Arguing from a Religious Belief Is Inferior

That's the point of Amanda Marcotte's latest screed against religious people expressing their beliefs if they are also political. And I'm sure it was a pure coincidence that she wrote this Easter weekend.

The gist of her post is that making policy arguments from one's religious belief inherently excludes those who don't share that belief. While that might be true, upwards of 90% of Americans believe in God, and for most of those people, appealing to their sense of a higher purpose or responsibility is effective.

Now, this isn't to say that every reference to Jesus is sincere and appropriate. In fact, I would consider using Jesus to promote your anti-Iraq war message offensive. But Amanda quotes from this blog post. Here's the part she uses:

Part of the problem for the religious right, I think, is that logic and reason is not on their side, especially on many social issues that they are pressing. Perhaps once one could argue that there were good reasons to make women second-class citizens–it was The Way Things Had Always Been, and Everyone Knew that women preferred to be in the home anyway, and Wasn’t it Obvious that men were superior? But as time has marched on, and we’ve seen that women are as capable as men, those arguments have lost their luster. Sure, now and again an unreconstructed righty will try to argue that women are less than equal, but few are buying it anymore.

So people of faith who believe women are less than equal (though they cannot prove it) and who believe society should treat them as less than equal (though they cannot justify it) are forced to stop arguing based on secular concerns, as they’re holding a bad hand. They’re forced to start arguing, in short, “God says so.” And as Ray Suarez has noted, the only comeback to that is, “No, He doesn’t.” And at that point, we’re no longer arguing about policy. We’re arguing about God.

Amusingly, this follows from a quote from another blog which makes the point that mocking someone's political belief can quickly devolve into mocking their religious belief.

One can only come to the conclusion that "logic and reason are not on (the conservatives') side" if one is the sort of narrow-minded bigot who thinks things like women staying home is making them "second class citizens." It's no wonder this argument appeals to Amanda so much; she's used it in purely secular discussions about women's choices and how women aren't really choosing to stay home. Indeed, she argues that religion has no place in politics using this logic:

This is why so many progressives adamantly oppose liberals talking up Jesus in their politics. For all that it might have good short-term gains, in the long run, making it acceptable to make arguments on faith will corrode the discourse over time. The logic requirement tends to exclude bad arguments but not good ones, which is why people fond of bad arguments (such as the argument that we should favor fertilized eggs over human women in the law) are so attracted to Bible-thumping.

Keep in mind that most pro-lifers believe that both fertilized eggs and women are alive and therefore deserve respect. It is only the pro-abortion supporters who argue that one sort of life deserves protection not only of its life but of its desire to destroy the opposite life. I will admit, it's pretty hard to be religious and support such a position.

But one of the arguments that drive the moonbats crazy in this church-vs.-secular society argument is the fact that our legal system is based on ideas of morality that come from religious beliefs. Whether you consider those ideas Christian, Jewish, or some other religious group, Anglo-American jurisprudence is based on the idea of the moral superiority of certain practices over certain others, and these are usually supported through various religious concepts. While it is certainly possible for atheists and agnostics to be moral, the world crimes of the 20th Century were done not in the name of God--which is the argument atheists usually use against religious believers--but by atheists (see Joseph Stalin and Mao Zedong). Given the horrors committed by these committed atheists, it is difficult to argue that basing one's political beliefs on one's religious commitment is somehow worse.

But Amanda does throw a bone to those supposedly inferior people who do, in fact, link their religious beliefs to their--gasp!--view of the way politics and government should work.

But the corporate media and a lot of people nowadays reflexively equate “religious” with “theocrat”. What we need is more people saying, loudly, that just because they pray every day doesn’t mean that students should lead prayer in school, which has a coercive element. Or that your Bible belongs in your bedside drawer, not displayed as a monument in front of a courthouse, signaling to non-Christians that they are considered lesser in the eyes of the law. Or that your religious beliefs about sex and marriage and end-of-life care should have no bearing on the laws governing people who don’t believe like you do.

It's truly scary to watch someone so intent on separating morality from the law- and decision-making process. The examples she gives are deeply moral questions, and to say that one's religious beliefs--the basis of one's morality--should "have no bearing on the laws" is quite amazing. Perhaps someone should send Amanda some histories, the sorts that include the millions of people exterminated by Stalin and Mao because those men saw nothing immoral in what they did. That's what you get when one's religion has "no bearing on the laws."