Preaching to the Choir: Some Thoughts on Faith and Politics

- "So the best we can do is act in accordance with those things that are possible for all of us to know, understanding that a part of what we know to be true...will be true for us alone." Barack Obama, The Audacity of Hope, 220 (emphasis added).

- "We shall dismiss religious experience if we follow Wittgenstein, Sellars and Brandom in thinking that there is no intermediary called 'what the experience was really like' in between the altered state of the nervous system associated with the onset of the claimed experience and the resulting discursive commitments undertaken by a member of a language-using community." Richard Rorty, "Cultural Politics and the Question of the Existence of God," Studia Universitatis Babes-Bolyai, Studia Europaea, XLI, I, 2001, 59.

Here we have two quotes from two very different thinkers, expressing very different positions on the nature of religious belief. And yet, I agree with both. Sort of. Perhaps I should say I am sympathetic with both. On one level, I agree with Rorty (surprise, surprise): The kinds of things people talk about when they talk about faith are often incommunicable to people outside of that community (the community of 'God-talk' language users, in Rorty's terminology). On the other hand, I think Obama is making a valid observation: Many people believe--and therefore think it to be true--that they have experienced things which are unintelligible without reference to a higher power, whether it be Yahweh, Jesus Christ, or Brahman. On a philosophical level, I think Rorty is correct to point out that identifying the causal antecedents to such experience will hinge on the way an individual frames their greater narrative, and the intelligibility of that narrative will depend on a community understanding the proposed framework. Yet on a practical level, I don't find this to be an argument that is going to reach the communities that do accept such a framework. Rorty's larger point is that the question of God's existence is not a matter of evidence-gathering and argumentation. Rather, the question of anything's existence is a matter of how a community of people talk about things, what they say about those things, and what utility such linguistic patterns offer. He refers to this discourse as "cultural politics," and while he argues that talk of religiosity is a form of cultural politics, I think he misses a major point: Insofar as our current culture readily subscribes to some form of religious talk, those of us who do not engage in such discourse will always be at a disadvantage in communicating our ideas. And leftist intellectuals wonder why so many people are "too dumb" to agree with them.

First, I think it important to point out the notions of truth being bandied about. Rorty basically agrees with William James in his attitude towards truth and reality, "that arguments about relative utility are the only ones that matter...Another way to put James' point is to say that truth and reality exist for the sake of social practices, rather than vice versa" (Rorty, 41). That is to say, truth is an attribute we tie to certain statements that are useful in communicating with other people or in adapting to our world. When one asserts, "it is true that the earth revolves around the sun," one is saying, "it is more useful to proceed on the premise that the earth revolves around the sun as opposed to any of the alternative premises previously offered." While this is all well and good in the empirical sciences, things get trickier when you turn to cultural practices, such as religion. One has to start asking things such as this: "What is the utility in claiming that Jesus Christ died for our sins and will one day return to bring about the end of days?" Or: "What use is it to believe that the Qur'an is the divine word of Allah communicated to the prophet Mohammed?" The answers to these questions are pretty simple to me, as I tend to think the questions answered by religion are better answered by other means; but I in no way hold the majority view. In fact, the beliefs people hold about religious matters often stem from experiences they frame in religious terms. Circular as it may be, the pure subjectivity of it speaks to people's sense of self and meaning, and therefore must not be ignored.

I have been arguing with people about religion for years, and I feel fairly confident that I have not converted a single person to my way of thinking. I don't think this is a result of bad argumentation on my part; I think I have some pretty strong arguments against a theistic God and for a secular world view. But these arguments either fall on deaf ears or are received merrily by people who already agree with me. I think I am ready to concede that I will never turn anyone into a godless heathen, and that as long as my arguments for other issues disregard religious persuasion, I think they might be doomed. The point is: faith and religious conviction often constitute fundamental aspects of people's sense of self and community. People who use God-talk and people like me are engaging in a different language game (as Wittgenstein would put it). We will sometimes have different vocabularies for similar situations. But this is a feature of the kind of society that I deeply value. Rorty is right to say, "it is a feature of what we have come to think of as a desirably democratic and pluralist society that our religioun is our own business--something we need not even discuss with others, much less try to justify them, unless we feel like doing so" (Rorty, 58). And I might agree, on an ideological level, with those that "think we should stop talking about God--that God-talk, as well as talk about a higher plane of existence than that of the material world, is a bad thing" (Rorty, 38). But on a practical level, it will do no good to continue banging our heads over issues that are often unimportant on an interpersonal level and unlikely to be settled by argument. I think this is a lesson for secularist and religious person alike, because as soon as one chooses a particular religion it becomes much easier to ignore other kinds of vocabularies. What we need to do is learn these other vocabularies and seek agreement by utilizing them. Rorty is right to place religion in the realm of cultural politics, but if members of the intellectual left fail to recognize the importance of playing alternate language games, they will continue to fail in affecting actual politics.