[MD] Theocracy, Secularism, and Democracy

[John Carl]

I say, godspeed to Matt's view, which explains things better than anybody
else I've heard in a long time:


On Mon, Aug 9, 2010 at 12:56 PM, Matt Kundert
<pirsigaffliction at hotmail.com>wrote:

  And the
>
> people who did so were largely what Eisenhower referred to
> privately as those "stupid Texas oilmen" who wanted to turn back
> the New Deal.  These people only care about money: they are
> neither inherently racist or religious, but simply use both as a
> means to a single end: getting as much cash as they can to buy
> islands to live on when the whole ship they've pillaged goes down.
>
> Because of the right-wing propaganda echo-machine, I think much
> discussion about religion is distorted and needlessly inflammatory on
> both sides.  I don't blame it on the religious; I blame it on the
> corporatists who are simply taking advantage of them.


Amen. From a religious viewpoint,  Satan is certainly not an atheist, he
just wants to BE the god that everyone worships.  And if that means changing
his name to "Christ", well  he's perfectly willing to do a little creative
marketing.



> The more
> heat they can generate, the easier it is for them to steal our money
> while we're looking in the other direction.  And I can only applaud
> you and Stout for wanting to effect a Copernican shift in the dialogue,
> so as to better talk about both religion and politics.  This would be
> getting the anti-theists and theists who are more flamethrowers than
> thinkers to see that they live each other's deaths (which is no way to
> live intellectually).  I say godspeed to that.




> My only suggestion is not
> wedding "secularism" to the position occupied by the miltant atheists
> who think that religion sans phrase is a sickness.  I don't think this
> for douchey reasons like a dictionary told me so,


"douchey reasons"?  I'm laughing my ass off here.




> but because I think
> it's good rhetorical policy to reserve an ism that has wide recognition
> (even if not totally good recognition--what term does?) for the
> position you want to fight for, and once we abandon atheism and
> anti-theism as too narrow in parameter, I'm not sure what other
> good flags there are to plant in the ground we want to occupy.
>
> It's a weird thing to argue.  Rorty wanted to enlist Donald Davidson
> as a pragmatist for years, but Davidson demurred for years
> because he couldn't dissociate pragmatism from its traditional
> theory of truth.  Rorty made a judgement call after a cost-benefit
> analysis on the term "pragmatism," and decided pragmatism was
> the flag for him (and Davidson whether he liked it or not).  Was he
> right?  Time will tell.  But I would likewise, currently, decide that the
> benefits of choosing "secularism" as your flag outweigh the costs in
> most circumstances, and plant it for me (and Stout whether he
> liked it or not).
>
> Matt
>
>
To paraphrase a little-known bible passage, of Paul to King Agrippa,
 "Almost thou persuadest me to be a Rortyian."


John