This house believes that religion should be modified to suit today's necessities - Opening speeches

Introduction

Has religion become unsuitable for our modern societies? All the more since religion is involved, your response will certainly highly depend on where you sit. A young former catholic rejected by his very pious family because after a long internal battle with himself he ended accepting he was gay? or a religious extremist? […]

by LL

First proposing speech

The “Darwin’s Rottweiler”, as he is called in Oxford, where he teaches “Science understanding”, Richard Dawkins, once summed up in tough words the impact of religion during the last decade : “Imagine, sang John Lennon, a world with no religion. Imagine no suicide bombers, no 9/11, no 7/7, no Crusades, no witch-hunts, no Gunpowder Plot, no Kashmir dispute, no Indo/Pakistan partition, no Israel/Palestine wars, no Serb/Croat/Muslim massacres, no Northern Ireland 'troubles'. Imagine no Taliban blowing up ancient statues, lashing women for showing an inch of skin, or publicly beheading blasphemers and apostates. Imagine no persecutions of the Jews - no Jews to persecute indeed, for without religion they would long ago have intermarried with the surrounding populations”.  […]

by AMa

First opposing speech

I am going to show you in three parts why this motion cannot pass. First, I will demonstrate that fundamental bases of religion are not to be touched. Then, I will show that many people just want religion to adapt, so they can feel better about themselves. Finally, I’ll show you that today’s necessities are not really different than yesterday’s ones. [...]

by AMo  

Introduction

Has religion become unsuitable for our modern societies? All the more since religion is involved, your response will certainly highly depend on where you sit. A young former catholic rejected by his very pious family because after a long internal battle with himself he ended accepting he was gay? or a religious extremist.

Even if we do lack of very precise data concerning the number of practicing Christian, Jew, and Muslim, Buddhist etc., which then need to be taken with a pinch of salt when they exist, every observer agrees to say that the number of new religious keeps rising ever year. Therefore, the greatest religious leaders keep empowering as their moral and political positions touch a growing audience every day. And saying that is without a doubt an understatement. Religious leaders keep standing in the eyes of their community as moral leaders and sages who profess guidances in the name of God which makes them unquestionable. Of course a growing self-consciousness among the religious, along with their growing access to education, has dimmed the all-mightiness of those positions but it is not the case among the most vulnerable populations who too often happen to be the most religious. I’m thinking about the latest sayings of the Pope during his last visit to Africa in March when he discredited the condom efficiency in the fight against AIDS. This will certainly trigger dramatic consequences and a sharp tailback of this cause in the continent. The most developed countries were then faced with the deepening split between the Pope and the scientific community and his blindness in front of truths generally accepted in the most modern societies.

With new technologies pushing further the limits of our knowledge, new questions keep being asked: where does life start? What was the role of God during the Big Bang? Therefore, this debate should question whether religion can take those new discoveries: can it always have a word to say? To put it in a nutshell, we expect this debate to question the ability of religion to be a social fact. Indeed, you cannot abstract society from man and society is meant to evolve: women are meant to emancipate, abortion is now legal in an ever growing number of countries, gay marriages have been legalized in ten countries … On the other hand, religions rely on writings that were made thousands of years ago, when our living conditions were different. If religion becomes unsuitable for today’s necessities, does it mean our societies are on the wrong path, or that religion is outdated? Would a change in the doctrines be at odds with their Holy immutability? What type of modifications should be implemented? At which level? Who would decide when those modifications need to be made? How could religions change to adapt when they are supposed to be universal whereas the necessities, the progress made in some societal debates highly vary from a country to another?

For the sake of this debate, we would like to make it clear that we are not questioning whether we invented God or not or whether we actually did invent religions. Here religions should be approached by their social aspects, as institutions and as “art” and “theory” of our internal life.

LL

First proposing speech

The “Darwin’s Rottweiler”, as he is called in Oxford, where he teaches “Science understanding”, Richard Dawkins, once summed up in tough words the impact of religion during the last decade : “Imagine, sang John Lennon, a world with no religion. Imagine no suicide bombers, no 9/11, no 7/7, no Crusades, no witch-hunts, no Gunpowder Plot, no Kashmir dispute, no Indo/Pakistan partition, no Israel/Palestine wars, no Serb/Croat/Muslim massacres, no Northern Ireland 'troubles'. Imagine no Taliban blowing up ancient statues, lashing women for showing an inch of skin, or publicly beheading blasphemers and apostates. Imagine no persecutions of the Jews - no Jews to persecute indeed, for without religion they would long ago have intermarried with the surrounding populations”. This leads us to think about all the consequences that the religion has nowadays, and why it can have such a huge impact on our societies. Indeed, our word is overwhelmed by changes, by technical revolution, and everything which matters in the world should live on those advances. Thus, religion is concerned by this evolution, and should change with our time, to fit our necessities. 

However, what does the word religion means? He, who knows the answer, let us know! More seriously, the religion here should be understood as a concept which leads people to gather together around principles, around celebrations, around a time to give to someone, something… And that is the only interesting definition here, because if we want to talk about religion through the consequences it can have on society, we should not institute differences between all the different religions. Indeed, doing that would lead to a religious debate, about which religion is accurate, which one is obsolete, and it is definitively none of our concern here. Then, modifying religion is not something easy, but the way that it can be made is realistic: of course we are neither going to abolish religion, we simply cannot, nor going to change the dogma, the deep principles on which religions are based: it is not what matters. What we should do, is to change the way that people act “in the name” of their religion. The way we want to change it will be detailed later by one of my colleague. 

First of all, let us focus on the issues raised by people acting apparently for their religion, to understand why we should modify religion. For many people, an action in the name of Christianity, Judaism, Islam… is forgiven by the whole world, because it is kind of “written in the dogma”, so it is the right thing to do, and it’s not the person who is responsible, but the religion itself! Because religion now is considered by too many people as an instrument, very regardless to people’s deep motivations, very useful to control, very useful to have power… Without drawing up a list of everything which happened, as terrorism acts, as violation of human rights, as crimes against humanity… in the name of one of the 18 most important religion (those that everyone once heard about in his life), we cannot talk about religion impact without thinking about cruses, about St Barthelme, about the Inquisition, and more recently, about Belfast, 9/11, and everything Richard Dawkins talked about in his speech, which I referred to at the very beginning.… According to the Washington Post, between 2003 and 2004, the number of attempts in the name of religion has been quadrupled. This said, we cannot keep on being persuaded that religion is well lead today, and that we should not act in order to put back things where they should be, to make people come back in the right way. Religion is now, because it has not change with the advances of our world, ill-equipped to face the will of people, and if we do not want it to be left holding the bag, we should change the way it is lead, the way it is taught, the way people act for it. In conclusion, we should modify it, to fit the needs of our world, to fit with today’s necessities. Imagine a world without being afraid of travelling by plane above Bagdad, to take the train in Madrid, or the underground in London… 

AMa

First opposing speech

Dear members of the assembly, good morning!

We are here today to debate whether or not religion should be modified to suit today’s necessities. I am going to show you in three parts why this motion cannot pass. First, I will demonstrate that fundamental bases of religion are not to be touched. Then, I will show that many people just want religion to adapt, so they can feel better about themselves. Finally, I’ll show you that today’s necessities are not really different than yesterday’s ones.

A religion can be defined as a system of general truths, which have the effect of transforming character when they are sincerely held. If each religion has its system, all of them have quite common bases: Justice, Charity, Peace…

Let me ask you one question? Does a truth change? Does a truth ages? Not really. Truth is a universal and eternal value. Religion cannot be modified, as we cannot modify truths. But the way we look at them can evolve. So, in a way, religion can evolve.

But it cannot be modified. How could we modify something that God inspired us to create? However it can evolve. That means that the point of view can change along the centuries. While the bases stay what they are, the ideas are not seen in the same way tan before.

As we expect a hero to be a model of inspiration, as we expect him not to change a bit, we expect the same from religion. Do notice that it often evolves regarding material or social principles. The fundamental ones are not to be touched in any way. The Christian Ten Commandments or the Buddhist Ten Precepts will be in a thousand year what they are today. The bases do not change.

We need religion to be our support in life, eternal. The problem appears when we want our support to start changing with us.

You’ll tell me that we aren’t all religious. Aren’t we really? We all know what religion means and cannot sincerely affirm that its principles are unhealthy. In a way, we are thus all religious.

You drive at 120 miles per hour although it’s forbidden to go over 100. You know the rules but you follow your owns. But you’d sure feel better if the limitation grew to 120 miles per hour. People know what religion commands. And since it’s really hard to obey, they feel too often guilty. Even if they still don’t follow its rules, they still prefer the rules to change.

What do we mean by “today’s necessities”? Wars? There always were wars. Hunger? Always was, too. The only true thing that has changed today is the number of human beings on earth. It sure imposes religion to change its strategy to touch over six billions souls.

Today’s necessities are not so different than yesterday’s ones. I say religions have existed for thousand years, and they are still there. Let’s not think that our century is so different than the precedent ones.

Thank you very much. Make the right choice: Vote for us!

AMo