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Re: An open letter to "the religious right"

Update: more discussion by a friend here.

Joe Carter writes Being on God's Side: An open letter to "the religious right". I'm replying to his point #10.

Disclaimer: according to his definition of "religious right" at the beginning of the article, evidently I fall into that category, though I'm starting to doubt I would ever define myself that way, as I'm finding I'm not incredibly politically conservative.

At the end of the article, Joe says that "because the Bible says so" is not a reasonably persuasive argument to put forward in a political discourse. Instead, he posits that the religious right should make efforts to find arguments that support their beliefs, and use those as reasoning for political motivation.

I think this is inherently, and in some senses, disastrously, backwards. Arguments should not be found to support beliefs, though I'd say the common occurrence of this is unfortunately part of the human condition (Update: A related quote: "The difficulty lies, not in new ideas, but in escaping from the old ones, which ramify, for those brought up as most of us have been, into every corner of our minds." -John Maynard Keynes). Instead, beliefs should be founded on arguments.

Let me explain. Belief is an indication that someone says they know something. A belief is actually knowledge if the belief is true (describing this distinction between belief and knowledge is what the whole field of epistemology is all about). In other words, the human action of belief is, in some sense, the manifestation of attempting to understand the world by forming an hypothesis about what is true.

I am a firm believer (haha, believer) that there is an external truth that is true regardless of anyone's beliefs about it. I don't think truth is subjective. I think it's quite seriously objective. So, the question is, does a belief matter if it's untrue? My answer? No.

Now, bringing this back to Joe Carter's article, I am not attacking anyone in "the religious right"'s beliefs in any way. Evidently, if I was, I would be guilty of attacking myself. What I am saying is that those beliefs should be based on reason, and not the other way around. There are reasons for having the beliefs the religious right have, but if those reasons were to vaporize, we should not try to construct new reasons to support our existing beliefs; instead, we should endeavor to make sure our beliefs are solidified by existing reasons. If the belief is true (and therefore matters), then there is a reason. No need to make any up. And while I doubt Joe Carter would ever suggest that making up reasons is a good idea, I think his inverted order of priorities in effecting political discourse is prone to incite this sort of thing.