[MD] Theocracy, Secularism, and Democracy

[skutvik at online.no]

Steve 

8 Aug. you wrote:

> I'd like us to try to explore the political implications of Pirsig's
> anti-theism. Philosopher of religion and pragmatist Jeffrey Stout
> (Yes, Bo. I've been reading again.) agrees with Sam Harris that
> theocracy is a threat to democracy, but he sees secularism, the notion
> that religion needs to be stamped out and has no place in political
> discourse, as equally anti-democratic as are any imposed limits on the
> sorts of justifications that are permissable in politics.

America and Europe differs regarding religion. USA the "asylum" for all 
kind of strange sects with a new "Church" around every bend in the 
road, while Europe is hysterically "secular" seeing religious 
infringement ever so often. With the Muslim immigrants and their 
religious-imposed codes of behavior a new problem has arisen. An 
aside: It looks as if the Muslims in USA aren't so (hell) bent on wearing 
religion on their cuffs (as Khaleed once said) and if that is right it's IMO 
because they regard Europe's secularism as greater threat than the 
many Christian sects that flourish in USA.          

Now, the MOQ sees all this in its level perspective and it is only anti-
theist for the reason that it sees religions as static social patterns and 
applauds intellect's struggle with "society" because the MOQ can only 
be reached from intellect, but in is anti-intellectual because intellect is 
the last and most sophisticated static obstacle.  

I haven't followed the "learned" DMB, Matt, Krimel discussion about 
the internal American political issues about names unknown to us 
abroad, but regarding some old Christian "in God we trust" rituals as 
"theocracy" is nonsens. The only place where such occurs is in the 
social-value-dominated Islam culture, there hasn't been any theocracy 
in the West since intellect returned with the Renaissance. Maybe the 
Vatican State, but intellect has made it inside there long ago. the Pope 
cannot issue fatwahs (death sentences) over writers or order stoning 
and mutilations of unfaithful wives. Seen the picture of the Afghan 
woman with her nose cut off by the Taleban, that's teo- at least 
Allacrazy. 

Again my thesis. Islam is to the social level what SOM is to intellect, 
both are the two value levels poured in concrete. The Islamic culture 
has tied itself to the mast as not follow the "Sirens" of intellect who 
tempt with progress and individual freedom. This will be the end of 
Islam, and that's right, but of course not to social value. Intellect on the 
other hand has closed itself to the next movement - the MOQ - that will 
be the end of SOM (but not of intellectual value). Admittedly, the MOQ 
has not made any attempt at SOM on the public scene, the existing 
PhD and those announced are bland varieties that won't raise an 
eyebrow, but from the test tube the MD is we see the SOM's 
resistance to the real MOQ.    

Bodvar 

PS
Steve (or some article)
> 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?

This is naive unto nonsense. The Western civilization is all intellectual 
because the Christian religion is all-intellect-influenced, not even the 
most fundamental Christian would dream of "theocracy" in the 
Taleban, Ayatholla or any other Muslim sense where the wet dream is 
the Sharia rule. Note, the immense difference that among Muslims 
(and Jews) there is no argument about "God's existence" this 
argument spells the intellectual level that require objective proof. The 
true social-level Islam doesn't know "skepticism". So you Steve or the 
author of this piece is way off, the intellectual (Enlightenent) has won 
an unconditional victory. But note the (social) need for rituals will not 
go away, I am a member of the Lutheran Church and have no 
intention of unsubscribing I like the Christian rituals at existence's 
milestones.               





















> Both the religious traditionalists who hope to unite all under the
> banner of one religion and see democracy as inadequate to sustain
> moral values without religious constraints as well those secularists
> who would like to eliminate the impact of religion on politics are in
> a quandary. The democratic process of exchanging ideas is not going to
> either rid the populace of all religion or unite us under one
> religion. Conversation alone is not going to work to achieve the goals
> of either. For either group to achieve their ends, it will become
> necessary to achieve political dominance of one over the other and
> enforce their views through the coercion of government The choice is
> between militancy and giving up on democracy or finding reason to
> doubt the notion that the opposition needs to be eliminated for
> democracy to survive.
> 
> We have already seen that the response of many of the religious
> traditionalists to this quandary has been to become theocrats, to give
> up on democracy and try to impose their religion using the power of
> government rather than convince the rest of us to agree with them. 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.
> 
> But why not just regard religious reason-giving and argue that such
> religious reason-giving is unconvincing instead of work towards a
> state of affairs where such reasons ought never be aired in public?
> Isn't it enough that a particular religious conception is just one
> voice among many given equal consideration of all other voices, or
> must all views that cite religious justification be ruled out of the
> conversation, period? If so, how should that ruling-out be done? 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).
> 
> 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 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?
> 
> While Harris who wrote an article called "Science must destroy
> religion" and his fellow "horsemen" have condemned all religion as
> irrational, he has also (in his controversial speech "The Problem With
> Atheism") argued that atheism is "too blunt an instrument" at certain
> times. He doesn't want us to self-identify as atheists in a blanket
> attack on all religion. His concern is not that we throw the baby out
> with the bath water, but that we don't treat all religion as equally
> evil when some religious practice are far more problematic than
> others. But isn't it also possible that some religious practices can
> be not merely less evil or innocuous but actually good? We atheists
> tend to think of Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell when we think about
> religious influence on politics, but some liberal believers first
> think of Gandhi, Martin Luther King, and Desmond Tutu. Unfortunately
> there seem to be a lot more Jerry Falwells than MLKs, but such
> examples should make us wary of condemning religion _en masse_ as
> something we need to eliminate in order to protect democracy.
> 
> 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.
> 
> After all I've said, I know I'm still two posts behind in responding,
> DMB, but I'll try to get back to you tomorrow.
> 
> Best,
> Steve
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