Hypocrisy: Religious Believers and The Surveillance State

I love religious believers; they are so hypocritical. Right now, the country is debating the role and rights that government has or doesn’t have to spy on its citizens. As it turns out, our government is already doing that and just wasn’t telling us about it.

Many Americans are outraged about the government’s spy program and rightfully so. Progressives are particularly outraged. Many of us consider Edward Snowden (who exposed the program) to be a hero. As it turns out, many religious believers are outraged too because they see it as an attack on human dignity. I actually agree with that, but I also extend that attack on to one more reason why I think belief in an all-watching deity is immoral.

Once again, religious hypocrisy establishes two sets of morality. One set for actual people and another set for imaginary deities. Just as torture is wrong when people do it and still wrong when religious believers claim God does it, spying on people is wrong when people do it and still wrong when religious believers claim God does it. Sure, it is almost a moot point since their God doesn’t actually exist in the first place, but the hypocrisy is that religious believers actually believe that God does exist and does allow for eternal torture and is eternally spying on not just American citizens, but on everyone!

If something is morally wrong for people, then it is morally wrong for deities too. Ironically, religious believers are often the ones who talk about how there is objective morality and are complaining that atheism is too subjective and relativistic (even when it isn’t). So if there is objective morality, then there can’t be two sets of moral laws. If something is wrong, it is wrong, period.

Of course morality is more complicated than that, but many religious believers reject a complicated and more nuanced view of morality and yet their argument is to exempt deities from moral law. They will claim that God is the moral law giver and therefore not subject to the law. But this argument doesn’t hold. Congress are the lawgivers of government and yet they too are held accountable to the law.

When it comes to the surveillance, polices are allowed to spy on people only when they get a warrant which specifically lays out why the person or persons are being watched and what exactly they are being watched for. Where is God’s warrant? What independent body is God appealing to in order to obtain that warrant?

While I don’t believe such a deity exists, even if I held such a belief I would still not view that deity as praise worthy. Spying on people without the due process of law is immoral. It is immoral for governments to spy on its citizens without a just cause and it if deities existed, it would be immoral for gods to spy on people too.

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