Beyond belief

Guardian Unlimited | Arts features | Beyond belief:

I ran across this article in The Guardian today in which Ian Jack dismisses the spirituality of William Carey while ruminating on the conflict between religion and free speech.

I thought the section which I quote here was a good picture of the thinking of many westerners today. They aren't hostile to religious faith as such, just dismissive of it.

Religious belief is now almost never seriously discussed among the kind of people I know and the same is true, I suspect, for most readers of this newspaper. Religion as sociology, religion as history, religion as ethnicity, religion as politics and ethics, religion as art, ritual or good works, religion as the best route to a good C of E primary school: we can and do about talk about these.

But religion as faith and as an explanation of the world - why God exists, what happens after we die, who gets to heaven (or hell): most of us would run a mile from such a conversation. We know that argument was won a long time ago and there is no point discussing it. Real believers (as opposed to the soppy 'there-must-be-something else' brigade) are infrequently encountered and are not in any case amenable to what we believe is reason. They have their private beliefs; let them get on with them.

Religion when viewed through the social sciences is safe, non-demanding, non-controversial. Same with generic, universal human spirituality. Real live, specific religious faith is a different matter. It MUST be dismissed. Its claims are to exclusive and demanding.

What about when faith mixes with politics, such as in our current US political climate? My politically progressive friends are openly hostile to the current administration's discussion of faith in the public sphere. While I DO think that there is a place for God in politics (I believe the entire notion of "secular" public space as a faith-neutral area of discourse is a clever fiction of the Enlightenment), I also feel that we who believe should ask some of the questions my friends would ask. Is it really that religious commitment and Christian presuppositions are actually driving the political machine, or has an all-too-secular political agenda hijacked religion as a means of legitimizing policy and winning votes? I'd like to think it's the former, but it's a crucial question to ask.

Notice the attitude regarding the ontological status of God and faith: "We know that argument was won a long time ago and there is no point discussing it." Anybody who can believe that so dogmatically has not kept up with the analytic philosophy rags and departments, and the work of Alvin Plantinga over the last 35 years as noted by this Philo article by Quentin Smith. Smith's no friend of theism, but the desecularization he notes should give the dogmatic atheist pause. Note also skeptic poster child Anthony Flew's recent conversion to deism.