[MD] Theocracy, Secularism, and Democracy

[david buchanan]

Matt said to Steve:
I am genuinely perplexed by this problem.  On the one hand, I have to confront the fact that my instinct when encountering Leviticus-pointing is to tell the pointer to keep his Bible out of the American Constitution, and yet my instinct when encountering the liberal who says that the fact that Jesus is love causes him to vote for universal health care is to say, "hey, good for you."  I don't know what to do about that.

Steve replied:
Yep, me too. DMB thinks that that instinct is a straw man, but I know exactly what it is like from past personal experience to regard talking about texts from Leviticus in public as not merely unwelcome but a threat to democracy and a crossing of the Church-State boundary. It ought not to be done because our freedom _from_ religion is violated. By the way, there is an organization called the Freedom From Religion Foundation which boasts Dawkins, Hitchens, and Dennet among others as honorary board members...


dmb says:

I certainly have to rethink and re-state my complaints about a straw man. I thought Stout's militant secularists were members of some political movement or something. As it turns out, however, these militant secularists include Rorty and the Rortians, which basically means you and Matt. Now that I understand what I'm dealing with, let me offer an analysis.

I'll give you my basic thesis right up front. I think your perplexity is a direct result of following Rorty on these issues. As I've said several times, including the first time I posted a response in this thread, Pirsig's distinction between social and intellectual values is very helpful in explaining this situation. But when this conflict is examined using Rorty's brand of cultural relativism the whole area becomes perplexing. From Dick's "ethnocentric" perspective,  there is no way to adjudicate between rival views because is no universal standard by which to measure them. Without that, there no way to privilege MLK, for example, over Bush or anyone else who gives religious reasons. They are just different solidarities. As the IEP explains it:

"Carrying forward his naturalistic, Darwinian views, Rorty sees humans as creatures whose beliefs and desires are for the most part formed by a process of acculturation. With no non-relative criteria or standards for telling real justifications from merely apparent ones, it follows that there can be no teleological mechanism independent of specific social narratives to determine the socioethical superiority of one solidarity over another. Since we all acquire our moral identity and obligations from our native culture (the niche in which we find ourselves), why not embrace our own social virtues as valid and try to redefine the world in terms of them? This is Rorty’s argument for ethnocentricism; a position from which one “can give the notion such as ‘moral obligation’ a respectable, secular, non-transcendental sense by relativizing it to a historically contingent sense of moral identity.” And if this is a form of cultural relativism, so be it. Rorty does not fear relativism, since fear grows from the concern that there is nothing in the universe to hang onto except ourselves. This is his humanist point against the claim that reason transcends local opinion; there is only ourselves nested in the habits of action evolving over time into the current, contingent societal solidarities we find useful for achieving our purposes."



Let me stress one point in particular. Rorty's ethnocentrism "is his humanist point against the claim that reason transcends local opinion". I think it's pretty neat that Pirsig, "carrying forward his naturalistic, Darwinian views", to make a humanist point IN FAVOR of the "claim that reason transcends local opinion". The MOQ brings that claim to the analysis of this issue of church-state separation, the theocratic tendencies of the religious right and the related issues. This is not "Reason" with a capital "R" and in fact both the social and the intellectual levels are conceived a contingent products of evolution but the MOQ makes a distinction between them all the same. As Pirsig sees it, this distinction is exactly what James's pragmatism needed too because, he says, in James's Victorian age the social and intellectual levels were "monstrously confused". 


"..the MOQ avoided this attack by making it clear that the good to which truth is subordinate is intellectual and Dynamic Quality, not practicality. [dmb Notes: truth is not just whatever "we find useful for achieving our purposes".] The misunderstanding of James occurred because there was no clear intellectual framework for distinguishing social quality from intellectual quality and Dynamic Quality, and in his Victorian lifetime they were monstrously confused. But the MOQ states that practicality is a SOCIAL pattern of good. It is immoral for truth to be subordinated to social values since that is a lower form of evolution devouring a higher one. ...James would probably have been horrified to find that Nazis could use his pragmatism just as freely as anyone else, but Phaedrus didn't see anything that would prevent it. But he thought the MOQ's classification of static patterns of good prevents this kind of debasement."

Compare that passage with the IEP's article on Rorty. The following paragraph directly precedes the one I just quoted:

"But Rorty does not want to throw out entirely the fruits of Western culture. To the contrary, he says that he is “lucky” to having been raised within this cultural tradition, especially because of its tendencies for critical analysis and tolerance. In this vein, Rorty responds to a Habermasian critique: “I regard it a fortunate historical accident that we find ourselves in a culture . . . which is highly sensitized to the need to go beyond (dogmatic borders of thought).” Nevertheless, he does not hold that his luck is any different from that felt by Germans who considered themselves fortunate to enroll in the Hitler Youth. It’s simply a chance matter as to which society one is born, and what set of beliefs is valued therein."


You see, from Rorty's point of view the difference between fascism and liberal democracy is just luck. They both do whatever they find useful for achieving their purposes and nobody has a god's-eye view from which to rank one over the other. The difference between marching with MLK and singing the anthems of the Hitler Youth is simply a chance matter as to which society one is born, says the Rortian. That's why you guys are perplexed. See? By contrast, Pirsig makes a case for intellectually guided societies over societies guided by social level values using a pattern of conflict that can be traced out over the last century or so. As you know, fundamentalism and fascism are the central examples or instances of a larger reactionary movement. And this bring us right into the heart of the matter, today's religious right and the Republican party in general. These are the forces that are concerned with "militant secularists" and "godless relativists" like Richard Rorty. Phrases like that, as well as "secular humanist" and "godless communist", have been coined by these reactionaries an they act as standard forms of currency in the culture war, which is really what we're talking about, eh?

"Everybody thinks those Victorian moral codes are stupid and evil, or old-fashioned at least, except maybe a few religious fundamentalists and ultra-right-wingers and ignorant uneducated people like that. That's why Rigel's sermon this morning seemed so peculiar. Usually people likeRigel do their sermonizing in favor of what ever is popular. That way they're safe. Didn't he know all that stuff went out years ago? Wherewas he dutring the revolution of the sixties?"

"Where had he been during this whole century? That's what this whole century's been about, this struggle between intellectual and socialpatterns. That's the theme song of the twentieth century. Is society going to dominate the intellect or is intellect going to dominatesociety? ... That was the thing this evolutionary morality brought out clearer than anything else."

"Phaedrus thought that no other historical or political analysis explains the enormity of these forces as clearly as does the MOQ. The gigantic power of socialism and fascism, which have overwhelmed this century, is explained by a conflict of levels of evolution. This conflict explains the driving force behind Hitler not as an insane search for power but as an all-consuming glorification of social authority and hatred of intellectualism."


Steve said:
... We need moderate and liberal Christians to make such cases for us. Stout notes that unfortunately the new atheists have made it clear that there will be no such alliance between atheists and religious moderates and liberals since they have condemned not just certain ways of being religious but rather religion as such. That's what I think we nonbelievers need to be much more careful about doing in the future.


dmb says:

See, I think think if you cut things along social vs intellectual lines, then you don't have to condemn religion as such. Instead you can frame it instead as a matter of traditional social values and their relation to intellectual truths. Even better, you can frame religion as a matter of direct experience and the concepts that refer to that immediacy. That is to say, even though religion is primarily and originally social, it is not confined to that level any more than language or political authority is confined to that level. That way you don't construe the debate in terms of religious reason-giving versus literary reason-giving but rather the over all level and quality of reason-giving. Then categories like "religious" or "literary" or "historical" are just matters of style and perspective and they become irrelevant to the question of whether or not the reason-giving is reasonable and good or not. 

By the same token, this method of analysis explains the strange constellation of attitudes that give shape the ideology of today's Republican party. It explains how the conservative whites in Kansas and Alabama could end up getting in bed with the Plutocrats. It seems like a strange coalition until you realize that bible-thumpers and Wall Street traders both share an interest in preventing the intellectual control of society. The both hate godless socialism, although one is more concerned with godlessness and the other is more concerned with the socialism. They're both defending social level values against intellectual values. This is how we end up with strange phrases like "commie fag". Such phrases help to hold this coalition together, see, because it gives both elements something to hate the most. Even if you're just liberal and slightly effeminate, that's more than enough to make you entirely worthy of scorn.


Anyway, I think democracy and secularism are perfectly consistent with each other and theocracy is hostile to both. This is what we're up against and I really don't see how it would help to enlist "moderate and liberal Christians"  to make a case for democracy or secularism. In fact, Sam Harris goes after such moderates as a big part of the problem. They give cover to the more extreme fundamentalist positions by lending a veneer of respectability to their cause. I'd even say it only serves to hide the truth of the matter, which is that there is an anti-democratic and anti-intellectual movement hard at work in our culture and their cause represents a de-evolutionary step backwards. I think the MOQ's method of analysis makes it pretty clear to see who's who and which side to take. It's not just a matter of applying some simple formula or a law but it provides some orienting generalizations that allow you to read the situation without being so perplexed.