It is intellectually dishonest to maintain the idea that religious beliefs are precluded as bases for thought, logic, and debate.
Christianity does involve a set of presuppositions and adherence to belief in ideas, principles, and truth claims that are not quantitatively provable. However, any viewpoint that a person brings to a discussion on social issues like abortion and same-sex marriage is ultimately based upon a world view that rests upon ideas, principles, and truth claims that cannot be proven. The idea that you can participate in debate about issues like this from a morally neutral standpoint is false.
For example, if you were to ask a Christian and an atheist "Where do human rights come from?", you are probably going to get two very different answers and each person's answer will not satisfy the other. However, if you start to ask a series of "Well why do you believe that?" questions upon each person's successive answers, you are going to finally arrive at a set of beliefs that neither the Christian nor the atheist can prove or explain.
The way that this "myth of neutrality" finds footing is that during a debate on an issue, a person claiming to be "morally neutral" will critique the speaker by saying that the speaker is offering a a truth claim that cannot be proven. Too often, the speaker will then say "Well I guess I can't ultimately prove this, so it can't be legimate grounds for debate." What happens then is not that the conversation proceeds on grounds of moral neutrality (if the conversation proceeds at all). Instead, what happens is that the conversation proceeds on grounds that both parties, the critic and the speaker, agree on. Since there is no disagreement about the truths being used in the conversation, the conversation appears neutral when it is in fact not.
An honest appraisal of that critique, however, reveals that the critic is actually asserting claims to truth himself. The very standards upon which the critic assesses the other's truth claims are themselves moral stances. The truth here is that all individuals approach these issues with presuppositions that cannot be proven. The fact that mine may be based on a belief in God and yours may be based on an atheistic belief in human reason doesn't change the fact that I cannot prove God anymore than you can prove the dependability of human reasoning in a world without God. Both stances claim to have a greater truth than the other.
The critics true goal here, is not to approach an issue from a truly neutral standpoint, but rather to set the parameters for the debate. By saying that you can't use your unprovable truth claims in this discussion, but I can, the critic is really just building an advantage for himself into the conversation.
So at this point, we have two options:
1. "All ideas, philosophies, theologies, ideologies, etc. are fair grounds for debate."
OR
2. "Since nobody can ultimately prove their presuppositions, discussion is meaningless."
Option 1 gives us the opportunity to debate, discuss and progress. Option 2 paralyzes us.
Now am I advocating for allowing anyone to define truth however fits their fancy at a certain time? No. Just because people should be allowed to use religious arguments in a discussion about political policy does not mean that those arguments are given a free pass. If people put an argument into a debate, they should rightly have to defend their reasons for believing that argument.
What I'm concerned about here is:
A) The belief that anyone can approach an issue from a truly morally neutral standpoint.
B) That academic intellectuals, theological atheists and agnostics, and legal positivists often hide behind the false concept of "moral neutrality" to throw religious ideas out of the debate without any discussion.
It's not fair and it's not intellectually honest.
2 comments:
I'm not buying your argument, though I appreciate you taking the time to respond. I'm not sure where you got the impression I claimed to be "morally neutral." I just stated an opinion, based on my feelings on the issue as informed by my personal life experiences.
I believe I can put myself in the place of a person of faith and understand what informs their way of thinking, because I myself was once a person of faith. At one point in my life I was even a Sunday school teacher. But the hypocrisy and homophobia and obsession with sexual issues eventually just turned me off entirely. The contrast between my experience with gays and lesbians and what I was taught in church was just too much to wrap my head around. Pretty soon none of it made any sense. The reason I responded to your post is because I enjoy reading your tweets, even though I no longer share your faith. I appreciate that, unlike many Christians I know, you truly seem to be a smart and thoughtful guy and your belief strikes me as completely sincere and the result of a lot of personal reflection. But I think you do real damage to your efforts to preach the gospel when you spend time talking about something like same sex marriage. For many people, myself included, you wading in dangerous territory when you uncork that bottle. I personally see no moral difference between racism and homophobia and I regard same sex marriage bans as institutional homophobia. Every new poll I see shows more and more people are starting to feel the same way (to the point that a small majority nationwide now support marriage equality). I see Christianity destroying itself with its unhealthy obsession with people's private sexual lives.
By contrast, I'm not sure you understand where folks like me are coming from. Most Christians I know have never stopped to put themselves in the position of a person of nonbelief. To us, it is hard to understand how otherwise smart and sometimes even brilliant people can simultaneously readily accept the laws of science in their daily life and yet also believe that they communicate telepathically with a supernatural being. If you can think about it from the perspective of someone who's a nonbeliever or better yet who's never even been exposed to Christianity, you might be able to appreciate what an extraordinary sort of thing that is. And if you can do that, you might be understand why it's so terribly unsatisfying to be told that ending something we regard as a true injustice can't happen because of the desires of an unseen force that we don't believe in.
Ian
My comment was too long, so I turned it into a post on my blog: http://bit.ly/rlDvTb
In short:
(1) Your argument fits with modern thought on epistemology
(2) You fail to pay attention to the link bewteen praxis and thought.
(3) Paradigms (thought patterns) often change only as a result of a situation in which it is necessary for them to.
(4) When Christianity attacks secular modernism at the point of same sex marriage, it creates no need for a change. In fact, Ian is correct to point us to how absurd such a claim seems to someone who does not believe. (nice to meet you Ian)
(5) Christianity has many areas in which it can attack secular modernism in the public sphere in which modernism is ill equipped to respond.
(6) You should expand your line of thinking to some of these areas.
Peace,
Glenn
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