| Wednesday, February 1, 2006 |
17:18 - Here's a stupid thought
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This has been bugging me for a little while.
We've all pretty much consensually determined that a secular society is better than a religious one, right? (I'm being mildly facetious here; bear with me.) It's reached the point where we've banished all mention of God from public offices and schools, we avoid telling strangers "Merry Christmas" lest we "offend" them with our amiable well-wishing, we force religious groups to explicitly accept members from other religions (however often that situation might come up), and we all wring our hands and act scandalized when the President says "God bless America" at the end of a speech.
It all but logically follows, because life is in fact pretty damn good in this day and age, that the less religion there is in public society, the better off we all are. Right? And the irreligious find plenty of reasoning herein for feeling more and more comfortable having left faith behind on the sidewalk many years ago.
Well, here's something I can't help but wonder:
The entire concept of justice and due process as we know it is founded on some pretty shaky principles: namely, that we can take a person at his word, as long as he has sworn an oath. We don't care what book a person places his hand on to swear—we just care that he has sworn.
Well, what is an oath to the nonreligious?
What's stopping a person from lying to a court if he thinks he can avoid charges of perjury?
The whole point of an oath was that it bound a person to the truth by virtue of punishment by a higher power if he lied. It took the onus of proving a witness' credibility off the human jurists. A person on the stand, after putting his hand on the Bible, would feel genuinely, honestly uncomfortable lying—not to say that he'd be actually incapable of doing so, because he believed that the oath meant what it said, and that he'd commit himself to hellfire if he lied. And as a result, a trial could be assured to be more truthful, with less effort on the part of the judge and jury to determine who was lying, than would otherwise be the case.
Well, what are we doing nowadays? This country is still plenty religious, but how do the aggressively secular countries deal with this issue? Do they still go through the motions of swearing people to the truth in court, even when they know it's a meaningless gesture that doesn't faze a would-be perjurer in the least? In other words, when the only punishment one fears is the one that can be doled out by a human organ—and an easygoing, rehabilitation-oriented one at that—what incentive is there to tell the truth if one thinks he can get away with a lie?
Now, I'm not naïve about this; I understand that even a couple hundred years ago, you couldn't exactly put a criminal on the stand, say "Do you swear to tell the whole truth" etc., and expect him to wobble and sweat and finally just spontaneously break down and confess. Someone who's willing to break laws or act as an accomplice to someone who does isn't going to feel much compunction about the fate of his immortal soul. It's about as silly as yelling "Stop thief!" at a purse-snatcher, as though he'll freeze in his tracks, turn around, and shuffle back to return the purse with a downcast moping apology.
But there's got to be a reason why we think it's worthwhile to bother swearing people to oaths. As society becomes less and less overtly religious, there are bound to be consequences of some kind in how the rule of law is perceived; because when people only fear the punishment of fallible and gullible humans, and no longer feel their lives governed by something higher and omnipresent, who wouldn't do more of the illicit stuff that only God could see?
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Brian Tiemann
