Today I received an email from one of my rightwing, religious fundamentalist college students telling me that God loves me, that Scripture is the Truth and way, that God wants me to love him and that I need not be frightened by things like "rat-brained robots" because I have a soul and God has saved my soul. I believe this email represents all that is wrong with religious fundamentalism and is indicative of a fundamental failure to love the neighbor. Why?
First some backstory (skip this if you want to go directly to the meat of the diary):
I teach philosophy. This semester has consisted almost entirely of discussions of God. We've read selections from Augustine, Aquinas, Maimonides, Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, and will finish the semester with Whitehead. We have explored proof after proof for the existence of God. We have explored the various ways in which theological traditions conceive the relation between God, the world, and humans. We have explored questions of free will and paradoxes of time that arise from the omniscience and omnitemporality of God.
Currently we are working through the first part of Spinoza's Ethics. For those not familiar with Spinoza, he argues that God and the world are one, that God is not outside of nature nor nature outside of God, and that all things are strictly determined (for Spinoza there are no final causes, ends, or teolology). Quite literally, for Spinoza, you or that rock over there are parts of God in the same way that your fingernail is a part of your body.
It was in this context, yesterday, that we discussed the horrifying phenomenon of the rat-brained robot. For those not familiar with the rat-brained robots (see the link above the fold if you're interested), scientists have removed neurological tissue from rats and placed them in a beaker. Using blue tooth technology, the brains are able to transmit messages to a little vehicle that has wheels and sensors on it. What we get here is a true interface between computer technology and biological matter. No two of these robots have behaved in exactly the same way. Moreover, their behavior evolves over time. Here we get a cyborg in the true sense of the term. The moral of the story, of course, seems to be that our selves, what we are as persons, is just the result of a computer made of "wet things" (organized patterns of neurons); and this because this "wetware computer" can be made to interface with other computers. Note, I wasn't claiming that this is the case. Only that it is what much evidence in neurology, bio-technological interface technology, and computer programming increasingly suggests. It was this discussion, I suppose, that prompted my student's email.
On to what is objectionable:
So what did I find objectionable in my student's email? Why do I find his email so offensive and troubling? First, allow me to outline what I did not find objectionable in my student's email. I did not find his belief that God loves us, that we have a soul, that we are saved, that God wants us to love him objectionable. In other words, it is not the content of my student's claims that I find objectionable. Philosophers swim in claims and perpetually encounter discussions of God, so there's no issue here.
What I find objectionable is the fundamental lack of respect this email suggested towards my student's fellow human beings. There is, of course, the first and obvious form of disrespect embodied in this email: this student knows nothing about me and my own beliefs. He presumes to address me in this way, not knowing whether I'm Jewish (I am), Buddhist, Hindu, atheist, agnostic, etc. As a consequence, he has a fundamental lack of respect for those who might have other beliefs.
However, this first form of disrespect embodies a more profound disrespect and lack of regard for others. Something seldom emphasized about knowledge workers is that they are not so much interested in claims as arguments. Philosophers, scientists, mathematicians, and everyone else in the academy is interested not in claims in and of themselves, but rather those claims that can be supported or demonstrated. The mathematician is not so much interested in the solution to a mathematical problem, but in the demonstration that allows one to show that solution is true. A scientist is not so much interested in a claim about the nature of the world, but in the evidence that supports that claim. A philosopher is not so much interested in the fact that a person believes in God, but rather in the sort of reasoning or demonstration that either proves God exists or that supports the existence of God.
Here's a very simple and non-controversial argument. Suppose I tell you that it rained this morning (a claim). Suppose, in addition to that, that you did not witness this storm. How might I persuade you that it rained when you didn't witness the storm? Well, I can point out that the ground is wet (a supporting reason). Or perhaps the ground is no longer wet because it's very hot out. I can point out that the pot I keep next to my house has water in it when it did not have water in it last night (another supporting reason). If you wish to dispute my claim, you don't just deny the claim ("damn it!", you say, "it did not rain last night!"). No, you show that one of my supporting reasons can be explained in another way. For example, you might suggest that the ground is wet because my neighbor's kids were playing in the sprinkler this morning. Such is the nature of argument.
And here we get to the crux of the matter. Providing arguments for your claims is a way of respecting your fellow human beings. Put differently, the person who loves their neighbor is a person who, in part, displays love of their neighbor by providing arguments in support of the claims that they make. They do not ask their neighbor to simply take their word for it, but rather they provide supporting grounds for their claims that other persons can verify or discover for themselves. In other words, if you love your neighbor, you respect your neighbor enough to provide them with reasons based on evidence or reason (capacities and powers they share if only they bother to use them).
Yet my religious fundamentalist student has no respect for his neighbors. To be sure, over the course of the semester, he has provided me with all sorts of reasons in support of his arguments (I've received a whole slew of arguments like this from him). But from whence do the reasons he gives me come? They come, of course, from Scripture. He cites Biblical texts in his emails. But there's the rub. I have no way of distinguishing the truth-value of the Bible from the truth of the film Avatar or Homer's Illiad. I have no way of verifying these things. The point is not that I believe these texts are false, but rather that I have no way of knowing whether or not they are true. And that's just it. Foisting your belief on me when any story is as good as another and when I am unable to determine the truth of these stories is, I believe, a profound form of disrespect for the dignity of human beings. How, for example, is this student to communicate with the Hindu? He tells the Hindu that God wants her to do x and that he knows this to be true, but cites Scripture in defense of this prescription. The Hindu, in her turn, responds that her sacred text tells her to do something quite different. There's no way to resolve this dispute because there's no way to verify the supporting reasons for their respective claims.
This is why I believe that arguments grounded in appeals to sacred texts are inherently corrosive to public discourse and are necessarily disrespectful of other human beings. They are corrosive to public discourse because ultimately they demand that we accept certain claims without being able to establish those claims in a way that others can verify. The consequence is that the person who argues in this way ends up rejecting claims that can be verified because they don't gel with the teachings of their sacred text, thereby further corroding all standards of public discussion. Eventually, arguing in this way can only lead to violence because where something cannot be demonstrated or supported and where it is nonetheless demanded that everyone believe it, the only recourse against those who don't share the belief is to force them to submit to the belief. No one ever went to war over whether time slows down when objects accelerate. They do go to war over whether or not God allows people to eat shellfish.
It will be objected that these are matters of faith, and therefore it is wrong to expect arguments. I think this is nonsense. Faith has become a way of cheating, such that it's true meaning is that beliefs are to be treated as immune to questioning while nonetheless being treated as legitimate grounds of public policy. In other words, faith becomes a form of force or violence, foisting beliefs on others without others being granted the dignity of evaluating those beliefs. This, I believe, is a degenerate understanding of faith. Rather, when I look to scripture I clearly see that faith is a work of loving your neighbor, not a collection of beliefs held without support. And if faith demands that I love my neighbor it should above all demand that I provide reasons my neighbor can discover for herself even if she doesn't share my religious beliefs. If I'm a Christian, faith should allow me to even love the Buddhest as a Buddhist and to persuade the Buddhist not through scripture, but through reason and observation.