Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon

For many of us, the price we pay—accepting the rule of secular law—is one of the best bargains on the planet. Those of us who therefore put our first allegiance—critically and tentatively and conditionally—with our secular systems of democracy recognize the wisdom of the principle of freedom of religion, and will defend it even when it interferes seriously with our particular interests. Those with other allegiances who refuse to make this commitment pose a problem—and not just a theoretical problem. In Turkey today, an Islamic party governs with a majority that would enable it to impose Islamic law on the whole nation, but it wisely refrains and even goes so far as to outlaw some practices of radical Muslims as inconsistent with religious liberty for all. The result is fragile, and fraught with problems, but it contrasts dramatically with the situation in Algeria, where violence and insecurity continue to blight the lives of everybody in the wake of a civil war that was triggered in 1990, when it became apparent that democratic elections would put in power an Islamic party intent on throwing away the ladder of democracy and creating a theocracy.

Fifty years ago, President Eisenhower nominated Charles E. Wilson, then president of General Motors, as his secretary of defense. At the nomination hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee, Wilson was asked to sell his shares in General Motors, but he objected. When asked if his continued stake in General Motors mightn’t unduly sway his judgment, he replied, “For years, I thought what was good for the country was good for General Motors and vice versa.” Some in the press, unsatisfied with this response, stressed only the second half of his response—“What’s good for General Motors is good for the country”—and in response to the ensuing furor, Wilson was forced to sell his stock in order to win the nomination. This was a fine object lesson on the importance of being clear about priorities. Even if it were true, other things being equal, that what was good for General Motors was good for the country, people wanted to be clear about where Wilson’s loyalties would lie in the rare event that there was a conflict. Whose benefit would Wilson further in those circumstances? That is what had people upset, and rightly so. They wanted the actual decision-making by the secretary of defense to be directly responsive to the national interest. If decisions reached under those benign circumstances benefited General Motors (and presumably most of them would, if Wilson’s long-held homily is true), that would be just fine, but people were afraid that Wilson had his priorities backward. Imagine the furor that would have been provoked had Wilson said that for years, as a good Methodist, he had believed that what was good for the Methodist Church was good for the country.

Allegiance to the principles of a free and democratic society only so long as they support the interests of your religion is a start, but we can ask for more. If it is the best you can muster, then fair enough, but you should recognize that the rest of us are right to view you as part of the problem. Is this a fair judgment? This is controversial, and I have deliberately expressed it in stark terms to bring out the contrast. It is a view that deserves to be taken just as seriously as the more traditional, and more obviously biased, insistence that deep respect is due to all such exemptions from scrutiny. A similar impasse often arises during ecumenical attempts to resolve the different perspectives of science and religion, and it puts the scientifically minded discussants in a quandary: how should they respond? The polite tack is to acknowledge profound differences in viewpoint and paper over the cracks with some bland assurances of mutual respect. But this conceals and postpones indefinitely the consideration of an asymmetry: we wouldn’t for one moment pay respectful attention to any scientist who retreated to “If you don’t understand my theory, it’s because you don’t have faith in it!” or “Only official members of my lab have the ability to detect these effects,” or “The contradiction you think you see in my arguments is simply a sign of the limitations of human comprehension. There are some things beyond all understanding.” Any such declaration would be an intolerable abdication of responsibility as a scientific investigator, a confession of intellectual bankruptcy.