By RUSSELL BLACKFORD - METAMAGICIAN AND THE HELLFIRE CLUB
Added: Tue, 09 Mar 2010 00:00:00 UTC

Monday, March 08, 2010 - Social division with a vengeance!

Social division with a vengeance!

Taner Edis takes me to task

My colleague Taner Edis, who contributed a fine essay to 50 Voices of Disbelief: Why We Atheists , has, alas, written a new essay over on the Secular Outpost blog, in which he takes me to task for my recent criticism of Gary Bouma.

The main point made by Edis is this:

Secularism, particularly when it extends to public criticism of religion and policies that inconvenience religious communities, is a source of social division. Secularists keeping quiet is, in fact, in the interest of peace and public order in many present circumstances.

So, he argues, if secularists want social peace we will actually abandon secularism and shut up. Or, at any rate, we will cease to advocate the key idea of secularism in the sense under discussion: the separation of church and state.

Needless to say, I disagree. I can't, however, cover all the issues in just one blog post, at least not without making it very long and cumbersome. Consider this to be Part I, and I'll return with the second, and final, instalment tomorrow.
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Tuesday, March 09, 2010 - A multi-cultural dystopia?

A multi-cultural dystopia?

This is the second part of my response to the post by Taner Edis a couple of days ago, in which he takes me to task for defending classical liberal secularism of the kind proposed by John Locke in the 1680s - though much developed by other thinkers in the liberal tradition since that time. Unfortunately, there will now need to be a third part, since Edis has since had more to say in response to the first.

In the first part of my response, I developed the theme that any criticism of religion creates division only in the trivial sense that it creates (often healthy) disagreement. By contrast, real social division - social division with a vengeance - is caused when the theocratically inclined offer their controversial theological claims (or moral claims that are grounded in theological thinking) as a basis for coercive measures by the state.

For many reasons, it is better to avoid the concept of a Christian (or Muslim, or Jewish, or whatever it may be) state, in which political power is to be used to further God's eschatological plan and lead citizens to spiritual salvation. Rather, the state is best regarded as an institution, or set of institutions, that protects purely worldly things. Thus, the state provides a framework for public order, economic welfare, and the like. It establishes a scheme of property and commerce (which must be reasonably fair by ordinary secular standards, such as rewarding efforts and contributions), protects us from external violence, restrains us from using violence in social competition, and (increasingly) provides a social and economic safety net.
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TAGGED: ATHEISM, COMMENTARY

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