Faith and Justice

On Saturday night I watched in awe as the new welterweight champion Floyd “Money” Mayweather systematically dismantled a man previously considered to be one of the top 3 boxers in the world.  Mayweather is my favourite boxer and while I was happy to see him win in such dominating fashion, I was bothered by what I perceived to be a grave injustice.  In the lead-up to the fight, Mayweather had been extremely disrespectful towards Shane Mosley.  In 24/7, the HBO documentary series used to promote the fight, Mayweather had maliciously ridiculed everything from Mosley’s fashion sense, to his perceived lack of intelligence.  He also repeatedly and unabashedly accused Mosley of being a steroid user, referring to an incident from 7 years ago in which Mosley claimed he was unknowingly administered performance enhancers, which weren’t banned substances at the time.  This was after Mosley had agreed to Mayweather’s demand for unprecedented and somewhat intrusive Olympic-style random blood testing.  In a possible prelude to what would eventually play out in the ring, Mosley, known as boxing’s consummate nice guy, did reciprocate Mayweather’s venom.

After the fight, a friend of mine asked me if I believed in karma, to which I replied that Mayweather’s victory was strong evidence that the cosmic entity charged with enforcing the law of karma has been on an extended sabbatical for some time now.  This isn’t the first time in boxing that the nice guy finished last, and embarrassingly so.  Back in 1975, prior to his bout with Joe Frasier, Muhammad Ali launched a barrage of vicious, unprovoked, racially charged slanders against Joe Frazier.  Then he proceeded to hand Frazier the most brutal beatdown of his carreer.  (Although, unlike Shane Mosley, Frazier gave almost as good as he got in the ring.)

In the grand scheme of things, these examples seem trivial compared to all the gross injustices that happen across the globe everyday.  When it was all said and done, Shane Mosley remained a multimillionaire who may yet get his chance for redemption.  But what about the innocent victim of an IDF terrorist attack in Palestine or the victim of a lynching in the South, whose attackers will never see the inside of a jail cell thanks to the racist legal systems of present-day Israel and America-circa-1945.

Faced with the challenge of reconciling the existence of an omnipotent and moral deity with a blatantly unjust world, religion’s solution has been to suggest that those who don’t get what they deserve in this life, will get it in the next.  So let’s just assume for the time being that such an afterlife exists (even though there exists not a shred of evidence).  Is this celestial justice system a moral one?

I’ve written extensively in past blogs about religion’s utter uselessness when it comes to uncovering truths about the natural world.  But today I intend to argue that when it comes to morality - religion’s supposed specialty – religion is in fact equally useless and even more subversive.

A few years back I watched a documentary (I can’t remember the title now) about a group of teenaged boys in rural California who had gotten themselves into trouble with the law.  They had been in a fight in which one of them pulled out a knife and stabbed another boy, causing his death.  Under a recently enacted anti-gang law, all of the boys were charged with first degree murder and received life sentences without the possibility of parole, even though the prosecutor conceded that the other boys had no clue that their friend was carrying a knife.  The legal community was horrified that the system could lock up a minor for the rest of his life for engaging in what amounted to a fist fight.  Legal scholars surmised that the sentence had completely ignored the foundational concept of proportionality, the idea that the severity of the punishment should match the severity of the crime.

But this is precisely the type of punishment that would have been prescribed by the god of the bible.  Of course the comparison isn’t perfect but if we change a few of the details in the scenario we can make it so that this example more accurately reflects the biblical concept of crime and punishment.  Let’s start with the punishment.  First we can replace the sentence of life in prison, with a sentence of eternity in prison.  Next, replace the jail cell with a lake of fire that burns hotter than anything known to man.  Finally, consider that instead of being banished to hell for eternity for the crime of murder, the boys got that punishment for the sin of failing to recognize Christ as their lord and saviour.  How’s that for proportionality?!

While it may not be politically correct, it’s not terribly controversial to assert that, from a morality standpoint, the bible - especially the old testament - is one of the most vile texts known to man.  But what about the Eastern religions?  Surely they take a much more humane and enlightened approach to justice?

Well let’s look at the two most prominent Eastern faiths, Hinduism and Buddhism.  As it turns out, the concept of karma comes from Hinduism and it also features quite heavily in the Buddhist faith.  Personally I like the idea of karma.  I like the idea that if you commit evil deeds then evil will some day be visited upon you as penance. I try to live my life as though karma is a fact.  The only problem with karma is that there is absolutely no evidence for it whatsoever.  In fact, looking at the rich sociopaths who run wall street or the fascist tyrants who run the gulf states and have more money than they know what to do with, it’s easy to get the impression that the universe is actually governed by a type of reverse karma.

But once again religious doctrine and real-world evidence are reconciled by introducing a form of afterlife.  In both Hinduism and Buddhism, along with many other Eastern faiths, it is believed that all living things are reincarnations of beings that lived before them.  This way any bad karma accumulated in this life that goes unpunished, can be accounted for in the next.  Sort of like a form of cosmic rollover.  In the Hindu faith, this has been used by some to justify the caste system.  The idea is that those born into low castes, got there because of karma carried over from a previous life.

At the risk of projecting my own Western sensibilities onto this very complex philosophical concept, I have to say that I find it problematic, if not immoral, to suggest that a child born into a low caste somehow earned his or her bad fortune because of acts committed in previous lives.  It’s clear that the idea of karma does not necessarily lead to the strict caste system that has historically been practiced in India, but the caste system certainly would not have existed in such a rigid and socially debilitating form had it not been for the notion of karma.

Many Buddhist societies have also fallen victim to this type of entrenched social stratification.  One of the big myths surrounding Tibet is that prior to being invaded by China in the 1950’s, it was a free, equitable and peace-loving society.  However an accurate reading of the history tells us that this is simply not true.  The ruling monarchy, of which the present Dalai Lama is the latest incarnation, came to power in the 13th century after violently overpowering competing sects.  Prior to being expelled by the Chinese, the Dalai Lama presided over a de facto slave society in which the vast majority of the arable land was owned by the elite Lama class, whose estates were worked by lowly serfs.  The Dalai Lama himself lived lavishly in a 14 story palace with 1000 rooms.

It is debatable whether the Dalai Lama’s Tibet was a just society.  But in order for the debate to proceed one must recognize that there are two types of law in the universe.  The first is natural law.  These include things like the laws of gravitation, the law of increasing universal entropy and the law of natural selection.  These laws are enforced naturally (meaning “in the absence of human intervention”) and they existed prior to our becoming aware of them.  The second type of law is human law.  This includes things like the charter of rights and the criminal code.  These laws are a set of social edicts that have been created and decided upon by humans precisely because they are not upheld automatically and therefore we must be vigilant as a people to actively ensure the these guidelines are followed and to make sure that transgressions don’t go unpunished.

As far as laws go, karma belongs to the latter group.  However, religion hopelessly confuses the two types, and in doing so, it hinders our ability to develop and enforce and just and equitable social contract. 

Therefore, returning to the question of whether or not I believe in karma, the answer is yes.  I believe in karma as a principle, which we as humans must strive to make a reality, because no all-powerful deity or cosmic force is going to do it for us.