Truth or otherwise
Something I wonder about – Jonathan Derbyshire commenting on something Chris Dillow said:
“I should stress here that my beef is not with religion as such. It’s about the role it should play in politics. In an egalitarian polity, in which people should be persuaded rationally of policies, religion should have no place – even if it is true. Religion might motivate political beliefs, but it shouldn’t, and needn’t, be the public justification for them.”
In other words, the truth or otherwise of religious beliefs is irrelevant to the question whether they should play a role in public deliberation. So the putatively religious roots of Gordon Brown’s egalitarianism oughtn’t to worry us so long as they play no role in his public justifications for it.
Is the truth or otherwise of religious beliefs really irrelevant to the question whether they should play a role in public deliberation? I’m not so sure. But it’s tricky – because what’s really relevant is not just whether or not the beliefs are true but whether or not we know they’re true (or not true), and whether we all know it, and how we know it and how confidently we know it. In other words, it’s a reliable knowledge issue again. It has to be. Why, in an egalitarian polity, in which people should be persuaded rationally of policies, should religion have no place? Because rational persuasion can get no foothold in the absence of reliable knowledge. What’s needed for rational persuasion is not just truth but also reliable knowledge of the truth. But both are needed – if we have reliable knowledge and what we reliably know is that the religious beliefs in question are not true, then surely that’s not irrelevant.
“What’s needed for rational persuasion is not just truth but also reliable knowledge of the truth.”
Why, OB, how very foundationalist of you. Will not a sceptical empiricism fill out what it is practical to do in society very well, without a need to assert its observations as ‘the truth’?
Surely the mark of the kind of society being posited here is that it would be pragmatic in relation to the ‘truth’ of anything, being concerned mostly with what worked best for most?
Well I didn’t mean The Truth – I meant a more modest idea about the truth of particular truth-claims. Still, it did occur to me that reliable knowledge (in the very strong sense I defined it at least) might be too much for this purpose. Yet one does want some sort of reliable knowledge for purposes of public policy – one doesn’t want everyone just making it up.
Well…as I say, it’s tricky.
The problem, as Dawkins points out, is that if you can believe one ridiculous thing you can believe others – like Saddma being only 45 minutes away from destroying Britain with atomic missiles. Darwin save us from any more ‘conviction’ politicans.
“Is the truth or otherwise of religious beliefs really irrelevant to the question whether they should play a role in public deliberation?”
To the secular pragmatist, yes. To the worshipper, no.
And concerning Derbyshire’s comment – “Chris Dillow reminds us that secularists seek not to extirpate religious belief but to keep it out of the public sphere (a distinction that’s mostly lost on Richard Dawkins, incidentally).”
Why does he make that silly accusation? It is toothgrindingly irritating and arrogant.
Does Derbyshire not understand that all atheists are secularists, but that not all secularists are atheists?
Actually, you could – in theory – be an atheist and yet cynically propound theocracy as an effective way of controlling the masses.
You’re right about that, Don. No doubt it’s happened somewhere along the line, too. I wouldn’t be surprised if there was a pope or two who were secretly atheists.
There’s even a name for it – ‘Voltaireanism’.
One doesn’t have to read too far into the history of the C18 aristocracy to realise that it was their essential view of public morality – i.e. that it was something very important, but only for other people.
Oh, there were atheist popes all right, or at least pretty obviously not-really-religious ones. That’s part of why Savonarola was able to get some traction. The Medici popes weren’t what you’d call devout.
It should be called Ciceronianism rather than Voltaireanism; Cicero was quite explicit about it, and so was Polybius. Except it should probably be named after someone even earlier than Cicero.
Posting of popes, in general
“atheism.about.com/od/popesandthepapacy/a/08thcentury.htm – 2” has very excellent and easy to read articles about popes.
A plant growing where it shouldn’t is a weed. An object for which you have no need or sentimental attachment is garbage. Extirpate the one, toss the other. — Philip Kennicott,
It requires Atheists to extirpate organised religion by methods such as the above by tearing them up by the roots and casting them into the rubbish heap. The reigning “above mentioned” should be the the hardest dangerous root of all to extirpate. As it is imbedded so firmly. There will otherwise never be an elagitarian polity, not in Ireland anyway or other RC countries. It holds the reins. Its root is gargantuan. Power incarnate is its name.
<>“egalitarian” <> should have read!