Tuesday, January 25, 2011

Newspeak: Religion

Most take it as an unquestioned fact that religion and the state should be separate from each other, and that religious ideals should not stand behind the state's laws. Few attend to the fact, however, that the word "religion" is used somewhat idiosyncratically in this statement.

If by "religion" one means ones ultimate beliefs about human nature and about the world, then the statement is simply false. Atheist, utilitarian, secular humanism can be such an all-encompassing worldview; arguments based on it are often used in the public sphere. Indeed, we rarely encounter arguments in the public sphere based on anything else.

If, on the other hand, by "religion" one means belief in a super-human personal Entity or entities, then it is true that religious arguments are not permitted to stand behind laws.

On the other hand, such an interpretation destroys the statement's pleasantly neutral facade: it shows that the statement favors the secular worldview over the religious, just as theocracy favors the religious over the secular. To say that religion and the state should be separate becomes the same as saying that secularists should be able to pass laws that are based on their values--and which thus promote their values--while those who believe in God should not be able.

One might object that nearly everyone can agree on certain good things that secular humanism endorses, like food and shelter. This is true. But to base laws only on the principles of secular humanism will be satisfactory only to those who recognize only secular humanist goods--that is, only to secular humanists. Because man is finite, any attempt to promote solely a certain sort of good will injure man's chances of attaining other kinds of good. A life organized around making money will fall short by Christian standards; thus a state organized around humanist goods will also.

The same argument could be reversed: nearly everyone can also agree on certain good things things that Catholicism endorses, like food and shelter. But no non-Catholics would be satisfied with a state that only permitted laws based on Catholic principles.

Similarly, no one who is not a secular humanist should be satisfied with a state that only permits laws based on secular humanist principles.

And no one, save secular humanists, would be satisfied with current western states, if it were not for their veil that language draws over reality.

Thus, the separation of religion from the state masks the imposition of the secular worldview.

This is but one example of how a vaguely used term, such as 'religion' is often used in an incoherent or a deceptive way in private thought or public discourse. I am going to begin a series on this theme, because it is extremely important.

"Man thinks his word before he speaks his thought," according to Louis de Bonald. Thus, words change how we think, and words that do not reflect reality can change it for the worse.

Allow me to quote George Orwell's essay "Politics and the English Language" explaining how degenerate language and degenerate thought reinforce each other:

"A man may take to drink because he feels himself to be a failure, and then fail all the more completely because he drinks. It is rather the same thing that is happening to the English language. It becomes ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts. The point is that the process is reversible."

Our slovenliness serves the purposes of others, he continues.

"When there is a gap between one's real and one's declared aims [in politics], one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish spurting out ink. In our age there is no such thing as "keeping out of politics." All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred, and schizophrenia. When the general atmosphere is bad, language must suffer."

This is why our language fails to cut reality at the joints: those who use it have no desire to do so.

Take a look at "religion" again, for instance.

If this means that politicians should not base laws on their principles and beliefs about the good, then we are simply asking politicians to be unprincipled, and therefore venal and corrupt. If this means that politicians should not base laws on beliefs about something greater than themselves, then we are asking them to pass laws like atheists. Neither alternative is terribly attractive to me.

2 comments:

  1. "Most take it as an unquestioned fact that religion and the state should be separate from each other, and that religious ideals should not stand behind the state's laws."

    Let's look at what the Constitution actually says:

    "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;"

    The intent here was to prevent Congress from imposing a national religion on the whole country, but to instead leave laws that are tied to religious principles up to the states and local communities. I fully agree with the Constitution in this regard. Each community should be free to establish its own laws based on the shared beliefs and values of the members of that community.

    What the liberals did was to twist the Constitution and reinterpret it in a way that is exactly the opposite of its original intent. They used this very clause to establish atheism as the national religion by extending this clause to mean that no level of government may make any law related to religion. And of course the liberals ignore the "prohibiting the free exercise thereof" part. I am an atheist myself, but I am not a liberal and I don't want my beliefs or anyone else's to be imposed by Congress on the nation.

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  2. If the Constitution were the document whereby we were governed in practice, rather than in theory, this would be nice. There were states with established religions when the document was passed, if I recall correctly.

    I agree with the Constitution in this regard as well . . . but, I don't know, I feel like working to restore the Constitution as an American would be like working to restore the current British monarchy to power as an Englishman. You'd have to upend decades, or a century, or maybe a bit more, of precedent. In short, the whole government would have to be transformed, the bureaucracy replaced/eliminated, etc. It just isn't happening. Not that it wouldn't be nice it if it.

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