Positive Liberty

Via Arts & Letters Daily, the following is likely to keep me thinking over the weekend…

What should the atheist’s position be on “sacred texts”?

Think of it as another “death of the author” problem.

The first difficulty for atheists is glaringly apparent. Unlike the situation with God, atheists can’t deny the existence of sacred texts, at least as texts. There’s indisputably something on hand to deal with. They can only deny to such texts the quality of sacredness. That behooves atheists, then, to have a clear definition of the sacred — object of veneration, say, or “something related to the holy,” or “something set apart from the non-holy,” or “something worthy of extreme respect” — and also a clear definition of text or book. Many atheists who have a relatively clear idea of what they mean by “God” when they reject His, Her, or Its existence, possess little knowledge of the sacred texts that animate religions. Indeed, Jacques Berlinerblau, in his book The Secular Bible: Why Nonbelievers Must Take Religion Seriously (Cambridge University Press, 2005), opens his study by declaring, “In all but exceptional cases, today’s secularists are biblically illiterate.”

Exploring what these books are as texts, then — take the Old Testament, New Testament, and Koran as representative — is the first step toward pondering the atheist’s proper behavior in regard to them. Happily, one can get help from non-sacred texts, since critical scholarship on sacred texts, which includes what was once widely known as biblical criticism, continues apace.

Let me offer a few propositions, in reply to the above:

First, with only a few exceptions, today’s believing Christians are also biblically illiterate. It’s a bit rich to complain about atheists being biblically illiterate in an article the bulk of which is devoted to showing complications and difficulties in biblical scholarship that most believing Christians know nothing about. One would think that if the Bible actually were a sacred text, then the numerous problems of translation, authorship, and version would be the very most important questions in the entire world for Christians. Yet clearly they are not.

Indeed, Christians often think they know what is in the Bible but have not read it and/or manifestly do not understand it. Often they pretend to a far greater knowledge than they actually have, and they use this knowledge, combined with the power they ascribe to sacred texts, as justification for things that I cannot possibly believe Jesus would accept.

I’m not talking just about the culture-war issues, either: Take a look at the ridiculous notion, all too common in modern American Christianity, that Jesus Christ wants you to be wealthy. Wealthy. Can these people even read? Jesus condemns wealth almost every time the subject comes up. His advice is to give all your money and possessions away and live in simple poverty. Until all the get-rich-quick Christians do exactly this, I will remain skeptical about the fidelity of their faith. And about their reading comprehension.

The claim that atheists are biblically illiterate (and therefore in no position to judge Christians) also falls flat for another reason: It proves too much.

By definition, no Christian can be a Hindu; all Christians must reject the Hindu sacred texts. Yet virtually no Christians have ever made a detailed study of these texts. Clearly, then, they reject Hinduism on the basis of ignorance alone. If it is wrong for atheists to reject Christianity based on a cursory or superficial reading of the Bible, then it is even worse for Christians to reject Hinduism based on no reading whatsoever of the Rig Veda or the Bhagavad Gita.

I’m not sure if there is a recognized logical fallacy at work in this argument, but the sheer fact that it can be replicated almost ad infinitum is enough to suggest that something is seriously awry: You’re not a communist? But you’ve only read a little bit of Marx? For shame! You reject communism only out of ignorance. You’re not a Freudian? Not a Mesmerist? Not a Mormon? Not a Scientologist? Not a theosophist? Not a Muslim? Not a Buddhist? Not a Muggletonian?

The fact is, beyond reasons and evidence, beyond interpretations of texts… there is simply the need to get on with living one’s life. All of these ideas and belief systems make claims, and it is well beyond the ability of any one individual to evaluate them all in the detail the Christians demand of the atheists who live among them. We have rejected their claim, perhaps because it does not take a detailed study to recognize a large or fundamental error. Or perhaps because we have decided to get on with living our lives rather than spending them on the study of mountains of sacred texts. Or maybe we’ve done both. Or maybe these amount to the same thing, somehow.

Second, the difference between a sacred text and other texts is very simple. A sacred text commands obedience. An ordinary text must stand or fall on its own merits, but a sacred text is never thought capable of error.

“Sacred,” when applied to a text, means that apparent difficulties with the text are a priori more likely, or even certain, to be the fault of the reader than of the text. The more sacred the text is thought, the more likely the reader is presumably at fault.

This is a lousy way of reading, and it means that — in Nietzsche’s wonderful phrase — the art of biblical interpretation becomes the art of reading badly. Texts alone should not command obedience. They should command a thoughtful, respectful, and very earnest struggle, one in which the intellectual outcome is not a foregone conclusion. When reading a text — any text — it must remain possible, from the outset until long after the text is set down, that the reader may have varying relationships with it or with any of its parts. He should be able to interrogate the text without the intervening argument from authority. Sacred texts, however, demand not our engagement, but our submission. This is a remarkable epistemological gambit, and I think a fatal one.

Third, sacred texts injure reading in yet another way. A sacred text occludes the act of interpretation. I know this sounds terribly postmodern, so please let me explain myself.

We are told that sacred texts may often be read literally or figuratively, and, as far as it goes, this is true: One may believe in a literal Noah, a literal Flood, a literal Ark full of tree sloths and hissing cockroaches and stegosauruses — or one may think that this is an allegory of something else, rather than a literal series of events. It’s a moral story about stewardship of the earth and about obedience to God. Each of these is in a sense a strategy about how to read, and they are not necessarily mutually exclusive.

The problem arises, though, when someone claims that the literal reading of a sacred text is the more unvarnished, purer, truer reading, that it is free or at least more free from human interpretation, and that fundamentalism is therefore closer to God. This is a dangerous delusion for two reasons.

Reason one: Fundamentalism is an interpretive strategy. Fundamentalism is not a divine command; it is a human decision about how to read a text, and it should be made to prove itself against all of the other equally human approaches to reading. No one has a magical hermeneutic key descended from Heaven, and there is no reason whatsoever to believe from the outset that fundamentalist readings are any closer to God than any other. The fundamentalist interprets his text just like anyone else does. The only difference is that he claims not to interpret, and the sacredness of the text causes many people to believe what would in any other context be an obvious imposture.

Reason two: Fundamentalism does not yield a single reading outcome. One man’s “literal” reading may well conflict with another’s, whether because the text contradicts itself or because many things seem obvious or literal only in reference to a particular set of cultural understandings. Even those who strive to approach a sacred text the most literally of all are going to bring with them interpretive filters that go entirely unnoticed and uncriticized. This happens precisely because they, as readers, have declared that they are free of such things.

In reality, the fundamentalist is more helpless against his own interpretive apparatus than anyone. Those of us who understand that all reading is an act of interpretation and interrogation will have our biases, but at least we attempt to be on guard against them.

There is much else of interest in the article, for example:

How atheists react to sacred texts, I submit, properly belongs as much to the history of etiquette as to that of philosophy or theology. Let me explain…

Why can’t atheists see sacred texts as sacred to them — to those believers over there — and behave respectfully when not provoked? It is simply not true, in a normal, etiquette-infused vision of life, that we think truth must be stated at every time and in every context. We tell Grandma that she’s looking well when she’s looking terrible. We tell Grandpa that he’s going to be fine when we haven’t the faintest idea how things will turn out for him. We lie to people in small ways every day to make interactions gentler and less tense, and to be kind to others…

In advanced, progressive, tolerant societies, we also don’t go up to strangers and tell them that they’re ugly, that their children are repulsive, that their clothes don’t match, that they need a bath, that the leisure activity they’re engaged in is stupid and a waste of time. In the same way, atheists should not, unprovoked, go on and on about how sacred texts lack God’s imprimatur. And believers should not blithely go after atheists. If this sounds like the credo of an American — an odd creature of history who might be an atheist or believer — the plea is guilty. One can, of course, line up the bolstering high-culture quotations on this side too, against the belligerent atheists. Schopenhauer’s proviso that politeness is “a tacit agreement that people’s miserable defects, whether moral or intellectual, shall on either side be ignored and not made the subject of reproach.” Even Eric Hoffer’s lovely line that “rudeness is the weak man’s imitation of strength.”

The simple answer, then, to how atheists should respond to sacred texts is: politely, if possible, employing all the wry ambiguity book critics use when awkwardly trapped with the author or admirer of a book about which they have reservations. “It’s really quite amazing,” one might say, or, “You know, I was just reading it the other day — it’s as good as ever.”

I’m reminded of a dialogue I once wrote, back when I wrote such things:

“There must be a third thing,” said Fidelio, “that enables us to sort out cases of faith from cases of reason. It seems now that neither faith nor reason can be a proper judge between faith and reason. So what is that third thing?”

“Immanuel Kant claimed to have discerned a third thing,” said the Academic. “Or at least I believe that he claimed it. But I confess that even I cannot make heads or tails of his work on the subject.”

“Could it be,” asked the Cynic, “that politeness is the third thing?”

“What?” asked Fidelio.

“Politeness,” replied the Cynic. “I observe that there are certain subjects about which it is thought impolite to talk. Religion is usually one of them. Sex is another. Politics, often, is a third.

“I suggest — merely on the basis of empirical evidence here, for I am no great philosopher — that there are two classification systems that may be applied to all branches of human knowledge: The first is the duality between the polite and the impolite. The second is the duality between those things conventionally decided on faith, and those things conventionally decided on reason. I submit that there is very nearly a one-to-one correspondence between the two. Wheresoever it is impolite to ask, to probe, to doubt, or to demand evidence — there you will find humans using faith. Everywhere else, they use reason.”

“It brings new meaning,” said the Stoic, “to the phrase ‘An armed society is a polite society.’ For it seems to apply, though somewhat in reverse, to the battle of wits as well.”

“The question remains,” said the Academic, “whether politeness is indeed the causative agent in these divisions — and if so, whether it holds that title justly.”

To lay my cards on the table, I do not think that there is any such thing as a judge between faith and reason. I think that supposing the existence of a judge also supposes a set of criteria by which to judge, and these must be either reasoned or held on faith. Either way, the question is begged.

Ultimately politeness is fine, I suppose, as long as it is mutual. I am not rude to believers in my daily life, nor do I even bother to challenge them, usually. On the blog I do, because this is understood to be a space where ideas are aired and challenged. Politeness need not involve compromise (and indeed it shouldn’t), but its application depends a great deal on context.

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