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Religion should not factor in a Court of Law
6/29/2009
I WOULD like to respond to your news item captioned “Court of Appeal reserves decision in manslaughter appeal” as published in your June 18th, 2009 edition on page 6.
Senior Crown Counsel Mr. Roy Hurley is quoted therein as saying that the Defendant, Mr. Clyde DaCosta Clarke, “had no moral or spiritual compass since he did not believe in God”, and hence suggesting that the Defendant is deserving of a longer sentence.
As an atheist I take strong issue with the above ridiculous statement. Further, I fail to see what relevance the Defendant’s atheism has to do with his length of sentence. Barbados is not a theocracy. Perhaps in Iran non-belief in God may be an issue in sentencing but it ought not to be a factor to be in anyway considered, let alone raised, in a Barbadian Court of Law! Under the Barbadian Constitution citizens are entitled to have freedom of thought and conscience, and the right not to be discriminated against because of their creed.
A belief in God does not indicate a superior moral compass – we only have to look at the many atrocities committed in the name of God globally to see that. The Catholic Inquisition is a case in point, with its extreme torture methods which included the placing of red hot irons into bodily orifices; the tearing out of finger and toe nails; use of thumbscrews to crush fingers and toes; the pouring of acid onto victims; immersion into boiling hot water; the use of the rack to break bones; eyes gouged out with hot irons; etc. These were all done by a religious “moral compass” in the name of a Catholic God.
Countless thousands were mutilated and killed on spurious charges because they refused to accept the Catholic Churches dogma. Galileo had to recant his scientific belief in the earth orbiting the sun, (rather than the sun orbiting the earth as the Catholic Church officially maintained until 1979!), to avoid being tortured by the Inquisition, but he was nevertheless still put under house arrest until his premature death.
The 9/11 killing of innocent civilians, is another case in point of religion not creating a superior moral compass, as are the genocidal policies of a supposedly Thorah reading Israel against the Palestinians. Even the horrendous transatlantic slave trade was done in the name of religion, relying on the Biblical Story of Ham, and it was fully supported by the religious moral compasses of the day.
Unlike religious persons, atheists do not seek self-interested spiritual credits as an investment in the Bank of Afterlife. Just like any other group of individuals, atheists span the whole spectrum of human existence with all our human foibles, but generally it can be argued atheists have a higher moral compass as we are not driven by the self-interested need to amass spiritual credits, or by the fear of divine wrath, but just the doing of what is right for no afterlife recompense. Who can realistically say that atheists like Clement Atlee; Thomas Paine; Bertrand Russell; and Sigmund Freud, to name but a few, did not have a very sophisticated and laudable moral compass?
LALU HANUMAN
Attorney-at-lawŒ
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