If you watch Comedy Central a lot online, you've probably seen this ad:
As a fellow atheist, I agree 100% that religion has no place in government. But we need to do better than this.
The first rhetorical zinger in the ad is his introduction: "Hi, I'm Ron Reagan." This of course has a natural appeal to us liberal atheist types, since he's the son of an iconic conservative president. Ooh, won't this be handy at Thanksgiving, when you try to win over your crazy in-laws?
He goes on to tell us that he's an "unabashed atheist" and that he's "alarmed" at the intrusion of religion into our secular government. To me, "alarm" indicates a recent development -- think "fire alarm." In fact, religion has been slowly encroaching on our civic life for a pretty long time -- at least since the temperance movement of the 19th century, on up through prohibition. Certainly local and special purpose governments have never had much shame in incorporating religion into their life. And we didn't hesitate to invoke the Almighty in our war on communism.
He concludes his short spiel by reminding us that religion should be kept out of government, "just as our founding fathers intended." Again, a little dubious. While the constitution is undeniably secular, the Declaration of Independence, which had many of the same authors, explicitly mentions rights "endowed by our Creator." Hmmm, who could they possibly have been talking about?
But the appeal to the founding fathers is more troubling than that. The simple fact is that a true, free-thinking atheist would never make such a concession. It's no more appropriate to appeal to the idols on our currency (along with the phrase "In God We Trust") than it is to use biblical passages. Like any appeal to authority or religion, it's subject to the usual criticisms, for example:
- Even if we grant that the "founding fathers" unambiguously forbade religion in government, there were lots of things that they sanctioned or forbade that we now see as at least misguided, if not abhorrent. They failed to abolish slavery (which had dire consequences eighty years later), they failed to enfranchise women, and senators were not directly elected. So we "We should do X because the founding fathers said so" is, on its face, invalid.
- We are put on a collision course with the Euthyphro dilemma. Remember that one from your freshman philosophy class? Is something pious because it pleases the gods, or do the gods just have good taste? If they have good taste, and we're able to make that determination, why appeal to the gods in the first place?
Of course, like any critic, I expect someone from the audience to dare me to do better. I don't know if I can do better. But we certainly can and should do better. Still, I'll make a stab at it. Religion has no place in government for the same reason that it needs to get out the way everywhere else. Namely, it's dangerous, irrational nonsense. We live in a world right now where the largest problems that humans face are irrevocably intertwined with, and can only be solved by, science and reason. Carl Sagan raised that alarm a while back:
We live in a society absolutely dependent on science and technology and yet have cleverly arranged things so that almost no one understands science and technology. That's a clear prescription for disaster.
Understanding how to respond rationally to ebola, how to best to regulate the financial sector, global warming, GMO's, telecommunications -- all of these things demand rationality, objectivity, and a general willingness to be wrong when necessary. Religion is antithetical to all of that. Pussyfooting around this is what has managed to get the better of the usually sensible (if overly dramatic) Bill Maher, with surreal, pretzel-like arguments. (Ben Affleck and Bill Maher should both be embarrassed by this spectacle). To put it bluntly, we're faced with really serious problems that religion frequently prevents us from discussing, let alone solving. We know from history and current events that some really awful things happen when religion and government are mixed -- take a look at Saudi Arabia, for instance. Or Reagan's own mother, Nancy, and her White House astrologer. Again, I don't claim to do any better than Mr. Reagan. But he has set the bar awfully low for the rest of us here.
Perhaps as a former math TA, I'm overly sensitive to invalid arguments being used to reach desired (even if correct!!) conclusions. Perhaps. But the need to get this off my chest remains. Based on his uncanny ability to wrap an essentially invalid argument in appealing rhetoric, my main takeaway is that the apple really doesn't fall very far from the tree after all.