MORE BRIGHT THOUGHTS: Reading the exchange between Dennett and Michael Rea, some more thoughts: No matter what the particular textual evidence says about whether Dennett truly thinks religious persons belong in a zoo, what comes across is that Dennett wants religion defanged, tamed, diminished, when it comes to the public sphere. It’s hard not to feel that Dennett believes that religious people are backwards, and that apart from a few nice cultural contributions (pretty churches, etc.) their overall influence has been baleful, both in terms of advancing knowledge and in advancing morals, and that therefore they have no contribution, no per se religious contribution, to make to civic life.

Whatever the case for not advancing knowledge, one might think that the case for advancing morals by religious persons has some merit, and so the case against banning them in the public sphere is weak. Here we make the obligatory reference to the civil rights movement, and Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. But what of the overall record? There was, of course, religious backing to slavery. And when one thinks about the major progressive moments, such as women’s rights, gay rights, and animal rights – the influence of religion in these areas amounts to a negative, at least one might plausibly suppose. On the other hand, there’s the church’s contribution to social justice and (this is either a plus or a minus, depending on where you stand) the pro-life movement. It seems important to figure out just in what ways and to what degrees religion has been a benefit to society; because too often, it seems that religious persons believe it obviously is a benefit, and non-religious people believe it obviously isn’t (or at least is a wash). We need a more pragmatic perspective.

But the deeper point raised by what Dennett says is: is there any other way a liberal democrat (small “l” and small “d”) should look at religious belief, or at least the public expression of religious belief, in any other way than just a club with a really long history? Stephen Carter, in a number of his recent books (Culture of Dissent, God’s Name in Vain, etc.), plugs for religion because he believes that’s the only real source in American society for pushing people away from their own selfish desires, and towards higher causes. This may be contingently true in America, though reflecting on the causes mentioned above (women’s rights, gay rights, and animal rights), it seems that there are also secular, moral sources in American civic life. So why should religious belief be special? I’m torn here, because I want to resist Dennett’s explicit condescension towards religion (there’s nothing true in it, but hey, it’s made some neat cultural contributions), but at the same time feel that to allow religious belief any greater role in public life is at best unwarranted and at worst dangerous.

I confess to holding on to (what I’ll call) a “theological instrumentalism”: I tend to like it when priests and pastors give sermons on social justice and denounce the wealthy as ignoring God’s will and not recognizing Jesus among the least of us. But I tend not to like it when religious people use theological and scriptural arguments to defend certain ideas about the role of women, or the practices of gays, etc. So I’m happy to allow public invocation of God in the former case, but reluctant about it in the latter case. My excuse for this (if I have one, which I’m not sure I do), is that those theological arguments which also have good secular arguments can satisfy the “Rawlsian proviso” which says, roughly, that you can invoke God in political life, so long as after a suitable period of time (Rawls notoriously doesn’t say how long this is) you can explain in “public” terms why your position is justified. Because I believe there are good, secular arguments for social justice, but not for condemning homosexuality, I’m more tolerate of arguments for the former than for the latter cause. But at the same time, theological instrumentalism is a ploy only a secularist can use – the religious believer won’t be able, or willing, to make the distinction between God’s causes which are acceptable and which aren’t: because what counts as acceptable is what God says is acceptable, not what is acceptable according to liberal, secular, morality.

The deeply troubling aspect of debates like the one between Dennett and Rea is that they raise the specter that liberalism (and its attendant reliance on “reasons”) is just another faith, rather than a neutral or impartial playing field on which competing interests and groups can strive to reach some moral consensus. I think we are good to be rid of the idea the liberalism is somehow neutral, that it doesn’t embody certain moral principles – because it clearly does. The advantage of liberalism, if it is an advantage, is that it seems to allow a wider breadth of diverse viewpoints, to accept a great degree of religious and moral pluralism, while nevertheless staying true to its underlying principles. To which the fundamentalist might reply: “Yeah, and that just gives more room for false beliefs to take hold. And when you say liberalism can accommodate a wide variety of religious views, what you really mean is that it can tolerate Unitarians.” To which the liberal will reply that the fundamentalist is being “unreasonable.” And so it goes.

- posted by Chad @ Sunday, July 20, 2003