21 October 1999, 811 words
I am frequently amazed at how readily religious people will lie in order to defend their beliefs. They will even go so far as to misrepresent their own scriptures, if their Holy Books happen to contradict their positions.
Take one Feroze Shah of the Masjid-al-Birr, who last Thursday felt compelled to go into print to defend his right to have sex with12-year-old girls. (I say "have sex", because no man marries a 12- or 14-year-old because he's interested in her conversation or her cooking.) Chapter 4:5 of the Qu'ran, according to Mr. Shah, supports his position: "Train the orphans until they attain puberty for marriage..." But my translation reads: "Prove orphans until they reach marriageable age..." [my italics].
Common sense suggests that the latter is correct. Arabic is a Semitic language and has no Latin roots. The word "puberty" comes from the Latin "puber", which means "adult". So that even if Mr. Shah's translation does say "puberty", the more accurate interpretation is that the orphans should not be married until they are "young adults". And, contrary to Mr. Shah, the Muslim position is not based on any Qu'ranic text, but on the Prophet Muhammad marrying pubescent girls1400 years ago. It hasn't occurred to one Islamic spokesperson that, since women generally died around 40 years of age back then, the equivalent age of those girls now would be 24 years.
Then there's Pastor Cuffie, who quotes only those parts of the Bible that will profit him. Although I'm inured to Cuffie's self-serving selectiveness, I was still amazed to see him in a recent article asserting that the Bible doesn't say man is superior to woman. He even quoted the Apostle Paul - "In Christ there is neither male nor female." (Gal 3:28) - to argue that women are equal and even allowed to be pastors. Naturally, though, he didn't quote Paul in 1Corinthians14:34 "Let your women keep silence in the churches", and for damn sure he didn't quote Genesis 3:16 "...thy desire shall be thy husband and he shall rule over thee."
Now if religious people confined their deceit to matters of theology, their lies would be trivial. Unfortunately, the habit of prevarication - inevitable in a belief system that demands the rejection of logic and evidence - carries over to more crucial areas, such as child abuse. Thus we have Br. Michael Samuel, principal of Presentation College, San Fernando, penning an article in defence of corporal punishment.
Br. Michael calls for "proper scientific investigation" before "we listen to so-called experts from other countries". Since I once heard him give a lecture filled with false information about evolutionary theory, I am less than impressed by Br. Michael's commitment to scientific truth. And both his scientific illiteracy and his mindset are clearly revealed in the following sentence: "When we use corporal punishment, are we depending on an inbuilt reaction within the human psyche which reacts to pain by avoiding the misdemeanour as Pavlov's salivating dogs?" (The dogs, of course, salivated in expectation of a reward, not punishment.)
The sheer ignorance in Br. Michael's article is displayed in several ways, not least of which is his appalling sentence structure, but perhaps most revealingly in the following: "Is the chaos and indiscipline experienced in [schools in Canada, the United States and the UK] partly the result of the abolition of corporal punishment?"
Here are the facts. Corporal punishment has been abolished in only about half the states in the U.S. It was banned in U.K. public schools only in the 1980s. In 1997, in the largest international study on education ever conducted (the Third International Maths and Science Study), both Canada and England scored above the average. The U.S. was on the median. In third place was Japan, a country also noted for having one of the lowest crime rates in the world. Japan first abolished corporal punishment in its schools in 1879. The study's researchers identified factors such as whole-class teaching, standardised teaching manuals, and extra coaching for slower pupils to explain the success of the top-scoring countries. Br. Michael's recipe for scholastic success - prayer, uniforms and punishment - weren't mentioned.
Br. Michael, of course, will never accept the wealth of evidence showing that corporal punishment does a child no good, and may even be harmful. To do so would be to confess that he has been doing harm to children for over two decades. Thus, he needs to lie to himself and, apparently, to do so in public.
Next week, Presentation College will be hosting a conference (i.e. brainwashing) for secondary school students titled "Religion and Morality". Given our moral leaders' slippery way with truth, my advice to any young person who's truly interested in morality is simple: stay as far away from religion as possible.
Copyright © 1999 Kevin Baldeosingh