyone else you knew had ever encountered.
Western rationality tells us to investigate where we do not understand something, to analyze and then come to a reasonable conclusion. But there are hardly any of us who can do that in every situation, because in addition to being rational animals, we humans are also very emotional. So there is hardly a doubt that the Papua New Guineans who have been burning people alive – this was not the first case, afterall – were acting on their fears. Much like the Europeans who engaged in this horrific behavior centuries earlier – and who gave the Papua New Guineans the idea in the first place.
While I do not believe that there is an onus on any people to change in a particular direction, to acquire any particular ideas or customs, there are certain abstract ideological threads that necessarily run through every culture, every religion, and of which most human beings have at least a minimal understanding. One of those is a reverence for life, which if not present would see every human society and institution fall apart.
If there is ever a reason to employ rationality, it is in making decisions that will damage or destroy the lives of others. There should be no place in this world for witch hunts. They were a travesty in Salem in 1692, post-WWII United States, Iraq in 2003, most recently in Papua New Guinea, and ongoing in the Gaza strip. The people responsible in every case should be brought to task for violating one of the essential principles that allow for humanity’s continued existence.
And when they are, we must resist any impulse to burn them alive.
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