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Is religion a conversation stopper?
Apr. 10th, 2005 02:27 amI should be sleeping, since they say that you shouldn't do any heavy reading before you go to sleep. So true, because my head is churning after doing my honors reading. It puts this post of mine into perspective. Arguing, "my faith says so" convinces nobody except those of your faith. But heck, a lot of "Christians" today don't know what they truly believe in, nor do they read their Bible very often.
Anyways, thisatheist anticlerical guy, Richard Rorty wrote a response to some Carter guy (Carter wrote something about how he felt religion was being taken out of the public sphere of debate). Rorty wrote in 1994, "The main reason religion needs to be privatized is that, in political discussion with those outside the relevant religious community, it is a conversation-stopper" (Religion as a conversation-stopper). To make a long story short, Rorty believes that religion should be privatized to preserve democracy. Institutionalized religion is a bad thing. You see, public discouse should be restricted to premises hold in common.
Of course, two other guys named Wolterstoff and Stout have criticisms. The first guy basically doesn't like the atheistic tone of Rorty and points to Martin Luther King, Jr. as an example of someone who uses religion in the public sphere (An Engagement with Rorty). Stout thinks religion does have situational use because religion isn't a conversation stopper, because religion isn't essentially anything (Religion in political argument). Stout is careful to point out that anything that somebody cares about deeply can influence the public sphere, whether it be a hobby or religion.
The Rorty response to these guys in 2003 is to remind them for the occasional King, there are multiple Jerry Falwells (Religion in the Public Square). He then brings up the same sex marriage issue to clarify why he believes religion should be pruned back to the parish level. In refernce to citing the Leviticus 18:22 or Paul, Rorty says, "Citing such passages should be deeme not just in bad taste, but as heartlessly cruel, as reckless persecution, as incitement to violence." He equates such citing as "peacetime sadism", using religion to excuse cruelty. Down the road he says "The gays and lesbians, however, persist in thinking that if the churches would stop quoting Leviticus and Paul on the subject of sodomy, would stop saying that tolerance for homosexuals is a mark of moral decline...there would be fewer gay-bashers around". Many also are "struck by the fact that religious reasons are now pretty much the only reasons brought forward in favor of treating them with contempt." Homophobia is equated with anti-Semitism because "encouraging exclusivist bigotry brings money and power to ecclesiastical organizations". Then, we have a divide in America, where "a sizable body of opinion that treats gays and lesbians as contemptible and despicable and another body of opinion that treats those who quote Leviticus 18:22 as contemptible and despicable". Christians can have their Christian reasons for supporting redistribution of wealth or opposing same sex marriage, but Rorty is not sure "it counts having such reasons if the person who finds such marriage inconceivable is unwilling or unable even to discuss, for example, the seeming tension between Leviticus 22:18 and I Corinthians 13. Rorty feels entitled to his "right to urge social ostracism of homophobic preachers as they do to abuse gays and lesbians".
Rorty concludes by saying that he should have said "that citizens of a democracy should try to put off invoking conversation-stoppers as long as possible. We should do our best to keep the conversation going without citing unarguable first principles, either philosophical or religious. If we are sometimes driven to such citation, we should see ourselves as having failed, not as having triumphed."
Yet, people do have to draw a moral line somewhere. In the end, what one argues in public will ultimately be governed by what one personally believs in. And when we reach dead ends, our democracy relies on its votes and courts to carry the day.
Anyways, this
Of course, two other guys named Wolterstoff and Stout have criticisms. The first guy basically doesn't like the atheistic tone of Rorty and points to Martin Luther King, Jr. as an example of someone who uses religion in the public sphere (An Engagement with Rorty). Stout thinks religion does have situational use because religion isn't a conversation stopper, because religion isn't essentially anything (Religion in political argument). Stout is careful to point out that anything that somebody cares about deeply can influence the public sphere, whether it be a hobby or religion.
The Rorty response to these guys in 2003 is to remind them for the occasional King, there are multiple Jerry Falwells (Religion in the Public Square). He then brings up the same sex marriage issue to clarify why he believes religion should be pruned back to the parish level. In refernce to citing the Leviticus 18:22 or Paul, Rorty says, "Citing such passages should be deeme not just in bad taste, but as heartlessly cruel, as reckless persecution, as incitement to violence." He equates such citing as "peacetime sadism", using religion to excuse cruelty. Down the road he says "The gays and lesbians, however, persist in thinking that if the churches would stop quoting Leviticus and Paul on the subject of sodomy, would stop saying that tolerance for homosexuals is a mark of moral decline...there would be fewer gay-bashers around". Many also are "struck by the fact that religious reasons are now pretty much the only reasons brought forward in favor of treating them with contempt." Homophobia is equated with anti-Semitism because "encouraging exclusivist bigotry brings money and power to ecclesiastical organizations". Then, we have a divide in America, where "a sizable body of opinion that treats gays and lesbians as contemptible and despicable and another body of opinion that treats those who quote Leviticus 18:22 as contemptible and despicable". Christians can have their Christian reasons for supporting redistribution of wealth or opposing same sex marriage, but Rorty is not sure "it counts having such reasons if the person who finds such marriage inconceivable is unwilling or unable even to discuss, for example, the seeming tension between Leviticus 22:18 and I Corinthians 13. Rorty feels entitled to his "right to urge social ostracism of homophobic preachers as they do to abuse gays and lesbians".
Rorty concludes by saying that he should have said "that citizens of a democracy should try to put off invoking conversation-stoppers as long as possible. We should do our best to keep the conversation going without citing unarguable first principles, either philosophical or religious. If we are sometimes driven to such citation, we should see ourselves as having failed, not as having triumphed."
Yet, people do have to draw a moral line somewhere. In the end, what one argues in public will ultimately be governed by what one personally believs in. And when we reach dead ends, our democracy relies on its votes and courts to carry the day.
