[MD] Theocracy, Secularism, and Democracy

[Matt Kundert]

Hi Steve,

Matt said:
It seems to me that the notion of "militant secularism" you are using 
is factitious, because it isolates a _problem area_ not a position: as 
if Rorty thought it was okay to justify your beliefs about universal 
health care with reference to Proust, but just not God.

Steve said:
I think the issue is just what is it about religious reason-giving that 
someone finds objectionable. The rest of your post makes Stout's 
point that the reason that religious people don't give religious 
reasons in public is because they don't convince rather than 
because the militant secularists have been successful in opposing a 
gag rule. The militant secularists finds religious reasons not merely 
unconvincing but somehow objectionable to her liberal sensibilities.

Matt:
There's a couple things I'd like to disentangle.  The first is the last 
sentence here: you can't be talking about either Rawls or Rorty.  I 
don't recognize either one of them as thinking that religion damages 
their sensibilities.  That poses a problem for who we are talking 
about with respect to the community you want to label "militant 
secularists": you've been suggesting that the moniker houses 
everyone from Rawls and Rorty to Harris and Dawkins.  I think this is 
a clear indication that we are talking about two different communities, 
because while it makes sense to think that Harris and Dawkins find 
religion qua religion objectionable, it does not make sense to think 
this about Rawls and Rorty.  I've been trying to suggest that there is 
another community, the only one I want to defend, that does not 
include Dawkins, and that there objection is, basically, to religion qua 
politics.  I think these different communities.

The way I would explicate the difference between these two 
communities is by saying that this other community, which I would 
like to call the "secularists," does _not_ think religious reasons in 
public are objectionable because "they don't convince."  There's a 
difference between finding the thought "Obama isn't leading this 
country well, so I'll vote for someone else" unconvincing and finding 
the thought "Obama doesn't love Jesus enough, so I'll vote for 
someone else" unconvincing.  The first is unconvincing because, 
though it _could_ qualify as convincing, it doesn't.  The second is 
unconvincing because it _couldn't_ convince because the premises 
of the line of reasoning are not premises you use.  It's analogous to 
speaking French to convince people to vote Republican: you might 
be making perfectly cogent points _in French_, but because the other 
person doesn't speak French, there's no hope of understanding, let 
alone convincing.  The analogy between natural languages (like 
French) and various vocabularies that function as the terms in which 
arguments get stated is basic to Rorty's philosophy, and by extension 
his moral/political philosophy.

Religious reason-giving is not objectionable because there's 
something wrong with religion: it is objectionable because religious 
freedom means the freedom to have whatever religious background 
you want without being punished for it, and for using whatever 
religious vocabulary you want without being punished for it.  This 
creats a _culture_ in which this sector of vocabulary-formation will 
vary to a scale in which communication will be a problem.  If religion 
is a private affair, who cares?  If religion is a legitimate political 
vocabulary, then everyone must _believe_ in Jesus, Yahweh, 
Muhammed, the Buddha, Shiva, Shakespeare, Proust, and Pirsig 
(amongst much else) because the basis of legitimacy that I think we 
must work with is: can everyone use these reasons in their own 
reasoning?  Is the vocabulary in which reasons get stated a neutral 
vocabulary with respect to political problems?

Tensions in how we work out "legitimacy" will certainly come up, but 
I'm not convinced that secularists are commiting anti-democratic 
fouls in the way you seem to be suggesting.

Steve said:
Freedom of religion which is consistent with 1st amendment 
secularism is taken by the militant secularist to an extreme of 
freedom _from_ religion. We ought not have to listen to religious talk 
in politics. We have a right not to have to hear it. A couple of years 
ago I would have agreed. Now I am not so sure.

Matt:
Are we required to listen to my stories about the bad gas that caused 
me to vote for Bush?  "We ought not have to listen to religious talk in 
politics."  Stated that way, I'm not sure what the problem is.  I ought 
not to have to listen to disquisitions on Leviticus because it is 
irrelevant.  Despite the fact that I'm wont to say "good for you" when 
someone says it was God's love that led them to vote progressive, it 
is a bit of a waste of my time because it does not help _me_ figure 
out whether I should vote progressive.  It's not irrelevant to the 
orator, but the question looming in the background is "ought we take 
every reason that every person finds convincing in their own 
reasoning processes seriously?"  That fart is still lingering over this 
conversation, because the only reason I can make out that you think 
religious-reasoning should be thought _relevant_ is that _someone_ 
finds it relevant.  Then what about that SBD I let out in the voting 
booth that caused everybody in the basement of the Methodist 
Church to start crying?  Everyone voted for Bush that day because, 
in a moment of historic seredipity, everyone became convinced that 
the smell of my foul, asparagus-inflected bowel emission was 
reason enough to vote Republican.  (It's about as good a reason I 
can think of.)

I need another reason to find religious-reasoning relevant than that 
_someone_ finds it relevant.

I should say, too, that it's unclear to me why "freedom from religion" 
strikes you as wrong.  If someone wants to wage a cultural war on 
a cultural form they think should die out, that's their perogative.  You 
can then fight back if you wish.  What is illegitimate in this war is the 
use of the State, by either side.  The movement of secularism, 
however, is not that cultural war.  It may have once thought of itself 
that way, but the gerrymandered tradition of "secularism" that I 
attach to my flag and community has little to do with killing off 
religious traditions.  Freedom of religion is a freedom from religion, 
insofar as you cannot be punished for wanting to avoid the religious, 
just as the religious cannot be punished for running headlong into it.  
What secularism in politics requires, however, is that you not be 
forced to take seriously a thing which you have a right not to take 
seriously.  In legal practice, this should be a clear "no 
religious-reasoning parrading around as law."  For the 1st 
Amendment suggests that no laws can be made with a religious 
prejudice (given that no one should be punished for their religious 
beliefs).  In practical politics, it is surely less clear, but I still can't 
quite get myself past Rorty's pithy "religion is a conversation-stopper": 
nothing against religion, it's just irrelevant.  Shouldn't we promote a 
culture of political discourse in which elected representatives, in 
discussing the State's Business, do not think to justify their decisions 
about how the government should act with recourse to the Bible?  
Legal practice tells you that a Law is not just a sentence, but the 
reasoning of what that sentence means.  So, we still argue about 
what the Constitution means with recourse to all kinds of generated 
lines of reasoning which sit the words on the page in a web of 
justification.  That web is functionally the Law.  And since Congress 
writes the Laws, should we not promote a political culture in which 
religious-reasoning does not become embedded in the Laws, since 
that is a violation of the 1st Amendment?

Do I think it's sad that a portion of the Atheistic Left won't join 
hands with the Religious Left?  Sure.  That's bad political strategy.  
But I don't have a grasp on what is anti-democratic about the 
Atheists evangelizing their point of view.  It is when either side 
tries to embed them in Law, that's when we have a problem.  If 
everyone became Atheist, would the world be a better place?  
Maybe, because at least people wouldn't think to fight over it 
(though they'd no doubt think to fight about something else).  The 
trick of the question, of course, is that you could fill for "Atheist" 
_any_ answer to the "religious question": it's the uniformity that 
makes this possible world "better."  (And even then, some people 
don't care for uniformity.)  So if that's what Atheists are using as 
an argument for Atheism, then that's a reason for being bored by 
it.  But it doesn't strike me as a political stance.

Matt