[MD] Theocracy, Secularism, and Democracy

[david buchanan]

Pirsig said:
"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 replied:
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???

dmb says:

The quote is a statement of opposition to social suppression of intellectual and Dynamic freedom. He's saying the MOQ is anti-theistic IN THAT REGARD. He's responding to such a move on the part of Absolute Idealism. To read that quote as saying all conceptions of God are necessarily evil is way over the top, is a case of jumping to conclusions in the worst way.

Steve said:
... At the same time, perhaps many secularists have responded by becoming the militant variety where their secularism is not understood merely in terms of religious freedom but rather as seeking to expunge religion all together from political reason-giving. They may see _all_ religious influenced reason-giving as inappropriate and theocratic. Religious voices in political discourse are perhaps thought to need to be silenced for the sake of democracy.


dmb says:

Who are these "militant secularists" who seek to expunge religion all together?



Steve said:
...If militant secularism can only be furthered through the undemocratic means, of coercion, it is as much a threat to democracy as is theocracy (if not to the same degree since militant secularists have never had the sort of power to justify anyone's fears about them).

dmb says:

Who are these undemocratic and coercive militant secularists? Seriously. Name one. You can't mean Sam Harris because he's only "trying to exhort us to hold people's religious beliefs up to the same conversational pressures that our other beliefs face". And it's simply not true that he is "condemning _all_ religious beliefs as irrational _en masse_ and  _in advance" In fact, the man has taken up the practice of meditation, which is a religious practice. It's not the sort of practice that requires faith or a belief in supernatural entities but it still counts as religion or spirituality in a broader sense. Same goes with Pirsig's outlook. In that broad sense, the MOQ is a religion or can be anyway. It's a form of philosophical mysticism, a non-theistic form of mysticism. And this view point is going to withstand the kind of conversational pressure Harris is calling for whereas a belief in the rapture, for example, won't be plausible to anyone but the faithful. Like you said, Harris "doesn't want us to self-identify as atheists in a blanket attack on all religion. I think you're concerned with a position held by nobody. 

You keep disputing those who are "condemning religion _en masse_ as something we need to eliminate in order to protect democracy" and are concerned with their "attempts to expunge religion all together". You're railing against the goal of "stamping out all religion", against those who are "opposing religion as such" and "working for a Godless world". Who - specifically - are you talking about? I don't think these positions exist at all (except in the paranoid imaginations of reactionaries). I hope you don't think this delusional nonsense reflects my view of the MOQ or of the MOQ itself. 
Maybe you just didn't get to it yet but I want to stress this because it is my central point. I fundamentally disagree with the way you have defined the terms and framed the issue. You are pitting "an agenda of militant secularism" AGAINST "religious freedom and better religion". Considering the fact that secularism IS religious freedom, this framing makes no sense. To pit one against the other, you have to construe secularism as militant, oppressive and anti-democratic. But that's just not what the word means nor does not describe the actions or stances taken by any actual secularist. And of course a straw-man argument is a fallacious argument. That's the case I'm making here, see. 

But if we're both in favor of religious freedom and freedom of speech. if we're both opposed to theocracy and we both think the leaders of the religious right are ridiculous reactionaries, then what's your actual concern?

Let me back up and put it another way. As I understand it, you and I don't get to decide what "secularism" means any more than you or I get to decide what a dollar will by. Words function as a common currency or they don't function at all. Secularism means what it means by virtue of our shared history, namely the modern Western differentiations of art, science and religion and more specifically our own national history. Secularism means what it means by virtue of the way political scientists use it, which is a reference to the separation of church and state. Secularism means what it means by virtue of our constitution and our dictionaries. Everything I know about the word tells me that it is essentially about religious freedom, freedom of thought. And yet your whole case is centered around a version of secularism that's defined as undemocratic and militant. How did this doctrine of religious freedom become something so scary and evil? It seems to me that secularism would only look that way to a anti-secularist, to religious person who feels oppressed by the separation of church and state. It seems to me that you're talking from the perspective of one who feels persecuted by secularism. But I think that's unrealistic in the extreme. These persecutors do not exist. 
Are there people who think religion is just stupid and unworthy of respect? Sure. Is there such a thing as religion that's just stupid and unworthy of respect? Sure. Fortunately, in a free society, people are allowed to be stupid and disrespectful and you can even be both at the same time. I mean, what people do and say with respect to religion is different from the issue of what governments can and cannot do with respect to religion. Preventing theocracy is a legal matter, you know? It's not about what style of language people are allowed to use when expressing their beliefs or values. 

I think we have a sort of unwritten civic religion where it's okay to invoke God as long as you stay real vague about which god you mean, as in "God bless America" and such. So if you want to have a theocracy detector listen for specifics when politicians talk. If you can tell which god they mean or which religion they mean, you've detected some tendency or at least a willingness to play to that tendency in others. Most of the time it's pretty obvious and candidates are perfectly happy to identify themselves as a Christian. But sometimes its hard to tell whose seeing it because they also speak in a coded language. Bush used the "born-agan" language of protestant fundamentalism to describe himself, for example. That little phrase might be a bit like a dog-whistle. Some just can't hear it and others howl at the moon cause it's so loud and piercing in their ears. It means he's been "saved", he's accepted Jesus as his personal lord and savior. To the fundamentalists, it means "I'm one of you". And when they think he's one of them, they think he wants prayer in school, a ban on gay marriage, on abortion, the teaching of creationism, the placement of the ten commandments in court houses and all the other things that secularists would take as a threat to the separation of church and state. There is a definite theocratic impulse in today's conservatism. It one of the best reasons to vote for anyone but a Republican. I'd even go so fat as to say that very few of them are completely innocent of this anti-democratic impulse.