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... to justify a bias for chastity before marriage, and sexual fidelity afterwards.
JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - Some 9 million children in Africa have lost a mother to AIDS, British charity Save the Children said Monday, calling on donors to sharply increase aid to meet their needs.
"Incredibly, the impact of HIV and AIDS on children is still being ignored," Save the Children Chief Executive Jasmine Whitbread said in a statement.
The charity said in a report that a lack of testing facilities meant that many mothers, especially in the poorest countries, did not know their HIV status until they were ill and unable to fight off even the simplest infections.
"The AIDS pandemic robs millions of children of their childhoods as well as their mothers," Whitbread said. "Children are caring for their mothers, missing school, and having to work because their mothers are too sick to look after them." [emphasis mine]
All you need is a little common sense. This is why, a few weeks ago, reflecting on Sam Harris' imagining of a world in which we all awaken one morning with no knowledge of religions or their teachings, I wrote "Imagine such a world. I venture that, in a great many respects, it would wind-up looking much like the present world."
Always, everywhere — when there are intelligent people to lead, anyway — the prevaling moral code reflects some common-sense consensus about what is best for the most. And why should we be surprised if the ignorant, theistic imagination imputes that consensus to the will of some God?, e.g., "Our problems go away when we do such-and-such, or don't do the other thing — so isn't it obvious it's His will?"
This was Nietzsche's view of morality, and it's the reason that clerics still excoriate him; he didn't kill God so much as point out that He doesn't really contribute anything to moral reasoning. At the same time, though, clerics affirm Nietzsche's fundamental argument, as when Africa's Anglican clerics declared they might have to create a new theology for Africa because Episcopal tolerance for homosexuality could never be accepted there.
And now Africa's anguish provides yet another example of it.
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