MaxedOutMama
Saturday, November 20, 2004
Who are we?
I have been trying to work my way toward adding something to the raging debate between Nato and Lancelot Finn on civic virtue, and I felt honored when Lancelot commented on one of my posts that he saw some sort of connection. But work has been wild, and I have to go shopping and do housework (civic virtues, I tell you) as well as work this weekend, so I'm not going to get to add my two cents to this discussion. Instead I'm going to refer you to it with a short introduction. They are two profoundly literate individuals, and aside from the real substance of the debate, they're both a pleasure and an education to read. I find myself agreeing with both of them on a lot of points, and I'm not sure they're not converging to a basic agreement either. In his most recent post on the subject, Nato said
"I mean, if some atheist parent sends her child to a school and it "makes" her child a theist, then perhaps the child found the school's case for theism more convincing than the parent's case against it. The marketplace of ideas doesn't always spread the truth, but it's the best mechanism we've got."
I don't think Lancelot would disagree about the marketplace of ideas. I certainly don't. What Lancelot does disagree with is a sort of official exclusion of religious ideas from that marketplace, of the type I was trying to describe in several prior posts. Nato doesn't see the problem or the liklihood of that occurring.
The basic argument started when Lancelot opined that the basic virtues upon which secular humanistic states depend for their existence stemmed to some extent from the Christian belief that faith must be voluntary, and therefore he looks with some suspicion upon the ability of a society that essentially bans the exercise of religious thought to sustain itself as a free society. Lancelot suspects that all such societies will eventually wind up imposing an essentially totalitarian social dogma of their own, asking "Why let a belief system you think is absurd continue to exist, after all?"
Nato hotly demurred (see the comments on the link above), saying "As for 'secularized culture,' the very term implies something forced and invasive - something that can only happen under authoritarian regimes. Secular states, on the other hand, are very much associated with democratic freedom."
The argument continues in this post of Lancelot Finn's, and this post of Nato's. Lancelot Finn picks up on the schooling issue, and his profoundly worthy opponent Nato responds. By this time I was having so much intellectual fun that I think a Puritan would have regarded it as an immoral diversion from the recommended concentration upon my own sins, so naturally I was amorally delighted to read Lancelot's post on atheism and tolerance, concluding with the words "It is because America is a Christian country that I expect to remain free." The battle continues in the comments, and you don't want to miss Nato's comment ending "But because America has deeply entrenched expectations of civil-liberties, I expect it to steadily free itself." Not surprisingly, Lancelot was moved to contemplate the nature of secular democratic states, and more secularist reflections, to which Nato responded with a cheerful boiling of non-secularist blood.
This debate has not ended and I suspect it will not. The only real contribution I have to make is with the observation that no genuinely theocratic state I have ever known has truly succeeded, but that somehow the combination of disestablishment of religion at the very highest of levels, combined with civic tolerance of vibrant and diverse religions has produced these two thoughtful men, both of whom exemplify real civic virtue. I think the reason theocracies don't work is because they must inevitably suppress that "marketplace of ideas" that Nato wishes to preserve. Religious beliefs are not, in general, unthinking or unevolved, and so they also qualify as ideas.
To me the EU does seem to be evolving toward a sort of secular doctrine that could end up being a type of theocracy of the officially tolerated combined with a genuine suppression of what is not comfortable. With Lancelot Finn, I worry that it may come to naught because in the end it has no firm foundation. With Nato and with Thomas Sowell, I plead for the preservation of the marketplace of ideas and cultures, conducted within a civic tradition respecting thought, rationality, kindness, pragmatism and freedom.
Jesus was asked by his disciples if there would be prophets after him, and he told them there would be prophets both false and true. When they asked him how they would be able to tell the difference, he answered that they could be known by their fruits - by watching how their doctrines turned out in practice. It is certainly possible for someone who has no knowledge of any real religious teaching to conclude that religion is mere superstition. It is very possible that such a person could logically and rationally come to the conclusion that such superstition should be eradicated from society.
I am sure that God exists, and I'm sure that the God of Islam, Judaism and Christianity is that God which does exist. I don't know enough about other religious traditions to rule on whether their gods are creatures of man's conception or not. I also believe strongly in science and the benefits of scientific habits of thought. The commonality between my strong reliance on both my faith and upon the scientific tradition is that both paths have outward checkpoints. Scientific hypotheses may be tested against reality, and religious precepts may be tested against their results in practice. I reached my faith not by revelation but by a process of experimentation, and fell into faith as an accidental byproduct of experimenting with my own life by attempting to follow the practical precepts of the Jesus of the New Testament.
The question is, how may the secular doctrines of society be tested? In essence, the "good of society" or the "good of the greatest number" is always a subjective measure - an unknown quantity. In chasing this unknown and essentially unknowable quantity is it not possible to fall into a self-referential circle? I must ask myself if the society which can feel it right to exclude any Jews bearing identifiable marks of their Jewishness from a march commemorating Kristallnacht - a pogram aimed at eliminating Jews from German society - has not lost any capacity for meaningful self-criticism?. With my entire being I assent to Rabbi Cooper's protest:
"Rabbi Cooper continued, "Mr. Ambassador, the Simon Wiesenthal Center protests in the strongest terms possible this outrageous, hypocritical and ominous development. Can one even imagine a commemoration of a solemn anniversary of the Shoah that itself is Judenrein? As the largest human rights NGO devoted to the memory and the lessons of the Nazi Holocaust, I can only urge Norwegians not to bother to shed tears for dead Jews if they show no respect for live Jews," Cooper concluded."
Whatever road led to the Oslo march, I don't want to walk down it. I regard both Nato and Lancelot Finn as allies in that struggle.
"I mean, if some atheist parent sends her child to a school and it "makes" her child a theist, then perhaps the child found the school's case for theism more convincing than the parent's case against it. The marketplace of ideas doesn't always spread the truth, but it's the best mechanism we've got."
I don't think Lancelot would disagree about the marketplace of ideas. I certainly don't. What Lancelot does disagree with is a sort of official exclusion of religious ideas from that marketplace, of the type I was trying to describe in several prior posts. Nato doesn't see the problem or the liklihood of that occurring.
The basic argument started when Lancelot opined that the basic virtues upon which secular humanistic states depend for their existence stemmed to some extent from the Christian belief that faith must be voluntary, and therefore he looks with some suspicion upon the ability of a society that essentially bans the exercise of religious thought to sustain itself as a free society. Lancelot suspects that all such societies will eventually wind up imposing an essentially totalitarian social dogma of their own, asking "Why let a belief system you think is absurd continue to exist, after all?"
Nato hotly demurred (see the comments on the link above), saying "As for 'secularized culture,' the very term implies something forced and invasive - something that can only happen under authoritarian regimes. Secular states, on the other hand, are very much associated with democratic freedom."
The argument continues in this post of Lancelot Finn's, and this post of Nato's. Lancelot Finn picks up on the schooling issue, and his profoundly worthy opponent Nato responds. By this time I was having so much intellectual fun that I think a Puritan would have regarded it as an immoral diversion from the recommended concentration upon my own sins, so naturally I was amorally delighted to read Lancelot's post on atheism and tolerance, concluding with the words "It is because America is a Christian country that I expect to remain free." The battle continues in the comments, and you don't want to miss Nato's comment ending "But because America has deeply entrenched expectations of civil-liberties, I expect it to steadily free itself." Not surprisingly, Lancelot was moved to contemplate the nature of secular democratic states, and more secularist reflections, to which Nato responded with a cheerful boiling of non-secularist blood.
This debate has not ended and I suspect it will not. The only real contribution I have to make is with the observation that no genuinely theocratic state I have ever known has truly succeeded, but that somehow the combination of disestablishment of religion at the very highest of levels, combined with civic tolerance of vibrant and diverse religions has produced these two thoughtful men, both of whom exemplify real civic virtue. I think the reason theocracies don't work is because they must inevitably suppress that "marketplace of ideas" that Nato wishes to preserve. Religious beliefs are not, in general, unthinking or unevolved, and so they also qualify as ideas.
To me the EU does seem to be evolving toward a sort of secular doctrine that could end up being a type of theocracy of the officially tolerated combined with a genuine suppression of what is not comfortable. With Lancelot Finn, I worry that it may come to naught because in the end it has no firm foundation. With Nato and with Thomas Sowell, I plead for the preservation of the marketplace of ideas and cultures, conducted within a civic tradition respecting thought, rationality, kindness, pragmatism and freedom.
Jesus was asked by his disciples if there would be prophets after him, and he told them there would be prophets both false and true. When they asked him how they would be able to tell the difference, he answered that they could be known by their fruits - by watching how their doctrines turned out in practice. It is certainly possible for someone who has no knowledge of any real religious teaching to conclude that religion is mere superstition. It is very possible that such a person could logically and rationally come to the conclusion that such superstition should be eradicated from society.
I am sure that God exists, and I'm sure that the God of Islam, Judaism and Christianity is that God which does exist. I don't know enough about other religious traditions to rule on whether their gods are creatures of man's conception or not. I also believe strongly in science and the benefits of scientific habits of thought. The commonality between my strong reliance on both my faith and upon the scientific tradition is that both paths have outward checkpoints. Scientific hypotheses may be tested against reality, and religious precepts may be tested against their results in practice. I reached my faith not by revelation but by a process of experimentation, and fell into faith as an accidental byproduct of experimenting with my own life by attempting to follow the practical precepts of the Jesus of the New Testament.
The question is, how may the secular doctrines of society be tested? In essence, the "good of society" or the "good of the greatest number" is always a subjective measure - an unknown quantity. In chasing this unknown and essentially unknowable quantity is it not possible to fall into a self-referential circle? I must ask myself if the society which can feel it right to exclude any Jews bearing identifiable marks of their Jewishness from a march commemorating Kristallnacht - a pogram aimed at eliminating Jews from German society - has not lost any capacity for meaningful self-criticism?. With my entire being I assent to Rabbi Cooper's protest:
"Rabbi Cooper continued, "Mr. Ambassador, the Simon Wiesenthal Center protests in the strongest terms possible this outrageous, hypocritical and ominous development. Can one even imagine a commemoration of a solemn anniversary of the Shoah that itself is Judenrein? As the largest human rights NGO devoted to the memory and the lessons of the Nazi Holocaust, I can only urge Norwegians not to bother to shed tears for dead Jews if they show no respect for live Jews," Cooper concluded."
Whatever road led to the Oslo march, I don't want to walk down it. I regard both Nato and Lancelot Finn as allies in that struggle.
Comments:
<< Home
Regarding the exclusion of all things Jewish from the commemoration. I think this is not directed, broadly speaking, against signs of a religion so much as it is an appallingly heavy-handed attempt to prevent the march from becoming an embarrassing pro-Israel rally. This somewhat mitigates the flavor of intentionally-forced secularization, but it in no way helps with the heaping helping of government-enforced secularist insensitivity.
Further note: I attended the Museum of Tolerance the day before I shipped off to the Army. I found it very moving and worthwhile, but two flies landed in my ointment. The lesser landed during a film discussing, amongst other things, the status of refugees around the world. Palestinians were mentioned with some sympathy but otherwise their situation received none of the analyis offered for those of other dispossessed populations. Likely I would have forgotten that entirely if it's much larger brother hadn't smacked into my eye when I happened across a pamphlet the MoT distributed filled with blatant anti-Palestinian propaganda. I doubt the claims were false, but the detailed Palestinian provocations were in no way balanced by anything done by Israelis. It shattered my perception of the Simon Wiesenthal Center's neutrality.
None of which moderates what I said in my previous comment, but rather helps explain why I construe Norway's apprehensions in the way I do.
Post a Comment
None of which moderates what I said in my previous comment, but rather helps explain why I construe Norway's apprehensions in the way I do.
<< Home
