In Heather’s post she mentioned that at the end of the day for her it is about truth, not consequence, in relation to supernatural claims. This is a point that needs to be made because intellectuals such as Michael Novak have argued for the efficacy of Christianity in terms of promoting good in this world, while naive believers who adhere to trends such as prosperity theology seem to mix the worth of truth with the material manna it might presage. But at the end of the day for all the consequentialist arguments about Christianity’s role in the rise of capitalism, or abolition of slavery, it’s irrelevant for intellectual believers, at least notionally. Two years ago Rod Dreher said in chronicling his conversion to Orthodoxy from Catholicism:
But there was the matter of truth. A decade ago, when my dear friend Terry Mattingly was trying to decide whether or not to go Catholic or Orthodox, I listened impatiently to his fears for raising his children as Christians in an American Catholic parish, without active support from the priest and the community, and possibly even outright attack (at the time, I was preparing for marriage while living in south Florida, and had learned that CCL instructors, who taught couples how to practice NFP in obedience to the Church, couldn’t even get a foot in the door in parish marriage instruction). I kept saying to him, confidently, that none of that matters, that what matters is: Is the case for Catholicism true? And here I was a decade later, facing the same dilemma.
As Right-leaning non-believers we are enjoined by some that our frankly stated opinions give offense, that even admission of our existence causes discomfort, that our nature denies any possible identification as conservative. And yet on the other hand I could argue that without the fullness of appreciation of the power of truth my conservatism would be far more attenuated, grounded in the norms of the moment, than in the tangible realities of human nature. If I did not believe that the possibilities of human flourishing are constrained by the range of psychological variation, and that human societies exhibit the modalities they do due to the contingencies of our natures, then my skepticism of radical change, experimentation, and the blooming of relativism would lack an empirical grounding.
Let me offer a specific example. A friend was once a member of a radical anarchist commune. He told me how at some point the “community” decided that normative heterosexuality was a “social construct.” To show their commitment and rejection of patriarchal “heternormativity” several previously identified heterosexual males engaged in homosexual acts. This was one of the many moments where my friend saw that his own commitment to the “cause” was less than total, but, he was happy for his relative conservatism when it came to experimenting in this way. He indicated that some of the men who wished to “overthrow” the “shackles” of their heterosexuality were psychologically traumatized rather than opened up to a new world of personal exploration and fullfillment. Human nature is not universally malleable, contingent upon the willy-nilly of social consensus. This I believe to be true, and that leaves me very skeptical of social engineering. In fact, it is less engineering than social shamanism, a faith that the spirits of human nature bend to the will of powerful savants and wizards who by their charisma can convince many that what is, isn’t.
Truth is a powerful thing. The great scientists of European civilization wielded truth against the wisdom of the ages. They were disruptive, but there is a difference between being conservative and cautious of change, and seeking perpetual social stasis. As a matter of common decency I do not hector the religious as to the falsity of their beliefs. But let me add that when I was a younger man I had a simple rule so as to establish a modus vivendi with my evangelical friends, they could attempt to convert me once so as to absolve themselves of the obligation, but they would have to cease at that one attempt so as to not waste both of our time indefinitely. Because of the nature of the society within which I lived this was a compromise I made, accepting rather repetitive lectures about the saving grace of Jesus Christ and the hell which I no doubt faced from individuals who I was otherwise in great agreement with about the important aspects of life. This sort of interpersonal rudeness when normalized ultimately gives no offense, it is expected. I take no great personal offense, aside from some irritation at the time expended, reality is what it is, and that was my reality in a different age.
I have admitted in this space a general skepticism of reason’s acidic power to eat away cognitive constructions and preconceptions. Rather, I suspect emotion has us on the leash quite often, the amygdala driving the left neocortex before it. Some Christians emphasize the essential depravity of human nature because of sin, and so putting into stark focus the importance of soteriology. I like to emphasize the relative insulation of humanity from the power of truth, however it is revealed. Of course this means truth telling is all the more important, and precious.
the empirical “truth” here is that most people just accept whatever they were indoctrinated to believe, and it’s even harder to get them to change their minds once they’ve made it up. so the key thing is to get them early: i.e. when they’re young and malleable. To use religion’s tactics against itself, in other words.
i don’t mean atheists ought to go around knocking on people’s doors, or try to infiltrate the school curriculum. they don’t need to: the culture is changing naturally, and where the culture leads the young will follow. just let things take their course. This is relevant to your point above about human nature. of course, “human nature” is not “universally malleable,” and i don’t know anyone who claims that it is, but (if i’m reading you right) you’re too dismissive of the power of environment to effect human behavior and human beliefs. white Western Europe has been secularizing at a startling rate–it’s not that old people have been abandoning Christianity, it’s that their kids look at christianity and don’t see the point. it’s laughable and ridiculous and not relevant to their lives. OTOH, for european muslims islam is bound up closely with their cultural identity, so it’s much harder to give up. both religions are equally implausible, so you might think they would be declining at the same rates, but of course religiosity is bound up with all sorts of other situational facts. The difference is the culture, not the truth.
i think the West is in a pretty good place right now, as is East Asia. we already know that a millenia-old religious tradition like christianity can vanish from whole societies within one or two generations–before the fact maybe you couldn’t have predicted that, because of “human nature.” but it turns out that humans don’t have to get more rational in order to believe more true things (and stop believing false things). you just have to have the right environment: in this case, an open society of free inquiry where children are exposed at an early age to a diversity of beliefs. It’s clear that the long-term demographic trend in these societies will be towards atheism–not a result of social engineering, but natural social change. OTOH, you have places like Africa or the Middle East where the demographic trend seems to be just the opposite. and that’s because they don’t have the same culture of free inquiry into truth that we have. to sort of sum up my post, i guess the point i’m making is that it may not be good enough to be right, or even to explain why we’re right–we also have to have (and maybe try to set up) the right conditions for making people receptive to the truth. maybe that’s even the most important thing.
p.s. just an aside. anyone who’s studied ancient sparta will know that homosexual behavior can be easily enculturated into pretty much any person, as long as you–and this is always the key–get them when they’re young. Heterosexual behavior too: think about all the gays married to women. “sexual orientation” is probably a different thing, but as an empirical matter there certainly have been homonormative cultures.
I thought you read Atran, Hume.
Supernatural belief is hard-wired in homosapiens sapiens and variable along what I imagine is a gaussian.
Unfortunately for the survival of intellectual tradition within the conservative movement there is a negative correlation between religious belief and IQ. And please don’t cite Old Dead Guys. Once upon a time belief was pretty much not optional, and religion and science were the same thing. Like I’ve said before, you would have Ibn Rushd, and I would have been Ibn Arabi.
The reason atheist/secular conservatives are vanishing rare is not that the socons have the party by the short hairs, but that most reps leave the tribe naturally in the course of secondary education.
Previously, 30somethings would return to the tribe when they married and reproduced.
I predict that will not happen much any more, because of the New Liberal Alignment. Things like Universal Healthcare and and more goverment programs will supplant the need for local church/community support.
This is a societal trend.
Culture evolves.
Pardon, most higher IQ reps leave the tribe naturally in the course of higher education.
..and raft, homosexuality is simply a natural variant on the spectrum of human sexuality.
And…a lot of people might find this offensive, but a lot of what religious-belief is comprised of is self-esteem for the bulk of the bellcurve that just won’t ever get high order mathematics or quantum mechanics or evo bio.
That is why the desperate attempt to promote IDT as competitve or peer to ToE.
It’s all about teh disrespect.
Here’s the meme–
We are just as smart as the lot of you snobbish elitist scientitists—we are smart in a different way!
The way that really matters!
God-smart.
(Our) Hume’s support from the historical Hume: ““reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them”
A bit strident perhaps, and I’d like to hope than maybe there’s some room for reason overcoming emotion (in some cases), but often the situation looks bleak. (As the repeated emotionally-driven comments by some commenters in even this blog can attest.)
Look.
You simply cannot purge religious belief from the lower 3/4 of the bellcurve without species wide genetic re-engineering.
This what you have to do to make conservatism viable into the 21st century.
1. You can still be the proLIFE, profamily party, but you have to give up attemptin’ to legislate morality.
Just tell the socons its game over for anti-citizen legislation.
2. Make these people the face of the GOP– Reihan Salam, Bobby Jindal, and Ahn “Joseph” Cao.
Reihan even digs teh Hiphop.
These guys are a resource of incalculable value.
Young, hyper-smart, educated, and NOT WHITE.
But good luck sellin’ them to base. 😉
Through the inexorable process of cultural evolution it has become cool to be black.
Like I told you back in the day Razib……..someday it will be cool to be brown.
Of course this means truth telling is all the more important, and precious.
Hmm. But what do you do when bona fide truth is simply not accessible to most people?
Some levels of truth are, of course, quite accessible. “Putting your hand in fire causes pain.” “The mailman is often late but rarely early.” “Sex feels good.” This level of truth is accessible through the broadly universal mechanisms of human sensation, or simple observation about uncontroversial empirical events.
With more complex topics, truth becomes more difficult to ascertain. Will national health care save lives in the long term? Should we have invaded Iraq? Does war “work” as an instrument of national policy? Who’s a better parent, Britney Spears or Kevin Federline? Although there are facts involved in all of these questions – millions of them, sometimes – sorting through the competing claims and the interpretations of all the contingent events becomes very difficult, and there is no consensus even among very bright people.
Some truths, while difficult to analyze, are nonetheless so clarion in their rightness that they can be meaningfully discussed, at least by those sufficiently cognitively skilled to handle the symbols. Mathematics is one such area where very bright people, while disagreeing on some things no doubt, nonetheless come to consensus about truths and are able to prove their findings using logic. Even the mentally retarded can process 2+2; algebra is challenging for many but broadly accessible to the mentally normal; calculus is tricky unless you’re fairly bright; and so on up the scale.
Still further up the hierarchy of conceptual difficulty (as a good conservative, I love me some hierarchy!) are questions that, frankly, most humans simply aren’t equipped to investigate, or even to process the digested investigations of those smarter than themselves. Questions like the fundamental nature of reality, the nature of matter and energy, how they interact, etc. I will say confidently that nobody reading this understands those things (I certainly don’t), and the honest particle physicists who study them don’t really understand them either. They have some educated guesses, and are working diligently to expand the radius of what we do know – but we’re like the alchemists of the Renaissance period, learning how to turn gold into less gold. (We’ve made huge strides here, I’m not intending to run down physics, just to point out how tenuous our grasp of the questions are.)
So. With all of that in mind, where in the hierarchy does “is there a God” come into it? My own lay opinion is that it’s at the top end of the scale. It’s not a “why is the mailman late” question, it’s a “how does the fundamental structure of the cosmos function” question. It may be susceptible to rational analysis – though I doubt it – but the odds are very long against any particular person being the one guy in the world smart enough to make any headway on the problem.
That’s why I tend to discount the opinions of strong atheists, who are convinced that their tiny meat brains have concocted logical disproof of the existence of the Ultimate. Agnosticism makes a great deal of sense on rational grounds; atheism (as a rationalist proposition, not as simply an inverse type of faith) makes no sense whatsoever. You’re not smart enough to have figured this puzzle out with your monkey brain; it’s just as ludicrous as claims to have proven the existence of God from rational means. It’s likely not a problem within the power of our mental toolkit.
Rationality is a sharp knife indeed – but of what use is a knife when confronted by Mt. Everest?
raft, one more thing.
Given that homosexuality is a historically and naturally occurring variant on the spectrum of human sexuality, different forms of societal institutions and structures have evolved to accomodate it.
Gay marriage is inevitable, and we are seeing cultural evolution gradually accomodating SSM.
Razib said to me once, that people are not shaped by culture as much as people shape culture according to their needs.
😉
Disagree
Having a good first approximation isn’t understanding, matoka_cha. And, note that very few people are competent to read Penrose’s book, let alone understand it, let alone do original research in the area. Query: in five hundred years, will Penrose’s book be viewed as a quaint attempt by our forebears’ primitive physics, or as the enduring classic defining physics? Right.
It would depend on the specific morality. I don’t suppose you wish to include giving up legislating morality when it comes to murder, rape, or burglary. When you go beyond those it gets more controversial.
The general assumption appears to be that “all” conservatives want to overturn Roe v Wade on religious grounds, or are all supportive of criminalizing abortion. That’s simply not the case. In addition, there are secular arguments for restricting abortion. I use abortion only as an example of dozens of issues that could fall under the conservative umbrella. It is possible to agree that Roe v Wade was bad law and that the issue should be decided by the states, and still agree that abortion should not be criminalized entirely.
The media has done a dandy job of associating all conservative positions with the religious right, ie, that all conservative arguments are based solely on religion. That’s false.
Take Ms. McDonald’s essay on the Behind the Hundred Neediest Cases, for example, and you have an excellent secular-conservative argument for for the slippery slope and how society has changed in response to a change in do-good-but-actually-screw-things-up social re-engineering program. (And her entire book of essays, The Burden of Bad Ideas focuses on a number of issues, once thought to be Christian-based strong-arming of society, overturned or revised in some sort of twisted idea of “fairness” or “kindness.”)
“The Youth” you seem to be so concerned about hasn’t heard those arguments, either because of inferior education or simply the fact that they’re young, and lacking experience on a wide range of issues.
There are a variety of reasons why something like homosexual marriage is a really bad idea, without being mired in the construct of Christian morals… but the secular message of why that is a bad idea doesn’t get out there. People hear either the stereotype that it is Christian-hating gays who are against it, or anyone who would be against it is a homophobe… as if that’s the beginning and the end of the discussion. California is a great example where your theory doesn’t jive with the facts. Obama won the state in large number, but those same Obama-supporting voters weren’t keen on homosexual marriage. Even in modern day Sodom and Gomorrah (New Orleans), homosexual marriage (and domestic partnerships) was rejected by a huge majority.
The degree to which morality can be effectively legislated isn’t the specific issue (per se) as it is the willingness of the public to support it. We continue to have laws against murder because people agree that murder is wrong. The public participates in supporting its illegal status. In communities where the law is not respected, even the murder rate is higher, and the communities don’t participate with law enforcement to catch murderers.
The Drug War doesn’t have popular support, but not necessarily because people want recreational drugs decriminalized. They want the overreach of search and seizure to be curbed, and they don’t like seeing the militarization of the police. While some might prefer to have drugs decriminalized, you can be against the methods of the drug war and still want drugs to remain criminal.
I think we make too much of Obama’s victory or are trying to read too much into it. It isn’t a dipstick of the country’s attitude towards morality legislation as it was a rejection of the effectiveness of McCain or his campaign. The candidates on the conservative side were dreadful!
The youth are generally excited about a youthful, emotive candidate, and are joiners when it comes to movement-type candidates. Obama represents, to the young, the kind of youthful ignorance that got horrible JFK elected. I don’t recall anyone suggesting that JFK’s victory meant the end of morality law-making in legislatures. The youth will wise up and discover that feel-good isn’t the basis for effective government, and that wealth redistribution is cool, until it’s your wealth that’s getting taken away.
I work the online problems at the end of the chapters, and I read here.
There are websites devoted to discussing those problems.
Sure, we don’t have perfect understanding…….. yet.
OTOH we ARE currently conducting scientific experiments to increase our understanding.
Where are your analogous god-experiments?
I am disagreeing with your statement, in particular the “confidently” part.
Mme. du Toit
Alas, it is not just the youth. The base is increasingly white married xians who are shrinking as a proportion of the electorate.
The GOP lost support from hispanics, the college-educated, women, men, youth, blacks, indeed from every demographic but the over 65 and white married xians.
If that isn’t a referendum I don’t know what is.
The problem isn’t just the socons— it is actually A socon– GW Bush.
Consider this– we just had our first socon president….and he was an epic fail.
Bush wasn’t a neocon– he hispandered on immigration and the border.
Bush wasn’t a a fiscalcon– he spent like a drunken sailor and handed out corporate welfare.
But Bush was a socon– he vetoed ESCR twice, went on record as advocating Creationism being taught in schools, promoted the marriage act, and appointed judiciary that could just possibly barely overturn Roe in the eleventh hour (according to Ross, IMHO it’s game over already).
So yeah, prolife isn’t the WHOLE problem—- it is the whole socon agenda that is the problem.
And I doubt very much that a socon will ever be elected to the high office again.
California is a great example where your theory doesn’t jive with the facts.
“the facts”
8 years ago, prop 22 passed with 30% of the vote.
Prop 8 passed with less than 5%.
See the curve?
Youth against Prop 8 2:1
Youth for Obama 2:1
That young voters are going to turn conservative is a myth you are telling yourselves.
Like Ross’s wistful fantasies of legions of proLIFE youth.
Campfire tales.
And, Mme., the states decided on miscegenation and slavery.
How did that work out for them?
“It would depend on the specific morality. I don’t suppose you wish to include giving up legislating morality when it comes to murder, rape, or burglary. When you go beyond those it gets more controversial”
Actually, none of these laws legislate morality, they legislate legality. They don’t assert that is right and wrong, but what is permissible and not permissible. No one is reguired to believe it is wrong to burgle, for example. It is not a crime to thing burglary is an absolute moral good, as long as one does not do it.
That should read, “It is not a crime to _think_ burglary is an absolute moral good, as long as one does not do it.”