Undiplomatic Immunity
There is a discussion at Twisty Sticks of the subject we were talking about a few days ago (‘Immunity’), and will be talking about in the future – as I said, it’s one I’m curious about and would like to explore. The subject of Why Does Religion Get Special Treatment? Why does it get a blank check, a free pass, a dispensation, diplomatic immunity. Why are there special rules that apply to religion and nothing else, why does religion get to trump other concerns, why does the importance of religion outweigh the importance of other things – of other concerns, commitments, values, desires, goals.
Which raises a related question, one which probably needs answering or at least clarifying in order to think about all this. The question of what religion is. When I ask why the importance of religion outweighs the importance of other things, what do I mean by other things? What are we talking about here? What things, what kinds of things?
I think that’s part of the problem in such discussions, and maybe part of an answer to the why question. Religion is probably the ultimate example of being all things to all people. That’s part of what’s wrong with it, why it’s so irritating (and dangerous and harmful, often), why it’s often so futile and frustrating to argue about it, as Phil Mole notes in an article in ‘Skeptical Inquirer.’ Because it doesn’t have to pin itself down and limit itself, because it’s just anything and nothing. It’s a feeling, it’s morality, it’s meaning, it’s love, it’s Daddy, it’s goodness, it’s purpose, it’s community, it’s someone watching over us, it’s the intelligence of the universe, it’s Mind.
But one of the main things it is is a set of ideas and truth-claims. If it’s not that it’s not really religion, not in the normal meaning of the word (as we’ve discussed here before, at considerable length). It is institutional religion we’re talking about here, because that is the kind that gets this special treatment. It’s the big, powerful, traditional religions about which people say Well maybe we’d better let them ignore laws about humane animal slaughter or else they might burn down Leeds. (Someone did actually talk about cities in Northern England in flames, at Twisty Sticks, so I’m not exaggerating.) So what I’m wondering about is why other sets of ideas that people care a great deal about don’t get this kind of treatment. I only get more curious the more I wonder about it.
Religion, spirituality, or whatever you want to call it, seems to me to be the attempt of Minds to come to grips with the Unknown. Of course the other things we do–science, e.g.–are right up against the unknown too, but they are trying to make it known, to push back that frontier. While religion, at least the conventional (Right Hand Path) varieties, says “it is going to stay mysterious and there is nothing we can do but suck up to that god or whatever it is and hope for the best.” Now I wonder if that sort of subordinate-pack-member mentality is more conducive to irresponsibility of the sort you describe, than the idea that we are free, powerful beings.
It’s just a guess…
Your discussions “at considerable length” may have convinced you that one of the main things about religion is “a set of ideas and truth claims”, but IMO the question of immunity grows out of the individual believer’s emotional committment to the “faith of our fathers”.
An analogy I like is in language usage: “everyone bring their…”; no matter how many arguments grammarians muster that a singular noun can’t be referred to by a plural pronoun, most people will continue to use it because it’s what their parents said, it’s what their friends say, and “by golly, it just sounds right”.
Religion at this level is a matter of unthinking habit starting from childhood and pervading every aspect of life; it has become so much a part of the person’s self-definition that the thought of anyone else messing about with it sends chills down the spine. All the rational argument in the world is helpless against “You may be right, but it still feels wrong”.
And public figures are very sensitive to this level of gut response.
I am not sure that what you say and what Ophelia said are contradictory. OB seemed to be desribing religion and you were talking about whence it (and its immunity) came from. It coule be BOTH a set of Truth claims AND subject to immunity because it was handed down from generation to generation.
What should one use in place of “their”? I only ask because I am a perverted individual, and find that sort of thing interesting (and am in the middle of Steven Pinker’s “The Language Instinct” so am thinking of grammar at the moment).
KM, you state that religion “seems … to be the attempt of Minds to come to grips with the Unknown”. You are too charitable. Religion often condemns those that seek to explain the unknown, and furthemore wishes to parade a vast screen of spectral evidence from cultural memories and texts, to disguise its own dogmatic power plays. Furthemore, as you hint, Religion attempts to replace in our minds the truly unknowable with complacent rhetoric. The idea that the crippling of human consciousness is God’s will strikes me as odd; one would have thought God’s representatives, if genuine, would have us seek truth above all else…
Yes, I think what tends to unnerve me about religion is that there is no such thing as an authoritative account of any one religion. In most cases we are speaking of an accumulation of texts that are rarely unambiguous and internally consistent combined with the equally contradictory results of their evolution as traditions surrounding them have developed. To state that religious extremists have perverted a religion misses the problem that their account of a religion is in theological terms every bit as valid as that of anyone else.
Just so. Religion and religions have none of the precautionary features of other (secular) forms of inquiry. So in a sane world, that feature would make them less eligible for special treatment, whereas in fact it appears to be what makes them more so. The very irrationality of the commitment seems to be what impels everyone, even many secularists, to make allowances for it. Not really a sensible arrangement, I don’t think.
If you read David Brook’s column today in the New York Times, you will read something to make the blood REALLY boil. Apparently the civil rights movement has religion to thank, and that even if we don’t beleive in god, relgion has a lot to teach us that we won’t learn from the secular world.
In fact I think Mr Brooks puts it far worse than I ever could.
“If you believe that the separation of church and state means that people should not bring their religious values into politics, then, if Chappell is right, you have to say goodbye to the civil rights movement. It would not have succeeded as a secular force. “
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/23/opinion/23BROO.html?n=Top%2fOpinion%2fEditorials%20and%20Op%2dEd%2fOp%2dEd%2fColumnists
So apparently, religion’s special treatment IS justified. I thought The NYT was better than this.
Yes, but then it always takes a little leap of faith in its own right to take on fully what most columnists grind out…
Richard’s post:
“Yes, I think what tends to unnerve me about religion is that there is no such thing as an authoritative account of any one religion. In most cases we are speaking of an accumulation of texts that are rarely unambiguous and internally consistent combined with the equally contradictory results of their evolution as traditions surrounding them have developed. To state that religious extremists have perverted a religion misses the problem that their account of a religion is in theological terms every bit as valid as that of anyone else. “
This is right on. That’s a very succinct, very accurate way of putting it.
And this is one of the things that frustrates me to no end about the way people tend to talk about religion. The fact that people play with definitions, smuggling their personal definitions of “religion” into debates about the thornier, more varied manifestations of religion in society. This trend is the very thing that allows many people to consistently link religion with morality and meaning, when it could just as plausibly be linked to amorality and meaninglessness.
Then, there’s the further problem that the same person often conflates two distinct and contradictory definitions of religion in the same argument. Someone like Gould defines religion as philosophy, shows there is no inherent conflict between science and philosophy, and then concludes that there can be no real grounds for conflict between science and religion. The problem, of course, is that many religious folks don’t just see their religion as a philosophical system, but as a set of Truths revealed by God.
So the playing with definitions really doesn’t get us anywhere – at least not anywhere worth getting to. It’s a bit like redefining conservativism as liberalism, and liberalism as a kind of conservativism, and then claiming there are no real conflicts between liberal and conservative political beliefs. It’s just playing games with language, and refusing to seriously examine the real problems.
Phil
I agree with Phil and Richard that one root of the difficulty is that everyone has a different, personal defintion of what religion means to them, both as a practice and a way of “thinking”. That’s one of the things I was trying to say in my earlier comment, but Phil said it better.
And I share ChrisM’s response to Brooks’s comments on the civil rights movement, but for a different reason. The problem I see in the Brooks point of view is the confusion between religious values and religious arguments. If someone opposes capital punishment on religious grounds, I have no problem; if that same person uses a religious argument (“we must ban the death penalth because the Bible says vengeance is the Lord’s”); then I can’t agree. The secular arena requires secular arguments.
And by the way, the NY Times isn’t better than that. Wendy Kaminer said in that New Republic article that got such a lot of attention a few years ago (‘The Last Taboo’) (I think we have it in Flashback – if not I’d better put it there) that the Times refused to run an Op Ed of hers on atheism because it was, well, too atheist. And that’s the very kind of thing that’s behind my question, in fact.
Stephen Carter’s book The Culture of Disbelief (is that what it’s called? I think so) has a lot to do with all this. I think a hell of a lot of secular liberals read it, were stricken with guilt, and have never gotten over it. I read it and was stricken with irritation, not guilt, but I gather a lot of people did the guilt thing.
“And by the way, the NY Times isn’t better than that.”
As I am beginning to see. Bloody Nixon-Speach-Writer-Saphire is defending (albeit half-heartedly) the “under God” bit of the pledge today.
“And I share ChrisM’s response to Brooks’s comments on the civil rights movement, but for a different reason. The problem I see in the Brooks point of view is the confusion between religious values and religious arguments. “
The implication of the article was that ONLY religion could have supplied those values. Like Jesus (a bit), I hate the religion, but don’t hate the religious. I have no problem with beleivers doing good works, and them claiming the motivation for them was their faith. (Whatever double-clicks your mouse as far as I am concerned). I have a huge problem when the implication is that religion provides a better (or only) way to promote humanitarian values. ESPECIALLY given the track record of religion which has shown at least as great a capacity for anti-humanitarian actions as humanatarian.
ChrisM,
I read Brooks’s reference to the Northern white liberals and their optimistic view of human nature as a tacit admission of a non-religious source for the values of the civil rights movement. Of course, Brooks certainly appears to be capable of contradicting himself in the course of a column.
Also, note how he inserts the typical right-wing misconstrual of the non-establishment clause as applying to private citizens as well as the government.
I live in a very religious part of the South, one of what I suspect are many buckles on the Bible Belt. An awful lot of people really believe in their religion. Yesterday walking down the hall in my office building, I heard a young woman on the phone to some one and saying that the other person should really study the Bible and pray, and then the person would know what to do.
I have no idea how that might happen, but if it makes people feel better, I cannot be ugly about it to them. I try to remember that for many decent people, religion is the thing that makes their lives bearable, just like that young woman and her friend.
When people import religious views into the political arena, it is better to try to get them to see the difference between their professed religious views and their politics. And even there, if we assume that people are acting in good faith when they argue for connections, then we do not assault them about the religion because it is so personal, and the beliefs are so important to self-definition, that it just wouldn’t be nice.