[MD] Theocracy, Secularism, and Democracy

[Matt Kundert]

Hi Steve,

Steve said:
While Rorty has responded to Stout's anti-essentialist critique of Rorty 
as opposing religion as _essentially_ a conversation stopper, he has 
fallen back into arguing something similar, that ecclesiastical 
organizations are _essentially_ disposed to fuel bigotry rather than to 
promote freedom and justice.

Matt:
Yeah, I'm not so sure Rorty should have conceded the issue to Stout in 
"Reconsideration."  To my mind, Stout's use of "antiessentialism" as a 
critical trope was a red herring: Rorty never said, and has no need to 
say, that religion is essentially anything, nor that ecclesiastical 
institutions are in essence anything: all he needs is to make a "I've 
read some history and come to a reflective, on-balance generalization" 
argument.  My memory of rereading "Conversation-stopper" after 
Stout's intervention, and Rorty's reconsideration, was that Stout was 
off-kilter in his criticism, and that religion--or farts--can still function 
as conversation-stoppers even if they aren't essentially so.

Have all monarchs been bad?  Did not Queen Elizabeth do wonders 
for England in the 16th C., and particularly for humanist culture and 
literature?  And yet, I'd still like to reserve the right to say that, on 
balance, I think it'd be a good idea for humanity to wean itself off 
monarchys and turn into democracys.  I think the same kind of 
argument can be made for centralized ecclesiastical institutions, 
whatever the benevolence of those currently in charge.  It's not 
what you'd call a conclusive argument, but we've already decided 
that the terrain here is muddy and subject to ground-truth 
reappraisals.

Steve said:
Why does everyone need to use the same reasoning? We don't all 
hold the positions we do for the same reasons. Reasons don't have 
to be relevant to all of us for them to be worthy of giving. They just 
have to have some hope of convincing some people who are still 
unconvinced.

Matt:
We don't all need the same reasoning, and perhaps what has been 
confusing is that both of us have a different idea in our mind's-eye 
when we think of the "public square."  By and large, what I'm thinking 
of is the conversation between politicians, people directly involved in 
the sausage-machine known as government.  This is (ideally) a 
_public_ conversation: the reasoning politicians tell their constituents 
for why they voted, or wrote a bill, a certain way.  Of course, there is 
a lot done behind closed doors, and there is a lot of publically aired 
material that I would dub "private": like Dawkins diatribes against 
religion.  Those are his private will made manifest to others, but that 
doesn't make them "public" in the sense I want to reserve for the 
public/private distinction in politics.

There's a short-term/long-term distinction working in the background 
for me, too.  Short-term advances might mean taking advantage of 
ecclesiastical institutions, but we shouldn't abdicate looking at the 
long-term.  "Religion ain't goin' anywhere any time soon" is a 
recurring theme in your argument, but that's a short-term 
consideration.  Sometimes people aren't looking, and _writing for_ 
the short-term, but looking long into the future, and placing bets 
about how we should compose ourselves.  I think Rorty strikes a 
good balance between trying not to needlessly provoke potential 
religious leftist allies and writing for this far-off future.  Nothing he's 
written strikes me as "militant."  

What strikes me about his liberalism is just this: we should promote 
a culture of public discussion about the aims and uses of 
governmental apparatus in which religious reasoning is left to the 
side.  That doesn't mean that religion is essentially bad, or a 
conversation-stopper, or anything else.  It just strikes me as the kind 
of reasoning that people 300 years ago had reached after the 
Religious Wars, and that end-of-the-century American politics has 
pressingly made present to us again.  Promoting a culture in the 
future doesn't mean going out and militantly being a dick to people: 
it just means, say, constantly moving a conversation with your 
peers, should it stray into religious reasons for political positions, 
back to ground in which you, the atheist, are able to ask for, and 
receive, reasons that you might find plausible.  I see no reason for 
thinking that while, on the one hand, I cannot continue a 
conversation about why believing in Jesus should mean believing X 
(or Y) about abortion that, on the other hand, I cannot stand by the 
Rortyan injunction to find a way to continue the present 
conversation: that just sometimes means shifting or changing the 
topic.  I see nothing antidemocratic about trying to promote a 
culture you'd like to see in the future, and I see nothing inconsistent 
(though perhaps a sometimes delicate needle to thread) about 
promoting a culture that doesn't exist and dealing well with current 
realities, and treating people you disagree with in the long-term 
with decency and respect in the short-term to eliminate the 
pressing, current difficulties surrounding us (and punting the 
long-term junk down the line).

Steve said:
So how can we say that religious reasons are inherently not as good 
as other reasons? Don't we need to clarify more specifically what it 
is about religious reasons that is problematic? If we can identify the 
issue perhaps not _all_ religious reasons have this issue. And 
perhaps some of our nonreligious reasons are infected by this issue. 
Their eradication ought to be part of this utopian vision as well.

Matt:
I don't think what I'm suggesting implies that religious reasons are 
not as inherently good as others, which is partly why I've had 
recourse to farts: we are talking about case by case situations of 
general classes.  That's a difficult needle, talking about particular 
generalities, but I can't see that it can't be done well and usefully.  
And what it is _specifically_ about religious reasons is that we have 
a _specific_ outlined freedom about them.  This freedom was 
instituted for the specific reality that faced Europe in those days, the 
recent past of wars motivated by differences in religious affiliation.  
Rawls, I think, when he talks about the secular leaving-at-the-door 
of religious reasoning typically mentions the historical reality that 
produces this attitude.  We cannot understand freedom of religion 
divorced from history.  The only difference, so far as I can see, 
between "religious reasoning" and "philosophical reasoning" is the 
real practical difference in terms of how people live out those 
reasonings: Kantians and Hegelians have never taken up arms over 
their differences, or joined together to suicide-bomb Platonists.

It's not that religious reasons aren't "good," it's that they should be 
thought of as illegitimate in the "public square" for the purposes of 
promoting a public square in which everyone only forwards reasons 
that other people _could_, even if they do not, use in their own 
reasoning.  You emphasize how we need to keep the conversation 
going, but I think your emphasis begins to lose sight of the fact that 
it does matter _what_ we are talking about.  (Think of your own 
recent comments about SOL.)  Maybe we can go a little ways with 
people fielding religious reasons, but as I indicated in a post before, 
how far do you really expect us to go?  These will all be case by 
case determinations, but I can only imagine a lot of my participation 
in these conversations being polite noddings of the head.  You don't 
need to "essentialize" a thing to think it is irrelevant.  And you also, 
without being a dick (which I would think is the behavioral side of 
militant), can't be constantly inducing existential crises in your 
religious friends when talking to them (because doing that is a 
good way to get them away from using Leviticus to hide their 
homophobia).

Steve said:
I think you make a good case that if a law can only be argued on 
religious grounds that ought not be a law. But that doesn't mean that 
religious reasoning cannot be used in addition to other reasoning. I'm 
thinking of Pierce's cable. One particular weakest link argument is not 
what we should desire.

Matt:
I demur: if you accept the idea that what a law is is its explication (in 
lines of reasoning, etc.), then yes, that does mean that religious 
reasoning cannot be used.  Are you suggesting that it would be okay 
for Scalia to cite Leviticus when he overturns the ruling against Prop 
10?

Steve said:
Harris complains that bad religious beliefs are held in large part 
because they are not allowed to be held to such scrutiny.

Matt:
You mentioned this a time or two, about getting people to be more 
out in the open with their religious reasoning.  It reminds me of the 
close of Fish's The Trouble with Principle when he opines (ironically?) 
for the days when people wore racism on their sleeve.  At least you 
knew, then.  But this creates trouble for judging what possible 
progress we've been making morally all these years.  And with 
Harris' complaint, I wonder what he's thinking of.  Does he want a 
more adversarial culture than we already have?  What kind of 
scrutiny are we talking about?  Because if we are talking about 
atheists pretending to be theologians again (even if their reasoning 
about the meanings of texts are sound), then I can't really imagine 
that's a good idea.  If we are talking about atheists popping magical 
bubbles, when did that stop?  If we are talking about constantly 
interrogating everyone we know for every belief they hold, then 
that's silly practically, though the idea of promoting a Socratic 
culture of self-examination is of course the right thing.

Steve said:
While Rorty is right that some people quoting Leviticus are 
homophobes who are merely "hiding sadistic grins behind 
sanctimonious masks," others are making a sincere effort to take the 
Bible seriously and to understand what the Bible teaches about 
homosexuality.

Matt:
Yeah, I know.  But people who are sincere about understanding 
difficult texts are not people thump things (Bibles or otherwise).  
People who are making a sincere effort to understand the Bible are 
conversable, not the sanctimonious, and isn't the difficult to change 
the conversation to what's _really_ motivating an "ewww, gross" 
feeling toward gay people with the sincere because of all the other 
things they don't do from the Bible.

The trouble is actually finding sincere people, finding people who live 
with uncertainty.  Our adversaries in the arena of public discourse 
(and I mean this, now, in the general way, on TV, newpaper editorial 
pages, blogs, etc.) are generally _not_ sincere about discovering 
something about themselves.  When we fight for keeps, we fight with 
weapons that do not change during the fight.  Sincere people ready 
to have a searching conversation are rarer.

Steve said:
Like anyone who we hope to convince of anything, we will have to 
meet them where they now stand and accept at least some of their 
premises for the sake of argument. But if we don't allow religious 
premises to ever be expressed, then we never get to challenge them.

Matt:
Yeah, but if I can win on the ground that everyone can participate 
on, then I can just wait for them to die, and they'll take their 
unexpressed "real" reasons to the grave.  Most cultural change 
happens not with changing minds, but the old guard dying off.  
Perhaps you like arguing with everyone about everything more than 
I do, but I'd rather isolate sections of the conversation of humankind 
from each other for the purposes of establishing, if only slightly 
artificially, ranges of relevancy to _get things done_: we can't hash 
out _every_ conversational position that somebody thinks of on the 
Senate floor, because we need to get shit done.  There's got to be 
practical constraints.  And because of the charged and contentious 
nature of religion in the world today (as it has been since the dawn 
of humanity, in most cultures), it still strikes me as a good idea to 
keep it out of the way.  Do we really want politicians hashing out 
theological controversies?  They can hardly handle the secular stuff.  
Have you heard the bullshit that gets said about religion on TV?  Of 
course you have, but I do not see how _more_ of it is going to help 
(not so long as the rich are at the reigns of control).

Steve said:
What is anti-democratic is to try to stop the conversation. Trying to 
enforce limits on what sorts of reasons can be given (if they are 
reasons and not just appeals to authority) is to do just that.

Matt:
All I can imagine "enforcing limits" could mean is pointing out, and 
arguing for, irrelevancy of certain kinds of reasons.  Intimations that 
it is illegitimate to do this conversationally is why I've been smelling 
so much bad gas in the air.

Is it not legimitate to think that some things, no matter how reasoned 
out, are beyond the pale?

Matt