February 20, 2003
SPIRITS, IN A MATERIAL WORLD:
Kicking the Secularist Habit: A six-step program (David Brooks, March 2003, The Atlantic Monthly)Like a lot of people these days, I'm a recovering secularist. Until September 11 I accepted the notion that as the world becomes richer and better educated, it becomes less religious. Extrapolating from a tiny and unrepresentative sample of humanity (in Western Europe and parts of North America), this theory holds that as history moves forward, science displaces dogma and reason replaces unthinking obedience. A region that has not yet had a reformation and an enlightenment, such as the Arab world, sooner or later will.It's now clear that the secularization theory is untrue. The human race does not necessarily get less religious as it grows richer and better educated. We are living through one of the great periods of scientific progress and the creation of wealth. At the same time, we are in the midst of a religious boom. Islam is surging. Orthodox Judaism is growing among young people, and Israel has gotten more religious as it has become more affluent. The growth of Christianity surpasses that of all other faiths. In 1942 this magazine published an essay called "Will the Christian Church Survive?" Sixty years later there are two billion Christians in the world; by 2050, according to some estimates, there will be three billion. As Philip Jenkins, a Distinguished Professor of History and Religious Studies at Pennsylvania State University, has observed, perhaps the most successful social movement of our age is Pentecostalism (see "The Next Christianity," October Atlantic). Having gotten its start in Los Angeles about a century ago, it now embraces 400 million people—a number that, according to Jenkins, could reach a billion or more by the half-century mark. [...]
Secularism is not the future; it is yesterday's incorrect vision of the future. This realization sends us recovering secularists to the bookstore or the library in a desperate attempt to figure out what is going on in the world. I suspect I am not the only one who since September 11 has found himself reading a paperback edition of the Koran that was bought a few years ago in a fit of high-mindedness but was never actually opened. I'm probably not the only one boning up on the teachings of Ahmad ibn Taymiyya, Sayyid Qutb, and Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab.
There are six steps in the recovery process.[...]
The third step is getting angry. I now get extremely annoyed by the secular fundamentalists who are content to remain smugly ignorant of enormous shifts occurring all around them. They haven't learned anything about religion, at home or abroad. They don't know who Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins are, even though those co-authors have sold 42 million copies of their books. They still don't know what makes a Pentecostal a Pentecostal (you could walk through an American newsroom and ask that question, and the only people who might be able to answer would be the secretaries and the janitorial staff). They still don't know about Michel Aflaq, the mystical Arab nationalist who served as a guru to Saddam Hussein. A great Niagara of religious fervor is cascading down around them while they stand obtuse and dry in the little cave of their own parochialism—and many of them are journalists and policy analysts, who are paid to keep up with these things.
The fourth step toward recovery is to resist the impulse to find a materialistic explanation for everything. During the centuries when secularism seemed the wave of the future, Western intellectuals developed social-science models of extraordinary persuasiveness. Marx explained history through class struggle, other economists explained it through profit maximization. Professors of international affairs used conflict-of-interest doctrines and game theory to predict the dynamics between nation-states.
All these models are seductive and partly true. This country has built powerful institutions, such as the State Department and the CIA, that use them to try to develop sound policies. But none of the models can adequately account for religious ideas, impulses, and actions, because religious fervor can't be quantified and standardized. Religious motivations can't be explained by cost-benefit analysis.
Over the past twenty years domestic-policy analysts have thought hard about the roles that religion and character play in public life. Our foreign-policy elites are at least two decades behind. They go for months ignoring the force of religion; then, when confronted with something inescapably religious, such as the Iranian revolution or the Taliban, they begin talking of religious zealotry and fanaticism, which suddenly explains everything. After a few days of shaking their heads over the fanatics, they revert to their usual secular analyses. We do not yet have, and sorely need, a mode of analysis that attempts to merge the spiritual and the material.
The recovering secularist has to resist the temptation to treat religion as a mere conduit for thwarted economic impulses. For example, we often say that young Arab men who have no decent prospects turn to radical Islam. There's obviously some truth to this observation. But it's not the whole story: neither Mohammed Atta nor Osama bin Laden, for example, was poor or oppressed. And although it's possible to construct theories that explain their radicalism as the result of alienation or some other secular factor, it makes more sense to acknowledge that faith is its own force, independent of and perhaps greater than economic resentment.
Human beings yearn for righteous rule, for a just world or a world that reflects God's will—in many cases at least as strongly as they yearn for money or success. Thinking about that yearning means moving away from scientific analysis and into the realm of moral judgment. The crucial question is not What incentives does this yearning respond to? but Do individuals pursue a moral vision of righteous rule? And do they do so in virtuous ways, or are they, like Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden, evil in their vision and methods?
One of the more interesting discussions that goes on here--probably annoying to most of you by now--concerns Darwinism generally, and evolutionary psychology in particular, and their fundamental incompatibility with the idea of Free Will and moral choice. What we find especially fascinating is the vigor with which even self-proclaimed evolutionary absolutists refuse to accept the logical conclusions of the theory and protest that they can have the best of both worlds--Man created wholly by forces of Nature, but then men with consciences and souls that are wholly their own creation. So do even the materialists among us deny the dictates of pure reason and cling to the spiritual.
This is rather reassuring, on the one hand, because it suggests that no matter how ungodly such folks may wish to think themselves, they remain tightly moored to the traditional ways in which we in the West have comprehended ourselves. On the other, it points up a major problem with modern culture, because the prevailing philosophy of our intellectuals--rationalist, materialist, Darwinist--is implicitly acknowledged to be incoherent and inadequate at least to our psychological needs. One curious function of this cultural schizophrenia is that it is only the religious who are viewed as intolerant and fundamentalist, and it is demanded that they pay obeisance to such things as evolution, or else be adjudged somehow unfit for modernity. Meanwhile, it is never deemed proper to require the intellectual classes to acknowledge the reality of the spiritual realm. The element of faith that colors their own thinking must be ignored, like Grandma's goiter.
It's little wonder then that the two sides have such difficulty communicating with one another or even respecting each other. But, as Mr. Brooks points out, it is necessary to find ways around the barriers between the two sides because, where the secularists have for centuries assumed that time would prove them right, that religious belief, like other "superstitions" would merely fade away, it instead appears to be secularized society that dies off, as witness Japan, Western Europe, etc.--societies on such a demographic downslope that even if you only look at them from a Darwinian perspective you're forced to say that Natural Selection has selected them for extinction.
It can come as little surprise--though it has to many secularists--that the responses of America and Western Europe to the threat of Islamicism have been so different. The French and Germans, already headed towards minority ethnic status in their own countries and unable to access moral reasoning any longer, seem content to await their dooms. Compare their lassitude to the moral passion with which Americans--as exemplified by George W. Bush--discuss this confrontation and the seriousness with which America--a nation of rising population and still fervent faith--is responding. Mr. Brooks speaks of men like Osama and Saddam as pursuing evil visions and methods. Such a judgment imposes an obligation on those who believe in morality and righteousness to contend with that evil. But in a secular world there is no good, no evil, and no obligation. And, since ceasing to believe in evil seems unlikely to get rid of it, there may in short order be no secular society.
MORE:
Can We Be Good Without God?: On the political meaning of Christianity (Glenn Tinder, December 1989, Atlantic Monthly)
Mr. Judd;
I see the conflict here as the same as that between Alec Baldwin and George Bush. It's not so much the differences between them, but why Baldwin's opinion on foreign policy is considered relevant. He's just an actor. In the same way, why should a rationalist approach be considered adequate for our psychological needs? It's just a tool that achieves certain things far better than religion (e.g. building gigabit layer 2 routers).
As for economics, there's a big step from "people pursue their goals rationally in aggregate" and "people chose their goals rationally in aggregate", distinction that seems to be frequently glossed over.
AOG:
But it is the claim of the rationalist that reason suffices, while it is the religious who view it as a valuable tool, but no more.
"But in a secular world there is no good, no evil, and no obligation."
Only in a wishy-washy "secular humanist" type world. There are plenty of atheists, from Marxists to Randites, who have very strong (though completely incompatible) moral systems.
A very good post, Orrin. One quibble: Brooks' essay is from the March 2003 Atlantic
, not 2001. Alot has changed between those two years.
ralph:
incompatible moral systems is anarchy
Paul:
Geez, I'm usually ten years behind the times, not two.
Incompatible moral systems means they can't all be right. Not none of them are right or they are all equally valid.
Posted by: Wrighty at February 20, 2003 7:05 PMWhat's the alternative to non-materialist explanations?
Just making stuff up?
That's been the way of the world for most of human history. Don't results count?
Evidently not.
The key issue is, how does the moral system prescribe conduct when confronting intractable disagreement. Classical liberalism renounces coercion, preventing warfare, and Christianity enables liberalism to work by promoting honesty, willingness to forgive, and the desire to love -- traits that enable cooperative relationships to flourish. It's not clear that there's a workable alternative to this Christian-liberal synthesis.
Posted by: pj at February 20, 2003 8:49 PMHarry:
Yes, results are the point.
Europe has secularized and declined. America has stayed religious and ascended.
I believe secularism won the battle that counted--against the imposition
of revealed truth.
Because of the Reformation, rational inquiry's effect of taking the certainty out of religious belief, and the success of secular government, we enjoy a society with unprecedented freedom for, and from, religion.
Also, your distaste of what you see as some of the Theory of Evolution's implications has no bearing on the theory's correctness, or lack thereof. The ToE consists of three principles (variation, heritability, and correlated reproductive success) and one explanation (resource scarcity relative to demand, combined with varying abilities in acquiring those resources).
To argue against ToE's general validity (as opposed to process specifics), you either have to argue one of the above is incorrect, or their combination doesn't lead to the results the theory predicts.
I for one, am not the least bit annoyed by these discussions. I find both your posts, and the responses very thoughtful and interesting.
By the way, you might try reading An Intelligent Person's Guide to Atheism
by Daniel Harbour. Its style is occasionally too reminiscent of a doctoral thesis, but it is often dryly funny and might teach you a few things about a religious belief you have occasionally ridiculed.
Respectfully,
Jeff Guinn
Jeff:
To the contrary, that type of toleration is but a tool of the state, allowing it to impose its own will, having destroyed the institutions, mainly religious, that opposed it. That's why we get the paradoxical effect of relativistic secular societies becoming less free (like those in Europe) while we, still quite religious and homogeneously so, retain a fair degree of freedom.
Orrin, to be in a position to decline, Europe had
first to ascend. It did not ascend until it
dumped religion as a serious matter of policy,
dating from around the Treaty of Augsburg.
pj's admiration for the honesty of Christians
is a mighty armor of proof, if it has withstood
the recent revelations from Boston.
Of course, some of us, historically informed,
realized that the Church's embrace of child-rape
was traditional, having read "Putting the
Devil Back in Hell." And we all respect tradition,
do we not?
I've apparently been misinformed about Henry VIII and disestablishment, the Armada, the English Revolutions, the settling of New England, the Declaration of Independence, the American Civil War, etc, all of which I was led to believe were in no small part functions of religion.
Posted by: oj at February 21, 2003 12:38 AMOJ:
Note, I said secular government
, not society. And it is the nature of our government that leads to an astonishing variety of sects without the otherwise historically concomitant sectarian slaughter.
Regards,
JG
OJ:
Oh, one other thing. You may be succumbing to post-hoc reasoning. There are many non-religious (or, in spite of religion) explanations for the development of the West and America, as well as for Europe's relative stagnation (vastly greater power of labor unions there being just one).
As well, there are some counter-examples. Many countries are strongly religious (Ireland, Spain, South America), and have lagged well behind more secular Europe and the US. Until, that is, Ireland became much more secular replaced lagging with leading...
JG
"incompatible moral systems is anarchy "
Yes. It's also a pretty good description of the state of the world today. I was objecting to your statement that: "in a secular world there is no good, no evil, and no obligation."
Relativist pomos, weak-as-water "Secular Humanists", Unitarians and the National Council of Churches have "no good, no evil, and no obligation."
Quakers, Wahaabis, Marxists and Randites all have quite clear ideas of "good, evil and obligation."
The split is *not* correlated with whether or not one believes in God.
The problem is with those who no longer believe in their own values.
Harry - the failings of the Catholic bishops are a matter of great shame, but they are the failing to be Christian, not evidence that Christianity is erroneous. Insofar as Christianity influences people, it influences them positively.
The trouble is that the influence is often weak. This is why I am amazed that Jeff and his confreres are so terrified of religious faith, that they want to expunge it the same way Salemites expunged witchcraft.
In fact the desire to impose beliefs is not a religious impulse, certainly not a Christian one - for it is contrary to Christian faith - but a human one. This is why atheists like Hitler and Stalin have fought so vigorously to impose their beliefs. It is a matter of shame that some Christians have tried to forcibly impose Christian belief, but they did this not because they were Christian, but in spit of it.
ralph - good point - but Wahhabis, Quakers, et al can be among "those who no longer believe in their own values." I believe the Osama bin Ladens of the world have lost faith in Allah, and this is why they "play God." They no longer trust Allah to organize the universe so that they win, and so they take extreme steps to win without him.
Posted by: pj at February 21, 2003 8:52 AMralph:
Marxists and Randites have no good and evil, both are utopian and premised on human society having been perfect at some point and capable of returning to that state by our own efforts.
and by any objective rationalist measure you'd have to prefer the future of Islamism to that of secular Europe. The territory that is Europe will be Islamic in the not too distant future.
Posted by: oj at February 21, 2003 9:37 AMpj:
What was wrong with the witch trials?
JG:
Religious belief alone does not suffice and Catholicism's reaction to Protestantism seems to have been counter-productive as regards economic progress.But it can hardly be a coincidence that a still religious Ireland has the only healthy economy in Europe. And, if you had to buy $100 worth of stock futures to be cashed in on February 20th, 2103, would you buy a European Index or a Latin American?
European, without a doubt, Orrin.
pj, I have never encountered that admirable Christianity. All I know of the religion is what its adherents practice. I care nothting about what they preach. And 2000 years of consistent practice is enough to establish a trend.
Harry:
I find bizarre your ranting about religious wars when the secular regimes you favor exterminated 100 million people last century, even without the wars they also caused. sure the Inquisition was a bit rough, but your Cultural; Revolution killed what? about 30 million? Ah, blessed reason...
Harry - St. Francis of Assisi? St Thomas Aquinas? Mother Teresa?
But you have not addressed my point. The issue is not whether Christians are good or bad, but whether they're as good or better than non-Christians. The practice of non-Christians is every bit as consistent as the practice of Christians.
OJ:
I think I started this off by stating secularism's great triumph was in putting paid to the imposition of revealed truth.
In your comments equating atheism and communism, you fail to note that communism is the imposition of revealed truth in precisely the same manner as pre-reformation Christianity.
Communism is a religion. As practiced, it had a priesthood (Communist Party), revered texts (The Communist Manifesto, Das Kapital) and sanctified entities (cults of personality). Just as with theistic religion, communisms arguments were based on authority, as opposed to rational inquiry.
Hypothetical: Communism survives for, say, several hundred years. Any doubting Marx, Engels, Lenin, et al would have obtained supernatural status?
So equating atheism--which resists all arguments based solely on authority--and Communism is a significant category mistake.
BTW, I am not terrified of public religious symbols, there are just far too many examples of where that can lead. Try studying the experiences of the Jews at the hands of their ever so peaceful Christian neighbors across centuries of European history.
Regards,
Jeff Guinn
Jeff:
What is your faith in "reason" but a religious belief?
I can't deconstruct Rationalism better than Michael Oakeshott, but I think you'll benefit from his essay:
http://www.brothersjudd.com/index.cfm/fuseaction/reviews.detail/book_id/1208/
OJ:
Well, of course my belief in rational inquiry has a religious component to it: atheism is, after all, a religious belief. Although, I think it is one reached through much more analysis than theistic belief.
Regards,
JG
Jeff:
Of course you believe it to be truer than other religions, what believer thinks that someone else's faith is more legitimate?
OJ:
No. I didn't say truer. I merely commented on the process of getting there. In fact, I think it is undecidable whether theistic or atheistic belief is "truer."
Regards,
Jeff Guinn
Jeff:
Then how does it put paid to revealed truth, if it makes no claim to a greater truth?