I linked to this earlier, but amateur history buffs will find Cato Unbound’s discussion on the origins of modernity pretty fascinating. The central point of contention is the so-called “first cause” of modernity – did the West develop because of spontaneous social change, secularism, the rise of “engineering culture,” or competition between European states? I’m inclined to agree with Stephen Davies insofar as competition among states probably laid the groundwork for the subsequent cultural, political and social changes we associate with modernity, but all four contributors raise some interesting objections.

One point of agreement among the contributors is the radical discontinuity between pre-modern Western civilization (read: Christendom) and modern culture. All four authors seem to agree that the connection between Christendom’s essential features and Western modernity is pretty tenuous, which raises a few interesting questions about other religions’ encounters with modernity.

Some of the best evidence for the modern departure from Christendom are what early European liberals had to say about religion. I’m immediately reminded of Leon Gambetta’s famous utterance, ,”Le cléricalisme, voilà l’ennemi!” His views on Christianity were shared by any number of his classically liberal contemporaries. From Galileo to Darwin to the Scopes Monkey Trial, innumerable scientists of the early modern era also held skeptical views about the compatibility of science, reason and faith.

Christianity and modernity survived this encounter. The pope now speaks of the fundamental relationship between God and reason. The recent Manhattan Declaration emphasizes the connection between liberal accomplishments like ending slavery and challenging the divine right of kings and Christianity. The theological and historical truth of these claims are almost irrelevant – the larger point is that Christians have self-consciously accepted the legitimacy (and, indeed, desirability) of liberalism and modernity.

The disconnect between how the contemporary Church views its relationship with liberalism, modernity and science and how early liberals viewed the church is worth remembering in the context of the current debate over Islam. You frequently hear that Islam is fundamentally incompatible with pluralism, liberalism, and the penumbra of Western political and cultural practices. If the Christian experience teachers us anything, however, it’s that the fluidity of historical interpretation and theology can open up space for liberalizing movements to take hold within a major Abrahamic faith. Over the next few decades, it will not surprise me if major Muslim leaders begin emphasizing how Islam preserved the works of great philosophers and fostered scientific learning throughout the Middle Ages as evidence of their faith’s integral relationship with science and modernity. In fact, it’s already pretty common to hear similar talking points from moderate Islamic leaders in the United States and Europe. This narrative may not be completely accurate, but that’s almost beside the point. If the number of liberal Muslims reaches a critical mass, they’ll find ways to justify their political and cultural outlook within a rich theological tradition, just as liberal Christians have done in the West.

UPDATE: See also Johnathan Rowe at Positive Liberty.

Daniel Larison takes issue with Obama’s Notre Dame speech and especially Obama’s use of doubt, which Larison maintains is not a quality, but rather “a function of a mind clouded by the passions”.  Doubt, Larison writes, “is the result of confusion. It does not teach us anything, but rather prevents us from learning.”  This is interesting coming from Daniel – and a bit surprising, since I think doubt plays a much more nuanced role in our lives (politically and spiritually) than merely as an agent of personal obsfucation and confusion.  Where Daniel finds the most fault  is in Obama’s inability to separate apophatic theology from doubt – the one being an acceptance of the “unkowability of God” and the other being the “function of human confusion.”

Doubt, to my mind at least, is not at all the “function of human confusion” though it can certainly lead to confusion if we let it consume us.  Then again, if we let our appetite for any emotion or passion or pursuit consume us it is possible we will be rendered helplessly confused – by love, by greed, by faith even.  By certainty, even.  [Read more →]

I read Leviticus last year while studying Judaism and I noticed exactly the same thing Ron Beasley is on to in this post. The problem with fundamentalism is it can’t really operate in the real world; no Christian follows all the laws and commandments set forth in the Torah.  Few Jews – even Orthodox – can manage that, and some Orthodox Jews go to extraordinary lengths to follow all 613 mitzvot.  Find me a Christian who even comes close.  Some Orthodox Jews keep two kitchens just to make sure they’re staying kosher.

This is because in Christianity Jesus said, essentially, that there were two commandments that superseded all the rest:  to love God, and to love our neighbor.  To love in other words, wholly and freely.  Jesus was responding in large part to the folly of the priesthood of His day, which had lost sight of love in favor of all those damn laws and commandments.  There is something strikingly similar about those days and our own.  We condemn gays because of a commandment in Leviticus, but we certainly no longer stone people to death for skipping out on the Sabbath – a far more weighty commandment at least from the ancient perspective.  We’ve largely abandoned the Sabbath in the modern world, but still cling quite fiercely to any and every sexual taboo.

The truth is that we could never, as people actually living in the world, as a part of the world, follow each and every ludicrous, ancient commandment, many of which may have made sense – perhaps even on a purely sanitary level – for the ancients, but which miss the point of Jesus’ two great commandments altogether.

Damon Linker and Rod Dreher and Andrew Sullivan have been tossing this ball back and forth now for a while.  In his latest, Linker writes:

It seems to me that Rod’s opposition to gay marriage and social acceptance follows less from an argument or an assertion about the world, nature, or God than it does from a disposition or temperament — from a disposition or temperament inclined toward fear. (In retrospect, I can see how significant and telling it is that one of the first questions I posed to Rod in my original post was “What are you afraid of?”, and that Andrew fastened onto that passage in his initial response and returned to it in the title of his longer post in response to Rod. Fear has been at the center of this debate from the beginning.)

Conservatism and faith are both inextricably tied to doubt; the former utilizes doubt as a sort of gauge by which to check and evaluate progress, the latter as a sort of balancing force.  True faith must be contrasted with real doubt.  But what faith and conservatism do not need, and what inevitably leads to their corruption, is fear.  And Linker is right to note that what this debate – at least for Dreher – boils down to, is fear.  This is not to say that all arguments against gay marriage are based in fear, as Conor notes, but certainly many are, and they all miss a larger point. [Read more →]

I wanted to draw attention to this post over at William Randolph’s blog.  He has a pretty good summation of our recent series on atheism, and takes the discussion one step further:

What is needed for this discussion—more than a neuroscience of belief or a biology of belief—is a human psychology of belief. And until someone shows me a better starting point, I will begin with William James’s essay “The Will to Believe”. If there are real truths that cannot be objectively decided—and the entire point of the avian fettuccine avatar is that science has nothing to say about such putative truths—then we can either cut ourselves off from such truths and remain secure in the fully justifiable, or we can leave safety behind, daring to know. James’s contribution is the idea of the live option: that for any particular person, some ideas will be plausable and some ideas will not. The avian fettucine avatar is not a live option for anyone, as far as I know. For cultural and historical reasons, the Christian God is much more likely to be one in our place and time.

Now, I think this discussion has largely run its course, and I won’t offer up much more at this time.  But I think Will is on to something here.  Not everything is quite so plain or so cut and dry as we’d like it to be.  Psychology, plausibility–these things don’t fall on the side of rational thought.  Just because the Spaghetti monster and the Christian God are both equally unprovable does not mean humanity won’t gravitate more to the one than the other.  Similarly there are dragons in ours and many other cultures myths, but rarely are there noodle behemoths.  There is something indefinably human about our belief in these things, in our decision to draw lines between what is spiritual and what is silly.

Will finishes his piece with something I think strikes this whole question dead-on:

A person’s fundamental beliefs have less to do with the questions she can answer and much more to do with the questions she can afford to leave unanswered.

Now isn’t that precisely correct?  Doesn’t that cut to the very heart of the whole notion of Faith?  Even atheists have unanswered questions that they cannot but help to leave unanswered, and they resolve to do so as a matter of Faith or perhaps inevitability, I’m not sure it matters what it’s termed.