[MD] Theocracy, Secularism, and Democracy

[david buchanan]

dmb said to Steve:
.... Secularism is the notion that religion needs to be stamped out? According to my dictionary, that's just not what the word means. "secular, adjective 1 denoting attitudes, activities, or other things that have no religious or spiritual basis : secular buildings | secular moral theory. Contrasted with sacred .2 Christian Church (of clergy) not subject to or bound by religious rule; not belonging to or living in a monastic or other order. Contrasted with regular."

Steve replied:
Looking up "secular" because you want to understand what it means to be a secularist is something like looking up "material" because you want to know what it is to be a materialist, isn't it?


dmb says:

Not at all. I'm saying that you have a very distrorted idea of secularism, that it simply does not mean what you say it means. I'm saying that you have invented a straw man. You are doing battle with a position held by no one.



Steve said:
... To be charitable toward your sensibilities I will discuss the issue as "militant secularism" to distinguish it from whatever more innocuous version of secularism you may have in mind. By militant secularism I am referring to the worst possible implications of Sam Harris's claim that we have lost the right to our myths. I am not sure that it is what Harris intends, but a militant secularist would be willing to use the coersive power of the government to enforce limits on political discourse. 


dmb says:

There's the straw man again. Can you think of an example of an actual "militant secularist"? I can't. And I suspect that there is no such person. Not to mention the fact that you've slandered Sam Harris, who very far from being a militant anything. I think he's a perfectly reasonable man who has no intention of picking up a gun. Like I said, the definition you've used as a premise is actually quite biased. It is not really a definition so much as a paranoid distortion and a slanderous attack.


Steve said:

Is the establishment clause all that is needed to protect government and religion from one another? Both the militant secularists and the theocrats say, "no." The militant secularist thinks that religion itself is a grave threat to democracy. ...These are the extremes of the debate. Both sides think that democracy will not be safe until the other side is erradicated. Both exist in part as a response to the other.



dmb says:

Sorry but I just don't believe you. Who are these militant secularists? Can you name anyone or anything in particular? Seriously. I think you're just making stuff up. The most outspoken atheist in the country, Sam Harris, is no where near the extreme position you've painted. If there is someone who can rightly be described the way you have described "militant atheism", I'd surely like to know about it.


Steve said:
I agree completely. I think the new theocrats are delusional when they paint Christians as a persecuted minority. Nevertheless, there it is, and we feed into this delusion when we atheists complain about the prez saying "God Bless America" and take credit for the degree of secularization of political discourse that has occurred. ... If atheists are seen as militant secularists, as seeking to actively oppose religion as such, is it any wonder that an atheist who is honest about her lack of belief cannot be elected? Why would a broadly religious populace want to elect someone who will work on their behalf to destroy all religion? Do you see why we can't be seen in that light? I am saying that we need to concern ourselves with the perception of being militant secularists if we can hope for an honest atheist in high office.


dmb says:

If the perception of persecution is delusional - and I definitely think it is delusional - then why should we be concerned? Why buy into a view that simply doesn't comport with reality? Sorry, Steve, but I think your position on this is unhelpful and even a bit irrational. I think Sam Harris has it right. He wants us to put conversational pressure on religious people. He wants them to be held to the same standard as everyone else because, as he sees it, they have been given preferential treatment for too long already. It's simply not fair to cut them so much slack as if there views were automatically above reproach. Accommodating their paranoid delusions is probably the worst way to respond, for example. If they're talking nonsense, why in the world is it wrong to say so? 


Steve said:
DMB, you must be aware of bigotry toward nonbelievers? We often call them irrational and delusional, weak minded and cowardly, no? Dawkins has said all those things and more. Haven't some of us delighted in Voltaire's imagine of the last king being strangled by the entrails of the last priest?


dmb says:

It seems you meant to ask about the atheists bigotry toward believers.  Sorry, but I think you're buying into their distortions in this case too. Name-calling aside, is it really fair to say your political opponents are bigoted? By definition, he's your opponent because he thinks you're wrong. Are the two political parties just different kinds of bigots? And if an atheist can never win political office in this country, then whose bigotry is more effective? No, my friend. We are allowed to disagree with and even disrespect each other's views. In fact, if we're going to have an honest debate then these unpleasant things are inevitable. I think that part of Sam Harris's point is that certain views have been artificially protected from scrutiny by a demand for tolerance and respect for religious views. To that end, open disagreement is construed as "bigotry". That's not fair. Sure wish I could declare all your disagreements as bigotry. That would make things real easy for me but that's just not how it works. See, I think the establishment clause sits right there next to the rights of free speech and of the press for a reason. Secularism means ideas - religious or otherwise - have to compete on their own merits. Nobody get the laws or armies or cops to back up their views. They persuade or they don't. They work or they don't. They make sense or they don't. I think religious freedom means we're supposed to work it out for ourselves and we're supposed to slug it out in public too. Harris writes books and gives speeches. To call him a "militant" anything is just a meaningless insult. 


Steve said:

As for anti-democratic leanings, Sam Harris is viewed by many as the poster child for religious intolerance. 
Quotes from the End of Faith: Sam wrote "Intolerance is...intrinsic to every creed." If _all_ religion is intolerant, ought it not be erradicated? "Should Mulsims really be _free_ to believe that the Creator of the universe is concerned about hemlines?"
"We have simply lost the _right_ to our myths?"


Now, I don't think that Harris means that anything coercive ought to be done. I'm a huge fan of Sam Harris. I am convinced that all Harris wants is conversation. But can you not see how he and others can often be read as proposing something more?


dmb says:

The leap from wanting conversation to the eradication of all religion is fairly ridiculous and we ought not calculate our rhetoric to meet the demands of such a ridiculous interpreter. Sam is only saying what any reasonable person already knows. It is simply a fact that any group is defined by the people who are and are not in it. And since religious deals with ultimate matters like good and evil, the out-groups are seen as wrong in very fundamental ways. I mean, let's face facts here Steve. The history of Western civilization is up to it's eyeballs in blood over this stuff. The first amendment was written with that history in mind, that's for sure. That's what Sam wants to eradicate. His is a simple statement of opposition to religious bigotry. And if a guy tells you what God's preference is with respect to your clothes, I think you are well within your rights to tell him how crazy that makes him sound. Maybe you even have a responsibility to challenge such nonsense, especially when it means your obedience to that nonsense. If he's free to say that and believe that, then the women with the hemlines are not free to say or believe otherwise. Is that just me imposing my values on them or is it actually wrong in some real way? I think it really is wrong. And we are wrong if we fail to stand up against it. It's wrong to respect that or tolerate that. In case you're tempted to conclude this is a plan for genocide, I'm only talking about conversational pressure here, and not anything else. 

Don't get me wrong. Anyone can see how a certain kind of religious person would be offended by Sam Harris. He thinks people in our culture can get away with believing some very unbelievable things and those things also happen to inform public policies. The Tea Party candidate in Nevada, for example. If her religious views can impact federal law, why in the world should such views be off limits? Is it just my liberal bias or is it actually wrong to force women to bare their rapist's child? Should we just tolerate that view? What sane person wants to give that view a voice in the U.S. Senate? Nah, I think it's okay if we say she's not good enough to represent any state in the union. She's crazy and cruel and not too sharp neither. Why is wrong to say so, especially when it's true? I really don't that. We can't go along and get along with that in our politics. 

Steve asked if Plutocrats and the bible-thumpers are:
 _natural_ bed-fellows? Is there something inherent in religion that makes it supportive of plutocracy over democracy? Does religion as such need to be opposed to protect democracy from theocracy and plutocracy? There is something very unpragmatic about the notion that religion is _essentially_ bad. As pragmatists, we don't think that religion is _essentially_ anything. Militant secularism comes in when we start to think that religion as such is the problem rather than some particular ways of being religious.


dmb says:

Uh, oh. Watch out for those militant essentialist with their radical secularism. Sorry, but your concerns seem to be coming right out the the religious right's playbook and I think it's a whole lot of hooey. The Plutocrats have them in their pockets because they paid good money for them. The Tea Party itself is basically the product of public relations agency, which creates fake grassroots movements for any cause that's willing to pay for it. Republican campaigns have been one long sales pitch since we were babies. When Johnson backed civil right the Republicans developed their "Southern Strategy", which meant they were going to win with the bigoted vote. At the time, Johnson thought his Party had lost the south for a generation. Then Lee Atwater came along and really cranked things up during the Reagan era and Rove is the present king of that sort of sleaze. That was almost fifty years ago. It's all well documented if you're interested. There's an interesting book called "How the South Finally Won the Civil War" that tells this same story in an even larger historical context.

 Anyway, this is about a certain reactionary style of religion as it relates to our politics. The question about the inherent worth of religion as religion is another question altogether. The value and validity of philosophical mysticism, for example, is not about the influence of social institutions. In politics it's used to pit people against one another. The phrase "militant secularist" works for that purpose. It doesn't really represent anything or anyone as far as I can tell. It's good at conjuring up something scary. You know, like secular humanism, godless humanism and other phrases, it comes from a group of believers telling you how bad those unbelievers are, those other guys. 

But seriously, is there anyone in this world who sincerely describes himself that way? Maybe you could find some sassy blogger somewhere but it sounds made up. If it weren't so implausible I might even think it was produced for buck or two.