This fact could not be more evident than in the response to Barack Obama's call for a balanced role for religion in democratic society. Obama argued that religious people should not check their convictions when they enter the public square but should seek to make arguments for their convictions on grounds that will appeal to those that may not share their particular faith.
Democracy demands that the religiously motivated translate their concerns into universal, rather than religion-specific, values. It requires that their proposals be subject to argument, and amenable to reason. I may be opposed to abortion for religious reasons, to take one example, but if I seek to pass a law banning the practice, I cannot simply point to the teachings of my church or evoke God's will. I have to explain why abortion violates some principle that is accessible to people of all faiths, including those with no faith at all.
--Sen. Barack Obama (D, Thrillinois)
Dr. Albert Mohler responded that it is impossible to have a religiously diverse society with a shared discourse aiming for objective governing principles.
Sen. Obama seems to believe in the myth of a universal reason and rationality that will be compelling to all persons of all faiths, including those of no faith at all. Such principles do not exist in any specific form usable for the making of public policy on, for example, matters of life and death like abortion and human embryo research.
--Dr. Albert Mohler, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary
There is simply no way around it. If Mohler is right, then political discourse in a religiously diverse society is just a rhetorical battleground where one religious group fights for dominion over others. Dr. Mohler is not right, however. He argues from the fact that just because some people (such as himself) refuse to adopt a neutral stance and argue from logic and observation, that no such stance is impossible. Certainly there are folks that believe in all kinds of things for all kinds of irrational reasons. People make life-altering decisions based on the flop of Tarot cards. That fact does not imply that flopping Tarot cards is as good a basis for major decisions as listing of pros and cons, for instance. It may well be the case that there will never be agreement on objective principles of governance, but even that does not imply that it is not a worthy goal and in general worthwhile to persue in a pluralistic democracy. The alternative to persuing this goal is politics as "war by other means"; ie, a battle for dominion.
In any case, Mohler reveals quite clearly who the true relativists are and it damn sure isn't the secularists who believe in the "myth" of rationality. Rather, it is the epistemic relativists like Mohler that subject their beliefs to a different standard of justification than they allow in others that are the real relativists.
Crossposted:
http://ifthenknots.typepad.com/...