Hallelujah Hazel & Hallelujah Howell

By AM Friday, March 11, 2011

Share Tweet Share Share Email

Since ancient times, the philosophers' secret has always been this: we know that God does not exist, or, at least, if he does, he's utterly indifferent to our individual affairs - but we can't let the rabble know that; it's the fear of God, the threat of divine punishment and the promise of divine reward, that keeps in line those too unsophisticated to work out questions of morality on their own - Robert J Sawyer

The case of Hazel Stewart and Colin Howell convicted recently of the double murder of their marriage partners in 1991 gives rise to questions of how morality relates to religion. There was nothing very moral and a damned lot immoral about the murder of two unsuspecting people by a brace of bible thumpers. The killers were both Baptists and one was a former Sunday School teacher.

The deaths of Trevor Buchanan and Lesley Howell may have been peaceful exits for the victims who were poisoned by carbon monoxide as they lay sleeping in their separate homes, but the killings were executed as mercilessly as they were meticulous. The planning and logistical organisation involved underscore a level of premeditation that would deny any defence based on the crime of passion. But for a confession by one of the killers almost two decades after the act the double murder would have constituted the perfect crime. Not easy to achieve in a technological world. An indolent RUC seemed not to ‘think dirty’ when it came to the obvious – lovers not their partners enter into suicide pacts – and so the killers prowled the streets for a further two decades before being apprehended.

‘Gin and tonic set’ killings involving sex and murder are always likely to stir tabloid interest like little else. Nothing like a bit of White Mischief to set the pulses racing. There is a tendency to home in on the mini-skirt, the low cut blouse, the perfume, the seduction. The imagery is massaged and manipulated to titillate the readers. Throw in a bit of puritan religion and the mix is set to explode from the front page of your average red top accompanied by the promise of saucy, sordid secrets on the inside pages.

We have seen it all before with the religious crowd. If they are not raping children and then threatening their victims with hellfire for eternity if they divulge the rapes to anybody, they can often be found fondling each other at the back of the evangelical bible class. Yet they behave as if they are morally superior to the rest of us and insist that we should somehow be required to live our lives in accordance with the moral diktats of their scripture. Iris Robinson is a case in point.

Regardless of the slant pursued by tabloids, behind the Stewart –Howell murder trial lies a human story of loss more enduring than the vagaries of lust; where children from two families are left without a parent each because the other parent had a sociopathic capacity for ruthlessness. Both murderous bible thumpers in this case seem equally culpable. Hazel Stewart’s callousness is perhaps more amplified because of the contrasting demure characterisation of herself that she postulated as a foil against the demonic persona the prosecution sought to present. Colin Howell threw the hands up and confessed to standing apart from most of humanity by his actions. It makes him look bad but straight whereas Stewart just looks bad and bent.

Religious types often like to tell us that their moral values come from god; a bit like me claiming my own come from the Flying Spaghetti Monster. Our morality has evolved like everything else about us. I see no evidence of a morality in religious believers that is absent from somebody without any religious belief. Quite often I see loathsome standards exercised by those with god and honourable stands taken by those without. Not much wrong with Mencken when he said ‘conscience is the inner voice that warns us somebody may be looking.’ Which means don’t stop because it is wrong, only stop because somebody is watching.

Religion did not cause Stewart and Howell to kill their partners. It simply failed to dissuade them from murder. Religion offers no guarantee of moral behaviour, or at least it provides the religious types with a moral outlook no better than that possessed by the atheists.

In fact it might be argued that the religious fixation with policing sexuality brings into being dangerous liaisons which in turn unleash deadly passions. Religious guilt seems to have figured greatly in the interplay between Stewart and Howell. Yet the guilt was as a result of engaging in extra marital sex. Howell would drug Stewart with her consent prior to sex so that her guilt could be assuaged. She did not require to be drugged in order to commit murder. Maybe she found something in the bible that justified murder but not sex.

Judging this sordid episode there is much to be said for the view of Francis Bacon:

Atheism leaves a man to sense, to philosophy, to natural piety, to laws, to reputation; all of which may be guides to an outward moral virtue, even if religion vanished; but religious superstition dismounts all these and erects an absolute monarchy in the minds of men.

A moral monarch that whispers in the ear of the devout 'it’s alright to kill both of them.'