More important than humanity?

14 November 2012 - 15:34 By Bruce Gorton
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Human skull. File photo.
Human skull. File photo.
Image: Gonzo Carles

One of the articles I was reading this week included a very, creepy line about how atheists don’t believe in something more important than humanity.

I say this is creepy, because when people talk about God as being more important to humanity, they kind of open the door to some very sick and twisted things taking centre stage.

Take Malawi as a recent example. The Malawian government announced a moratorium on their laws banning homosexuality – major progress that would likely make people’s lives better.

It didn’t take long until religious groups pressured the government into backing down on that, because gay rights weren’t consistent with Malawi’s “Christian culture.”

The suffering of human beings is less important than their idea of God.

The Catholic Church in Australia is currently being investigated for covering up for paedophile priests. The reason the church did this was to cover its reputation and win converts.

God, is more important to the Catholic Church than children getting raped.

Lets take a look at another example. Recently a school was burnt down in Pakistan because a teacher accidentally photocopied the wrong page of the Koran.

The headmaster, who is 77, was arrested and the teacher in question will likely have to live in hiding for the rest of her life, because to those Pakistanis who burned down that school, God is more important than humanity, and blasphemy is supposedly a crime against God.

When we take our ideas as being more important than people – and lets face it God as it stands is an idea, we don’t have enough data to say God exists never-mind what God may want - there is no limit to what horrors we can perpetrate.

The history of our species is replete with things that have been taken as being more important than humanity, and it generally hasn’t ended well.

It is when we put our concern for our fellow human being first, that the best of who we are is revealed.

When we look at someone and thing not “There is an X” but “there is a human being”, and everything else is secondary, the best of who we are rises to the surface.

So yes, I suppose I do reject the idea of something being more important than humanity, because I am human first, before anything else.

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