Categories: uncategorized
Date: 30 August 2007 12:47:45
I have just finished reading a Robert Ludlum book and have just started one by Philip Kerr. Though these are works of fiction they do have interesting moral dilemmas that provoke thought.
In Ludlum's The Bancroft Strategy there is an organisation that is using assasination as a tool to remove people from humanity who cause suffering to people through blocking aid projects, corruption or poltical gain. The organisation has created a computer programme that can determine whether or not that person's death will lead to the "greater good" of humanity.
It works on the assumption that religious morals are not as proficient in reality as those based purely on "reason". Does this begin to sound familiar to what we are hearing in books, or watching documentaries, today from authors such as Dawkins? Our faith is not grounded in reality but is a blockage in the way of humanity's evolving to a higher plane.
In Kerr's book we have the dilemma of the allies having to decide wether it is best to remain allied to the Soviet Union or to abandon that alliance. The backdrop is the Katyn Forest massacre of the 4500 Polish officers by Stalin's NKVD.
The novel is based in 1943, before the allies knew about the enormity of the Final Solution. Therefore Churchill & Roosevelt have to decide which is the greater evil - Nazism or Stalinism.
Reading these has made me think about the decisions that are made in our name. Are they based on precise, unbiased information? More often than not they aren't. This is where reason falls down. You will never have enough verifiable facts to form an absoute conclusion. They can be manipulated by others to reach a conclusion that is favourable to them.
Just think of the decision to go to war with Iraq in 2003. This was never based on fact. The British government knowingly forged intelligence data to force GW's hand. In turn GW forged data to meet his argument regarding WMD and Iraq's links to terrorism. Many were rightly suspicious of this but went ahead anyway.
We ahve to remember that we can never rely on reason alone to find solutions or to base decisions on. Reason, like faith, is not an absolute science. Both are fallible because it's conclusions are formed by fallible human beings - except the Pope who is supposedly infallible.