A Novel Response to Rick Warren
One of the interesting developments of the past several years has been what seems to be a more prominent place in American dialogues for the voices of non-believers. Best-selling books on the subject of atheism have emerged from Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchins. One of the interesting developments of the past several years has been what seems to be a more prominent place in American dialogues for the voices of non-believers. Best-selling books on the subject of atheism have emerged from Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchins. A humorous examination of religious belief was offered up in cinematic format by Bill Maher. All of this has more or less been part of rather uncharacteristically mainstream attention, much to the chagrin of self-labeled culture warriors.
Of course, despite the odd setback, like getting caught having solicitous, extra-marital, homosexual relations with your meth dealer, the evangelical movement is alive and well in America. Exhibit A: Pastor Rick Warren. In a recent video, philosopher Daniel Dennett offers some interesting responses to some of Warren's claims, including the claim that morality and a belief in evolution aren't reconcilable.
But, as he does in his book Breaking the Spell, he also posits some interesting premises of his own. Namely, that religion is a natural phenomenon and that there's something to be learned, something valuable, in understanding how and why it occurs in human culture. Furthermore, he asks us to entertain the idea of teaching all the facts of all religions in public schools.
Personally, I'm a big fan of this idea. It's one that I've brought up for years in discussions about religion in the realm of public education. After all, it's not discussion of religion that I take issue with. In fact, the discussion isn't really about keeping religion out of schools anyway. It's about whether or not we maintain the American tradition, given to us by the genius pairing of the Establishment and Free Exercise clauses, of not allowing a particular religion to become dominant in state affairs. Teaching religious philosophy and theology generally does not strike me as violating these principles.
However, as Dennett points out, religious leaders have not, so far at least, been very keen on this idea. To me, this is an indication that the discussion is not really about stamping out all discussion of religion, but rather about controlling that discussion and, most specifically, about whose faith becomes dominant in that discussion. Though proponents of teaching Intelligent Design, for example, frequently make a plea to "teach the controversy", it would seem that the global controversy of many competing religious ideologies is something they would rather not examine.
5 years ago
1 comment:
An excellent, thought-provoking post. I must say, I believe that teaching what all of the world's major religions hold as tenets of their faiths and studying them does not appear to, on its face, violate constitutional requirements. I draw a clear distinction between doing this and promoting any one religion or world view as supremely righteous or infallible. I agree this would serve to show how religious practice appears to be a natural, cultural phenomenon worthy of study.
The danger is of course that some teachers might pervert this educational process by proslytizing. If sanctions for such abuses were adequately severe, rooting out offenders shouldn't pose much of a problem.
Such education would have to be deftly carried out, and the cultural dominance of Christianity might prove resistant to being "demoted" to a one-among-many status.
As a humanist and supporter of reason and rational inquiry, my guess is that the teaching of the phenomenon of religion would expose the commonality of flawed reasoning among the major faiths of the world, i.e., belief in the supernatural. This, in turn, might ease the cultural subordination and alienation atheists are all too often exposed to.
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