Author: Ophelia Benson

And on a lighter note – also a different note, which is good, since I’ve been stuck in this poke-at-religion groove for days and days now, but I can’t help it, it’s not my fault, so don’t blame me: articles keep turning up, and then comments raise good questions, and the groove just keeps getting dug deeper. I was just about ready to put the back seat under the rear wheels for traction. On a lighter and different note, as I was saying, this piece by Laurie Taylor is very amusing. It caused me to laugh quite noisily more than once.

Yes, I’ve said, with the casual blend of matiness and erudition that distinguishes media sociologists, the Sixties revolution brought about a profound change in our sexual attitudes…As a sociologist I was also in touch with many of the theoretical currents feeding into the sexual revolution. What’s more, I looked the part. I had a casual green velvet suit that put my colleagues’ leather-patched sports jackets to shame, enough uncombed hair to stuff a small sofa, and rarely appeared in public without a cigarette or a cheroot dangling from my lips. You only had to take one look at me to know that I was “into the scene”.

Cool, dude. (I have to say, I like Laurie Taylor. I like ‘Thinking Allowed,’ for one thing – love its casual blend of matiness and erudition, and the topics are quite good too. And then he’s one of the small select band of discerning people who reviewed the Dictionary (available in all good Tescos and Morrisons) – in his case in the THES. He said some unfavourable things about it, but he also quoted some entries and said they were funny, so that’s enough to make me his slave.)

I went to the back bedroom, took down the box file labelled “old photographs” and began for the first time in years to search for pictures of myself that would provide documentary evidence of my status as a fully paid up member of the Sixties revolution…How on earth had I ever come to dress in that manner? What did I think I looked like with hair that long? Why was that unlit cigarette dangling from my lips? Had I been so busy bringing about the collapse of capitalism that I couldn’t find the time to light the damn thing? And who was it who had turned me into this peculiar vainglorious being?

It was Linda.

It was Linda who forced me into absurdly tight jeans and T-shirt, who made me listen to Pink Floyd (“lie back and let it wash over you”), and rolled me my very first joint (“suck, don’t blow”)…From my new reading I learnt about the extraordinary power of the true orgasm. This was apparently nothing at all like the consummations that I had previously encountered in my dark marital bedroom. This was a spontaneous coming together of such power and energy that nobody who experienced it could ever again allow themselves to become subservient to the life-sapping routines of capitalism.

Yup – that’s what it was all right. You betcha. That’s why capitalism went away in 1968 and never came back.

She simply stopped seeing me and started hanging out with an old hippie with bad teeth and so much hair dripping off his face that he looked as if he was peering out of a yak’s arse…I’d not only dressed bizarrely but I’d also entertained some crazy ideas: the notion that sex could ever be natural and spontaneous rather than culturally constructed; the belief that good sex could tell us something about ourselves that was not revealed by such other pursuits as playing poker and eating out.

Especially if it involves humping a guy who looks like the occupant of a yak’s arse. Not worth it.

Stewart notes that a phrase in that Boston Globe article stands out.

Provocatively, Ruse argues that evolutionism has often constituted a ”religion” itself by offering ”a world picture, a story of origins, and a special place for humans,” while its proponents have been ”trying deliberately to do better than Christianity.”

Okay – and why not? Why not try to do better than Christianity? What does Christianity do well? What does it do better than anything else can? Is it even possible to decide or know that? On what grounds?

The one possibility I can think of is consolation. Religion – or Christianity, if you prefer – can do that better of its nature (as opposed to contingently, sociologically, because people already think it can, assume it can, have been told it can) because it is based on consoling fictions. That is the point – it is the fiction that is consoling. Without the fiction, there is no consolation, or it is much less effective. Personal immortality, heaven and reunion, a god who takes care of us. Other kinds of fictions on the whole don’t work that way because they’re not believed in the same way – they are recognized as fictions (except in the case of e.g. New Age, Wicca and the like, but in that case they are functioning as religions). There are two essential ingredients: belief (so novels don’t do it) and fictions (so philosophy and reflection don’t console in this particular way). Religion can console for those who believe it.

But what else? Motivation and commitment are often mentioned – and religion can work that way – but it has no monopoly there. Ideals, political hopes, loyalties, aspirations, dreams – many things can provide and strengthen motivation and commitment.

And there is nothing else. This gets to that overlapping magisteria nonsense that Steve Gould (in Ruseian vein) talked about – that ‘all is well if each sticks to its own territory’ idea. But religion doesn’t have a territory. It has no expertise – no expertise that is unique to religion rather than being held in common with other fields, as when bishops talk about ethics in ways that are obviously thoroughly influenced by contemporary, changing, secular ideas. There is no ‘special’ religious morality that’s different from secular morality. There are some ‘special’ religious rules and taboos, but they either find secular justification, or get widely and rightly ignored.

Some people like to claim that religion has a monopoly on ‘meaning.’ Well…there are two choices. Either that meaning relies on the same fictions that consolation relies on (the loving god, the afterlife), in which case religion does have a monopoly on that, but, again, on condition of believing fictions; or it doesn’t, it just relies on what we all rely on by way of meaning, in which case there is no monopoly.

We ought to draw up a little map of religious monopoly. There would be a blue patch for consolation and a purple patch for fiction-derived ‘meaning’ – and all the rest is open country.

In short the only territory religion gets to fence off and declare its own and off-limits is the fiction-illusion-supernatural-metaphysical area. If that aspect is not in play, then it has no special ‘religious’ expertise or authority or right to say hands off go away get out, at all.

G in comments brings up the question of how (and if) Michael Ruse defines ‘religion,’ so I’ve gone looking to see if I can find him doing that in articles and interviews (I don’t have his book, so looking there will have to wait). Here are a few relevant remarks.

From a recent interview – he doesn’t define it, but he does say a little about what he means by it in this context, answering the interviewer’s request to explain what he means by saying ‘the Darwin vs. Creation argument is often a battle of two religions’:

I am not saying that Darwinian theory is always religious – it is not. I am saying that often evolutionists use their science to do more than science and to give a world picture – origins, special place for humans at the top, moral directives – that we associate with religion. Creationism I argue flatly is a religion – the religion of biblical literalist, American protestant evangelicals of a right wing persuasion. Creationists deny that their position is purely religious, but I think that they do this to avoid the separation of church and state embedded in the US constitution. I suspect that many Darwinians will take issue with my claim that any part of their theorizing is religious – but I have made my case and rest it.

So what he means by it for the purposes of this discussion (in his book) is ‘to do more than science and to give a world picture – origins, special place for humans at the top, moral directives – that we associate with religion.’ Okay – that helps. Questions and objections immediately suggest themselves. ‘Origins’ is more than science? I would have thought it was science – origin of species kind of thing. And then, tending to associate things with religion – well that’s a whole big set of problems. Just for one thing, it’s often a mistake to do that. Moral directives for example can and should and do have secular justifications; ‘tending’ to associate them with religion tends to be just a bad and stupid and often harmful habit – so it doesn’t make a lot of sense to say people are doing religion when they talk about morality simply because some people still ‘tend’ to associate moral directives with religion. Does it. And finally – evolutionists give a world picture with humans at the top? They do? That’s news to me. But, it’s a little unfair to argue with the short version when I haven’t read the book. But then again – more people will see the journalistic simplifications than will read the book; journalism is influential; so in another sense it’s not unfair, or at least it needs to be done, unfair or not.

From an article in the Boston Globe:

Evolution is controversial in large part, he theorizes, because its supporters have often presented it as the basis for self-sufficient philosophies of progress and materialism, which invariably wind up in competition with religion.

Well, yes – but then anything of that kind inevitably winds up in competition with religion, doesn’t it. That’s not the fault of evolution, it’s because religion and religious people often think religion has or should have a monopoly on that kind of thing. Well that’s just too damn bad. They don’t get to have a monopoly; they used to, and they don’t any more.

Provocatively, Ruse argues that evolutionism has often constituted a ”religion” itself by offering ”a world picture, a story of origins, and a special place for humans,” while its proponents have been ”trying deliberately to do better than Christianity.”

Okay – so it appears that at least some of the time he is (implicitly or explicitly? we’ll have to read the book to find out) defining religion as something that offers a world picture, a story of origins, and a special place for humans. Well, that’s a pretty woolly definition of religion, frankly. Yes those things overlap with religion – but on the edges, not at the center; and overlapping is not the same as defining. Creationists and IDers are theists, not just people with a world picture and a story of origins and a place for humans. It just muddies the waters, as Stewart says, to pretend otherwise and then use that pretense to blame the people who don’t make truth-claims about supernatural entities for the hostility between religion and science.

Good – now by way of relief from the water-muddying of Ruse, let us turn to David Rudenstine, Dean of Cardozo Law School. At last, someone says it!

In a provocative address last week…the dean of the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law warned of a “collision course with democratic order and social unity” as politically outspoken religious leaders wield increasing influence over the nation’s public policy. Dean David Rudenstine…further suggested that U.S. jurisprudence and legal education were “very much on the defensive,” in part because strict secularism as a legal paradigm is seen by the faithful — including some at Christian law schools — as an insufficient context for policy issues such as abortion rights, homosexual marriage, stem-cell research and Darwin’s theory of evolution. Mr. Rudenstine said that America’s law schools have a social responsibility, especially at a time of religious fundamentalism, to foster reasoned debate over the facts and science of such controversial matters.

Thank you. Reasoned debate over the facts and science. Precisely.

“Faith challenges the underpinnings of legal education,” Mr. Rudenstine declared. “Faith is a willingness to accept belief in things for which we have no evidence, or which runs counter to evidence we have.” He added, “Faith does not tolerate opposing views, does not acknowledge inconvenient facts. Law schools stand in fundamental opposition to this.”

Bingo! That’s exactly it – and that’s what you’re not allowed to say. ‘Faith’ is not a virtue, ‘faith’ is not the right basis for discussion of public issues, in fact it’s exactly the wrong basis for discussion of public issues, for exactly that reason – because it’s a willingness to accept belief in things for which we have no evidence, or which runs counter to evidence we have. And it doesn’t tolerate opposing views and it doesn’t acknowledge inconvenient facts. But how often do people come right out and say that? In public, I mean. Not damn well often enough.

Barry Lynn, executive director of the Washington, D.C.-based Americans United for Separation of Church and State, was quick to associate himself with Mr. Rudenstine’s thesis…”No one expects politicians and policy-makers to divorce themselves entirely from the roots of their belief system, but in the United States, our laws have to be based on secular justifications.”

Just so. You can derive your moral views from any belief system you like, but when it comes to making actual laws, you have to give secular justifications, not religious ones. You have to come up with something more (and better) than ‘God said so.’ For one thing, ‘God’ said a lot of things, and some of them are quite disgusting.

Regent Law Dean Jeffrey A. Brauch countered, “I don’t think you can understand the historic development of law in this country if you don’t understand the role that religion has played, the role that faith and the church has played.” Much of the U.S. legal system, he said, comes from British common law, which “has a theological basis. Why is it we believe a king or a government ruler is obliged to some higher authority? It’s because there was a belief that there was a God and a higher law,” he said.

We don’t. We don’t, we don’t, we don’t.

Mr. Brauch said he believes in a “reasonable faith” as opposed to a “blind faith,” and that Regent and other religious law schools simply add spiritual dimension to academic pursuit. “Let’s say we’re talking about family law,” said Mr. Brauch. “Somebody in the class has a strong belief that a family with both a mother and father in a heterosexual marriage is better for children. I would hope that our students wouldn’t merely say, ‘That’s what I believe because it’s what I’ve always been taught,’ but that they’d look at a tremendous amount of empirical research that would show that, and then ask what that could mean for public policy.”

Well exactly, you fool! That’s what we’re saying! [takes deep breath] Look, if you look at empirical research and then ask what it could mean for public policy – that’s all we’re talking about. You’ll notice you forgot to mention your pal God there. This is our point. You don’t need it. It doesn’t add anything. You need the research and the analysis of the research and what it will mean, you don’t need God.

But of course he thinks he does. It’s sad, isn’t it – he sees the basic point, and yet he can’t take it in. Too stuck in that ‘spiritual dimension.’

But let’s hope more people will start doing a Rudenstine, and pointing out the problem with ‘faith.’