[MD] Theocracy, Secularism, and Democracy

[Steven Peterson]

Hi Matt,

I've defended Stout as well as I can, but I find your arguments pretty
convincing. I also reread Religion as a Conversation Stopper and have
a hard time finding much wrong with his arguments. I'll work on
rethinking the issue and get back to you.

Best,
Steve





On Sat, Aug 14, 2010 at 10:38 PM, Matt Kundert
<pirsigaffliction at hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> 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
>
> Moq_Discuss mailing list
> Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc.
> http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org
> Archives:
> http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/
> http://moq.org/md/archives.html
>