Religion, HIV and morality
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Health officials in the Philippines are angry at the Catholic Church for its efforts to prevent the government from funding family planning. Without contraception more women will die during pregnancy, HIV will spread and poverty and hunger will increase.
In order to understand why the Church is so immoral we must understand that religion has nothing to do with morality.
The atheist philosopher Bertrand Russell once noted that if a man dedicated his life to fighting disease and helping sick people, according to Christians he would still go to hell if he engaged in non-marital sex. But if another man causes his wife to die by impregnating her every year he will go to heaven because he didn’t have non-marital sex.
I remember when people thought AIDS was a “gay disease” the Christians gloated that God was punishing male homosexuals. But Christians had no explanation of why lesbians virtually never transmit HIV to one another.
My point is that religion teaches us to be irrational, sadistic and cruel. And that's exactly what prevents us from being moral.
Eric Bahrt
