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One of the most influential books for me in trying to understand how the American system has operated in relation to “religious freedom” is Winnifred Fallers Sullivan’s The Impossibility of Religious Freedom. A lawyer, she recounts how the legal framework of balancing religious freedom and the conformity to law expected by the state arose in the United States in the context of a particular Protestant confessional framework. More precisely, the exact purview of religion was delimited in such a way as to be congenial with the cultural expectations of Anglo-American Protestantism, and what that implied as to the shape of what a “religion” was. Religious traditions in earlier centuries which did not conform to these outlines were subject to cultural censure, or even repression (for example, see Catholicism and American Freedom: A History). Once religious traditions such as Judaism and Catholicism conformed to the normative template of American Protestantism (e.g., self-identity as a congregation of individuals rather than an expression of corporate collective consciousness), tolerance and religious freedom were provided on a liberal basis. In The Impossibility of Religious Freedom the author argues that the emergence of religious groups which have a different conception of what it means to be religious, for example, emphasizing particular practices rather than creeds, is again challenging the ability of authorities to balance the need for conformity to universal laws and the particularities of religious identity.
It strikes me that the period between 1990 and 2010 was peculiar in the history of the United States. Though the nation was atypical in that its founding lacked the explicit imprimatur of a religious tradition, the culture of the United States and its elite was fundamentally derived from that of Anglo-Protestantism. In the 20th century Catholicism and Judaism were both absorbed into this framework (on the terms of Protestantism), reflected in Will Herberg’s post-World War II thesis in Protestant, Catholic, Jew. By the 1990s this consensus had collapsed, and a variety of religious denominations and liberals of a multiculturalist bent aligned together to pass the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. I am old enough and conscious enough of these issues to recall this piece of legislation. The old order may have collapsed, but religious belief was still normative, to the point that Bill Clinton was recommending everyone read Stephen Carter’s Culture of Disbelief. As an atheist it struck me as peculiar that religious beliefs were given special latitude in comparison to other beliefs. After all, all religious beliefs were founded on human fictions from where I stood. But, as an observer of human nature it did not strike me as strange, because it is simply a fact that religious beliefs are precious and emotionally fraught for individuals and communities, and have been for much of human history. Even if accommodation was not entailed by the principles of our governance (and it arguably is), it was a prudent action to mollify democratic sentiment.
But what’s happened in the past generation is that a massive wave of secularization swept through the culture. In American Grace: How Religion Divides and Unites Us the authors report on data which suggests that many people on the cultural Left have abandoned even nominal affinity to religious denominations and identity. Since the 1970s religious conservatives have been talking about “secular humanists,” but as someone who remembers being an atheist in the 1990s it was always obvious that this was a bogeyman with little substance. Only in the past few years have the warnings about secular humanism started to seem plausible, as a large minority of young Americans are actually unabashed secular humanists, with no fond memories of a religious upbringing. The old consensus is collapsing, and where the Left has won on the culture wars, such as gay rights, the lack of affinity with religious sentiments makes them very unfriendly to the arguments of religious conservatives that their sincere views deserve consideration.
This brings me to a post by Rod Dreher, Christians ‘Must Be Made’ to Bow, where he notes that some liberal commentators seem to be suggesting that religious truths should be updated in light of the Zeitgeist. As a religious believer of intellectual predilections Dreher believes that some truths are eternal, so changing them would be craven. As I am not religious I don’t think that this is true. Rather, religious sensitivities will eventually abate as older beliefs will be “contextualized.” In fact many American conservatives agree with this idea , except they agree with it for Islam, not Christianity. They assume that Muslims should reinterpret their religion to be more in keeping with liberal democratic norms of a plural and secular society, just as secular liberals do. The problem is that what is good for thee is not so congenial for me, even if Christianity in the previous hundred years was broken multiple times by the ascendant liberal democratic order.
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You seem to regard all religions as obviously false. Fine, but it would be nice to see an argument for atheism that doesn’t simply dismiss theism as outdated. There have been many arguments for theism, and atheists often seem to adopt the methodology “I will show that this particular argument for X is invalid, therefore X is false.” I’m sure you won’t fall into this fallacy, but I’d like to see if you have a better argument for atheism than “the burden of proof should be on theists rather than atheists”.
Razib,
I have long believed that the American tradition of philosophical (including religious) freedom stands in fundamental tension with the requirements of a state. We want to believe that we can be free of religious entanglements but there is a practically tautological way of understanding that we can’t. It goes something like this:
(1) To have a state, there must be a criminal law.
(2) Criminal laws define what behavior will and won’t be punished, which
(3) can only be seen, except in the most rarified intellectual atmospheres, as defining right and wrong for the inhabitants of that state.
(4) People get their ideas of right and wrong from philosophical, especially religious, beliefs, so
(5) whoever writes the criminal law are the ones whose philosophies (religions, etc.) are privileged – more equal than the others, so to speak – which
(6) the others cannot help but deem a breach of their freedom of religion.
We Americans have traditionally fudged this conflict by imagining that at their cores, all religions teach the same behaviors: don’t take other people’s stuff, or or their lives, etc. But it’s an exercise in self-deception, which exposure to modern anti-Western religious extremism forces us to acknowledge. I come to this as a big fan of philosophical freedom, First Amendment and all that. But I just don’t see a path around the train of logic outlined above.
Ken
I don’t think people are any more secular today than they ever were, even though Christianity was effectively supplanted several hundred years ago when it conceded the truth to enlightenment thinkers. Among the elites and thinking people, real Christianity only lasted some five or six hundred years in the lands of my ancestors. Since the dawn of the modern era, it’s been relegated to habit and convention, which is not to say that it isn’t influential, but rather that for most people – including those who call themselves Christians – it’s more of a conscious affectation than an animating principle.
Before that happened, I’m not sure people thought of Christianity so much as a religion as “the truth.” When we discuss religion these days we forget that point. One thing that strikes me about medieval writing is the lack of skepticism about fundamental Christian doctrine. Not so much the more outlandish mythology, but the totality of the biblical message.
In the future, I’m sure people will look back on many of our contemporary beliefs as we look on the “quaint” medieval scholars. So discussing religion as though it’s separate from the normal human worldview is misguided in my opinion. Culture and the religious mentality are interdependent and based on the same psychological mechanisms. You can’t have one without the other.
I think in your case you have the benefit of having been raised in a different culture even as you were surrounded by American “Christian” culture (for lack of a better term), which allows you to see its fallacies from an outsider’s perspective while still understanding it well. But I doubt people will come around to a worldview more like yours, because it is exceptional rather than the norm. Instead, religious thought will evolve and adapt with the times, but it won’t abate. And even as this process goes on and on, people will remain largely unconscious of the religious basis of their behavior and norms, because that’s just how humans are.
Razib, what would be an example of how Catholicism changed to accommodate Anglo-Protestant norms in the US? I know one shift in Catholic thinking has been the attitude to religious freedom in secular law. Triumphalist pre-Vatican II teaching used to have frank double standards when it came to freedom of religion: Catholics should demand complete freedom of the Church from discrimination and oppression with respect to secular law in non-Catholic countries, but Catholic governments should use all means, including force, to privilege the Church over other religions, since “error has no rights”. Execution of unrepentant heretics was formally sanctioned by the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215. It really wasn’t all that different from Islamic fundamentalist attitudes of today.
Can you think of other examples?
I wonder if Dreher’s Orthodoxy can claim a little more consistency on this over time. Although religious freedom in monarchist Orthodox countries was never as liberal as we are used to in today’s secular West, the Orthodox Church never formally sanctioned persecution of heretics in the way the Catholic Church did. I think that is partly to do with the greater prestige of the State vis-a-vis the Church in Orthodox history, i.e. when the Orthodox did persecute heretics, e.g. the Judaizers in early 16th-century Russia, or the Old Believers in the mid-17th, it was construed as the State acting in its own capacity as protector of Orthodox society, rather than in direct obedience to the Church.
But I’m Orthodox so I’m no doubt biased. 😉
So the accusation of secular humanism turned out to be spot on, even though you and yours thought it worthy of a snigger at the time. Curious.
How things have changed.
From 1958 to 1961, I was a student in a Boston high school. Every morning, our home room teacher read to us from the King James Bible, which he often said was accepted by all Christians. Of course, this was Boston so the great majority of students in the room were practicing Catholics. Jews out-numbered Protestants. And we knew, if he didn’t, that the KJV was not used in our churches (or synagogues).
The point being that 60 years ago the Anglo-Protestant ascendancy was still in force even in Catholic/Jewish Boston. Nowadays, my two daughters are secular humanists and actually hate all things Christian. And I mean hate.
I myself have drifted off into agnosticism. I have a collection of Bibles, and my old home room teacher would be appalled at how different the various translations are. He will be apoplectic if someone were to tell him how closely Moses and Jesus embody Raglan’s and Campbell’s mythic hero.
I wonder what you think of, if you have read, Joseph Bottum’s “The Spiritual Shape of Political Ideas.” http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/spiritual-shape-political-ideas_819707.html
He agrees with your post that “the culture of the United States and its elite was fundamentally derived from that of Anglo-Protestantism” and that “what’s happened in the past generation is that a massive wave of secularization swept through the culture.” He sees Social Justice Warriors as descendents of Protestantism with a kind of “old wine in new bottles” fighting faith: those who believe must search their conscience because they are sinners; those who disagree must bow because they are heretics.
An agreement with the first half but a disagreement with the second half of the famous, “When people stop believing in God, they don’t believe in nothing — they believe in anything.” (often mistakenly attributed to G.K. Chesterton)
Bottum also has a book which I gather elaborates on some of the ideas in the article, An Anxious Age: The Post-Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of America (2014). Bottum identifies as a Christian.
Allan Bloom, IIRC, was more describing Gen X and their noted cynicism. Who saw zealous Millennials coming? I certainly didn't.
Various societies have wider or narrower Overton windows and different ways to deal with those who promote unthinkable ideas, but in the end none are truly free. The biggest source of conflict is that the Overton window is moving and ideas that were accepted and even dominant become haram.
Or is it that traditional religions are being replaced (for many people) with a new one that so far has no name — the belief in a combo of liberalism, diversity, multiculturalism, egalitarianism etc. God knows (joke intended) that it’s a matter of faith, and God also knows that its adherents are often as fanatical as the fundamentalists of any other religion are.
Orthodoxy outside of the Slavic world also had the experience of existing for centuries under the Turk’s yoke, including the Ecumenical Patriarch, who has a bit of relevance to all Orthodoctrinaires everywhere (as indeed he still does). Not sure what effects that had exactly on the development of Orthodoxy, but maybe there were some developments that made it easier for them to get along with other rival systems of ideas.
you can’t look up book at your local library? this argument has been had for thousands of years. not interested.
if you take elements of religion, you can define anything as religion. we’ve had this discussion before. social-political movements overlap with religion quite a bit. but i think the term should be somewhat narrower than you.
I've started to move away from this definition. Why? Mostly because I think it's not really a useful distinction anymore. Society is secularizing, but the human mind (bar massive genetic intervention in the future) is staying the same. Most humans as individuals and as collective groups will still try to set up a framework of metaphysical meaning that is mostly jury-rigged out of received wisdom, even if much of the "wisdom" now has some sort of basis in empirical understandings of the world as opposed to revelation. The human need for some sort of orthopraxy (always more important than orthodoxy) is something that won't go away and bears study, and I think that drawing that line is implying that there are a whole new set of intellectual tools needed to understand what's going on there, when honestly, most of the same principles are being carried over.Replies: @Razib Khan
no idea what you are even talking about. work on your reading comprehension if you want to comment again.
see how ashkenazi jews treated polygamy and whether christians were monotheists or not. seems pretty clear that they were influenced by having to deal with xtians on a regular basis.
The issue of Christianity-as-polytheism in Judaism is connected to business transactions and the oaths involved therein, but lurking in the background is the traditional Jewish reluctance to avoid ruling in ways that would provoke violent or costly retaliation from powerful non-Jews (local leaders, kings, the Church, etc.) My guess is that Rabbinical rulings about the status of Christianity are heavily coloured by these concerns. Better not to anger the Church when you depend on it to keep the local thugs calm.
In this sense "influenced by having to deal with Christians on a regular basis" is a good way of putting it.
Polygamy is likely a different case, as it was very much a local-cultural thing to begin with, and seems to have been rare at both in the Talmudic academies as well as Europe before the time of Rabbeinu Gershom. Iranian Jews practiced polygamy within the last 100 years, and Yemeni Jews even within the last 20-30 years.Replies: @Razib Khan
These young “secular humanists” are almost all white males and while they absolutely despise american religious conservatives, they have also, in my opinion been by far and away the most effective critics of islam. And they’ve also been the most effective critics of the radical feminist movement, well at least online. So I wouldn’t just throw them in with all the “left”.
don't make things up. actually they've become progressive LESS white and LESS male as irreligion has become more socially acceptable. i do agree that this segment is NOT all on the left.Replies: @Alex M
The Christians complaining of secular humanists blew it because they didn’t want to identify their opposition for what it really was, a new developing religion that had not yet been adequately named. Think protestantism before it was called protestantism, when it was simply ‘reform.’
You describe ‘the emergence of religious groups which have a different conception of what it means to be religious, for example, emphasizing particular practices rather than creeds.’ Idealism, magnified by a need to suppress non-idealistic thought, is just such a belief system and should be identified as a religion. It has its necessary sectarian needs, supporting by any means possible egalitarian idealism and anti-tribalism. These needs are more important than any attachment to reality, and they dictate necessary sacramental practices including the punishment of any0ne who is insufficiently anti-tribal who dares occupy a public stage. Thus the defenestration of Richwine, Watson and you. Not to mention the continuing narrative jihad against white males. This is a religion. Calling it secular is an error.
These young “secular humanists” are almost all white males
don’t make things up. actually they’ve become progressive LESS white and LESS male as irreligion has become more socially acceptable. i do agree that this segment is NOT all on the left.
You describe 'the emergence of religious groups which have a different conception of what it means to be religious, for example, emphasizing particular practices rather than creeds.' Idealism, magnified by a need to suppress non-idealistic thought, is just such a belief system and should be identified as a religion. It has its necessary sectarian needs, supporting by any means possible egalitarian idealism and anti-tribalism. These needs are more important than any attachment to reality, and they dictate necessary sacramental practices including the punishment of any0ne who is insufficiently anti-tribal who dares occupy a public stage. Thus the defenestration of Richwine, Watson and you. Not to mention the continuing narrative jihad against white males. This is a religion. Calling it secular is an error.Replies: @Razib Khan
i don’t think this sort of behavior needs to be termed religion, or is so surprising. social conformity is the human norm.
I used to agree with you on this notion, which is the notion held by the majority of scholars who study religion as a phenomenon, even though most would disavow an easily defined working definition of religion, even as the vast majority work by it. In other words, groups like the Raelians are fair game to study, but the Revolutionary Communist Party is not, despite them being both fringe groups with reifying practices and norms that set them apart from wider society and are centered on a charismatic leader with a materialist/atheistic understanding of the universe. Granted, I picked two rather far out-field groups to highlight the point.
I’ve started to move away from this definition. Why? Mostly because I think it’s not really a useful distinction anymore. Society is secularizing, but the human mind (bar massive genetic intervention in the future) is staying the same. Most humans as individuals and as collective groups will still try to set up a framework of metaphysical meaning that is mostly jury-rigged out of received wisdom, even if much of the “wisdom” now has some sort of basis in empirical understandings of the world as opposed to revelation. The human need for some sort of orthopraxy (always more important than orthodoxy) is something that won’t go away and bears study, and I think that drawing that line is implying that there are a whole new set of intellectual tools needed to understand what’s going on there, when honestly, most of the same principles are being carried over.
That’s not the argument I want to have. The question that interests me is whether any theistic religion is intellectually defensible enough that this cultural battle is not already effectively over and in the mop-up phase; in other words, whether the way in which you say the ascendant liberal democratic order has “broken” Christianity is by merely overpowering it (when there is the potential for a comeback) or by conclusively refuting it (when there is no such potential).
i didn’t say it refuted it. religion is just subordinated to the broader culture. that’s not that strange. the fact is that many religious christian conservatives have no problem in concrete terms with this, they were part of the push to subordinate non-american expressions of catholicism in generations past. the problem now is that their own position in society has been pushed toward the margin, and the same weapons are being turned against them. (and this is not particular to western/american culture; in east asia there have been repeated periods when religion was subordinated to the state).
What happened was that all religions were affected more or less to the same degree by democratic ideals and civic rituals. This is why a contemporary Evangelical megachurch service strongly resembles a political convention, whereas it has little in common with a 17th century Puritan service.
Christians have been subordinate in the US from the beginning. Mark Twain, for example, openly mocked Christianity in the 19th century without suffering any consequences of import, while those that promoted a literal interpretation of the Bible have been laughed off the national stage from the beginning.
As for Rod's objections, I think they were poorly elucidated, but I agree that forcing Christians to participate in gay marriages is a very serious imposition. A wedding is a ritual and therefore inherently religious, so forcing a Christian to participate in a gay wedding is akin to forcing a Jew to take communion or a Christian to pray to Allah. Even as an agnostic, I would be highly offended if forced to sanctify something I don't believe in, such as gay marriage, which I consider a farce along the lines of transgenderism.
This gay marriage issue isn't about secularization, but rather the imposition of a state-sanctioned religion. Our new bishops are our judges and politicians, apparently.Replies: @Razib Khan, @TangoMan
I've started to move away from this definition. Why? Mostly because I think it's not really a useful distinction anymore. Society is secularizing, but the human mind (bar massive genetic intervention in the future) is staying the same. Most humans as individuals and as collective groups will still try to set up a framework of metaphysical meaning that is mostly jury-rigged out of received wisdom, even if much of the "wisdom" now has some sort of basis in empirical understandings of the world as opposed to revelation. The human need for some sort of orthopraxy (always more important than orthodoxy) is something that won't go away and bears study, and I think that drawing that line is implying that there are a whole new set of intellectual tools needed to understand what's going on there, when honestly, most of the same principles are being carried over.Replies: @Razib Khan
a primary difference is permanence. ‘secular’ movements tend to burn out and not maintain permanence of identity and coherence. the religious movements in the burnedover district of upstate NY in the early 19th century were usually more robust in maintaining themselves than the secular ones (with mormons being the big winners).
I feel like there has to be some intermediate position between "You can't scientifically get an 'ought' from an 'is' so anything that says, 'This is right; that is wrong' is a religion" and "A religion is something that calls itself a religion." But I can't figure out what that position is.
If we're talking about lasting institutions, then yes, you're right about that, but I think that it's something that's going to change, as the world "secularizes". A secular movement can have "real world" goals, like say, enacting certain legislation or encouraging individuals to recycle, but it can also have metaphysical value statements like "social justice" or "saving the planet" attached to it, and often does. As the older traditional priests and churches fade away into niche status, the need for people to have received wisdom and find order in the universe does not fade. In this respect, I think that secular groups and movements are going to fill in that space, complete with intentional communities of a sort, with all that entails. They will be much more ephemeral, but society has been moving to a much more accelerated cultural pace for several hundred years anyways.
Honestly, I don't know if I'm making too much sense in what I'm trying to convey here. Filled up with ham and beer.Replies: @Razib Khan
i was thinking recently about how conservative xtians like to point out how it’s acceptable for libs to criticize Xtians/Catholics but not muslims. it seems they’ve forgotten that there’s a reason why this is so. America does not have an oppressive muslim majority that has Lorded over them for most of its history. trivially true, but apparently they need to be reminded of this.
and it has been this way, at least, since my parents were involved in the counter-culture movement: bash christianity but buddhism was exempt/cool/embraced. you could dismiss that attitude as contrarian or hypocritical but let’s not forget why it took place: they were sick of your xtian bullshit. being a SJW used to have legitimate meaning.
not to mention that part of Rod’s post sounds almost exactly like Ben Affleck’s (canned?) opener when he got short of breath talking to Sam Harris on Real Time: “Oh, so you’re the person who understands the officially codified doctrine of Islam?”
aside: which one of Ben’s douchey friends did he steal that from and how many times did he repeat it to himself before the show?
One could argue that though there has been persistence in the sense of institutional continuity (there are churches in upstate NY that are 200 years old and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints has unbroken continuity of bureaucracy in Salt Lake City), what people take from those churches is very different than it was. What the churches treat as important, and what goes without saying, is very different. Even some of the official doctrine is different.
I feel like there has to be some intermediate position between “You can’t scientifically get an ‘ought’ from an ‘is’ so anything that says, ‘This is right; that is wrong’ is a religion” and “A religion is something that calls itself a religion.” But I can’t figure out what that position is.
don't make things up. actually they've become progressive LESS white and LESS male as irreligion has become more socially acceptable. i do agree that this segment is NOT all on the left.Replies: @Alex M
Like almost everything in america they have in fact gotten less white and less male but they are still overwhelmingly so ( this has nothing to do with discrimination). I think you might be assigning the secular humanist label to irreligious liberals, but the two are far from interchangeable. For example, are most of the protesters in Indiana liberal? Probably, and probably a majority are irreligious, although even gays are not all irreligious. However are a majority of the protesters secular humanists? No chance in hell. Your typical liberal is a “social justice” type with a less narrow, but not much less narrower world view than your typical right winger . The vast majority of women, gays and minorities who would identify as progressive or liberal fit into this social justice warrior category. Secular humanism encompasses a much more expansive world view and is still a small movement (although intellectually potent) and it is particularly attractive to white male critical thinkers because the left has come to be dominated by identity politics while the right wing base is both jingoistic and a cesspool of science denialism ( yes, the left has its own growing science denial problem, but it’s less obvious on the surface although it’s becoming more so, i.e. race is a social construct, and gender differences ).
* relevant link for your next comment: http://sda.berkeley.edu/sdaweb/analysis/?dataset=gss14Replies: @Alex M
Razib,
It’s interesting I recently read In Gods We Trust, and the idea that religious belief systems last longer than secular belief systems seems pretty well grounded in historical experience. But Atran’s idea that religion will always be here because it answers existential questions that secular belief system’s can’t – what’s the meaning of life? what happens when you die? – doesn’t seem to be holding up particularly well right now. More and more people becoming atheist or only nominally religious.
I wonder if this is a temporary phase and within several decades there will be a religious revival among the college-educated crowd. If not, will Atheists eventually run off the demographic cliff, or could the conversion of religious people to Atheism just keep the community alive, even if it is a demographic sinkhole?
from what i remember the idea is that atheism will never become a fixed equilibrium. there have been always been atheists of some sort around, at various proportions. if the majority of the human population was pushed over on the autism spectrum i suspect atheism would be the modal type, with theism the minority position.
shut up and use the GSS now.* i don’t care about your opinions, as i know this data better than you, but i want to know where you are getting this from.
* relevant link for your next comment: http://sda.berkeley.edu/sdaweb/analysis/?dataset=gss14
http://www.norc.org/PDFs/GSS%20Reports/GSS_Religion_2014.pdfReplies: @Razib Khan
It's interesting I recently read In Gods We Trust, and the idea that religious belief systems last longer than secular belief systems seems pretty well grounded in historical experience. But Atran's idea that religion will always be here because it answers existential questions that secular belief system's can't - what's the meaning of life? what happens when you die? - doesn't seem to be holding up particularly well right now. More and more people becoming atheist or only nominally religious.
I wonder if this is a temporary phase and within several decades there will be a religious revival among the college-educated crowd. If not, will Atheists eventually run off the demographic cliff, or could the conversion of religious people to Atheism just keep the community alive, even if it is a demographic sinkhole?Replies: @Razib Khan
But Atran’s idea that religion will always be here because it answers existential questions that secular belief system’s can’t – what’s the meaning of life? what happens when you die? – doesn’t seem to be holding up particularly well right now. More and more people becoming atheist or only nominally religious.
from what i remember the idea is that atheism will never become a fixed equilibrium. there have been always been atheists of some sort around, at various proportions. if the majority of the human population was pushed over on the autism spectrum i suspect atheism would be the modal type, with theism the minority position.
The subordination of Catholicism by “Anglo Protestantism” is greatly overstated IMO. There never was a Protestant monoculture, because Protestant sects were very diverse in early America. The establishment Protestant Church in most of the US was the Anglican (now Episcopalian) Church, and it is (and was) more like Catholicism than it is like, say, Calvinist Puritan Churches, or Lutheran Churches, Mennonites, Quakers, etc.
What happened was that all religions were affected more or less to the same degree by democratic ideals and civic rituals. This is why a contemporary Evangelical megachurch service strongly resembles a political convention, whereas it has little in common with a 17th century Puritan service.
Christians have been subordinate in the US from the beginning. Mark Twain, for example, openly mocked Christianity in the 19th century without suffering any consequences of import, while those that promoted a literal interpretation of the Bible have been laughed off the national stage from the beginning.
As for Rod’s objections, I think they were poorly elucidated, but I agree that forcing Christians to participate in gay marriages is a very serious imposition. A wedding is a ritual and therefore inherently religious, so forcing a Christian to participate in a gay wedding is akin to forcing a Jew to take communion or a Christian to pray to Allah. Even as an agnostic, I would be highly offended if forced to sanctify something I don’t believe in, such as gay marriage, which I consider a farce along the lines of transgenderism.
This gay marriage issue isn’t about secularization, but rather the imposition of a state-sanctioned religion. Our new bishops are our judges and politicians, apparently.
no. people confuse 17th and 18th century anglicanism for the catholicizing tendencies which crept in during the 19th century. this is a complex issue, but you need to separate the radical protestant groups from the magesterial protestants. additionally, the anglican creed is still more calvinist than arminian from what i recall.Replies: @Pithlord
Society will recognize conscientious objections to taking up arms in defense of one's country, but now it is a higher moral calling to cater pizza to a gay wedding than it is to defend one's country during a time of war.
Time for a calibration check.
He agrees with your post that "the culture of the United States and its elite was fundamentally derived from that of Anglo-Protestantism" and that "what’s happened in the past generation is that a massive wave of secularization swept through the culture." He sees Social Justice Warriors as descendents of Protestantism with a kind of "old wine in new bottles" fighting faith: those who believe must search their conscience because they are sinners; those who disagree must bow because they are heretics.
An agreement with the first half but a disagreement with the second half of the famous, "When people stop believing in God, they don’t believe in nothing — they believe in anything." (often mistakenly attributed to G.K. Chesterton)
Bottum also has a book which I gather elaborates on some of the ideas in the article, An Anxious Age: The Post-Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of America (2014). Bottum identifies as a Christian.Replies: @Dain
Seems we’ve come a long way since conservatives complained that the youth were a bunch of postmodern relativists. If anything they – or at least the youth’s leaders on campus and in media – believe in right and wrong pretty intensely!
Allan Bloom, IIRC, was more describing Gen X and their noted cynicism. Who saw zealous Millennials coming? I certainly didn’t.
What you’re describing sounds more like the New Atheists and their fans, not your general “secular humanist” though New Atheists are a subset of that.
What happened was that all religions were affected more or less to the same degree by democratic ideals and civic rituals. This is why a contemporary Evangelical megachurch service strongly resembles a political convention, whereas it has little in common with a 17th century Puritan service.
Christians have been subordinate in the US from the beginning. Mark Twain, for example, openly mocked Christianity in the 19th century without suffering any consequences of import, while those that promoted a literal interpretation of the Bible have been laughed off the national stage from the beginning.
As for Rod's objections, I think they were poorly elucidated, but I agree that forcing Christians to participate in gay marriages is a very serious imposition. A wedding is a ritual and therefore inherently religious, so forcing a Christian to participate in a gay wedding is akin to forcing a Jew to take communion or a Christian to pray to Allah. Even as an agnostic, I would be highly offended if forced to sanctify something I don't believe in, such as gay marriage, which I consider a farce along the lines of transgenderism.
This gay marriage issue isn't about secularization, but rather the imposition of a state-sanctioned religion. Our new bishops are our judges and politicians, apparently.Replies: @Razib Khan, @TangoMan
The establishment Protestant Church in most of the US was the Anglican (now Episcopalian) Church, and it is (and was) more like Catholicism than it is like, say, Calvinist Puritan Churches, or Lutheran Churches, Mennonites, Quakers, etc.
no. people confuse 17th and 18th century anglicanism for the catholicizing tendencies which crept in during the 19th century. this is a complex issue, but you need to separate the radical protestant groups from the magesterial protestants. additionally, the anglican creed is still more calvinist than arminian from what i recall.
Liturgy matters more than theology, since hardly anyone understands theology.
Socially, Anglicans were always Proteatants in America. People moved pretty easily between Protestant denominations, buy going to or leaving Rome was a big deal.Replies: @Razib Khan
Yes, social conformity is the human norm, but so is religiosity or at least participation in a group that professes some form of literary belief to which social obedience is expected. I’m not convinced that religion exists for purposes other than validating social hierarchies. I’m open to the idea that it performs functions more important than social binding and hierarchy validating but I’m not aware of what those more important functions might be. Since idealism performs for its followers what I imagine to be the most important functions of religion, and since most idealists by their actions display an expectation and even wish for it to perform these functions, I fail to see why it shouldn’t be called a religion?
BTW – I was at a college alumni lecture yesterday where the subject was a study (by a psychology professor), government funded of course, where the topic was her attempt to code different infant behaviors and chart them by low SES and high SES expecting to discover which infant behaviors with objects, like soft toys or hard toys, might offer the key to leveling academic differences between high and low SES children. There is no control in this study for genetic differences (I asked). In other words, no study of low SES adoptees raised by high SES parents much less identical twins raised in differentiated households.
After all the discoveries related to heritability how could a government financed study of this sort avoid any heritability controls? Answer: religion.
you seem to be confusing organized religion with religion. the former is an elaboration of the latter. in small scale societies with flat hierarchies religion exists, though it is bracketed as 'animism.'
* relevant link for your next comment: http://sda.berkeley.edu/sdaweb/analysis/?dataset=gss14Replies: @Alex M
There has been a trend away from formal religion across all groups, I’m not denying that. My point is that not all of these people who have dropped formal religion have become secular humanists. How many people identify as secular humanists? The gss does not provide an answer, which confirms that this group is so small that they don’t even bother with the question. Again, most people protesting in Indiana are not secular humanists, they’re just irreligious liberals. Now will the natural outcome of this trend away from formal religion be the growth of secular humanism, particularly among women and minorities? Yes, but the “social justice” movement right now is attractive to many women, gays and minorities, and that’s where the vast majority of the irreligious people of these groups are aligned politically. How many of these social justice warriors identify as secular humanists? Also notice that prominent secular humanists like Steven Pinker and Michael Shermer argue against the group rights the “social justice” warriors promote, and they’re highly critical of islam. In other words, secular humanism is the logical next step for those who have walked away from religion, but most are no there yet. Nearly all of the prominent secular humanist intellectuals are white males and most secular humanists online are white male atheists.
http://www.norc.org/PDFs/GSS%20Reports/GSS_Religion_2014.pdf
The vast majority of new religious movements tend to burn out pretty quickly as well. Some do well for hundreds of years, then decline to nothing, but you know that as well as I do. If we’re talking about movements coming out of the “burnedover district”, I would venture that American first wave feminism is at least a big a winner as the Mormons, if not bigger, granted though it took a lot more time to gain momentum.
If we’re talking about lasting institutions, then yes, you’re right about that, but I think that it’s something that’s going to change, as the world “secularizes”. A secular movement can have “real world” goals, like say, enacting certain legislation or encouraging individuals to recycle, but it can also have metaphysical value statements like “social justice” or “saving the planet” attached to it, and often does. As the older traditional priests and churches fade away into niche status, the need for people to have received wisdom and find order in the universe does not fade. In this respect, I think that secular groups and movements are going to fill in that space, complete with intentional communities of a sort, with all that entails. They will be much more ephemeral, but society has been moving to a much more accelerated cultural pace for several hundred years anyways.
Honestly, I don’t know if I’m making too much sense in what I’m trying to convey here. Filled up with ham and beer.
What happened was that all religions were affected more or less to the same degree by democratic ideals and civic rituals. This is why a contemporary Evangelical megachurch service strongly resembles a political convention, whereas it has little in common with a 17th century Puritan service.
Christians have been subordinate in the US from the beginning. Mark Twain, for example, openly mocked Christianity in the 19th century without suffering any consequences of import, while those that promoted a literal interpretation of the Bible have been laughed off the national stage from the beginning.
As for Rod's objections, I think they were poorly elucidated, but I agree that forcing Christians to participate in gay marriages is a very serious imposition. A wedding is a ritual and therefore inherently religious, so forcing a Christian to participate in a gay wedding is akin to forcing a Jew to take communion or a Christian to pray to Allah. Even as an agnostic, I would be highly offended if forced to sanctify something I don't believe in, such as gay marriage, which I consider a farce along the lines of transgenderism.
This gay marriage issue isn't about secularization, but rather the imposition of a state-sanctioned religion. Our new bishops are our judges and politicians, apparently.Replies: @Razib Khan, @TangoMan
but I agree that forcing Christians to participate in gay marriages is a very serious imposition. A wedding is a ritual and therefore inherently religious, so forcing a Christian to participate in a gay wedding is akin to forcing a Jew to take communion or a Christian to pray to Allah.
Society will recognize conscientious objections to taking up arms in defense of one’s country, but now it is a higher moral calling to cater pizza to a gay wedding than it is to defend one’s country during a time of war.
Time for a calibration check.
I think Greg Pandashtang’s comments were addressing Orthodox Christianity, not Orthodox Judaism.
The issue of Christianity-as-polytheism in Judaism is connected to business transactions and the oaths involved therein, but lurking in the background is the traditional Jewish reluctance to avoid ruling in ways that would provoke violent or costly retaliation from powerful non-Jews (local leaders, kings, the Church, etc.) My guess is that Rabbinical rulings about the status of Christianity are heavily coloured by these concerns. Better not to anger the Church when you depend on it to keep the local thugs calm.
In this sense “influenced by having to deal with Christians on a regular basis” is a good way of putting it.
Polygamy is likely a different case, as it was very much a local-cultural thing to begin with, and seems to have been rare at both in the Talmudic academies as well as Europe before the time of Rabbeinu Gershom. Iranian Jews practiced polygamy within the last 100 years, and Yemeni Jews even within the last 20-30 years.
i don't care. this is a general issue. if you read cross-cultural studies you see it (e.g., muslim accommodation with confucianism in eastern china in the early modern period).
http://www.norc.org/PDFs/GSS%20Reports/GSS_Religion_2014.pdfReplies: @Razib Khan
what is secular humanist to you? really it is more popular as a pejorative, though obviously you have the AHA owning the term. basically liberal atheists and agnostics, though even theists can be secular humanists.
The issue of Christianity-as-polytheism in Judaism is connected to business transactions and the oaths involved therein, but lurking in the background is the traditional Jewish reluctance to avoid ruling in ways that would provoke violent or costly retaliation from powerful non-Jews (local leaders, kings, the Church, etc.) My guess is that Rabbinical rulings about the status of Christianity are heavily coloured by these concerns. Better not to anger the Church when you depend on it to keep the local thugs calm.
In this sense "influenced by having to deal with Christians on a regular basis" is a good way of putting it.
Polygamy is likely a different case, as it was very much a local-cultural thing to begin with, and seems to have been rare at both in the Talmudic academies as well as Europe before the time of Rabbeinu Gershom. Iranian Jews practiced polygamy within the last 100 years, and Yemeni Jews even within the last 20-30 years.Replies: @Razib Khan
I think Greg Pandashtang’s comments were addressing Orthodox Christianity, not Orthodox Judaism.
i don’t care. this is a general issue. if you read cross-cultural studies you see it (e.g., muslim accommodation with confucianism in eastern china in the early modern period).
If we're talking about lasting institutions, then yes, you're right about that, but I think that it's something that's going to change, as the world "secularizes". A secular movement can have "real world" goals, like say, enacting certain legislation or encouraging individuals to recycle, but it can also have metaphysical value statements like "social justice" or "saving the planet" attached to it, and often does. As the older traditional priests and churches fade away into niche status, the need for people to have received wisdom and find order in the universe does not fade. In this respect, I think that secular groups and movements are going to fill in that space, complete with intentional communities of a sort, with all that entails. They will be much more ephemeral, but society has been moving to a much more accelerated cultural pace for several hundred years anyways.
Honestly, I don't know if I'm making too much sense in what I'm trying to convey here. Filled up with ham and beer.Replies: @Razib Khan
it’s a serious perspective. need to think more on it. i’m moderately skeptical, because religion makes people do a lot of insane things. then again, there have been secular suicide bombers too…
When you step back from it all, the world is pretty insane, religious or secular. It's just us seculars tend not to be insane in very sanguine ways.
Yes, social conformity is the human norm, but so is religiosity or at least participation in a group that professes some form of literary belief to which social obedience is expected. I’m not convinced that religion exists for purposes other than validating social hierarchies.
you seem to be confusing organized religion with religion. the former is an elaboration of the latter. in small scale societies with flat hierarchies religion exists, though it is bracketed as ‘animism.’
“….many people on the cultural Left have abandoned even nominal affinity to religious denominations and identity.”
—
I think this “nominal affinity” has overstated the number of believers in the US for decades. That’s my impression, anyway. The percentage of people who are “believers” is determined by polls or surveys, I’m presuming. Pollsters have always misrepresented the religious nature of populations because they won’t acknowledge that what people believe is much more accurately determined by how they live than what they say (especially on a survey form.)
So in the 70’s and 80’s, many Americans found it morally (or socially) elevating to say that they believed in God, while at the same time never committing themselves to any constraining religious tenets that would actually alter their lifestyles. I remember being surprised back in the 80’s when I would hear about polls that claimed that something like 88% (or whatever) of Americans claimed to be Christian. How could TV shows like “Three’s Company” or “Married with Children” or widespread cinematic nudity or Heavy Metal or Rap exist in such a culture? The amount of belief in a Christian God has been overstated over the last 40 or 50 years, and the last 10 years or so has just been a sudden public acknowledgement of what was really happening. Young people are just willing to admit what their boomer parents weren’t.
It’s possible that young whites flocking to Obama in 2008 was, in a way, a transfer of people’s innate need for a large and benevolent force in their lives from God to the state. Regardless, faith and culture have a symbiotic relationship and as one goes, so goes the other.
Those who primarily identify as such like Steven Pinker and Michael Shermer do. Would you describe Ta Nehisi Coates as a secular humanist? I can imagine them in a room together with Pinker celebrating the decline of violence globally, Shermer praising the advancement of science, meanwhile Coates will be crying for reparations. And yet, the guy with the narrow ethnic viewpoint would be better received by most left wing audiences.
Absolutely, try telling the average guy that you’re a secular humanist and see what look he gives you, basically “Oh, yeah you think your’re so smart don’t you a-hole.”
The majority of modern Western seculars think that someone wearing the other genders clothing, taking massive amounts of synthetic hormones and surgically removing one’s genitals because an individual is convinced they belong to the other gender is not only a benefit to the individual in question, but is a morally brave act, and one that should not only be tolerated by society, but lauded.
When you step back from it all, the world is pretty insane, religious or secular. It’s just us seculars tend not to be insane in very sanguine ways.
Most ‘religions’ are supported by subjective morality. This is basically the set of moral rules derived from a specific culture. The culture is the allegory or symbolism of human behaviors in interaction with their environment as well as for phenomenological events. Failure to religious freedom within a culturally plural environment occurs precisely because of the huge discrepancy between the ” religions ”. We have the X religion that preaches vegetarianism and the Y religion that preaches the exact opposite, as an example.
Religious freedom would only take place if the universal similarities of religious practices were maintained within a culturally plural environment and their idiosyncrasies were eliminated. This is rule based on wisdom, because we know that human beings are always very likely to prefer the coexistence with those who behave like that. Called ”conformism”.
Morality subjective, if we start from the conceptual idea that morality means the search for a behavioral ideal (read, positive traits such as kindness and balance), should be deleted by objective morality, for example, murder for futile reasons ( read up especially for no apparent reason). Cultural practices and specific rules of behavior, which are not directly related to objective harmonization of the society, are examples of subjective morality.
However, the very idea of religious freedom seems irrational, starting from the fact that virtually all ‘religions’ are based on stunting of individual freedom or individuality, which in my opinion, is the true practice of freedom (freedom with responsibility, of course.)
Collectivities (is not exactly the same than communities… well, words) in a hyperliteral or hyperreal world, no there. I’m not a libertarian. We believe in collectivities to build and sustain communities and tend to suppress the individual because we need the cooperation of all. But in a perfect world with people close to perfection, it is quite possible to make a society of individual co-workers.
I think individuality rates can correlated a lot with higher intelligence or specially, with ”intellect” or ”smart personality”.
That’s my opinion.
it's pretty clear that the core morality of most religions co-opts human universals. e.g., 'thou shalt not kill' (at least ingroups). orthopraxic elaborations are often the stuff that distinguishes, but they aren't part of the core morality. though as jesus' parable with pharisees suggests people get confused.
""That which is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor. That is the whole Torah; the rest is commentary. Go and study it.""
-HillelReplies: @Joe Q., @Santoculto
no. people confuse 17th and 18th century anglicanism for the catholicizing tendencies which crept in during the 19th century. this is a complex issue, but you need to separate the radical protestant groups from the magesterial protestants. additionally, the anglican creed is still more calvinist than arminian from what i recall.Replies: @Pithlord
This is definitely correct for theology, but less true for liturgy and church government. The 39 Articles are thoroughly Calvinist, and Anglican theology did not import any Catholic elements until the Oxford movement in the mid-nineteenth century. OTOH, the Book of Common Prayer translated much of the medieval Catholic mass into English and until recently it united Anglicans liturgically. The big issue with English-speaking Protestant sects was that the Anglicans preserved the bishop-center end church government. There remain significant continuities with pre-Reformation canon law.
Liturgy matters more than theology, since hardly anyone understands theology.
Socially, Anglicans were always Proteatants in America. People moved pretty easily between Protestant denominations, buy going to or leaving Rome was a big deal.
Religious freedom would only take place if the universal similarities of religious practices were maintained within a culturally plural environment and their idiosyncrasies were eliminated. This is rule based on wisdom, because we know that human beings are always very likely to prefer the coexistence with those who behave like that. Called ''conformism''.
Morality subjective, if we start from the conceptual idea that morality means the search for a behavioral ideal (read, positive traits such as kindness and balance), should be deleted by objective morality, for example, murder for futile reasons ( read up especially for no apparent reason). Cultural practices and specific rules of behavior, which are not directly related to objective harmonization of the society, are examples of subjective morality.
However, the very idea of religious freedom seems irrational, starting from the fact that virtually all 'religions' are based on stunting of individual freedom or individuality, which in my opinion, is the true practice of freedom (freedom with responsibility, of course.)
Collectivities (is not exactly the same than communities... well, words) in a hyperliteral or hyperreal world, no there. I'm not a libertarian. We believe in collectivities to build and sustain communities and tend to suppress the individual because we need the cooperation of all. But in a perfect world with people close to perfection, it is quite possible to make a society of individual co-workers.
I think individuality rates can correlated a lot with higher intelligence or specially, with ''intellect'' or ''smart personality''.
That's my opinion.Replies: @Razib Khan
Most ‘religions’ are supported by subjective morality. This is basically the set of moral rules derived from a specific culture
it’s pretty clear that the core morality of most religions co-opts human universals. e.g., ‘thou shalt not kill’ (at least ingroups). orthopraxic elaborations are often the stuff that distinguishes, but they aren’t part of the core morality. though as jesus’ parable with pharisees suggests people get confused.
“”That which is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor. That is the whole Torah; the rest is commentary. Go and study it.””
-Hillel
The problem is how people cognitively less capable interpret it, so that the true psychology (and not one that is based on a dangerous mix of factoids and ideological lies) is essential for us all to be discerning judgment and avoid extremes for the exception or the rule or generalizations.
Good people and are not holistic thinkers '' rationalizating'' (ie, generalize) this phrase to all others, including those who do not have any vestige of morality or positive personality traits.
Liturgy matters more than theology, since hardly anyone understands theology.
Socially, Anglicans were always Proteatants in America. People moved pretty easily between Protestant denominations, buy going to or leaving Rome was a big deal.Replies: @Razib Khan
agreed. also, people must remember that the ‘broad church’ in the earlier phases was inchoate enough that puritans saw themselves as a faction *within*, not a denomination outside.
The aspect of religion which makes it so hard to settle religious disputes is that religious concepts are almost definitionally those which cannot be proven one way or the other. So, people of good will can fight over them with no realistic hope of resolution.
Matters which have clear right and wrong answers tend to be resolved decisively if those answers have consequences that matter. Politics handles the “unimportant” questions for which the correct answers are uncertain.
I think the irreligious are only truly a threat to the religious if secularism takes on the flavour of imposed secularism that seems prevalent in France. Atheism is already the largest “religion” in my province and I don’t see any movement towards this, and I don’t think any religious person so truly be concerned by a more liberal live and let live type of secularism.
Under the Westphalian model, "religion" is what princes can mandate for their states but shouldn't fight each other over. This gets adapted into the First Amendment model under which "religion" is whatever the government cannot establish but should allow the free exercise of.
I haven't read Sullivan's book, but she is obviously right that there are a whole lot of institutional assumptions that are necessary to use a category of religion. But that doesn't mean that the category can't adapt or that "religions" can't adapt to fit the category.
What's interesting right now is the coming apart of the coalition in favour of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. (Virtually) everybody was for it in the early 1990s. Now the feminist and pro-gay rights left doesn't like it and maybe the anti-Muslim right won't like it. But of course in the American context, pretty much everybody is going to argue about the scope of religious liberty rather than saying they are opposed to it. You can do this in law, because law is all about turning substantive disagreement into semantic wrangling.
Mr. Khan,
If you could spare a few moments, I’d like to know what you thought of the observations and the arguments Ross Douthat makes in his “Bad Religion: How We Became a Nation of Heretics” regarding contemporary spiritual trend in the United States.
Also, might I recommend a book by Mircea Eliade titled “The Sacred and the Profane: The Nature of Religion”? This is the book that made it possible for me to, not only accept Transubstantiation, but actually participate in it, be a part of it, and indeed celebrate it, which has allowed me to glimpse a place without time and time without a place (the sacred) in moments of spiritual ecstasy.
This is the book that made it possible for me to, not only accept Transubstantiation, but actually participate in it, be a part of it, and indeed celebrate it, which has allowed me to glimpse a place without time and time without a place (the sacred) in moments of spiritual ecstasy.
1) why are u telling me about your cannibalism? ;-)
2) marijuana is pretty available where i liveReplies: @Twinkie
If you could spare a few moments, I'd like to know what you thought of the observations and the arguments Ross Douthat makes in his "Bad Religion: How We Became a Nation of Heretics" regarding contemporary spiritual trend in the United States.
Also, might I recommend a book by Mircea Eliade titled "The Sacred and the Profane: The Nature of Religion"? This is the book that made it possible for me to, not only accept Transubstantiation, but actually participate in it, be a part of it, and indeed celebrate it, which has allowed me to glimpse a place without time and time without a place (the sacred) in moments of spiritual ecstasy.Replies: @Razib Khan
i read eliade a long time ago, in the 90s. i’m not a fan of that sort of scholarship, though i know it’s pretty well regarded.
This is the book that made it possible for me to, not only accept Transubstantiation, but actually participate in it, be a part of it, and indeed celebrate it, which has allowed me to glimpse a place without time and time without a place (the sacred) in moments of spiritual ecstasy.
1) why are u telling me about your cannibalism? 😉
2) marijuana is pretty available where i live
In *my* particular case, Eliade's reasoning made it possible for me to accept and embrace the (the regularly scheduled*) miracle of Transubstantiation.
*Insert smiley face here.Again, I do not know if you meant to be glib or serious, but, assuming the latter, I would think that a man of your intellectual caliber would be able to distinguish between a chemically-induced (and thus altered brain) hallucination and the product of a normally-functioning, rational human brain. The quest for the sacred is present in all of us - we do not require narcotics to see it, feel it, and even think deeply about it.
As such, the impulse for the sacred has not gone away in contemporary America - it is, for many, replaced by pseudo-religions (even pseudo-Christianity), which is, simplistically put, the argument Douthat makes.
Even utilitarians must accept the historically demonstrated benefits of religion such as social cohesion and foundation of morality. A society requires religion, with all its rituals and community, to have common organizing principles. We are not homo economicus and we do not live well together as merely self-interested individuals coexisting in a common space.
I have my doubts about the longevity of the latter-day pseudo-religions. I am confident that, no matter how small the number of its adherents become, orthodox Christianity will outlive them (or at least the latter-day variations), just as it did the pagan culture of the militarily, socially, and politically dominant pagans who overran the Roman Empire during the Völkerwanderung period and its aftermath.
So, as pagan anti-Christian persecution resumes, my co-religionists and I will be in the catacombs, rhetorically and perhaps even literally.
I’ve beaten this drum before, but I think it is important to distinguish between universal psychological tendencies of the human mind and the historical category of “religion”, which I would argue emerges in the modern West as a legal concept.
Under the Westphalian model, “religion” is what princes can mandate for their states but shouldn’t fight each other over. This gets adapted into the First Amendment model under which “religion” is whatever the government cannot establish but should allow the free exercise of.
I haven’t read Sullivan’s book, but she is obviously right that there are a whole lot of institutional assumptions that are necessary to use a category of religion. But that doesn’t mean that the category can’t adapt or that “religions” can’t adapt to fit the category.
What’s interesting right now is the coming apart of the coalition in favour of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. (Virtually) everybody was for it in the early 1990s. Now the feminist and pro-gay rights left doesn’t like it and maybe the anti-Muslim right won’t like it. But of course in the American context, pretty much everybody is going to argue about the scope of religious liberty rather than saying they are opposed to it. You can do this in law, because law is all about turning substantive disagreement into semantic wrangling.
This is the book that made it possible for me to, not only accept Transubstantiation, but actually participate in it, be a part of it, and indeed celebrate it, which has allowed me to glimpse a place without time and time without a place (the sacred) in moments of spiritual ecstasy.
1) why are u telling me about your cannibalism? ;-)
2) marijuana is pretty available where i liveReplies: @Twinkie
Would you please care to elaborate on why not?
I am not versed in emoticons (I only understand the smiley face), so I don’t know what tone you conveyed with that remark. But Eliade does not defend or explain Transubstantiation in “The Sacred and the Profane” per se, but rather advocates for the innateness of the desire for the sacred in human beings as well as for its real existence.
In *my* particular case, Eliade’s reasoning made it possible for me to accept and embrace the (the regularly scheduled*) miracle of Transubstantiation.
*Insert smiley face here.
Again, I do not know if you meant to be glib or serious, but, assuming the latter, I would think that a man of your intellectual caliber would be able to distinguish between a chemically-induced (and thus altered brain) hallucination and the product of a normally-functioning, rational human brain. The quest for the sacred is present in all of us – we do not require narcotics to see it, feel it, and even think deeply about it.
As such, the impulse for the sacred has not gone away in contemporary America – it is, for many, replaced by pseudo-religions (even pseudo-Christianity), which is, simplistically put, the argument Douthat makes.
Even utilitarians must accept the historically demonstrated benefits of religion such as social cohesion and foundation of morality. A society requires religion, with all its rituals and community, to have common organizing principles. We are not homo economicus and we do not live well together as merely self-interested individuals coexisting in a common space.
I have my doubts about the longevity of the latter-day pseudo-religions. I am confident that, no matter how small the number of its adherents become, orthodox Christianity will outlive them (or at least the latter-day variations), just as it did the pagan culture of the militarily, socially, and politically dominant pagans who overran the Roman Empire during the Völkerwanderung period and its aftermath.
So, as pagan anti-Christian persecution resumes, my co-religionists and I will be in the catacombs, rhetorically and perhaps even literally.
Would you please care to elaborate on why not?
not empirical enough, and not naturalistic.
but rather advocates for the innateness of the desire for the sacred in human beings as well as for its real existence.
the term ‘sacred’ is vacuous.
The quest for the sacred is present in all of us
that’s not true. you just substituted h. economicus with h. sacredicus. the reality is that humans vary. your own mental requirements do not extrapolate necessarily to the rest of the human race. you make the same idiotic inference that the new atheists do. don’t.
As such, the impulse for the sacred has not gone away in contemporary America – it is, for many, replaced by pseudo-religions (even pseudo-Christianity), which is, simplistically put, the argument Douthat makes.
since christianity is made up, it is hard for me to judge what is pseudo or not. though i grant there are now currents within xtianity sharply at rupture with the ‘great tradition’, like mormonism was in the 19th century.
Even utilitarians must accept the historically demonstrated benefits of religion such as social cohesion and foundation of morality. A society requires religion, with all its rituals and community, to have common organizing principles. We are not homo economicus and we do not live well together as merely self-interested individuals coexisting in a common space.
you make a host of assertions which are disputable or tendentious. you shouldn’t post comments here if you want to engage in a monologue with yourself. to each sentence, in turn. the first sentence: i agree with modest confidence and qualification, but there is debate around this. to the second sentence, the same (it depends on what you mean by ‘society’). the third sentence, again, one might, or might not, agree, depending on the parameters. as for the last sentence, i personally agree, and think this is probably the least disputable point, though interestingly a small minority of humans, economists and those on the autism spectrum, are actually h. economicus.
So, as pagan anti-Christian persecution resumes, my co-religionists and I will be in the catacombs, rhetorically and perhaps even literally.
they’ll call themselves christians. it’s just like the days of old, marcionists, athanasians, arians, and montanists, all against all…
I would argue that all (or at least all "normal") human beings have a craving for the sacred ("humans are wired for religion"). There is a whole host of philosophical, religious, and scientific arguments for that longing, about which you are no doubt aware (or, if not, you should be as a thinking man).Mr. Khan, there is no need to be rude. I read from Derbyshire that you don't suffer fools gladly. There is a difference between that and being ill-mannered to someone who has engaged you in a serious discussion politely.
Do you feel that words such as "sacred," "holy," and "divine" are "vacuous"?Is morality also "made up"?I commented here because I wanted to hear a considered response from a "thinking atheist." It seems I have my answer.I beg to differ. A homo economicus attempts to maximize economic benefit to himself. When I described that all human beings have an innate desire for the sacred, I in no way meant that "all humans attempt to maximize sacredness." I merely described an impulse - a powerful one, in my view, but one that is but one amongst many (most of us also have impulses for violence, sexual gratification, fear, greed, etc.).And yet an orthodoxy has survived and endured for two millennia.
not empirical enough, and not naturalistic.
but rather advocates for the innateness of the desire for the sacred in human beings as well as for its real existence.
the term 'sacred' is vacuous.
The quest for the sacred is present in all of us
that's not true. you just substituted h. economicus with h. sacredicus. the reality is that humans vary. your own mental requirements do not extrapolate necessarily to the rest of the human race. you make the same idiotic inference that the new atheists do. don't.
As such, the impulse for the sacred has not gone away in contemporary America – it is, for many, replaced by pseudo-religions (even pseudo-Christianity), which is, simplistically put, the argument Douthat makes.
since christianity is made up, it is hard for me to judge what is pseudo or not. though i grant there are now currents within xtianity sharply at rupture with the 'great tradition', like mormonism was in the 19th century.
Even utilitarians must accept the historically demonstrated benefits of religion such as social cohesion and foundation of morality. A society requires religion, with all its rituals and community, to have common organizing principles. We are not homo economicus and we do not live well together as merely self-interested individuals coexisting in a common space.
you make a host of assertions which are disputable or tendentious. you shouldn't post comments here if you want to engage in a monologue with yourself. to each sentence, in turn. the first sentence: i agree with modest confidence and qualification, but there is debate around this. to the second sentence, the same (it depends on what you mean by 'society'). the third sentence, again, one might, or might not, agree, depending on the parameters. as for the last sentence, i personally agree, and think this is probably the least disputable point, though interestingly a small minority of humans, economists and those on the autism spectrum, are actually h. economicus.
So, as pagan anti-Christian persecution resumes, my co-religionists and I will be in the catacombs, rhetorically and perhaps even literally.
they'll call themselves christians. it's just like the days of old, marcionists, athanasians, arians, and montanists, all against all...Replies: @Twinkie
I can see why you might see the book as “not empirical enough” (though it’s difficult to have “empirical” discussions about concepts like “sacred” and “beauty”). I do not understand what you mean by “not naturalistic” however.
While humans “vary,” they are also the same. All, or at least the vast majority of humans, have a brain, a heart, etc. You get the point. We are also social beings, so the vast majority of us crave community of some sort, companionship, expression, reaction to the said expression, and so forth (I am sure you write a blog for some measure of expression and positive feedback; after all, if inner deliberation was all you wanted, you’d choose something other than a blog as a venue).
I would argue that all (or at least all “normal”) human beings have a craving for the sacred (“humans are wired for religion”). There is a whole host of philosophical, religious, and scientific arguments for that longing, about which you are no doubt aware (or, if not, you should be as a thinking man).
Mr. Khan, there is no need to be rude. I read from Derbyshire that you don’t suffer fools gladly. There is a difference between that and being ill-mannered to someone who has engaged you in a serious discussion politely.
Do you feel that words such as “sacred,” “holy,” and “divine” are “vacuous”?
Is morality also “made up”?
I commented here because I wanted to hear a considered response from a “thinking atheist.” It seems I have my answer.
I beg to differ. A homo economicus attempts to maximize economic benefit to himself. When I described that all human beings have an innate desire for the sacred, I in no way meant that “all humans attempt to maximize sacredness.” I merely described an impulse – a powerful one, in my view, but one that is but one amongst many (most of us also have impulses for violence, sexual gratification, fear, greed, etc.).
And yet an orthodoxy has survived and endured for two millennia.
it's pretty clear that the core morality of most religions co-opts human universals. e.g., 'thou shalt not kill' (at least ingroups). orthopraxic elaborations are often the stuff that distinguishes, but they aren't part of the core morality. though as jesus' parable with pharisees suggests people get confused.
""That which is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor. That is the whole Torah; the rest is commentary. Go and study it.""
-HillelReplies: @Joe Q., @Santoculto
The interesting twist here being that Hillel was basically a Pharisee.
it's pretty clear that the core morality of most religions co-opts human universals. e.g., 'thou shalt not kill' (at least ingroups). orthopraxic elaborations are often the stuff that distinguishes, but they aren't part of the core morality. though as jesus' parable with pharisees suggests people get confused.
""That which is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor. That is the whole Torah; the rest is commentary. Go and study it.""
-HillelReplies: @Joe Q., @Santoculto
Religion unconsciously to teach what I term as objective morality, nothing else is doing than teaching the true empathy, not do what you do not like them to do to you.
The problem is how people cognitively less capable interpret it, so that the true psychology (and not one that is based on a dangerous mix of factoids and ideological lies) is essential for us all to be discerning judgment and avoid extremes for the exception or the rule or generalizations.
Good people and are not holistic thinkers ” rationalizating” (ie, generalize) this phrase to all others, including those who do not have any vestige of morality or positive personality traits.