Revelation, Rationality, Knowledge & Truth — Page 214
SECULAR VIEWPOINTS EXAMINED entire early history of the dawn of religions and you will not find a single such example. It always legislated in favour of the weak and the poor. Genuine implementation of this legislation is guaranteed and impregnated by belief in an All-Knowing God. The believer can never escape His knowledge of whatever He does or intends to do. No manmade law enjoys this advantage in relation to its implementation. It invariably fails to protect the system which they legislate, because of the absence of awareness in the mind of the criminal that he is being watched by the law-makers. Legislation alone, however much fortified with the threats of punishment, cannot stay the hand of the criminal. Its influence does not reach the breeding ground of crime the hidden soil of secret intentions. The criminal always seeks shelter in his hope that like his intentions, his act of crime will also escape the eye of the law. To seek protection in the lap of falsehood is another major abettor of crime. Man's propensity and impetuous tendency to commit crime is directly proportional to his hope of escaping detection. Hence, legislation alone can never succeed in uprooting social evils, because it lacks the vital prerequisite of reaching the dark abysses where crimes are nurtured. Most evils are perpetrated behind the smokescreen of imagined invisibility and unaccountability. . However advanced the techniques of detection may become, they can never shake the confidence of the criminal in his calculated hope of escaping detection because he plans and plots safely hidden from the sight of law, couched in the secret chambers of his heart. . It is only a sound belief in the existence of God and accountability, which can frustrate and defeat all crimes in the offing. This and largely this, has been the purpose of moral legislation on the part of religion. Morality, in fact, is virtually essential for the survival of religion itself. When 210 1