> ><snipping long story we all already know>
>
> Sorry for repeating the story of the East Waynesville Baptist Church casting
> out its devils (Democratic voters). I did it because religion seems to
> consist mainly of endless iterations of the same dreary sacralized tribal
> lore, and -- since people of faith are thus apparently slow learners -- I
> thought it would be useful to point to this cautionary tale again.
they may be slow learners, but i suspect the endless iterations have more to do with ritual recapitulation. it's part of the religious process.
>
> >ok, not only is this unnecessarily insulting (which makes one wonder
> >whether you're more interested in persuasion or in scoring cheap
> >points), it also betrays a complete and utter misunderstanding of
> >religion. if religion is fundamentally about assigning the cosmos
> >meaning, how can it not affect everything you do if you take it the
> >least bit seriously? while i have more issues with fundies where the
> >rubber meets the road, i have more trouble in principle with
> >quietistic private religion dorks who think that meaning is something
> >you keep to yourself.
>
> When religious people join in political debate, they should make their case
> solely in secular terms. They should explain how their positions stand on
> their own two feet and make sense for all people in the here and now. They
> should not invoke the will of God in support of their claims or state that
> their positions will benefit people in the hereafter. Any public policy
> worth advocating can be defended in quotidian terms without hauling God into
> the picture.
>
> One basic problem in this debate is that people misconstrue what religious
> toleration means in a democratic society. Toleration means that I am
> willing to *put up with* other people's pious twaddle; I doesn't mean that I
> respect or in any way endorse their silly presumptuous claims.
>
> If anything, I take the arguments of religion more seriously than the
> faithful apparently do. As I've said on the list before, I find religions
> sacrilegious. All religions state that God cannot be embraced by human
> understanding, yet each faith affirms that it and it alone has detailed
> intimate understanding of God's nature and intentions. What gross
> impertinence! In each religion, the devout are not worshipping God at all;
> they are worshipping their own faith, a human creation. The technical term
> for that is idolatry.
so far, i don't think i disagree with the substance of anything you've said.
>
> Human existence is tough enough without wasting time and resources
> squabbling about unknowable things. People can worship God in their hearts,
> but they should keep Him/Her/It the hell out of public policy debates.
>
here is where things get tricky, in my view. pointless squabbling is by definition pointless. what squabbling is pointless is still an open question. i would say, however, that we "waste" time and resources worrying about unknowable things precisely because things are so rough and many of the unknowable things matter an awful lot to us, even if we eventually decide to more or less let go of them.
bracketing that, however, i still see the same problem here with oversimplifying the relationship between politics and religion. i would prefer to go back to what you said above and have as our criterion or filter that no public policy arguments can be grounded in religious doctrine. that is still ambiguous (why do the things that matter to us matter to us? maybe those are grounded in religion), but it does not make the mistake (as it seems to me) of drawing this public/private distinction and placing religion on the private side. if this distinction is spurious (and i think it is), then it gets us nowhere at all to try to solve the religion and politics problem by making religion "private".
right?
j
-- Among medieval and modern philosophers, anxious to establish the religious significance of God, an unfortunate habit has prevailed of paying to Him metaphysical compliments.
- Alfred North Whitehead