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The Unacknowledged Subtext

Submitted by Ken Watts on Wed, 01/20/2010 - 12:04

MY LAST THREE POSTS have discussed the cases for religion made by Nigel Spivey, Julia Neuberger, and Roger Scruton, in the debate posed at Intelligence Squared over the resolution that "We'd be better off without religion."

"The meaning they give to the word "religion" is entirely different than the meaning given by those from whom Christopher Hitchens draws most of his negative examples."

All three of the debaters shared a common subtext which goes to the heart of the debate, both in that room and in the culture at large.

Not one of those arguing the case for religion argued that it was, in any scientific sense, true .

The rabbi—the one person on the panel with real religious credentials—specifically said that such questions—of the truth or falsehood of doctrines—were completely beside the point.

The participants in this debate sit on the opposite end of a continuum from many of the preachers and lay people who are so political active among the religious right in America or their counterparts in the Middle East.

They experience religion as a cultural, social, and personal phenomenon, not as a loyalty to a set of beliefs about the nature of the real world or to a God/King who can call them to arms.

That is to say, they experience religion as what it is.

Because of this realism about their own faith, they have a completely different experience of religion than those who sit at the other end of the continuum.

They find it easy to dismiss or underestimate the dangerous forms of religion because, in their own experience, religion doesn't include most of the elements which are so dangerous.

  1. It doesn't include dogma.
  2. It doesn't include claims to "truths" that could be at odds with our actual knowledge of the world.
  3. It doesn't include the right or responsibility to force ones views on ones neighbor.

In fact, these "religious" people differ far more from the religious people who throw bombs or pass laws against gays or enforce slavery on fellow humans than they do from the atheists on the other side of the platform.

The meaning they give to the word "religion" is entirely different than the meaning given by those from whom Christopher Hitchens draws most of his negative examples.

But they don't seem to be creating their definition of religion as a mere debating point. It's the definition they live with—the religion they know.

As one who, on his own spiritual journey, has moved from fundamentalist to evangelical to liberal evangelical to pantheist to atheist/pantheist, I believe them.

There are real positions in this world, which real people hold and live out of, and which involve an approach to religion that is not exclusive, not closed-minded, not interested in forcing its views and values on others.

Not all religion is cut from the same cloth.

It is possible to be religious without being a threat to humanity.

But neither side of the debate makes this distinction.

Neither those in favor of religion, or the atheists on the other side, ever point out that the religion of terrorists and gay haters has only superficial similarities to the religion of a lapsed Methodist or a progressive rabbi, and that we would be better off without the first—even if we wouldn't be better off without the second.

That may have been due to the fact that they were trying to win a debate, but in the real world it's a distinction both sides should make, and make consistently.

It does the practitioners of rational, open minded, religious activity no good to allow themselves to be confused with fundamentalists.

And it does atheists no good to be seen as attacking rational, open minded practitioners of religion.

Both sides would be better off attacking the irrationality, the hubris, and the danger of dogmatic and apocalyptic thinking without encouraging the idea that all religion belongs to the same category.

At least, that's what I think today.