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European Court of Human Rights Shows Religion Not Required for Morality


Bob Johnson
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The Cambridge Dictionary defines morality as: "a set of personal or social standards for good or bad behavior and character".

On Tuesday, February 13, 2024, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) ruled that the halal and kosher methods of slaughtering animals are immoral. Halal is based on the "revealed" religion of Islam and kosher is based on the "revealed" religion of Judaism. Both prohibit rendering animals unconscious prior to being killed.

The ECHR ruling is the result of regions in Belgium that outlawed halal and kosher methods of slaughter. The reason they outlawed these religious-based slaughter methods is because of the unnecessary pain and suffering of the animals that are slaughtered by having their throats cut and bleeding to death while fully conscious. After the laws were passed that made halal and kosher slaughtering illegal, several Muslim and Jewish individuals and organizations challenged the laws claiming they violated Article 9 of the European Convention on Human Rights. Article 9 states in part that it "provides a right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion". However, Article 9 also states,

Freedom to manifest one's religion or beliefs shall be subject only to such limitations as are prescribed by law and are necessary in a democratic society in the interests of public safety, for the protection of public order, health or morals, or for the protection of the rights and freedoms of others.

In its ruling the ECHR stated, "the Court considered that the protection of animal welfare could be linked to the concept of public morals". This is a profoundly important statement in that it points out the immorality of religious practices, in this case the Islamic halal and the Jewish kosher methods of slaughter.

While promoting anti-cruelty as a moral virtue, it is destroying the long-running argument used by many religious people, including some of America's Founders, that people need religion to make and to keep them moral. It is shining a light on the immorality of Islam and Judaism. Since Christianity and Mormonism also are both inextricably tied to Judaism, they too are infected with the immorality of cruelty.

This immorality of cruelty is pinned by the Abrahamic man-made "revealed" religions onto The Supreme Intelligence/God. This is seen in multiple claims in the Hebrew Bible/Christian Old Testament of God allegedly commanding the Jews to commit genocide against their neighbors. It is seen in the "holy" books of Christianity, Islam and Mormonism through the claims that God burns people in Hell for eternity if they don't believe in the correct "revealed" religion. Many Christians are probably not aware that the anonymous author of the Gospel of Luke claimed Jesus said we should fear God, which makes it impossible to love God as you cannot love what you fear. Luke 12:5 has Jesus teaching, "But I will forewarn you whom ye shall fear: Fear him, which after he hath killed hath power to cast into hell; yea, I say unto you, Fear him." Tragically funny is the fact that, based on these three "revealed" religions, a person is forced to play spiritual Russian roulette, since if they choose the wrong Abrahamic "revealed" religion, they will be on their way to having God endlessly torturing and tormenting them in Hell.

The Deist Thomas Paine warned us about belief in a cruel god when he wrote in The Age of Reason, The Complete Edition, "Belief in a cruel god makes a cruel man." The more we eradicate cruelty from our world, the better life on Earth will be.

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Bob Johnson is a paralegal and a freelance writer in Florida. He was raised Roman Catholic, but after reading Thomas Paine's The Age of Reason, he became a Deist. In 1993 he founded the World Union of Deists and in 1996 he launched the first web (more...)
 
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