[MD] Theocracy, Secularism, and Democracy

[John Carl]

Good points, as usual, Steve.  I wanna look at one you bring up and focus on
it especially:

Steve:
> These quotes are not anti-theistic and are evidence against any
> Pirsigian militant secularism. But then you quote...
>
> Pirsig:
> > 208 "The MOQ would add a fourth stage where the term "God" is completely
> dropped as a relic of an evil social suppression of intellectual and Dynamic
> freedom. The MOQ is not just atheistic in this regard. It is anti-theistic."
>
> Steve:
> Why does he need to go all _anti_theistic here? Why does the word
> "God" need to be dropped from everyone's vocabularies? Is every
> possible conception of God necessarily evil? Rather than simply not
> believing in God and arguing against specific ways of being religious
> or specific conceptions of God, is Pirsig saying that _everyone_ ought
> not believe in God? Any kind of God???
>

John:

It's especially interesting a question when you factor in the quote from
ZAMM, about "God" and "Good" sharing etymological roots.  Could we then just
as easily say "we ought not to believe in good?  Any kind of good?"  I mean,
how much evil has been perpetrated throughout history, because some dictator
thought it'd be a "good" idea?   Hitler thought it'd be a good idea to
eliminate the Jews.  Doesn't this mean then that we should eliminate any
belief in good?

I also remember with fondness, gav, and his last missive to the MoQ, which
was upon reading and reflecting of this very quote.  He didn't like it a
bit.  Your question of why Pirsig took such a hardline stance, imo,  goes to
a question of knee-jerk psychological reaction best exemplified by my
explication of what the difference between an atheist and an anti-theist is,
to wit: an atheist doesn't believe in God; an anti-theist is just extremely
pissed off at Him.

As a theist, I understand the sentiment exactly.  The Bible's full of
stories of God's "chosen" being anti-theistic at one time or another.



> After hundreds of years of the various religious sects trying to woo
> others toward their particular brands of religion, broad diversity of
> religious belief persists in the West especially in the US where
> religion especially flourishes, and it doesn't look like this
> plurality of religious ideas will be going away any time soon.
> Meanwhile, the post-Englightenment expectations of many secularists
> haven't been met. Though widely available, the arguments that we find
> so convincing against religious beliefs and for denying the existence
> of traditionally conceived theistic conception of God over the past
> few centuries haven't succeeded in convincing most others as
> secularist theorists expected they would.. Noting also the
> unavailability of any knock-down argument to settle the matter of
> God's existence here and now in addition to the unlikelihood that such
> an argument will present itself in the foreseeable future, we ought to
> recognize that religious voices will be around for a long time to
> come. The question is, what do we do about them?
>

I say we ought to argue with them that there is a more fundamental principle
than deity at the source of metaphysical being - that God is a Quality
concept.



> When Harris says that we no longer have a right to our myths, what
> does that mean in practice? I don't think he actually intended to
> propose any coercion (though he erred in leaving himself too open to
> being misunderstood in that way). I think he is trying to exhort us to
> hold people's religious beliefs up to the same conversational
> pressures that our other beliefs face.


I agree completely.  I think that's my point about God being a Quality
concept.



> I agree that we should, but
> what is the point then of condemning _all_ religious beliefs as
> irrational _en masse_ and  _in advance_, the same beliefs that
> supposedly have not already been held to such pressures?
>
>
Right.  Elimination of moral certainty is good, elimination of morality is
not.


> Given the history of attempts to expunge religion all together, even
> if we see nothing at all redeemable about any religious practice, we
> should still note that stamping out all religion is an unachievable
> goal; therefore, opposing religion as such rather than targeting
> specific ways of being religion is an impractical goal. For pragmatic
> and philosophical reasons, I for one am satisfied with promoting
> religious freedom and the need for _better_ religion instead of
> working for a Godless world. I have no idea whether _everyone_ would
> be better or worse off if there were no such thing as religion, and
> even the religious could not possibly disagree with my desire for
> better religion (that is, until we get into discussion of what we
> think would make some of our current religious practices better.)
>
> I also don't want to prevent anyone from making arguments in religious
> terms. In fact, if those are the reasons that motivated taking the
> stand in question, I welcome it. Though religious traditionalists
> lament being hamstrung by having to phrase their concerns in secular
> terms, I think (and Harris would agree) that it would be better if we
> could confront the actual reasons that convinced religious people to
> take their view in the first place instead of arguing against the
> secularized arguments that the religious have fabricated in an attempt
> to  taylor their discourse to for a wider audience. For example, if
> someone starts arguing that we ought to disallow homosexual marriages
> because statistics indicate that...better parents...blah, blah, blah,
> when the actual reason that convinces them that we ought to forbid it
> is some verse in Leviticus, we waste our time arguing against their
> dubious statistics, and we never get to hold the real justification up
> to scrutiny and present a case against such reasoning. We don't get to
> point out that Leviticus also requires us to murder people for all
> sorts of other acts that none of us any longer even regard as crimes.
> We are likely to gain allies even among the religious in opposing poor
> religious reasoning if such reasons are permitted to be aired. And
> since the vast majority of the population is religious in some sense,
> we certainly can't afford to refuse their support for our criticisms
> by promoting an agenda of militant secularism rather than seeking
> religious freedom and better religion.
>

Hear here.

John