Friday, October 30, 2009

Religion, Part 3 (conclusion)

So far we’ve established that religion is a concept based on non-rational thought that is, by its nature, at the core of believers’ perception of reality. At which point you say, okay, this is all well and good, but what does it have to do with debate?

I’m taking off from a particular reaction to the Nov-Dec topic, but that reaction was not limited to this topic, and has arisen in the past where there have been religious areas in play in a resolution. The issue at hand was a religious objection to immunization; the reaction was, “That’s just stupid.”

The one thing you’ll notice in this series I’ve been writing is that I haven’t addressed the content of religious belief. Nor will I. Because of the nature of religion, one can never address the content of religion as a starting point for discourse. You can’t argue about it, in other words, not only because of the close holding of the belief but also because of faith’s lack of rational structure. You cannot argue against something that does not respond to argumentation. As I said initially, religious beliefs are a-logical, outside the realm of logic. Argument is a tool from the realm of logic. Arguing about religion is like using a power saw to play the piano. It’s the wrong tool for the job.

This is why we don’t use religion as the warrants for our claims in debate. If we are arguing a moral question, most likely our religion provides clear warrants for a particular position. But to make a claim and warrant its truth as its being the word of God would not allow for much subsequent discussion. If I quote Joe Biden and you quote God, then pretty clearly your source outranks my source. So what we do is look for ways of making ethical judgments other than our religions. Good ethical judgments grounded in secular thinking ought to be roughly what our religions tell us. Good ethical judgments, for instance, tell us not to kill and steal and so forth, with no appeal to religious doctrine. We can make ethical determinations, in other words, without appeal to religion that are nonetheless congruent with religion.

Still, we do come up against issues where we are arguing about religion. In these cases we cannot argue religion’s content (in the case in point, the reason a religion might object to immunization), because that is irrelevant to the discussion, and impossible to change (because, being religious, it’s non-rational and core). What can be argued in any situation I’ve ever seen where its come up, is the role of religious versus secular concerns. That is totally debatable, and we see examples around the world of almost every possible combination of religion and secular in different cultures ranging from the totally separate to the totally intertwined. To evaluate what they mean, we need to step back from the content to the structure, to look not at what is being said but how its being said. We must look at the religious and the secular as societal structures, and evaluate their interplay abstractly, with an understanding of what religion is and what society is, absent a concern with the nature of a particular religion or a particular society.

Are you feeling structuralist yet? Are you doing the Caveman dance? The pulling away from the study of content to the study of structures was one of the milestones of 20th Century scholarship. And as far as I can tell, it’s the only way for debaters to meaningfully address issues of religion in society.

Back to the example. The X people won’t be immunized because it is against their religion. Responses?
1. “This is scientifically wrong because immunization yadda yadda yadda whatever.” Not a good response. Why? You’re arguing the content. The X people don’t give a crap what science says, and all the science in the world won’t change their minds. So even if you’re right, you’re not solving the problem.
2. “Society must prioritize public health concerns over private religious concerns.” A much better response (although I’m not necessarily saying it’s the correct one). Here you’re allowing for the X people to believe whatever they want to believe, but addressing the issue in a “what do we do when secular and religious conflict” mode, regardless of the content of the conflict.

I hope you understand what I’ve been trying to say. In a nutshell, I’m suggesting that you, first, understand what religion is, and, second, begin to think about ways of addressing it that take that understanding into consideration. Your beliefs or my beliefs or anyone’s beliefs are beside the point, but the role those beliefs play in arenas outside of the purely religious are very much the point. You can’t argue religion, but you can argue about religion, in other words. That’s the bottom line. And considering the religious nature of the society we live in, it’s probably good advice. People can believe whatever they want to believe, and they do, in vast numbers. That’s fine. When their beliefs cause a conflict beyond the boundaries of religion, that’s not fine. And that’s the ground on which we can stand as debaters.

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