The political landscape in America is currently filled with distasteful arguments--many of those arguments come from the left.
However, it would be incorrect to say that these arguments are exclusively "leftist." The various arguments below are ones that I not only hear now but that I heard growing up from conservative groups and in my (relatively) conservative church.
I believe that conservatives, specifically religious conservatives, need to take responsibility for these arguments if they are to combat them.
Below are some common untrustworthy arguments. I present the arguments. I then discuss why religion, specifically, has some justification to use these arguments. I then explain why I feel that even religious institutions and individuals should question the use of such arguments.
Untrustworthy Arguments
Doomsdaying
"The world is falling to pieces--it is so much worse than it has ever been."
This argument demonstrates the capacity for humans to place themselves at the center of everything, including time. So many periods/eras have included upheavals, from the Reformation in England to the 1960s. And yet humans go right on insisting that "no one has ever seen times like this," emphasizing the self-centered notion that all of history has led up to now. There is often an accompanying inability to learn from the past--to comprehend, for example, that abstracted rage can have truly horrific outcomes in which members of the same party turn on each other (the French Revolution, for instance).
When I was growing up, my parents did not use this argument. They wanted me to graduate from high school, go to college, earn a degree, get a job, and move out. Doomsdaying would not have been conducive to that end.
I did, however, encounter the argument at church. It was used to defend the need for religion in the face of a disintegrating world.
Body versus Spirit
"The body is dangerous and dirty while the spirit is the pure 'real self.'"
It is easy to blame this argument on religion, but I hear it these days as much from academic theorists as from fundamentalists. In fact, it is so common an argument in current and historical literature/popular culture, I can only assume it is part of the human experience. The first time one hits one's "funny bone"--or has troubles in the bathroom--the thought, "My body is against me" will rear its head.
Unfortunately, the distaste for the body is often accompanied by a 1950s (dare I say, Victorian) cliche: people ignoring or denying that their physical bodies have biological functions. The body v. spirit argument is also often accompanied by anti-science attitudes or, these days, science politicized to the point of meaninglessness.
I did not encounter this argument at home. My religious beliefs state that the body is good, the physical experience is good, and the worst sins or temptations come from pride, a sin of the spirit. Furthermore, my father is a physicist while my mother is an artist. Praising the physical form was common in the household in which I was reared. My parents embraced the theology of our church.
Our church membership, however, is (still) largely culturally Protestant. The idea of bad body versus good spirit crops up now and again, usually in off-hand comments. When I was growing up, it was, unfortunately, also associated with a vaguely unsympathetic attitude toward science, namely, that science was the worldly enemy to spiritual belief.
Conflation of Know and Believe
"I KNOW this is true." (But "this" is actually a belief.)
The conflation of know and believe appears to occur when the pursuit of truth (scientific, aesthetic, religious) loses ground to relativism. The pursuit of truth assumes, as Mulder would say, The truth is out there, even if it cannot be pinned down. People may disagree about what that truth entails but ultimately they agree that it can be found (or parts of it can be found) if diligently hunted for.
In comparison, relativism promotes the idea that truth is whatever the individual states it is. After all, people do experience life as individuals. And self-expression can produce impressive explosions of creativity in art and music and thought.
However, few institutions are willing to pursue relativism to its natural end: a bunch of iconoclastic individuals following their own intensely individual codes without reference to an accepted ethical belief system.
Rather than return to the pursuit of truth (an endeavor that takes discipline, effort, time, and a willingness to self-correct), many institutions fall back on rules, allegiance to the group, and promises of utopia. Their rules grow and grow, becoming increasingly rigid and demanding, especially as members of those institutions or cliques conflate belief with knowledge. In an effort to produce (easy) stability, the group becomes the holder of what-is-true. An abstract realization of one's experiences--the story I tell myself or the story the group tells me about me--becomes FACT.
It isn't.
Even organizations that prize the hunt for truth are influenced by the ideas and language around them. Claiming, "I know" appears (on the surface) safer than claiming, "I believe." Consequently, in the past few years, the number of people in my church who "know" the church is true rather than "believing/having faith in/hoping" has increased.
As a result, not only is the language of knowledge under fire, the language of faith (regarding religion, art, poetry, literature, personal narratives, and humor) is being corrupted and lost. Rigid literalism is gaining sway in the very areas that the language of faith was meant to protect.
Lack of Context
"It doesn't matter what that text actually says any more than it matters what actually happened in the past. People who argue for context are ___________."
Not good, according to this argument.
A hunt for context means asking, What does this text actually mean? Will it help if I understand the text as the author intended it be understood? What actually happened in the past? Will it help if I understand the people back then, including their mindsets and conditions?
Those who pursue truth will answer, "Yes, it will help."
Here's the snag: researching context takes time. It also involves humility--accepting that answers might change as new information gets uncovered.
It is easier for those who eschew the pursuit of truth to fall back instead on name-calling: People who argue in favor of context are everything-phobic and everything-ist.
Up through my 20s, people in my church occasionally accused me or members of my family of being "intellectual(ists)." It is a damaging accusation in many conservative circles since it raises the specter of the Ivory Tower academic who abstracts basic truths into nothingness (see above).
However, in this case, I and members of the family were not extolling abstract relativism. Quite the opposite! We were suggesting that learning more about a text, person, scripture, place, and time--its physical reality--could advance understanding.
The accusers (sadly, ironically) were practicing a form of relativism (likely not to their knowledge): "All I have to do is read this scripture and ask what it means to me. Then I will have a spiritual experience which no one can gainsay since it is a form of 'knowledge.'"
To put this another way, the accusers were relying on a very attractive intellectual theory to justify their name-calling.
Utopia as an Immediate End Goal
"If you would only...then the world would be perfect."
Life is messy and difficult. The pursuit of truth, as mentioned above, takes time and energy--and humility since it involves the ability to change as new information is revealed and tested. When people pursue truth, utopia is not possible (not in mortality). New information will change the so-called utopian society immediately. Goals will change. People will change. They will make mistakes. Beliefs will change. Mistakes will occur. A perfect society is something we can hope for (believe in) and maybe even strive for. But it cannot be guaranteed. Based on the vagaries of human nature, it is likely not even possible.
Lots of politicians (from the beginning of time) have tried to guarantee it anyway.
They are lying.
The church of preparation still exists--and the church that will get its members into heaven was always there: it may be impossible from a religious perspective to disentangle these two perspectives. Human beings being what they are, it may be equally impossible from a political perspective. Humans are fully capable of always imagining a different (better) future/life than the one we seem headed towards/inhabiting.
However, when getting people into heaven (utopia) becomes the only narrative, blasphemy and legalism are not far behind. It is one thing to encourage people to do better, to prepare people (in religious terms) to meet Christ and/or God and/or...
It is another to present a checklist (with acceptable vocabulary) toward achieving that better world.
Most religions, I believe, fall somewhere between those two positions. They believe in a hereafter. They focus on helping people survive the here-and-now while giving them rituals and daily practices to pursue/build a relationship with deity.
Many of these religions can also be pushed by outside pressures into providing guarantees/checklists/acceptable vocabulary, often in the fruitless wish to "compete" with more worldly institutions and political ideologies. After all, politicians love to guarantee outcomes when all they can truly do is present possible policies and programs that may help create good outcomes.
Why Religion Has Some Justification For These Arguments
Doomsdaying
End of times is a constant theme in most religions, from Ragnarök to the Second Coming. To an extent, it is the job of theology to tackle the big picture of what is to come.
Religions almost always present some solution or amelioration to this ending. It's coming--here's how to prepare/deal.
Politicians who rely solely on doomsdaying don't seem to be offering much. (Everything stinks! Vote for me anyway!) Religions should keep in mind that after awhile, doomsdaying pales and even becomes a little samey.
Body versus Spirit
As stated above, this split seems to be such a fundamentally human reaction (my "self" versus the uncooperative body I have that needs new eyeglasses), I'm not sure the dichotomy can be entirely removed from human perception.
Many religions at least offer a way to deal with the uncooperative body. And many of them have also (to some degree) backed off the anti-science sentiments, as those sentiments have proved increasingly unhelpful for biological, mammalian beings experiencing life in the physical realm.
Conflation of Know and Believe
There is no justification for this conflation. It confuses what constitutes knowledge with personal preference. It debases the language of belief. It creates untenable and increasingly abstracted approaches to everyday life. Religious individuals and groups need to cut it out. When politicians do it, it is "nails on the chalkboard" irritating (I am old enough to use that analogy).
Lack of Context
Lack of context is understandable in every facet of society. It is tremendously demanding and time-consuming to insist that people learn stuff. In addition, most religious groups see their members sporadically, especially now-a-days. Educating an entire membership may not even be possible.
And, let's be honest, relativism is to an extent unavoidable. We are all individuals who have to each separately deal with the stimuli of the world. "This is what this event/scripture means to me" is always going to be a factor. The personal conversion/testimony/internal change (that can lead to external changes) is often a seminal element of a religion's attraction/meaning.
I advocate religious groups keep the focus on the individual but be less obnoxious about avoiding context. Getting more information is a good thing, not a scary thing. C.S. Lewis argued that a believer need never fear an argument based on logic or information. It was the demon Screwtape, writing to Wormwood, who suggested the use of labels as opposed to grounded reasons.
Utopia as an End Goal
Like body versus spirit, the desire for utopia seems to be built into the human condition. As Breasted said, "It is important that the modern world should realise that the Messianic vision had a history of more than a thousand years before the Hebrew nation was born. This supreme form of social idealism is our inheritance from the human past."
The historical evidence that pursuing utopia before all else almost always ends in mass executions, pogroms, holocausts, witch hunts, terminations, loss of income, and other destructive events is often, unfortunately, ignored. It shouldn't be.
However, it should also be acknowledged that human beings are not going to give up wondering, pondering, believing in utopia, either before or after death. The atheists/cynics are just going to have to deal.
I suggest that religious groups--and this includes both the progressive members within my own church and that church's leadership--should cease obsessing about who gets into heaven. Pondering utopia may be part of the human condition. Deciding who belongs there (and why other people are wrong or right about who belongs there) is an impulse that should be fought.
When a religion is doing its job, I believe it focuses the individual on individual growth--as a person, as a member of society--in regards to God (whomever one understands God to be). It is preparation theology. It is aided by information and context but ultimately it accesses and speaks to the non-"know" part of the brain, the part of the brain that enjoys art and music and poetry and undefinable moments of joy and pleasure and even sorrow.
I personally believe that these moments ultimately translate into a transcendent physical reality. In the meantime, religion can--through story, through music, through art, through visions, through dreams, through scripture--help people contemplate those bigger, more numinous ideas and perhaps even produce story, music, art, visions, dreams, and texts of their own. (There is admittedly a social purpose to religion, which I would not by any means denigrate--that is, religion also helps people come together, raise their kids, follow basic civilized behaviors that in the long run keep them and society stable. An entirely valid purpose but one I will save for a later post.)
Determining who gets into heaven is God's job, not the religion's job.
Why The Above Arguments Harm Even Religion
Hopefully, the reason is self-explanatory. Enticing people through fear, belittling the physical experience, mocking scientific research, ignoring the difference between information/facts and beliefs, shrugging off the past and those who lived in the past, all while promising a kind of country club access to utopia--none of these arguments/attitudes are (1) helpful; (2) compassionate; (3) necessary.
And they feed similar arguments in other far less desirable and far less justifiable venues within our society.
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