Religious Themes
So I leave the blog alone for a day, and long, long comments bust out. I guess that posting on religion is the way to get responses.
Maybe a few quick responses to Tenaciousmcd's extremely thoughtful comments are in order. It is interesting that the commercialization of Christmas is less and less an issue, a point tmcd raises. To the extent that anyone complains about the commecialization or materialization of Christmas, it tends to come, today, from the "live simply" types, who tend not to be orthodox Christians. Most of these people I have known have been deeply spiritual, but not necessarily Christian in a traditional sense. This raises the question of New Age-y spirituality, a subject that tmcd also touches on when he notes the creedal minimalism of most American religion. Creedal minimalism is part of the answer here, in that the limited number of beliefs one must hold to be part of the "religious" camp is small enough to make coooperation against a common enemy (the dreaded secular left) possible.
What are the elements of that creed? The minimum set of beliefs to make one part of the religious as against the irreligious?
Btw, iumike also points out that political scientists are, well, concerned if not obsessed with the evolution of cooperation in competitive or at least contentious environments. But it's interesting that political scientists tend to take an external perspective on this question. The leading political science explanations don't really posit what the actors themselves believe to be moral, or their obligations. So many disciplines or fields of inquiry, so many differing perspectives on the same phenomena.
posted by Number Three @ 8:07 AM
5 Comments:
You raise a good question here: what exactly are the minimal requirements to qualify as "religious" in today's non-creedal America? I think there are really two: 1)you profess to believe in God; and 2)you at least lean Republican on cultural issues (abortion, gay rights, etc.). The sign of being VERY religious is that you strongly support the GOP on BOTH cultural and economic issues.
Now this may not make much logical sense since the major criterion (the second) is not religious at all. But what I would suggest is that, precisely due to the lack of natural common ground among believers of disparate faiths, politics has filled the gap, and the GOP has rushed to offer a unifying political content to vouch for "religious" credibility. Reagan was obviously a pioneer at this: vaguely Christian, hated going to church, based more practical decisions on his wife's astrology than on biblical principle, but was brilliant at extending symbolic recognition to evangelicals ("You can't endorse me, but I endorse you!"). Bush has smartly extended this, despite his lack of serious Christian ceredentials. He figured out that he could market his life story as one of sin and redemption, although he only hints at the sin (unlike Augustine, Christian sinners now only confess the conversion, not the sin--perfect for today's theocratic triumphalism) while riding hard on the supposed redemption, which conveniently coincided with his entering far-right politics. (I think this partly explains why my 90-year old granny, who swears by AA, has her apartment plastered with pics of W as a kind of Xian pin-up, a cross between Jesus and Scott Baio.)
What other criteria could there be? It can't be Jesus, because orthodox Jews are in da club, as were Islamic fundies prior to 9/11 (when Norquist aggressively courted them for W's 2000 election). And it can't be monotheism, because Mormons are included, although I guess we'll find out how exactly how much if Mitt Romney runs for Pres. On paper and film, he's a star and dwarfs the field , except for McCain and Rudy G., whose political heresies make them less palatable to the party establishment. But that's just the point. At least in the early running, JM and RG look like bigger long shots than MR b/c their political moderation makes them more heretical than the latter's creedal exoticism.
On another issue, I want to press you on the Thrasymachus point from two posts ago. Is his argument really so different from Nietzsche's: justice is an illusion created by the powerful to support their interests? I.e., moral values are merely effects of power relations.
We tend to rationalize our behavior, often retroactively, so self-interest does not really lead to a "moral universe." Of course, FN would challenge the idea that it was really even a matter of "self"-interest, since power has its own momentum that transcends individual ends, thus explaining the phenomenon of violent and even seemingly irrational self-sacrifice, as individuals embrace causes that manufacture a sense of purpose where none exists in nature. In the Republic, Glaucon domesticates this argument about how "justice cuts against the grain," by turning into a social contract theory, anticipating Hobbes and Locke. So this is not just a "sociopathic" theory--it is a highly plausible and compelling one that has had wide historical currency. But it also has some disturbing consequences, as Glaucon himself points out with the Gyges' ring story. Given the opportunity, when no one is looking, you should openly disregard "moral" precepts b/c they're nothing more than social conventions designed for purely instrumental purposes (rewarding you for not harming others, which you would enjoy, by granting you a good public reputation). Realistically, this seems to be the way that a large portion of society operates--note the current corruption woes of the holier-than-thou GOP. David Callahan's recent book, The Cheating Culture, documents more everyday instances, and we might recall that Plato describes the "oligarchy" as the kind of regime where the Gyges mentality predominates: rich and poor are both criminal classes, disobeying social norms whenever they think they can get away with it.
The religionist argument then goes something like this: if you are a consistent secularist, you cannot really avoid the conclusions from Thrasymachus, Glaucon, Hobbes, and Nietzsche that "morals" are something we do as a power-play when others are watching. If you actually buy into the rules and internalize them, even when you wouldn't get caught for disobeying, this reflects your weakness not your virtue. (Rorty would just be a sentimental bourgeois here, lacking self-reflection.) By contrast, accepting religion and a divinely oriented universe is a way of protesting against the power-based materialism that otherwise seems to characterize daily human life. Life is essentially moral, so those who disobey moral precepts do so at the cost of their own souls. The question is ultimately which set of explanatory hypotheses better explains the human condition. Is power or morality the more essential human experience? As always, I've run a bit long, but I'll close by referring to an excellent book on the place of moral consciousnes in human life: Paul Ricouer's The Symbolism of Evil. In a very Xian way, PR reads the problem of evil as key to understanding human behavior, and does a remarkable job of showing how culture emerges from rival answers to the phenomena of violence, guilt, etc. Susan Nieman's recent book on evil is also great, although I haven't ever quite finished it.
Curat, "Happy Holidays" and welcome back to the debate, buddy! I had thought you might have slunk back into the Fox News fever-swamp, so angst-ridden about the leftification of X-Mas that you couldn't poke your head outside to sniff the brisk winter air. I thought I smelled your arrival, but chalked it up to the stench coming from RNC offices in DC.
Thanks, Frances, for making the crucial point on the GOP and race. I would only add that most of the racist Southern Dems, such as Strom Thurmond, started bolting to the GOP in the 1960s, responding to the open invite from Goldwater, Nixon, and finally Reagan. In the North, "Reagan Democrat" may have meant ethnic Italians or Irish worried about abortion (and affirmative action), but in the South, where I have lived my entire life, it meant "whites who resent black progress and power." Meanwhile, the Dems may have been the party of Southern racism for a century, but they made their peace on the issue and paid the price for it. It wasn't only LBJ, either. FDR, Truman, JFK, Carter, and Clinton all took steps to bridge the American racial divide in ways that helped the nation more than the party. That said, I do not consider George W. a biggot or racist. Although I think he's the worst president in U.S. history, his racial record has been decent--I'd even say the best of any modern GOPper--and I give him credit for preventing serious backlash against American Muslims after 9/11. But many in your party (e.g., Trent "Go Strom '48" Lott, Rush "bone-in-his-nose" Limbaugh) never picked up those talking points.
And thanks, Curat, for proving my point on the current political definition of "religiosity" by assuming that since I'm a Democrat I can't actually be a religious believer. By the way, you seem to have forgotten that you lost the debate over the Bill of Rights. Amendments 4-8 are 5 of 10, not 4, they DO take up the most clause space, and your side still refuses to recongize the existence of the 9th amendment, so my claim stands (your silly point about not counting #7 noted and ignored). Finally, while it may be true that you can't know if some books are great until you've finished them (I'm guessing that your reading list includes Bible-themed coloring books, Tom Clancy, Ann Coulter, and maybe the Protocols of the Elders of Zion), academic books, the kind that express what we in the biz call "ideas," need not always be finished to reveal their merit. Luckily, I've read "the bulk of" that book.
So long, Curat, and a "Happy Kwanzaa" to you and yours.
So let me see if, "tard" that I am, I can figure out Curat's little math puzzle. Roughly 95% of Americans profess some religious belief and 85% claim to be some form of Christian. Meanwhile, based on recent national elections, half the population votes for the Democrats for President and Congress. And yet, all Democrats are God-hating lefty atheists. Of course, it all adds up! Good thing your boys are running the federal budget, Curat, we'll have surpluses as far as the eye can see.
I am puzzled, however, by your argment of "moral equivalence" in the parties' stands on race: Team A did something wrong, Team B did something wrong, let's pretend it's all the same. Democratic racism that largely ended 40 years ago deserves just as much blame today as GOP racism for the last 40 years. So, the corruption in DC really IS non-partisan, even if we catch 95% Republicans. So, Bush really IS like Stalin because both support torture gulags. Aha! Now I think I like this.
Finally, on the last issue you raise, I'm interested in your defense of "intelligent design" theory. When you say that, do you mean (a) the vague Xian belief, based of faith, that God is intelligent and created the universe; (b) the crackpot pseudo-scientific theories advanced by the Discovery Institute about "irreducible complexity," etc.; or (c) a literal 6 day creation where we have solar days before we have a sun? Just curious.
For my part, I accept (a) but would not dare to call it "science" or suggest it ought to be taught as such in public schools. As I'm sure you know, (b) has its origins at least partly in philosophic deism, rather than Xianity, and it was pretty savagely critiqued by Hume and Kant, the latter of whom, was, it turns out, a Christian (and possibly queer, but we liberals don't think God will hold that against him). Kant learned a good bit from the agnostic Hume, an encouraging fact. One mark of liberal Christians is that we tend not to see scientists and rationalists as enemies, and I would add that, for me at least, truth-seekers are always welcome in a good debate, which is why I tend to value Emery's and Frances's opinions much more than those of dimwitted, anti-intellectual political ideologues who think that their profession of Christianity is some kind of platinum card with special membership privileges, a "get out of jail free" card for any old right-wing hack who thinks God flies the fetus and the flag and that Jesus loved stompin' the hippies. Not that I have anyone in particular in mind, you know.
Happy Holidays.
Actually, I don't believe I ever actually called you "anti-intellectual," Curat, since I was speaking generally, not ad hominem. Since you profess to be a stickler on matters of language--a "humanities droogie," whatever the heck that is--I thought you might have picked that up. I even included a disclaimer in case you weren't the genius you're always claiming to be.
But you seem to have recognized something resembling yourself in my comments, so let's just assume, for the sake of argument, that I did mean YOU, specifically. I have no idea how I, or anyone for that matter, could have gotten the idea that you're anti-intellectual (or even a right-wing political hack). It couldn't have anything to do with your complete inability to engage the substantive points of an argument, your obsessive fetishizing of minor and usually irrelevant linguistic points, your knee-jerk tendency to attack first and think later, or the fact that in the half dozen or so posts I've read from you you have yet to express an interesting thought or depart from the most obvious points of right-wing demagoguery. No, it must be something else altogether. But I'm obviously not as smart as you are, so if YOU can think of what it is that makes YOU think that I was describing YOU, oh wise one, as "anti-intellectual," let me know.
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