Light Of Inquiry

…physical suffering is bad (“Oh my God, that really hurt!”), but it isn’t entirely bad if the thing one suffers for is extremely valuable (“But I’m joining a very elite group of very special people”)

—Daniel Gilbert

The small boat of thought of many Christians has often been tossed about by these waves-thrown from one extreme to the other: from Marxism to liberalism, even to libertinism; from collectivism to radical individualism; from atheism to a vague religious mysticism; from agnosticism to syncretism, and so forth…. Having a clear faith, based on the Creed of the Church, is often labeled today as a fundamentalism. Whereas, relativism, which is letting oneself be tossed and “swept along by every wind of teaching,” looks like the only attitude (acceptable) to today’s standards. We are moving towards a dictatorship of relativism which does not recognize anything as for certain and which has as its highest goal one’s own ego and one’s own desires.

What, in the pope’s view, has precipitated this civilizational crisis? Secularism: “Secularism and de-Christianization continue to advance. The influence of Catholic ethics and morals is in constant decline. Many people abandon the Church or, if they remain, they accept only a part of Catholic teaching…. Many of the ideas put forward by modern society have led nowhere, and many young people have ended up mired in alcohol and drugs or in the clutches of extremist groups.”

The secularism of the West has loosed civilization from its moral moorings, leaving us adrift in a universe without absolutes where nothing really matters except self-gratification. Now we are caught between secular amorality and fundamentalism; only a return to the Christian vision of the good society can deliver us.

When a rare few secularists push back against religious belief in print, they are branded-often by fellow seculars and liberal religionists-“dogmatic,” “evangelical,” “militant,” and “fundamentalist” atheists. Their scandalous premise is that religion is an urgent topic of conversation and therefore subject to the intellectual and moral standards of all serious conversation. There are dogmatists of every stripe, but God knows what an atheist fundamentalist would look like. If the mantra of religious fundamentalism is “I’m right, you’re wrong, go to hell,” the atheist creedo seems to be “I’m right, you’re wrong, let’s talk about it some more.”

Secular liberalism is not a religion. It is an intellectual and political movement that puts the freedom of the individual first, before God or government. Here a secularist is not necessarily an atheist, but someone who seeks sources of meaning, morality, and community outside of organized religion. A liberal is not the opposite of a conservative, but anyone who asserts the priority of individual liberty. Secular liberalism cannot be confined to a character in the Punch and Judy show of contemporary-American two-party politics. It has a proud and rich tradition stretching back to the founding of the country, to the European Enlightenment, and far beyond. Yet most secular liberals today seem to be incapable of standing up for their values in public debate.

Politics abhors a vacuum. And so the space in public discourse left unoccupied by secular liberals has been filled by religious conservatives, along with a new arrival: the Religious Left. Religious lefties, like their counterparts on the Right, quote the Bible to buttress their policy proposals, but they differ on their favorite verses. Whereas Pat Robertson likes Leviticus, Jim Wallis, an evangelical anti-poverty activist, likes Micah (“Do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with your God”). Wallis distinguishes between two uses of religion in American public life: “The first way—God on our side— leads inevitably to triumphalism, self-righteousness, bad theology, and often, dangerous foreign-policy. The second way— asking if we are on God’s side—leads to much healthier things, namely, penitence and even repentance, humility, reflection, and even accountability.” …

[secular liberalism] has been undone by its own ideas. The first idea is that matters of conscience—religion, ethics, and values—are private matters. The privatizing of conscience started with two important principles: religion should be separated from the state and people should not be forced to believe one way or the other. But it went further to say that belief has no place in the public sphere. Conscience belongs in the homes and houses of worship, not in the marketplace. By making conscience private, secular liberals had hoped to prevent believers from introducing sectarian beliefs into politics. But of course they couldn’t, since freedom of police means believers are free to speak their minds in public. Instead, secularism imposed a gag order on itself. Because “private” is equated with “personal” and “subjective”, questions of conscience were placed out of bounds of serious critical evaluation. Subjective phenomena—like the thrill of skydiving or the taste for spicy food—are determined by the attitudes and thoughts of the subject experiencing them. … If conscience is beyond criticism, however, liberals cannot subject religion to do public scrutiny when it encroaches on society.

—“The Secular Conscience” by Austin Dacey Copyright © 2008 by Austin Dacey. Excerpted WITHOUT permission. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

A man who won’t die for something is not fit to live.

—Martin Luther King Jr.

…There is an alternative to merely living at the mercy of the next neurotic thought that comes careening into consciousness.

—Sam Harris (Oct 2, 2007)

…hackerdom is what anthropologists call a gift culture. You gain status and reputation in it not by dominating other people, nor by being beautiful, nor by having things other people want, but rather by giving things away. Specifically, by giving away your time, your creativity, and the results of your skill.

—http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html