re: "Pope’s Remarks on ‘Reactionary’ U.S. Catholics Rankle, and Resonate"

re: "Pope’s Remarks on ‘Reactionary’ U.S. Catholics Rankle, and Resonate" (The New York Times, September 1, 2023)

Francis is rising in my esteem as he seeks to lead his church to some long overdue moral progress. 

Those comfortably ensconced in old ways have never liked that sort of thing. The Biblical account tells us that is why the social conservatives of the time, the high priests of ancient Jerusalem intent on protecting their beloved traditions, used the law to kill Jesus, the upstart radical on the streets. 

Law-and-order authoritarianism has a long history of opposing moral progress. 

_______________________________

The above comment was submitted by Felix Qui to The New York Times article.

It is published there at https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/01/us/pope-francis-conservative.html#commentsContainer&permid=127452132:127452132

re: "Pope Says a Strong U.S. Faction Offers a Backward, Narrow View of the Church"

re: "Pope Says a Strong U.S. Faction Offers a Backward, Narrow View of the Church" (The New York Times, August 30, 2023)

As pope, Francis can be infallible if he so wishes on matters of doctrine. That traditionalist doctrine being surely upheld by the conservative US rump, Francis should use his option of papal infallibility to correct a few inherited errors in prevailing Catholic dogma. 

Should a schism come, that is nothing to be feared. Christianity has schismed since its founding. 

Francis is right to seek to put decent moral values over the commands of the rather despotic god of the Bible, including St Paul's petty-minded, vindictive god of the New Testament preaching, for example, to slaves to "obey your earthly masters with respect and fear, and with sincerity of heart, just as you would obey Christ" (Ephesians 6:5) — that is not something fit for any religion in today's more morally enlightened world. 

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The above comment was submitted by Felix Qui to The New York Times article.

It is published there at https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/30/world/europe/pope-francis-american-conservatives.html#commentsContainer&permid=127400740:127401590

It's beyond reason

re: "Civic groups press for relocation of bizarre statue" (BP, August 17, 2023) 

Dear editor,

The Artists Council for the Promotion of Buddhism of Thailand demonstrates a flawed understanding of the Buddha's teachings if they think that merely because something "went against Buddhist teachings" could be grounds to abolish or suppress it. Bangkok and the rest of Thailand is full of churches, cathedrals, mosques, meat selling markets and restaurants, and no end of other things that are at least as "against Buddhist teaching" as is the rather ugly, bizarre in fact, statue of the deity Khru Kai Kaeo. The Artists Council for the Promotion of Buddhism of Thailand might find more constructive ways to promote Buddhism than an intolerance that seems itself to contradict the Buddha's ideals of reason and example rather than brute force, including brutish legal force. 

The statue and its prescribed worship are no more superstitious than any other bit of religious teaching or practice touching on supernatural matters. When it comes to the supernatural, every religious claim is, without exception, exactly as well-evidenced as every other such claim. The teachings attendant on Khru Kai Kaeo are as sacred as any and on that score as deserving of the same respect accorded any other equally well substantiated sacredness. Why wouldn't they be? The sacred is, after all, the sacred, however scary of visage and divine command. 

Those who find such things distasteful are free to ignore the crimson manicured Khru Kai Kaeo or point out that it's all a bit beyond reason, but that is as far as their horror may justly go. Those finding it a source of comfort for whatever reason should be allowed to exercise their faith provided they not cause or threaten actual harm to others, including innocent puppies, or pigs, neither of whom appreciate being sacrificed to human desires for blood-soaked self-indulgence. 

Meanwhile, those who are "gripped by fear" should get a grip and take a more rationally informed, more Buddhist, approach  to such nonsensical beliefs as ghosts, spirits, demons, gods and other such perfectly unsubstantiated fantasy. 

But before this latest god on the block is cast into the darkness whence all such derive, what sacrifice does  Khru Kai Kaeo require to deliver Thailand from the curse being cast by Pheu Thai, the senate, UTN and the rest of that most unholy alliance against the will of the Thai people as manifest on May 14 and since? Those gargoyles being gathered into the warm embrace of the Pheu Thai family are the truly scary ones stalking the land. 

 Felix Qui 

_______________________________

The above letter to the editor is the text as submitted by Felix Qui to the Bangkok Post.

The text as edited was published in PostBag on August 19, 2023, under the title "It's beyond reason" at https://www.bangkokpost.com/opinion/postbag/2632127/its-beyond-reason

Free speech in full

re: "Denmark on heightened alert after Koran burnings" (BP, August 4, 2023) 

Dear editor,

Some pieces of inked paper bound together in a book called the Koran have been peacefully burned in Sweden and Denmark under the protection of the laws of those countries. That book is a potent symbol to some, so the deliberate desecration is understandably upsetting, but like those who suffer with mature restraint the burning of their national flag, the $100 bill, the Bible, a revered poster of Barbie or any other cultural emblem, the followers of the Koran now have a chance to prove the true worth of the faith that each paper copy of the Koran symbolizes. By responding to the rude outrage with peaceful, reasoned rebuttal rather than bullying violence or threats thereof, they will show that their religion upholds good morals. They can demonstrate that, being firmly based on reason and objective reality, it need not lash out in desperate fear at those who question its verities.  

Denmark and Sweden have responded correctly to the extremely offensive but nonetheless peaceful expression of opinion that is the burning of the Koran. If we fail to insist that the law not only allow expressions of speech that we find utterly repellent but actually protect the peaceful exercise of such deeply offensive acts, then we do not in fact respect the fundamental right of free speech, which does not magically stop at my or your most revered or sacred things. Free speech really does mean that others have the right to peacefully express ideas that we, and perhaps a large majority of our society, find offensive in the extreme. Anything less debases claims of free speech to a worthless platitude allowing only already accepted ideas. Islam should take this opportunity to show a moral maturity that accepts that others will think differently about what it deems of supreme importance. 

 Felix Qui 

_______________________________

The above letter to the editor is the text as submitted by Felix Qui to the Bangkok Post.

The text as edited was published in PostBag on August 9, 2023, under the title "Free speech in full" at https://www.bangkokpost.com/opinion/postbag/2626029/tip-for-mfp

On sex and gender

re: "Breaking gender barriers in the clergy" (BP, Opinion, July 22, 2023) 

Dear editor,

It was a pure joy to read the erudite and humane Sanitsuda Ekachai on how those claiming to be Buddhists use the letter of the law to promote their inherited bigotry towards women and LGBTQ people. As she explains, they legalize their sacred texts to flatly contradict Buddhist principles. That same legalization of the Buddha's wisdom seems part and parcel of the Thai religion that presents itself under his name. If people in Thailand or any other country actually followed even the First Precept of Buddhism, their lives and their society would duly reflect that, both on a daily basis in the political realm. Thai customs and behaviour reflect no such commitment to the Buddha's teachings, which appear to be reduced to either strictly inhuman legalization or rampant superstition and trading in merit to bribe the karmic powers. 

For a start, were most Thais genuinely committed to the wisdom encapsulated in the First Precept, we would not see to many eagerly paying good money as they command others to commit a mass slaughter of animals every day for no better reason than to sate a lust for tasty animal flesh. No one needs to eat such unhealthy amounts of meat obtained cheap from the morally dubious infliction of suffering on and killing of sentient beings. The scale of that daily slaughter in Thailand does not seem particularly Buddhist. It isn't. But a legalized interpretation of the First Precept, one that focuses on the strict letter of the law as written, neatly manages to corrupt the plain intent of the humane and compassionate First Precept. The corrupting excuse by legalization is well known: I didn't kill any sentient being, I merely ate the meat after someone else killed it; they killed it on my orders; I paid them well to kill for me. And Don Corleone is not guilty of killing; he merely orders hits by his paid underlings on business associates who fail to freely see reason his way. He never pulls the trigger himself. And of course, there are those in politics who love to insist that all they do is in strict accord with the law, as they blatantly weaponize that law to actively and deliberately thwart justice for the Thai people. 

As to the sex and gender issue to which Ms Ekachai so eruditely and compassionately responded, if it were true that the sacred texts of Buddhism did indeed have a rule against transgender people, that would merely prove that those texts were not a reliable guide to good morals on that point. But religion never is such a guide. Just because the Christian Bible explicitly commands slaves to be obedient to their masters (Titus 2:9, 1 Peter 2:18, et al ) does not actually mean, despite slave holders traditionally citing that sacred text to support their trade in human flesh, that it's morally OK to own slaves. Slavery is wrong, and no number of biblical endorsements can change that, however legalistically interpreted or however hallowed a tradition passed down from generation to generation. 

I suspect that were he to reincarnate today, the Buddha would have the good sense and decency to sternly reprimand those who have built a rich and politically powerful institution using his name. He might, much like the Christian's Jesus is recorded doing in Matthew 21:12-13, wander into one of the impressively gilded temples awash with a true sufficiency of gold and other luxuries to inflate in the ego. And there he might politely reprimand the gathered chiefs and others in some such words as: "For god's sake learn to think. I did not found a hierarchy of tradition-bound law intent on preserving unchanging rules and regulations. Stop using my words to stifle both scientific and moral progress. I was obviously wrong way back then. Have you actually managed to learn nothing new, to make no improving reforms on my old notions in 2,500 years?" 

Bad rules should be corrected. No rule or belief is ever good merely because ancient or said by any particular human being. That it enables the correction of inherited errors of understanding in every field, without exception, is one of the lesser boons of respecting free speech and critical, open discussion on any and all topics. Surely that is the point of the Buddha's truly wise Kalama Sutta (กาลามสูตร). Unlike many who profess to follow him by enforcing strict, oppressive legalism, the Buddha appears a devout fan of critical thinking. His own life as I understand it seems one of constant reform driven by improving understanding: it was certainly not a life of forced stagnation in an idealized past of dubious merit. 

 Felix Qui 

_______________________________

The above letter to the editor is the text as submitted by Felix Qui to the Bangkok Post.

The text as edited was published in PostBag on July 29, 2023, under the title "On sex and gender" at https://www.bangkokpost.com/opinion/postbag/2619879/smart-but-no-friends

No fan of religion

re: "Malaysia seizes ‘Pride’ watches" (BP, May 24, 2023) 

Dear editor,

It is well-known, millennia of evidence across cultures attesting to it, that religion reliably leads to false beliefs and moral stunting masquerading under arrogant claims of unquestionable infallibility. Still, the sad seizure by Malaysian authorities of "Pride" watches bearing a design inspired by nature's beautiful rainbow is seriously kooky behaviour for the faith-driven as they seek to despotically impose their faith-sodden ideology on an entire society. 

Sadder by far, however, is that their unreasoning intolerance and contempt for basic human rights leads ineluctably to the creation, in the name of their ruthlessly commanding gods, of all too real hell on Earth for actual human beings. 

 Felix Qui 

_______________________________

The above letter to the editor is the text as submitted by Felix Qui to the Bangkok Post.

The text as edited was published in PostBag on May 26, 2023, under the title "No fan of religion" at https://www.bangkokpost.com/opinion/postbag/2578784/reckless-riders

re: "Tucker Carlson’s Dark and Malign Influence Over the Christian Right"

re: "Tucker Carlson’s Dark and Malign Influence Over the Christian Right" (The New York Times, May 7, 2023)

One problem is that many Christians prefer the version of their religion forged by the warrior St Paul in his letters laying down the law with perfect intolerance and disdain for human decency to the version of Christianity promoted by Jesus, the street protestor who died by the political machinations of the conservative religious establishment, the Sanhedrin, of ancient Judea who piously persuaded themselves that any means were OK to maintain their position in their beloved hierarchy.

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The above comment was submitted by Felix Qui to The New York Times article.

It is published there at https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/07/opinion/tucker-carlson-christian-right.html#commentsContainer&permid=124930746:124930746

Hell on Earth

re: "Families devastated by Kenya cult horror" (BP, April 26, 2023)

Dear editor,

The righteous outrage over the latest religiously inspired human sacrifice, this time in Kenya, is a little irrational. The horror of 90 or more faithful souls starving themselves and children to death at the behest of their pastor, a man too truly touched by his god, the Christian God, is indeed monstrous, yet nothing unusual in the history of religions, whether humankind's experience of Christianity or of other the other religions that have been made up from time to time.

Popes have a history of almost two thousand years of eagerly imprisoning, torturing and burning to death those they deem heretics and those who propose new understandings of the natural world around us, such as the basic science of our solar system. Islam's acts inspired by the Koran are also too well known. The apologists of religions naturally prefer we forget such facts about their truly zealous deeds. At least those Kenyans who starved themselves to death for their inspired belief in the Christian God's promise of eternal life did so more or less willingly and did not take vast numbers of others with them, although they have brought to their corner of it the very real hell on Earth that so often comes from sincere religious belief. They did not wage holy war on the tribe next door with different beliefs, but have nonetheless managed to tear families apart as too customary when religion is taken seriously.

One root problem with religions such as Christianity, Islam, and the other monotheisms  proclaiming their own perfect infallibility in all things is rooted in their sacred texts, perhaps also in those of polytheism, as the acts of India's Hindu nationalists teach us in recent years, along with a repugnant caste system blessed by their Gods.  Those collections of the magical thoughts of men written in reliably more primitive, less morally developed times are the source of the false beliefs about reality (heavens, hells, angels, and all the rest, and of course gods), and the font of the even worse perversion of good morals that history has shown to afflict the faith-driven. The still throbbing lust of some in the US, for example, to keep gay sex criminal and to deny women ownership of their own bodies are relatively innocuous evils that are based solidly on the content of the Bible, which really does say what its crusaders find in it. It is a book that should surely be banned from public libraries, from schools, and other  places where it might fall into the hands of innocent children. For decency's sake, save the children! 

But the root of the religious malaise is faith. This rejection of knowledge, along with life, in favour of faith is written into the very beginning of the the Judeo-Christian sacred text. In the Bible's Genesis chapter 2, God, Yahweh, dictates explicitly that "the tree of knowledge" is off limits, is absolutely banned. Faith does not love knowledge. 

Faith, however,  has never, under any circumstances, been a reliable guide to the true nature of the world around us, its physics, chemistry, biology, psychology, culture, history, or any other aspect of reality. Worse, faith has never been a trustworthy guide to moral good, as millennia of history too horrifyingly attest: religious wars, human sacrifice to faith-based ideology, persecution of non-believers, the suppression of women, gays, Jews, and any other out group condemned by sacred texts or their religious interpreters, and most recently 90 people starving themselves and children to death for their sacred one(s).

The outrage unfolding in Kenya is indeed the result of the religiously inspired teachings of a monster. It is also nothing extraordinary in the record of the acts of religions worldwide throughout history. 

Religion only becomes morally decent when strong secular morals compel at least a show of good morals. That is why Christianity in the US and modern Europe at least pretends to value human rights and respect even women, sometimes even LGBTQ people, and even those of competing faiths. In nations blessed with sound morals freed from the unquestionable commands of the sacred, even Islam can be brought to behave with some decency. These modern miracles are wrought not by faith in religion but by the efforts of critical reasoning, openness to correction, and an honest search for understanding taking hold in those societies and their liberal democratic governance, for which praise be given. 

 Felix Qui 

_______________________________

The above letter to the editor is the text as submitted by Felix Qui to the Bangkok Post.

The text as edited was published in PostBag on April 29, 2023, under the title "Hell on Earth" at https://www.bangkokpost.com/opinion/postbag/2559715/road-chaos-inaction

re: "For Easter, the Strangest Story Ever Told"

re: "For Easter, the Strangest Story Ever Told" (The New York Times, April 6, 2023)

Or someone honestly writing down what they remember someone sincerely telling them, they themselves having been zealously told that by someone who knew someone who had been there to witness it all from Jesus's birth to his death. 

But this does not really matter. No matter how sincere eyewitnesses are, it is irrational to believe something impossible in the absence of impossibly strong evidence. The Christian god, all three of him, is in the same position as every other god: a persistent failure to present a shred of direct supporting evidence for their existence. Every single god on Earth is equally well attested by solid evidence of its existence. 

Should jurors believe that the accused was not guilty of murder because an eyewitness, or several, sincerely reported that the the alleged victim got up after being shot through the head several times and then walked away into a passing cloud? But we know that even more mundane eyewitness testimony sincerely believed is often not what happened. Under stress, or simply under creative interviewing (not necessarily intent on corrupting), memory becomes flexible. 

Hearsay evidence, however sincere, just isn't a good reason to believe anything that matters.  

_______________________________

The above comment was submitted by Felix Qui to The New York Times article.

It is published there at https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/06/opinion/easter-christian-tradition.html#commentsContainer&permid=124249344:124249344

re: "There Is No Dignity in This Kind of America"

re: "There Is No Dignity in This Kind of America" (The New York Times, February 27, 2023)

Mr DeSantis should also take the opportunity to wind back those new-fangled sciences that have led too many good Americans away from their god-given Christian faith. It is rationality of the most devilish sort to think that mere human observation and sound reason can trump the Bible when it comes to planetary motion and the divine origin of man, from whom woman was later crafted with no hint of gender fluidity. Were such things possible, they would have been recorded in Genesis and the other biblical books that teach the divine order as understood by those who got their wisdom from burning bushes. 

DeSantis knows that Americans have been allowed to taste too copiously of the tree of knowledge, and that that rot at the very heart of culture must be turned back lest the fruit of the tree of life also be consumed, with liberating consequences for humankind, even in Florida. 

For God (the one true one at least, but perhaps not all those lesser other gods not privileged to be born again in USA) saw what he had wrought, and it did not need men with either knowledge of good and evil, or of life running around spoiling everything. Hence the divine punishment on those upstart women wantonly desiring knowledge and life that "in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children;" for a husband who "shall rule over thee" (Gen. 3:16). 

Thus shall it ever be, and the US will be saved from the dire threats posed by the knowledge and life that comes from the bountiful garden of liberal democracy.   

_______________________________

The above comment was submitted by Felix Qui to The New York Times article.

It is published there at https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/27/opinion/desantis-higher-education-bill.html#commentsContainer&permid=123460090:123460090

re: "When Gay Rights Clash With Religious Freedom"

re: "When Gay Rights Clash With Religious Freedom" (The New York Times, December 4, 2022)

It is honest of the author to admit that homophobia is written into her religion's sacred text, as are endorsements of the institution of slavery (even more in the New than the Old Testament: Ephs. 6:5, Titus 2:9, etc), which was also common when old men steeped in the patriarchy of desert tribes were busily composing those sacred scriptures to freeze desiccate their societies and every bad moral value held. 

The question then is, perhaps, how much value must the rest of us give to beliefs that, whilst sincerely held by millions for many generations, lack any sound moral foundation save the accident of having been written into someone's sacred text? Must every belief that has a scriptural foundation, say in Mein Kampf, and that today has sincere believers require that we respect their right to conform to their doubtless sincerely held belief? 

Can the law compel a racist, say one who holds that view for what they, notwithstanding Ms. Warren's rejection of it as bad theology, hold to be a theological command from their god written into the text of the Bible? Are only majority religious interpretations of a set of approved scripture to be allowed force in determining which religious exemptions are to be granted from complying with the secular law of the land? 

That said, I also see the attempted wisdom of Ms. Warren's suggested solution to the difficulty. We do not, surely, want to be in the habit of using the law as a weapon to compel compliance to our own values. 

_______________________________

The above comment was submitted by Felix Qui to The New York Times article.

It is published there at https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/04/opinion/303-creative-supreme-court.html#commentsContainer&permid=121836678:121836678

re: "A New Clash Between Faith and Gay Rights Arrives at a Changed Supreme Court"

re: "A New Clash Between Faith and Gay Rights Arrives at a Changed Supreme Court" (The New York Times, December 4, 2022) 

The zealous fans of that famous sacred text Mein Kampf have indubitably sincere beliefs that are as well founded on reason, reality and moral decency as are the moral convictions of any other set of sacred texts pushed by any religion. (Every single supernatural claim about reality by every religion is exactly exactly equally well supported by solid evidence.) Must their sincerely held beliefs that comport with their strongly held faith about what a greater power dictates be so be similarly respected? 

And then there are all those explicit endorsements of slavery in the Christian Bible, especially in the New Testament — passages such as Titus 2:9 and Ephesians 6:5. How exactly is the law of the land to accommodate the beliefs and practices of those who sincerely yearn to follow those commands of their loving god? 

_______________________________

The above comment was submitted by Felix Qui to The New York Times article.

It is published there at https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/04/us/politics/gay-rights-supreme-court-first-amendment.html#commentsContainer&permid=121837705:121837705

re: "This Holiday, I’m Going to a Gay Bar"

re: "How to Talk to Kids About Drugs in the Age of Fentanyl" (The New York Times, November 23, 2022)

That took me back near 50 years. I haven't been to a gay bar for a couple of decades now, but they were indeed a lifeline in 1970s Sydney. Whilst their continued existence in communities is reassuring, it's sad that gay bars are yet needed because segments of society yet hate and fear moral progress, terrified even of its whispers. 

Who is more directly harmful to society and children: a drag queen rocking a gay bar (or book reading, or prom, or anywhere else) or a priest, bishop, imam, reverend got up in sacred vestments too camp as he preaches supernaturally dubious claims and hellish intolerance because the authors of an ancient text wrote their inherited patriarchy, ignorance, and bigotry into it?  

_______________________________

The above comment was submitted by Felix Qui to The New York Times article.

It is published there at https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/22/opinion/club-q-colorado-springs-james-dobson.html#commentsContainer&permid=121643065:121643065

There is also an earlier comment:

For all the usual reasons, as Ms Hough sets them forth, Qatar is perhaps the timely example of a society in desperate need of some gay bars. 

t is published there at https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/22/opinion/club-q-colorado-springs-james-dobson.html#commentsContainer&permid=121642956:121642956

re: "How Book Bans Turned a Texas Town Upside Down"

re: "How Book Bans Turned a Texas Town Upside Down" (The New York Times, September 12, 2022)

Yet again, the cheerleaders in banning free thinking, in suppressing liberty to engage with a wide range of ideas, in stunting notions of what it can be to be human are too often those groomed by Christians to practice their despotic First Commandment that, as the Bible's Exodus 20:3 explicitly puts it, dictates absolute intolerance of other ways of seeing the world and our role in it.

_______________________________

The above comment was submitted by Felix Qui to The New York Times article.

It is published there at https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/08/magazine/book-bans-texas.html#commentsContainer&permid=120355623:120355623

re: "The Anglican Church’s ‘Kick in the Guts’ to Gay Parishioners"

re: "The Anglican Church’s ‘Kick in the Guts’ to Gay Parishioners" (The New York Times, September 2, 2022)

Who would want to be in communion with self-styled Christians who present that religion as one that abominates love and commitment to others? 

Perhaps the the trouble with the homophobic, love-denying Christian traditionalists is that they love rules and regulations more than human persons. In this, the anti-LGBTQ+ type of Christian seems rather in spirit with the rule-followers who put Jesus to death according to the letter of the law as written, and seriously at odds with the ideals of the Jesus who was so killed by the devotees of written rules. 

_______________________________

The above comment was submitted by Felix Qui to The New York Times article.

It is published there at https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/01/world/australia/anglican-church-homosexuality-new-zealand.html#commentsContainer&permid=120203994:120203994

No better, no worse

re: "Thailand should legalise prostitution" (BP, July 20, 2022) 

Dear editor,

As with so much other bad law, the criminal status of prostitution in Thailand reveals the hollow shallowness and echoing unreason of officially prescribed public morals and social norms that have too well characterized Thailand, among many similarly blighted nations, for many decades.

At best, the objections to prostitution are founded on nothing more substantive than dubious devotion to the mystical ideologies of some religion or other. Religion is an excellent reason for its true believers to follow the teachings claimed to have been handed down from their devotedly worshipped idols. It is no reason whatsoever to impose those principles and precepts on others in society, who might rationally prefer other religious beliefs, or none. Religion has never been a reliable guide either to objective reality or to moral right and wrong. The Earth was never at the centre of the universe, nor did humankind ever come to exist save through nature's mindless evolution on Earth over the course of 3.5 or so billion years, merely because a sacred text insists it be so. Burning witches or same-sex lovers was never morally right, however much some postulated god was said to condemn those human persons slaughtered in his or her name, nor was religiously endorsed slavery ever a morally right social institution merely because some god's sacred texts said it was so.

Religious belief is and should be a strictly personal matter, preferably indulged in private among consenting adults of like faith.

Thailand Development Research Institute's (TDRI) are right in their cogently argued call for Thailand to legalize prostitution. Humans choose their occupations according to their skills and demand. Paid-for sex is clearly in strong demand in Thai society, as are medical expertise, cooking skills, lawyering, teaching, cleaning, pop singing, and computer engineering. There is no obvious reason, save the mystical claims of religion, to support the claim that any of these work choices is morally better or worse than any other, so there can be no defensible grounds for criminalizing any of them merely because of the personal objections of some part of the population, even were it a large majority. Nothing is ever made right or wrong merely because is has majority support.

Ideologues, intolerant fanatics, and bigots think their personal prejudices must be imposed on all.

Good people, in contrast, accept that others will and do hold different values and beliefs to them, and that they will according make different life choices. The latter make for a healthy, flourishing society where all may freely, confidently live honest, open, productive lives. The former inherently retard freedom, confidence, honesty, creativity and productivity, today's Thailand being evidence. 

 Felix Qui

_______________________________

The above letter to the editor is the text as submitted by Felix Qui to the Bangkok Post.

The text as edited was published in PostBag on July 23, 2022, under the title "No better, no worse" at https://www.bangkokpost.com/opinion/postbag/2352297/between-the-lines

Rotten fruit

re: "Prayut focuses on 'prosperity'" (BP, July 9, 2022) 

Dear editor,

A wise man once said, "For a good tree does not bear bad fruit, nor does a bad tree bear good fruit. For every tree is known by its own fruit. For men do not gather figs from thorns, nor do they gather grapes from a bramble bush" (Luke, 6:43-44, KJV). These words spoken 2,000 years ago are worth bearing in mind as we yet again hear Prime Minister Prayut Chan-cha preaching of "his administration's ambitious plan to drive Thailand into the heart of the 21st century" as he yet again "urged Thais to unite as one." Both the claim and the call are contradicted by the odour of fruits never edible, now seriously beyond ripe. Thailand aspires to the soft power eminence that South Korea, whose achievements of the past four decades have made it the envy of many admiring Thais, has come to enjoy under the liberal democracy that in 1980 replaced years of tradition uniformly retarding that nation's development.

Up to 1980, Thailand and South Korea had much in common. Both were developing ever so slowly, wracked by regular, persistent political setbacks that retarded the political, social and moral foundations needed to drive economic and cultural flourishing. In 1973 and 1976, Thailand failed to grasp its South Korea moment. Thanks to the sacrifice of protestors now honoured as true patriots of the nation, South Korea, in contrast, took the opportunity to rid itself of retarding traditions in 1980. South Korea has since had no shortage of rotten politicians of remarkable corruption, as every democracy must, but in South Korea, the old ways did not use that deceitful excuse to stamp out democracy itself. Rather, democracy was permitted to meet the challenge, and South Korea grew into the modern cultural and economic powerhouse that it is today. Such are the fruits of liberal democracy. Thailand, in contrast, has continued for decade after decade, including almost a decade of PM Prayut, to suffer submission to traditions of bountiful benevolence and righteousness, as alleged by those sowing those seeds. The fruits of all that dictated prostration to allegedly sacred tradition is plain to see.  

Perhaps instead of unjustly imprisoning its internationally honoured recipients of South Korea's Gwangju Prize for human rights, Thailand should learn to respect them as the true patriots that they are. But then, that same wise man from the Bible teaches another apt lesson, as Mark recounts in his chapter 6, verse 4: "A prophet is not without honor except in his own country, among his own relatives, and in his own house.” 

 Felix Qui

_______________________________

The above letter to the editor is the text as submitted by Felix Qui to the Bangkok Post.

The text as edited was published in PostBag on July 14, 2022, under the title "Rotten fruit" at https://www.bangkokpost.com/opinion/postbag/2345808/superpower-secrets

Moral hazards

re: "All for pride, pride for all" (BP, Life, June 27, 2022) 

Dear editor,

That the sacred text of a religion commands that "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live" (Exodus, 22:18), was never a just reason for burning wise women at the stake. No more was traditional religious endorsement of that evil ever a sound justification for slavery throughout the US and elsewhere. 

Equally, just as the recent debacle of the religiously inspired forcing their bad morals on others in society as seen in the overthrow of legal abortion throughout the United States, the same is true of the cited objections of some to marriage equality for all Thais. Good morals require equality of rights before the law. It therefore follows that were it true as claimed by some opponents of Move Forward's Marriage Equality Bill now before parliament, that "such a bill , if passed, would violate religious beliefs", then those religious beliefs contradict good morals. The followers of a religion are of course entitled to hold whatever beliefs they wish and freely practice the associated rituals. There are, however, limitations on what religious freedom allows its devotees to do. Their rituals may not directly harm or threaten to harm others, for example by creating excessive noise that disrupts daily life in the area, nor should such beliefs be allowed to trump good morals. 

 Felix Qui

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The above letter to the editor is the text as submitted by Felix Qui to the Bangkok Post.

The text as edited was published in PostBag on July 2, 2022, under the title "Moral hazards" at https://www.bangkokpost.com/opinion/postbag/2338338/moral-hazards

re: "The G.O.P. Tries to Build a Gay Ghetto"

re: "The G.O.P. Tries to Build a Gay Ghetto" (The New York Times, June 22, 2022)

As usual, the malignancy that is faith-based ideology (aka religion) posing itself infallible and immortal spreads its evil founded solidly on crude superstition. 

The blatant God talk by those promoting such false beliefs and the moral errors they spawn gives away the ugly reality behind their agenda to suppress decent morals in favour of the morally stunted and stunting dictates of the ideologies to which they swear allegiance.

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The above comment was submitted by Felix Qui to The New York Times article.

It is published there at https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/22/opinion/republican-attack-gay-rights.html#commentsContainer&permid=118930059:118930059

re: "The Southern Baptist Moral Meltdown"

re: "The Southern Baptist Moral Meltdown" (The New York Times, May 27, 2022) 

As usual, good people should be forgiven for drawing the obvious lesson from history that it is secular morals founded on reason and justice that push religiously inspired moral belief and behaviour to in fact become what is more truly moral. 

Ancient texts might be a reliable guide to what our ancestors believed. They have never been a reliable to guide to reality or to good morals. How could they be? How could the piously inscribed prejudices of one group reflect more than the beliefs and habits of their authors and their society? It seems a tad arrogant to think that any one human being or group long ago got everything infallibly right for all time, either about the movements of the heavenly bodies or about how evolved creatures should best live here on Earth. 

Is this latest episode, the sad story of the Southern Baptist Convention, any different to what has played out for millennia, at least since Plato had Socrates lucidly set forth the fatal flaw in the notion that morality could be god given? Let us not forget that it was the charge of corrupting the young by teaching them to think critically about religious beliefs that led the court of law in democratic Athens to have Socrates put to death at the behest of politicians playing to true believers who valued sacred dogma over reason and justice. 

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The above comment was submitted by Felix Qui to The New York Times article.

It is published there at https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/26/opinion/the-southern-baptist-sexual-abuse.html#commentsContainer&permid=118519071:118519071