Values have religious roots - and they anchor Singapore rationally

Values have religious roots - and they anchor Singapore rationally

I REFER to Ms Felicia Tan's letter on Thursday, 'Facts outshine faith'. Ms Tan may have been concerned that Nominated MP Thio Li-ann's speech in Parliament was a call to allow religious values to determine laws for society. This was certainly not her appeal. Professor Thio had made it clear that 'the Singapore model of secularism is anti-theocratic in that religious tenets and secular law are separated, not conflated'.

Rather, her concern was the growing influence of 'militant secularism' which she understands to seek to gag religious worldviews in the public square. Ironically, this sentiment was espoused in Ms Tan's letter.

I wish to clarify that:

# Religious views being aired in the public square allows for diversity. By claiming that religious worldviews are 'non-inclusive' and 'narrow', Ms Tan has automatically alienated the views of religiously informed Singaporeans by her brand of secularism, thereby perpetrating what she fears most. The reason why we have a Parliament in the first place is to hear alternative viewpoints and arguments, and that freedom must be protected. Religion influencing policy is different from it determining policy.

# Scientific, sociological and economic principles certainly lend fuel to an argument, but to give it hegemony over a religiously framed argument is an indirect way of saying that the atheistic worldview is dominant. If religion is taken to be synonymous with morals, then morality should also be allowed to guide an argument. The crux of the debate should however be: Whose morals?

# Positing an argument which may have roots in a religious worldview certainly does not make it less logical or rational, and one must try to look past that intrinsic bias. For example, some religions in Singapore are opposed to gambling and its related vices, because religions teach that material wealth is not everything. Legalisation of gambling through casinos may make a positive economic impact, but will also have profound sociological consequences, some of which are undesirable. It is not surprising to find many religious values making sociological or scientific sense.

Laws ultimately concern themselves with values,�values which might have religious roots. While most secular democracies practise progressive ethics in today's world, let us not sever ties with these roots too hastily because they anchor Singapore morally, and I daresay, rationally.

Derek Choong

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