In defense of secular liberalism

        911 altered the west’s perceptions. Threats didn’t only come from modern ideologies- communism, fascism, nuclear dictatorships- but came just as viciously from ancient folklores and primitive notions. Not everyone changed, much to the chagrin of those who did.

          Some people continued to criticize  America while tolerating almost everything from its enemies. Some continued to sympathize with the delusional vendetta against Israel as a valid cause of anger to the entire Middle East. Of course, the right is frustrated to no end over how the most of the left refuses to develop the faintest concept of why the right is so angry with them about their moral relativism. The left sees only that our international leaders are our first responsibility. In essence, they won’t discuss what is wrong with the  Middle East or the west because they are not done hammering on about the Bush administration.

         Thankfully, the Bush administration is done for. So now, the left really has to think about the other questions, the deeper questions- the questions about what they believe in and why they believe in those ideals. Though the left has chosen to ignore it, the same straightforward accusations are repeatedly launched. They are self hating moral relativists. They refuse to believe nations of darker skinned people can be morally inferior to western civilization, which has been shaped mainly by white men. They refuse to believe in moral inferiority period, unless the other side contains white God fearing republicans. The left does not at all care what lofty principles the conservatives claim to believe in so long as the right supports incompetent, corrupt and catastrophic leaders like Bush. The right can’t believe the left cares so much about their catastrophic choice of leader when the left has no real principles in the first place.  

      The left most often operates on gut reactions. They claim they operate under the auspices of tolerance and progress, but like the creationist that condemns theories he does not understand, the left claims beliefs without ever thinking about the belief system those beliefs come from. That is why when the right levels charges of nihilism and degeneracy, the left never counters with a winning argument. The left usually resorts to petty jabs- the right is hypocritical because of their child molesting priests, their war mongering, their abortion clinic bombers etc.

      So, since the rest of the left will not speak for itself, I will speak for them. Indeed, I am speaking for what I stand for. I know the charges against us. I understand them well.  We are Godless and that is only the beginning of the problem. We are Godless and devoid of a sensible moral compass because without belief in an omnipotent, intractable being, we have no claim to an absolute reality or absolute morality. This translates into a profligate ‘anything goes’ mentality and a desire to find moral equivalences in every society. Many on the right think this is the inevitable result of liberal thought. But this is not the case, because liberal thought is not monolithic. There are a number of rifts within the secular liberal establishment.

     Some of the left consciously associates moral absolutes with hegemonic hierarchical societies in which people are assigned rigid social roles. In their view, progressive tolerance must be associated with moral fluidity which is the challenge to western patriarchal society. Some of the left is forever tied to 19^th century Marxist theory, where religion, social class and the free market are all concomitant causes of oppression and injustice. Some of the left refuses to acknowledge that these two ways of thinking are already in severe conflict. Communism and cultural anthropology are strange bedfellows. And there is still a testy elephant in that bedroom- science.

        Two years ago Lawrence Summers found himself embroiled with bitter charges of sexism. He stated that the greater number of men to women in advanced sciences could be related to greater innate variance in relevant abilities or innate differences in preference. The outcry came from the fact that Summers believed in something innate- that ability is not just a construct. The outcry came loudest from academics in the humanities. The faculty member chosen to come to Summers defense was Steven Pinker, a celebrity academic and proponent of innate neurological tendencies. It seemed that someone in the liberal establishment believes in the innate. In fact, many secularists believe in the innate and the objective. They are usually scientists. 

    Yet, academic scientists are often unaware of what people in the humanities theorize. Very few know what the history of science discipline propagates or what literary theory teaches. Academics in the humanities, however, can’t avoid a general sense of what scientists discover. When a new planet is discovered, it’s all over the news. When some ivory tower professor proposes an extended explanation of menstruation as a construct (yes, I’ve red this theory), then no one knows except other people living in the same obscure corner. 

    I will speak for empiricism and state that scientific discoveries are not constructs. Empirical observation views objective reality. Objective reality does exist and lastly that scientific principles are crucial to well developed moral reasoning.

      Firstly, people that actually believe that scientific discoveries are arbitrary constructs must have failed statistics. No, the discoveries are not constructs even though the experiments that illuminate them are constructs. Discoveries are not based on a one time observations, but on myriads of trials and conglomerations of experiments that are deigned to correct for the previous studies confounds. The discovery is always an approximation, but it is still concrete. To say science is just another way of knowing the world is as absurd as believing that pink dragons live under your bed. And yes, that is pointlessly absurd.

     There are also relativists that claim scientific support for their ambiguity by citing quantum physics, relativity and the uncertainty principle where numerical data is not absolute and depends on the position of the observer. These are people that failed both statistics and physics. The uncertainties on the quantum level do not translate into relativism on a physical scale we can naturally observe because quantum events still follow patterns. One cannot predict the route of a single quantum particle (yet), but we can say that 90% of the time they behave one way and 10% of the time they behave another way and overall certain outcomes will be observed. Large scale relativity also does not translate into support for moral relativism because events are still calculated based on fixed geometrical principles. Even unknowable events are proven to be unknowable and calculated through set mathematical concepts.

    And the most ill conceived argument against science comes from its forced association with pseudo science. Phrenologists called themselves scientists and somehow this reflects upon the scientific method. It’s remarkable that this belief is so prevalent in our society. Pseudo scientists do not even follow scientific methods. They have nothing to do with science no matter what they claim or how many people believe them. There is an observable objective reality and those who do not use logical or substantial methods of arriving at objective reality do not reflect poorly on those that do. It is in fact the fault of the ignorant and overzealous for being unable to distinguish between scientifically valid concepts and pseudo science. The best way to correct for this is not by training people to mistrust science, but by training them to know how to understand scientific data. 

      Very few people acknowledge the role that scientific data should play in moral decisions. Many have accepted the notions that science without some separate moral philosophy ends up in social Darwinism and Nazi experimentation. It is unfair that scientific reasoning is particularly blamed and associated with Nazism. The Nazis claimed Christianity, Viking heritage, anti communism, industrialism etc- they extended their philosophical umbrella over nearly every idea popular during their era. There is no reason science sans faith deserves a stronger association with Nazism than any other principle.

         Scientific reasoning as a way of viewing the world is not popular because it is not taught in school and comparatively few people develop it on their own. It offends the religious and challenges the relativists. The frontrunners in the humanities are sure to teach their theories, even hammer them into their students. And the better the university, the more indoctrination a student can expect, because their teachers are likely to be original proponents of theories and therefore zealous about them. This creates a society where the upper classes are the most indoctrinated. Hence the New Yorker’s uneasy place in American society. Science teachers, on the other hand, do not teach scientific theory and its implications. They teach science. Boyle’s law, quantum mechanics, DNA replication etc, but not why science is not a construct and how scientific principles can be applied to an overall mental framework.

         The other objection to scientific reasoning of course comes from organized religions on different levels. There are the biblical literalists that object to science simply because it leads to conclusions that differ from the literal word of the bible. And then there is the more intellectual and farsighted view of leaders of the Catholic Church- that godless philosophies are intertwined in their inevitable movement towards nihilism and self destruction. Science is cruel and moral existentialism spawns debauchery, self loathing, and soulless doubt.

           Personally, I know that the ideas of no God and even no certain religion are not inviting. But atheisms are not the only thinking that leads to nihilism. Calvinist doctrine implied that souls were predetermined to enter heaven or hell, which obliterated free will and implied that actions on this earth did not matter. The Catholic church criticizes the secularists for valuing only the corporeal world and its pleasures but their institution has done themselves harm through their obsession with the opposite-  shunning earthly desires through celibacy, atheism and  once upon a time- making an enemy of science. The desire to believe that nothing matters or that everything goes does not stem from disbelieving the supernatural. Fatalism and nihilism were with us long before masses of people departed from organized religion.

        Secularists are now the proponents of today’s most agreeable moral philosophy (at least in the western world) - secular humanism. Humanism owes much of its tenets to Christianity- religion of love they neighbor and turn the other cheek, but no one can say it would never have developed without Christianity. And scientific knowledge is not incidental to moral decision making. It is the essence of it. The pro-life vs. pro choice debate is nothing without science. Science made the procedure safe and inexpensive for the masses, it gave us the video cameras and ultrasounds of developing fetuses- their heart beats, their fingers. It told us what unique DNA meant. There are those that would like to take what they want and turn to God for notions of conception and souls and ignore scientific processes on those points, but its willful ignorance. It is only science that will tell us when and how human consciousness develops. It’s scary and unthinkable for some to consider how we can take microscopes and look into the human soul to understand it, but to me that’s more comforting than having to make crude guesses based on a book written by some Bronze Age tribesman. And me aside, it’s objectively possible.

             Nevertheless, I can sympathize with Pope Benedict’s wariness of the secular post modern west. Europe is mysteriously indifferent to its immanent decline. Negligible birth rates, immolation of cultural identities in favor of a socialist super state called the European Union –so much so that they refuse to take pride in even what is common to all European nations. Only the Anglophile world shakes its head and thinks ‘Europa- indulge in just a little chauvinism (And not just against North America). You did discover basically everything.”

          But the pope is wrong if he thinks God will save Europe’s soul (and I am sure he does). Why God? The Judeo-Christian God is universal, absolute and a mystery. The scientific concept is as universal as the mind’s curiosity extends, objective if not absolute and actually knowable and because it is knowable, non divisive. Christianity is as much the brainchild of western civilization as scientific reasoning- built on Aristotelian thought, the enlightenment and industrialization.

       He secular left has much stronger legs to stand on than “Bush is an idiot” and “Religious wing nuts are backward.” And hopefully when Bush is gone, they will stand up and show those who would destroy us that conservatives are not the only ones who refuse to back down from our civilization.

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Dude, where’s the pic?

Sigh. I know. That’s the only reason people read my blog.

Well, what goes with this blog post- Marie Curie?

Madame Curie isn’t crotch candy, you say? Well then, why not the finest woman Polnd has since produced – wonderbra model Magdalena Wrobel.

Comments

[lionel]

I stumbled across your blog purely by accident but was delighted by what I read. I found your analysis to be incredibly well thought out and I find myself agreeing with virtually every point. I would ask you to expound on the ideal of secular humanism. What are its central tenents, and how are they manifested in contemporary society? Given that this is a system of morals generated by people, what is to preserve its integrity, from the corruption of those who would rather not adhere to its restrictions? Although I am an aethiest, is there not a valid argument to be made that an absolute set of morals is required in order to preserve society's functioning? Your thoughts please.

[Bruce DeBoer]

Interesting thoughts and good points. Here are some tangents that came to mind as I read:

- Define "God" - I think if you ask 10 people you'd get at least 9 different answers. Therefore the word is nearly useless.
- From a distance we are one, therefore Left, Right, Science, Religion, Eastern Philosophies, you name it, are all tied together. Finding the common ground is a moral imperative. Maybe even the only absolute.
- Before the Big Bang there was no knowledge. Definitions began when there was evidence of what was not; I know nothing until I know what I am not. Divide by two and finally I can say, “I know who I am, I am not the other”. Thus being true, we can all trace back to a common existence; there is oneness. Define that oneness and label it “God” and is no atheism or nihilism.

I make these fairly random points primarily because I lack the patience to weave a dialog as complex as yours since I am certain it would take at least that to express thoughts in full.

Thanks for the read.

[Bruce DeBoer]

Also ... thanks for the photos. You must have taken at least ONE marketing course in College.

[lost in translation]

Great Post, Blogerette, as usual. Well composed and terrific subject matter.

Each individual has the right to live with the maximum amount of freedom possible without it infringing on the freedom of others. All personal law can be based on this principle. It's a simple code to live by, but one that results in an ethical standpoint as pure and as noble as any religious one. It's based on reason rather than superstition, and this gives it a strength that no religious morality could ever have.

So take yer god and bang it ;)

[Bloggerette]

Bruce-

- Define "God" - I think if you ask 10 people you'd get at least 9 different answers. Therefore the word is nearly useless.--

It is clear that different people refer to different concepts when they say 'God'. It is not meaningless as we live in a society where the concept of God has been developed through a number of organizaed institutions such as Churches. It at least provides a general framework for what God means in the western world. 'God' in a Judeo Christian society is still not as vague as 'being' or nirvana in the eastern world.

Point 2-
"From a distance we are one, therefore Left, Right, Science, Religion, Eastern Philosophies, you name it, are all tied together. Finding the common ground is a moral imperative. Maybe even the only absolute.

- Before the Big Bang there was no knowledge. Definitions began when there was evidence of what was not; I know nothing until I know what I am not. Divide by two and finally I can say, “I know who I am, I am not the other”. Thus being true, we can all trace back to a common existence; there is oneness. Define that oneness and label it “God” and is no atheism or nihilism."---

There is a cool wikipedia article on how the western concept of the subconscious /conscious mind developed out of eastern philosophy. I'll find it later. It sheds a lot of light on why and how the eastern concept of oneness and modern western ideas are often unified or similar.