the many faces of 'Faith'

my highlights in blue.

reposted from: http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/steven_poole/2007/01/o_ye_of_too_much_faith.html

O ye of too much faith

People point the finger at religion as the cause of society's ills, but to do so deliberately confounds political arguments.

"Faith" sounds like a friendly word, doesn't it? It's welcoming and ecumenical, affecting no prejudicial distinction between religions; and it also has an uplifting secular sense of hope or optimism, as George Michael so funkily exploited. You might even have faith in something like progress or the fundamental decency of humankind. Faith seems like something it's just good to have, regardless of what it is faith in.

Unfortunately these days the word "faith" is also a weapon of Unspeak in the hands of bigots, used deliberately to confound political arguments. And the problem is that it so often succeeds.

Why do I say it's a weapon of Unspeak? Because, in fact, "faith" is not the issue. People believe in all sorts of interesting if unproven things, from anthropomorphic sky-gods to reincarnation, or the existence of a multiverse, or the Platonic existence already of all music. Their mere "faith" in such things harms no one and may benefit them. It is only when the subject turns from expressing what one believes, to expressing what one believes and further saying that therefore society must be ordered in a certain way, that the problems begin.

If I say that I believe in the Platonic existence already of all music, and add that therefore bagpipes must be banned because they are a gruesome insult to the very idea of music, a garish cancer on the ideal that threatens, if left unchecked, actually to eat music utterly and destroy its Platonic immanence, then others have a right to challenge my political recommendation, perhaps by citing the economic benefits of tourism to Scotland etc.

Similarly, if someone self-identifying as a Christian believes in the literal truth of Leviticus and then says that therefore government should not grant equal rights to homosexuals - an opinion in no way inherent to the "faith" of Christianity as it is understood by many other Christians - then he or she may be challenged on that political recommendation. Similarly with the stricture against the education of women by some Muslims, not shared by all who profess the "faith" of Islam. In both cases, the challenge is mounted not on grounds of "faith" but of politics, since the proposal itself is political, a question of how society should be ordered now.

In response, the bigot, very cleverly, will change the subject. Attacked for his desire that certain people should be oppressed, he responds by pretending that his very "faith" is being attacked - and if "faith" per se is an untrammelled personal virtue, then this is a serious charge. You are attacking his spiritual core. This rhetorical jiujitsu is lamentably powerful.

In his latest post, AC Grayling describes recent history thus: "Live and let live I say; but in recent years religious people have not been living and letting live. In fact quite a few of them have been killing." Well, surely the problem with the people to whom Grayling refers is not that they are religious, but that they kill? (No doubt quite a few people with moustaches have also been killing over the last few years, but this is no argument against moustaches.) The existence of very many people of the same "faith" who do not kill shows that the killing does not flow inexorably from the religion. That's just what the murderous ones want everyone to think. (Meanwhile, as Robert Pape has shown, a recent al-Qaida recruitment video was "stunning in its absence of religious declamation".)

Grayling offers in further evidence an amusing fictional conversation: "So many different, competing beliefs that have caused so many wars and burnings and bombings! 'The bread turns to human flesh.' 'No it doesn't: die!'" Well, is the word "caused" really appropriate there? Has there never in human history been a conversation that went, instead: "The bread turns to human flesh." "No it doesn't; and would you like a cup of tea?" Personally, I suspect there have been a great many such conversations, and their existence provides economical proof that the beliefs themselves do not "cause" wars and burnings and bombings. You need something else besides the belief: you need a desire to burn and bomb. In many cases, the belief may just be a handy excuse.

So I propose that we should not accept the bigots' language, since to do so is to grant them their sordid excuses. Take the phrase "faith groups", a term Dave Hill accepts and uses in his otherwise highly reasonable post. When "faith groups" get into politics they are not "faith groups" but political groups: they are "pressure groups" lobbying for secular effect, just like the CBI or the risibly named creationist sect Truth in Science. As Grayling rightly says, they are indeed "one set of interest groups among many others". And as for "faith schools" - well, hang on, isn't that an oxymoron?

But we should be clear that the problem with those who demonstrated against gay rights on Monday was not that they were religious, but that they were bigots. It was not a "multi-faith demonstration", as the organisers pretended, but an opportunistic alliance of gay-haters. A mob of atheist homophobes would not have been somehow better. "Faith" had very little to do with it.