Barry Clifford: Oh God And A Happy New Year Everyone

Recently, David Quinn posed a question in his titled article submitted to the Irish Independent of  “If there is no God, no law giver, then why should we be equal?” I shall try to answer. With or without a God we as a society or just to function as one needs to have equality. The closest we can come to that is being born equal which we are not. Some people are born with disabilities, other into crushing poverty or extreme wealth, and that is only the start of our un-equality.

God, depending on whose version we adopt Christian or otherwise, is not into equality either. The historical version of the Catholic Church in Ireland proved that beyond any reasonable doubt, and in Spain the story of the inquisition, one drawn in nothing but blood, removed any doubt that was still left. God’s laws are, if you were to believe them without cheery picking the interpretations, are steeped in cruelty, and three of them are primarily based on a rather narcissistic view of himself: Remember to keep his holy day; leave out the competition; don’t mess around with his name.

The rest are entirely suspect too: Though shall not kill. Tell that to a Jewish man that had seen all of his family die in a gas chamber or a Catholic whose daughter had been raped; or tell a Protestant man on the battlefield to turn the other cheek as an enemy bears down on him with sword. 

How about honour your father and mother? No go here either if, as my parents had done, had abandoned you since you were 5 years old. Life is not straight forward in black or white only grey, and no law can fit all especially religious ones, and do not allow either for the rest of the complexities regarding the human condition. Civil law enshrined in democracy at least attempts to solve these conundrums even if not successful with its permanent imperfections.

Recently I came accross a few books on Martin Luther King and his speeches. He is one of those people that I still admire. It was not his Christian view though that dominated his thoughts or his willingness to engage the enemy in open view, it was his world- view that all men should be created equal rather than the fact that they are not. His idealism is rooted in making things better rather than Darwin’s scientific view of just reporting the facts that most religions still struggle with today. The content of one’s character rather than what hat or robe that they are wearing is all of the human condition anyone needs to know, as Martin said before you can make any informed choices. Other than that it will always be the survival of the fittest as it is in all species, and always has been and will be.

God or no God needs us to strive towards equality, to make more just laws rooted in humanitarianism along the way of life, and not a Catholic version of law or indeed a Muslim one, or the Hindu commandments along with all the other alphabet soup of religions and their dictates out there. It is equality and its cousins of fairness with tolerance and justice that will ensure all our survival whatever religions we choose to follow or not, and must never allow any threat to that social democracy that is sometimes called freedom or otherwise it may be our epitaph.

It is that, with God or not, is my hope for 2014. Happy new year everyone and thank you for your support.   

Barry Clifford