Author: Ophelia Benson

More on that Moyers-Nussbaum interview. As always when Nussbaum talks about religion, there are squashy places. The interview is like a pear with a lot of bruised spots.

[W]hat I love are [Roger Williams’s] metaphors for the way that freedom is taken away. I mean, there are two metaphors. One is the imprisonment of the soul. And the other, even deeper, is the rape of the soul. And he keeps saying it’s soul rape when people try to get people to believe something that they don’t really believe. So the only way we can avoid doing that kind of violence to conscience is to give it lots of space to unfold itself. Not just [not] persecuting people, but really bending over backwards to be sensitive to their religious needs.

I don’t think that’s true – depending on what she means by trying ‘to get people to believe something that they don’t really believe.’ If she means trying to force people to believe something by pure command, then – well, then I still don’t agree, but I disagree less than I do with the alternative. I agree that that does a kind of violence to people’s mental lives (I wouldn’t call it ‘conscience’ because I think Nussbaum is using conscience to mean religious belief, which is a stealthy way of privileging religion), but I don’t agree that bending over backwards is the only way we can avoid it; we can just not try to force people to believe something by pure command. But if by trying ‘to get people to believe something that they don’t really believe’ she means argument of any kind, then I don’t think that does do violence to people’s mental lives, or their consciences, and I don’t believe there’s any need to avoid doing that. I’m afraid she might mean that – which would be depressing.

[W]hat our whole history has shown is…that people can get along together and respect one another, even though they have differences about religion, because they can recognize a common moral ground to stand on. They can recognize values like honesty, social justice, and so on.

Well, yes and no. Or up to a point. Or sometimes but it depends. In short, that’s too easy. Some people can sometimes get along together because they can recognize a common moral ground – but not all people and not always. ‘Social justice’ for instance – people disagree about what social justice is, and lots of people are convinced it means nothing but taking all their money away and giving it to coke-addled women with 57 children, so that they hate the very sound of it. The people at Yearning for Zion ranch don’t recognize a common moral ground with people like, say, me. (And the history of the US isn’t entirely one of getting along, I have to say. A little spat called The Civil War comes to mind. So does slavery, so does the genocidal policy toward Native Americans, so do various other quarrelsome moments.)

And George Washington wrote a letter to the Quakers saying, “I assure you that the conscientious scruples of all men should be treated with the greatest delicacy and tenderness.” And what he meant is you’re not going to have to serve in the military. And I respect that. And unless there’s a public emergency, we’re just not going to do that kind of violence to your conscience. So, I think we have understood that lesson.

But that won’t do as a lesson, because that example won’t do as a general principle, because it’s an easy one. It’s no good trying to make a case for policy X by offering the easy examples and ignoring the hard ones. It’s no good at all, because the problems don’t arise with the easy examples, they arise with the hard ones, so citing the former and ignoring the latter is entirely the wrong thing to do. It’s like saying ‘the bridge is strong enough because look, this bicycle made it across,’ when cars and trucks and buses are also going to be crossing the bridge.

In short it’s a cheat. The problem is, the Quaker scruple is much too easy to ‘respect.’ Most people do understand and respect and sympathize with conscientious scruples about killing people, even if they don’t agree with particular instantiations of them. But that is not the case with all religious ‘scruples’, to put it mildly. Saudi authorities have ‘scruples’ about allowing women to do almost anything without written permission from a male guardian. I don’t respect that. I don’t think it should be treated with any delicacy and tenderness at all; I think it should be reviled. The Vatican has ‘scruples’ about condoms which cause it to forbid all Catholics to use them, which to the extent that it is obeyed will inevitably cause the deaths of countless women and children. I feel absolutely no need to treat that stupid, irrational, ill-founded ‘scruple’ with delicacy and tenderness. I think it’s vicious, obstinate, and murderous.

And the fact that Nussbaum picked an easy example instead of a hard one tips her hand, because if she picks an example that atheists and secularists can understand just as well as theists can, then she’s not really talking about religious scruples at all, she’s just talking about scruples. What is specifically religious about scruples against killing people? Nothing. So what does religion add to the scruples that mean we should treat them with the greatest delicacy and tenderness? Nothing. At least nothing that I can think of – do tell me if you can think of any.

No, I think it’s one or the other but not both, whereas Nussbaum wants to pretend it can be both. I think it’s either a good scruple whether you’re religious or not, or it’s a bad scruple. I can’t think of any that are good scruples that are also necessarily religious. Can you?

Do atheists crave a replacement for church?

Atheism’s great awakening is in need of a doctrine. “People perceive us as only rejecting things,” says Ken Bronstein, the president of a local group called New York City Atheists. “Everybody wants to know, ‘Okay, you’re an atheist, now what?’”

Nah, thanks – I’m not in need of a doctrine. In fact the very idea is kind of…how shall I say…idiotic? Part of the point of being an atheist is not having to sign up to a ‘doctrine.’ It’s not a matter of thinking those other doctrines are no fun but our doctrine is just the ticket. It’s a matter of not liking doctrines in the first place.

The most successful movements in history, after all—Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, etc.—all have creeds, cathedrals, schools, hierarchies, rituals, money, clerics, and some version of a heavenly afterlife.

Yes…but atheists don’t want creeds, hierarchies, clerics, or fairy tales about the afterlife. I’m down with pretty buildings, schools are good, some rituals are okay if I always have a right of refusal, money is just fine if anyone wants to give me some, but the rest of it is a good deal too churchy for me, thanks.

The article goes on to give a toe-curling picture of pseudo-church (Secular Jewish church; go figure) that illustrates just why the idea is so unappealing. Singing secular hymns…noooooo thank you.

When Tim Gorski, a Texas physician, approached Paul Kurtz, an influential atheist who now chairs the Center for Inquiry, an atheist think tank, about his plans to start the North Texas Church of Freethought in the nineties, Kurtz discouraged him, on the grounds that atheists don’t need church.

Just so. Tim Gorski should have started an atheist think tank, instead. Did I ever tell you about the library at the Center for Inquiry? Biggest library of free thought in the country, or the world, or something. I liked to wander around it drooling slightly.

Dennett sees value in atheism’s great awakening, in the energy and money that come from organizing, but he counsels caution. “The last thing atheists want to see is their rational set of ideas yoked up with the trappings of a religion,” he says. “We think we can do without that.”

Although, as I mentioned, money and pretty buildings are always gratefully accepted if offered.

“In the larger war against supernaturalism, frankly, it doesn’t help to fraternize with the enemy,” [Dawkins] says.

Fraternize with or imitate.

Martha Nussbaum talks to Bill Moyers.

[I]f you look into the religions, they have this deep idea of human dignity and the source of dignity being conscience. This capacity for searching for the meaning of life. And that leads us directly to the idea of respect. Because if conscience is this deep and valuable source of searching for meaning, then we all have it whether we’re agreeing or disagreeing. And we all ought to respect it and respect it equally in one another.

Hmm. I would say, as usual, it depends what kind of ‘respect’ is meant. There are, as usual, different possible levels of respect – recognition respect, substantive respect, and so on. In one way I agree with that (and so, it might surprise many people to know, does that notorious ‘fundamentalist’ atheist Richard Dawkins): I do respect the search for meaning and related projects, I do respect the desire for something more than the purely greedy or trivial or selfish. In another way I’m not sure I do agree with it – though I’m not sure enough that this really is another way to say flatly that I don’t agree with it. I respect the search for meaning, but then my respect goes wobbly if the search is carried on with the wrong equipment, or with self-imposed handicaps, or if it’s declared successful too early. My respect thins out to the vanishing point when the idea boils down to saying ‘people crave meaning therefore God exists’ or ‘people crave meaning therefore it is a crime to say there is no reason to think God exists and any old lies are okay to tell about people who commit that crime.’ Nussbaum doesn’t mean that, obviously; I suppose I’m just registering some caution about the idea because a lot of very vehement and inaccurate critics of ‘new’ atheism do resort to the ‘search for meaning’ defense in just that vituperative way.

Moyers later points out that many conservative Christians believe that ‘without a belief in a supreme being, a person, an atheist, can’t be a moral agent.’

I know they think that. But I think they really should look more closely at the ethical reasoning of people who are agnostics and atheists. And I think it’s obvious that lots and lots of people in this country are– are deeply ethical, do have a sense of the ethically obligatory and of the depth and real requirement of ethical norms, while not connecting that to a divine source.

Yes, I think they should too, but I’m not very optimistic that they will. But I would certainly be pleased if they did, and if Nussbaum’s book gets some of them to do that, very good.