That is the basic lay of the land, but let me unpack it a bit. As a sort of casual observation, the references to pop culture (I'll just assume a familiarity) serve a couple of purposes. Both Bones and Alison DuBois are misrepresentations or, perhaps more precisely, exaggerations of a type, and each is given a foil of the opposite type. In Bones, for example, the evidence-only hyper-rationality of Bones is offset by Seely Booth, the FBI agent who "believes in God" and operates on "gut feel" or hunches, but eventually capitulates to the tangible evidence. In The Medium, on the other hand, the "visions" of Alison DuBois are offset by her husband, Joe, the engineer, who pooh-poohs the other worldly revelations given to Alison, but eventually has to admit that "there's something to it." All fiction is in part allegory, and the competing "types" on the television shows simply reveal the personified aspects of a psychological conflict afflicting us all. We are all, to one degree or another, both Bones and Seely Booth, both Alison and Joe.
Because, however, the references are to pop culture, not high culture, we don't need to take the allegory all that seriously. I am thinking of C. P. Snow's, The Two Cultures (1959), talked about a similar opposition between science and the humanities. The famous passage, quoted by Wikipedia, set it up as follows:
A good many times I have been present at gatherings of people who, by the standards of the traditional culture, are thought highly educated and who have with considerable gusto been expressing their incredulity at the illiteracy of scientists. Once or twice I have been provoked and have asked the company how many of them could describe the Second Law of Thermodynamics. The response was cold: it was also negative. Yet I was asking something which is the scientific equivalent of: Have you read a work of Shakespeare’s?[5]
I now believe that if I had asked an even simpler question — such as, What do you mean by mass, or acceleration, which is the scientific equivalent of saying, Can you read? — not more than one in ten of the highly educated would have felt that I was speaking the same language. So the great edifice of modern physics goes up, and the majority of the cleverest people in the western world have about as much insight into it as their neolithic ancestors would have had.
Snow and I are ultimately talking about the same thing. Those who could describe the second law of thermodynamics live in a world of "observed" truth, those who were adept at the nuance of Shakespeare live in a world of "revealed" truth -- i.e. if "fiction" has any claim on "truth," it lies in the author's ability to "represent" and thereby "reveal" a sort of human truth. It is the same dichotomy played out in a wholly secular realm, though it is not by accident that Snow references Shakespeare, and not Gwen Bistrow or Paul Gallico, both best selling authors in 1959. Shakespeare is canonical, and the canon should be treated with reverence as culturally affirmed revelations worthy of attention.
I suspect that most Americans would be baffled by the second law of thermodynamics and have never read a work of Shakespeare, and to argue at that level seems a bit, well, hoity-toity and elitist. It is one thing to think about how the dichotomy plays out among "the cleverest people in the western world," if that is one's social set, another thing give some insight into the more neolithic dynamics of the masses, and we are all, to one degree or another mired in the masses, at least from a political perspective. So, even though the sina qua non of "observed truth" is science and the scientist, there is a considerable distance between those who actually practice science, as such, and the general public. The "reality" being "observed" by contemporary scientists is well beyond the pale. Forget about mass and acceleration, which most people can explain from their own "observed" reality, but what is "spin" for example? And no, I am not talking political spin, but rather the "intrinsic form of angular momentum carried by elementary particles, composite particles (hadrons), and atomic nuclei." One needs considerable education to even begin to understand "spin," but one thing is clear. The 19th century ideal of the "amateur" scientist, perhaps best exemplified by Darwin, has long since become an impossibility.
One can bemoan the "cultural illiteracy" of the masses along with Hirsch, but to do so seems at one level a very odd notion. Unless one has lived in utter isolation, without social contact or a language, it strikes me that everyone has a "culture." One difficulty, however, is the notion of a "common culture," and just how broadly that culture is shared. One could ask, for example, "is there an essentially American culture?" At some very high level of abstraction, or at some very high level of superficiality, the answer would be "yes," and often it's obvious to those of other cultures that we are Americans, from the way we speak, dress, act. The "yes," however, doesn't stand much push, and one thing the current election has demonstrated is that American culture is fractured along several lines, one being education. Education gives one access to the sort of "cultural literacy" that Hirsch celebrates and the "cultural illiteracy" he fears. To bemoan cultural illiteracy, for example, one needs a notion of and a familiarity with a "literate culture" that is distinct from and ostensibly better than the culture of the masses -- a notion of and familiarity with Shakespeare's "Taming of the Shrew" in the original and sacrosanct language, for example, that is distinct even from pop culture adaptations like "10 Things I Hate About You." -- even better, a notion of the sort of person that appreciates Tony Kushner's "Angels in America" distinct from the sort of person that appreciates "Duck Dynasty," or "Bayou Billionaires," or "Swamp People." It still takes considerable education to become "culturally literate," to have read Shakespeare and Milton, even Faulkner and Hemingway, and to appreciate "Angels in America," but there is something class ridden and artificially quaint about it all, a bit of snobbish bragging rights not worth the bother or the expense. It takes little or no education to appreciate the latest episode of "Duck Dynasty," and it's what real people in the real world actually enjoy.
Likewise with religion. If religious doctrine, and the deep truth associated with doctrine, was the province of the educated elite for the vast majority of human history, not so much today. One need not parse Latin grammar, much less Greek grammar, much less Aramaic grammar, to read the scripture. It is widely available and easily accessible to each and all, along with the moral and spiritual truth it reveals. One could argue that some of the same divide that we see associated with "cultural literacy" might be applied to "religious literacy" as well, and we might bemoan the fact that religious thinking has lost the depth and subtlety of an Aquinas or an Augustine, even a Calvin or an Edwards, over against the populist televangelism of a Billy Graham or Jerry Falwell. It is, ultimately, a dumbing down, a reduction of religious thought to the single decision to "accept christ as one's personal savior." This decision, of course, comes with any number of consequences, but to all outward appearances it is less a "philosophical decision," more like accepting a christian identity over against all those non-christians, more like joining a gang with self-enforced modes of dress, attitude, and behavior. It is a tribal "with-us-or-against-us" decision. Not unlike a gang, it demands that one be "all in," which means of course that one must be "illiberal," one must be intolerant of those who are "not-christian." Conversely, one must be on guard against "liberalism," particularly the temptation to "accept" those who are "not-christian," those who are "not like-us." I probably don't need to point out that it doesn't take wide strides to go from an intolerance of those "not like-us as christian" to all sorts of other "illiberalities," to all sorts of outright bigotry against differences that cannot be effaced with one's "personal commitment to christ" -- differences of race, ethnic origin, sexual orientation. Again, I probably don't need to point out either that it doesn't take wide strides to go from a suspicion of the "liberal" to a rejection of a "liberal education" that challenges the core attitudes of tribal identity, a rejection of any intellectual endeavor that might disrupt one's commitment to and belief in what it means to be a christian. One might debate how many angels can dance on the head of a pin, but we cannot debate the existence of angels or their ability to dance on pin heads. One should cover one's ears and go "nah-nah-nah."
Conversely, however, it might be useful to remember another book that came out at contemporaneously with Cultural Literacy, Alan Bloom's The Closing of the American Mind, which was a screed against the dumbing down of "liberalism." Although not specifically concerned with religion, as Wikipedia would have it, "to a great extent, Bloom's criticism revolves around his belief that the 'great books' of Western thought have been devalued as a source of wisdom." One could and should point out, of course, that many of the canonical great books were specifically concerned with religion, particularly a catholic version of the christian religion where an educated elite held central tenants of "faith" that could be argued over and argued against with great subtlety. One had to have an a priori understanding of the central tenants of "faith" to fully understand the arguments for the catholic church or for that matter Luther's or Calvin's protest against the catholic church. According to Bloom, however, the major universities, and consequently the educated elite, have lost, or abandoned, the central tenants of faith, the core "understandings" that gave structure and meaning to our arguments. We have lapsed, falling not only into an intellectual relativism, but also a moral and ethical relativism. It can be recognized in the multiculturalism and "political correctness" so bemoaned by the conservatives, and the tiff between Sam Harris and Ben Affleck is instructive in this regard. It is impermissible to mount a critique of the violence inherent to Islam, as Harris has done, because the muslims are, as Affleck would have it, as much entitled to their belief system as we are entitled to our belief system. Although Affleck didn't explicitly make the claim, in his version "liberalism," his disavowal of illiberal tribalism, his "intolerance of intolerance," there is no vantage point, no central tenant against which we can claim one religion is "better" than another, or for that matter that one world view is "better" than another. I won't engage the argument here, just point out that Bloom has something of a point. Affleck's more "liberal," more "open-minded" stance closes down the argument before it begins. It does so just as effectively as the assertion of tribal identity. While it might take considerable study to become fully literate "philosophically," it nevertheless seems, well, pointless, if ultimately all the effort leaves one with multiple "points of view" and no way to decide among them which is actually "better," except perhaps a personal "feel" for the matter.
Although they stand far removed from Harvard and Yale, there are universities associated with the populist televangelists, and so there is a sort of "education" associated with populist religion. Billy Graham is enshrined at Wheaton College in Illinois, and they do not fall into the relativist trap. Their statement of purpose reveals their commitment"to the principle that truth is revealed by God through Christ 'in Whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge,' Wheaton College seeks to relate Christian liberal arts education to the needs of contemporary society." No equivocation there. To bring the argument back to where I started, one way to understand the distance between Harvard and Wheaton is to understand the distance between a predisposition to "observed" truth and "revealed" truth. Harvard and most of the major universities are dedicated to an "observational truth," whereas Wheaton College is fully committed to a "revealed truth" -- Harvard to science, Wheaton to religion. Those educated at Harvard -- or in my case Brown -- would consider Wheaton's "christian liberal arts education" to be oxymoronic. A "christian" education cannot be a "liberal" education, in part because the belief that ALL the treasures of wisdom and knowledge can be found in christ itself is "illiberal." It forecloses any meaningful challenge. It is not a disavowal of all "observational" knowledge, but it does suggest a direction of reconciliation -- that is to say, the acquisition of observational knowledge must be reconciled to the "revealed" truth of the bible. The notion of creation science is, perhaps, one of the more obvious examples. It is difficult to completely ignore the observed evidence, but the Darwinian explanation of that evidence MUST be wrong because it directly contradicts the "revealed truth" of the bible, and so a good deal of time and effort has been expended reconciling the observed evidence to the revealed truth that "God created the heavens and the earth."
A Pause
There are a number of things implied in the foregoing that deserve more elaborate treatment, and my plan (again as something of a distraction) is to elaborate in the attempt to understand. First, there is a great and growing divide within our country, and throughout the world, between those who adopt observational truth and those who adopt revealed truth. The divide can be examined along any number of dimensions, though the correspondence is often blurred. One might suggest, for example, that the divide between observational truth and revealed truth corresponds to the divide between the liberal and conservative parties. Roughly speaking, this suggestion seems to have some validity -- with the liberal party accepting the scientific consensus on climate change while the conservative party denies the scientific consensus -- with the liberal party accepting the evidence on gun violence and calling for legal reform while the conservative party ignores the evidence and reverts to the first principle of the second amendment -- with the liberal party largely ignoring religion while the conservative party doubles down on evangelical protestantism. The correspondence blurs, however, when we equate liberalism with the sorts of feckless relativism of the sort described by Bloom and attributed to Ben Affleck above. Ultimately, it adheres to a sort of "if everyone" eschatology -- that is to say, ultimately, it asserts "if everyone thought like me and were tolerant like us, what a wonderful world it would be." It is no different than any other "if everyone" eschatology -- "if everyone thought like me and were white, christian, straight, fill-in-the-blank, like us, what a wonderful world it would be."
One might also suggest, for example, that the growing divide corresponds to an "educational divide." Again, roughly speaking, this suggestion seems to have some validity. In this day and age, it takes a good deal of education, much of it highly specialized, to understand the bio-chemical mechanisms that make evolution possible. Likewise, it takes a good deal of education, much of it highly specialized, to understand just what green house gasses are, how they contribute to climate change and why just a difference of a degree or two in average annual temperature could potentially be devastating. Those without the specialized education, and the general public as a whole, must take it on faith from those with the education, the experts. For those with education, even if it is not the most relevant education, the testimony of the experts will have some credence, in part because they can imagine how the evidence is gathered, how it is interpreted, and why the "truth" seems to oscillate until a general consensus is reached. For those without the education, the testimony of the experts is no different in kind than any other "revealed truth," and it is not difficult to see how an "inconvenient truth" of climate change can simply be rejected. For the majority of Americans, it is not simply, or not solely, the inconvenience of giving up one's SUV in favor of a hybrid. At best, it is simply a "doctrinal" assertion, among other doctrinal assertions, and one can believe (or not believe) just as one can believe (or not believe) that Saturday is (or is not) the sabbath, that christ did (or did nori) appear in the new world to the indians, that the host is (or is not) transformed into the actual flesh of christ. At worst, it is a deliberate deception. Indeed, the scientific "doctrine" is altogether more suspect than a divinely revealed truth, in part because it IS so difficult to understand, in part because it is often tainted by motives other than universal benevolence. It is not surprising, in other words, to find that oil sponsored research into climate change found little harmful effect from burning petrochemicals, or conversely that environmental interests found considerable harmful effect. If one must take it on faith from the experts, which set of "experts" is more to be trusted? Better, and easier, to reject the whole thing.
There are other examples, but one that is pressing upon me, for reasons that might be obvious, might be titled "The Great Man Theory." I will leave that for a future post, but let me close this with an observation on "belief." Back in my teaching days, I would often be confronted by students who claimed to "believe" something, and felt entitled to their "belief" on equal standing to my "belief." My response came from the "observational" side of "truth." I would say something like the following: "yes, indeed, you can believe what you want to believe. This is America, and we are a free country, and your right to believe what you want to believe is protected by our first amendment. You can believe the moon is made of green cheese, if you are inclined to do so, or choose to do so, but you would still be wrong." Behind this lies an assumption that some beliefs are, well, simply wrong, and those beliefs should be replaced by other, more correct, beliefs. I say, "more correct," and not simply "correct," in part to recognize that observational truth is in essence "progressive," but not "eschatological." There is no "final," once and for all "truth," only an optimistic skepticism. There is always the possibility of a newer, more nuanced "truth," and beyond that the possibility of a Copernican or a Darwinian shift, a new way of looking at reality that fundamentally changes our understanding. Revealed truth, however, is in essence "conservative," in the broadest sense of the word "conservative," and eschatological. There IS a "final," once and for all "truth," and it demands belief. For christians that truth was revealed to us a little over two millennia ago. Although christ's death was no different than any other death insofar as life went on, generation followed on generation, it was a significant death in one respect. The ostensibly divine origin of his revealed truth carried the obligation to preserve it and pass it on from one generation to the next in anticipation of its "final" fulfillment. For christians that fulfillment will come with christ's return, an historical event that will end history "once and for all." There is an obverse, secular side to the story. One might say, for example, that Marx was perhaps the first to give a fully "scientific" account of human history insofar as it eschewed traditional religious doctrine. It was based on observation, was apparently in its outlook, but with his postulation of an end to history in the fulfillment of "communism," he became, not a scientist, but a prophet. No less than Jeremiah, he demanded, and got, belief. The great 20th century battle against the spread of communism was not a battle between contending economic systems, not even ultimately a battle between contending political systems, so much as a battle against the imposition of an alien, atheist faith.
One can bemoan the "cultural illiteracy" of the masses along with Hirsch, but to do so seems at one level a very odd notion. Unless one has lived in utter isolation, without social contact or a language, it strikes me that everyone has a "culture." One difficulty, however, is the notion of a "common culture," and just how broadly that culture is shared. One could ask, for example, "is there an essentially American culture?" At some very high level of abstraction, or at some very high level of superficiality, the answer would be "yes," and often it's obvious to those of other cultures that we are Americans, from the way we speak, dress, act. The "yes," however, doesn't stand much push, and one thing the current election has demonstrated is that American culture is fractured along several lines, one being education. Education gives one access to the sort of "cultural literacy" that Hirsch celebrates and the "cultural illiteracy" he fears. To bemoan cultural illiteracy, for example, one needs a notion of and a familiarity with a "literate culture" that is distinct from and ostensibly better than the culture of the masses -- a notion of and familiarity with Shakespeare's "Taming of the Shrew" in the original and sacrosanct language, for example, that is distinct even from pop culture adaptations like "10 Things I Hate About You." -- even better, a notion of the sort of person that appreciates Tony Kushner's "Angels in America" distinct from the sort of person that appreciates "Duck Dynasty," or "Bayou Billionaires," or "Swamp People." It still takes considerable education to become "culturally literate," to have read Shakespeare and Milton, even Faulkner and Hemingway, and to appreciate "Angels in America," but there is something class ridden and artificially quaint about it all, a bit of snobbish bragging rights not worth the bother or the expense. It takes little or no education to appreciate the latest episode of "Duck Dynasty," and it's what real people in the real world actually enjoy.
Likewise with religion. If religious doctrine, and the deep truth associated with doctrine, was the province of the educated elite for the vast majority of human history, not so much today. One need not parse Latin grammar, much less Greek grammar, much less Aramaic grammar, to read the scripture. It is widely available and easily accessible to each and all, along with the moral and spiritual truth it reveals. One could argue that some of the same divide that we see associated with "cultural literacy" might be applied to "religious literacy" as well, and we might bemoan the fact that religious thinking has lost the depth and subtlety of an Aquinas or an Augustine, even a Calvin or an Edwards, over against the populist televangelism of a Billy Graham or Jerry Falwell. It is, ultimately, a dumbing down, a reduction of religious thought to the single decision to "accept christ as one's personal savior." This decision, of course, comes with any number of consequences, but to all outward appearances it is less a "philosophical decision," more like accepting a christian identity over against all those non-christians, more like joining a gang with self-enforced modes of dress, attitude, and behavior. It is a tribal "with-us-or-against-us" decision. Not unlike a gang, it demands that one be "all in," which means of course that one must be "illiberal," one must be intolerant of those who are "not-christian." Conversely, one must be on guard against "liberalism," particularly the temptation to "accept" those who are "not-christian," those who are "not like-us." I probably don't need to point out that it doesn't take wide strides to go from an intolerance of those "not like-us as christian" to all sorts of other "illiberalities," to all sorts of outright bigotry against differences that cannot be effaced with one's "personal commitment to christ" -- differences of race, ethnic origin, sexual orientation. Again, I probably don't need to point out either that it doesn't take wide strides to go from a suspicion of the "liberal" to a rejection of a "liberal education" that challenges the core attitudes of tribal identity, a rejection of any intellectual endeavor that might disrupt one's commitment to and belief in what it means to be a christian. One might debate how many angels can dance on the head of a pin, but we cannot debate the existence of angels or their ability to dance on pin heads. One should cover one's ears and go "nah-nah-nah."
Conversely, however, it might be useful to remember another book that came out at contemporaneously with Cultural Literacy, Alan Bloom's The Closing of the American Mind, which was a screed against the dumbing down of "liberalism." Although not specifically concerned with religion, as Wikipedia would have it, "to a great extent, Bloom's criticism revolves around his belief that the 'great books' of Western thought have been devalued as a source of wisdom." One could and should point out, of course, that many of the canonical great books were specifically concerned with religion, particularly a catholic version of the christian religion where an educated elite held central tenants of "faith" that could be argued over and argued against with great subtlety. One had to have an a priori understanding of the central tenants of "faith" to fully understand the arguments for the catholic church or for that matter Luther's or Calvin's protest against the catholic church. According to Bloom, however, the major universities, and consequently the educated elite, have lost, or abandoned, the central tenants of faith, the core "understandings" that gave structure and meaning to our arguments. We have lapsed, falling not only into an intellectual relativism, but also a moral and ethical relativism. It can be recognized in the multiculturalism and "political correctness" so bemoaned by the conservatives, and the tiff between Sam Harris and Ben Affleck is instructive in this regard. It is impermissible to mount a critique of the violence inherent to Islam, as Harris has done, because the muslims are, as Affleck would have it, as much entitled to their belief system as we are entitled to our belief system. Although Affleck didn't explicitly make the claim, in his version "liberalism," his disavowal of illiberal tribalism, his "intolerance of intolerance," there is no vantage point, no central tenant against which we can claim one religion is "better" than another, or for that matter that one world view is "better" than another. I won't engage the argument here, just point out that Bloom has something of a point. Affleck's more "liberal," more "open-minded" stance closes down the argument before it begins. It does so just as effectively as the assertion of tribal identity. While it might take considerable study to become fully literate "philosophically," it nevertheless seems, well, pointless, if ultimately all the effort leaves one with multiple "points of view" and no way to decide among them which is actually "better," except perhaps a personal "feel" for the matter.
Although they stand far removed from Harvard and Yale, there are universities associated with the populist televangelists, and so there is a sort of "education" associated with populist religion. Billy Graham is enshrined at Wheaton College in Illinois, and they do not fall into the relativist trap. Their statement of purpose reveals their commitment"to the principle that truth is revealed by God through Christ 'in Whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge,' Wheaton College seeks to relate Christian liberal arts education to the needs of contemporary society." No equivocation there. To bring the argument back to where I started, one way to understand the distance between Harvard and Wheaton is to understand the distance between a predisposition to "observed" truth and "revealed" truth. Harvard and most of the major universities are dedicated to an "observational truth," whereas Wheaton College is fully committed to a "revealed truth" -- Harvard to science, Wheaton to religion. Those educated at Harvard -- or in my case Brown -- would consider Wheaton's "christian liberal arts education" to be oxymoronic. A "christian" education cannot be a "liberal" education, in part because the belief that ALL the treasures of wisdom and knowledge can be found in christ itself is "illiberal." It forecloses any meaningful challenge. It is not a disavowal of all "observational" knowledge, but it does suggest a direction of reconciliation -- that is to say, the acquisition of observational knowledge must be reconciled to the "revealed" truth of the bible. The notion of creation science is, perhaps, one of the more obvious examples. It is difficult to completely ignore the observed evidence, but the Darwinian explanation of that evidence MUST be wrong because it directly contradicts the "revealed truth" of the bible, and so a good deal of time and effort has been expended reconciling the observed evidence to the revealed truth that "God created the heavens and the earth."
Conversely, a good deal of modern criticism
suggests that a commitment to science might itself be an assertion of faith, in
part because the obverse belief that ALL the treasures of wisdom and knowledge
can be found in observation is itself no less axiomatic. It too suggests
a direction of reconciliation -- that is to say, all belief, to include
religious belief, must be reconciled to our observation of the world, such as
it is. The tiff between Sam Harris and Ben Affleck is again instructive
in this regard. Affleck assumes that Harris has simply made a choice for
the revealed truth of another tribe, "atheism," not unlike those who
have made a choice for the revealed truth of christianity, or islam, or
buddhism, and Harris' attack on islam is merely a rationalization of his
choice, his expression of an unjustifiable prejudice, or a bigotry against
those not of his tribe. Affleck, in effect, affirms the inevitability of
tribal identity, and affirms as well the "high-mindedness" of his own
tribe's "acceptance of all" and his "intolerance of
intolerance." Ultimately though his particular form of
"high-mindedness" leads nowhere -- to a stasis, in which, to use
Yeat's oft-quoted phrase, "the best lack all conviction."
Harris, however, takes an "observational" point of view.
He is not arguing for or against religion, per se, at least not in
his critique of islam. Rather, he starts with a hypothetical
statement -- i.e. "the expressed belief of a religious system influences
behavior." He then observes the behavior of those who express belief
in islam, with its explicit glorification of jihad and martyrdom, and he finds
that expressed belief of a religious system DOES, according to the
observable evidence at hand, influence behavior. One extreme result is terrorism. There may be other "influencers" of terrorism -- e.g. a terrorist bomber may be "socially isolated," or "economically displaced" -- and ultimately those "influencers" may be more significant. Nevertheless the expressed belief in islam as a religious system DOES influence behavior, and some of that behavior includes terrorism. In itself, this is merely the expression of an "observational truth," which only becomes relevant when we attempt to solve the social and political problem, "what should we do about jihadist terrorism?" If we wish to solve this problem, Harris clearly believes, among other things, that islam as a religious system must change, must eliminate those aspects of the religion that influence terrorism.
A Pause
There are a number of things implied in the foregoing that deserve more elaborate treatment, and my plan (again as something of a distraction) is to elaborate in the attempt to understand. First, there is a great and growing divide within our country, and throughout the world, between those who adopt observational truth and those who adopt revealed truth. The divide can be examined along any number of dimensions, though the correspondence is often blurred. One might suggest, for example, that the divide between observational truth and revealed truth corresponds to the divide between the liberal and conservative parties. Roughly speaking, this suggestion seems to have some validity -- with the liberal party accepting the scientific consensus on climate change while the conservative party denies the scientific consensus -- with the liberal party accepting the evidence on gun violence and calling for legal reform while the conservative party ignores the evidence and reverts to the first principle of the second amendment -- with the liberal party largely ignoring religion while the conservative party doubles down on evangelical protestantism. The correspondence blurs, however, when we equate liberalism with the sorts of feckless relativism of the sort described by Bloom and attributed to Ben Affleck above. Ultimately, it adheres to a sort of "if everyone" eschatology -- that is to say, ultimately, it asserts "if everyone thought like me and were tolerant like us, what a wonderful world it would be." It is no different than any other "if everyone" eschatology -- "if everyone thought like me and were white, christian, straight, fill-in-the-blank, like us, what a wonderful world it would be."
One might also suggest, for example, that the growing divide corresponds to an "educational divide." Again, roughly speaking, this suggestion seems to have some validity. In this day and age, it takes a good deal of education, much of it highly specialized, to understand the bio-chemical mechanisms that make evolution possible. Likewise, it takes a good deal of education, much of it highly specialized, to understand just what green house gasses are, how they contribute to climate change and why just a difference of a degree or two in average annual temperature could potentially be devastating. Those without the specialized education, and the general public as a whole, must take it on faith from those with the education, the experts. For those with education, even if it is not the most relevant education, the testimony of the experts will have some credence, in part because they can imagine how the evidence is gathered, how it is interpreted, and why the "truth" seems to oscillate until a general consensus is reached. For those without the education, the testimony of the experts is no different in kind than any other "revealed truth," and it is not difficult to see how an "inconvenient truth" of climate change can simply be rejected. For the majority of Americans, it is not simply, or not solely, the inconvenience of giving up one's SUV in favor of a hybrid. At best, it is simply a "doctrinal" assertion, among other doctrinal assertions, and one can believe (or not believe) just as one can believe (or not believe) that Saturday is (or is not) the sabbath, that christ did (or did nori) appear in the new world to the indians, that the host is (or is not) transformed into the actual flesh of christ. At worst, it is a deliberate deception. Indeed, the scientific "doctrine" is altogether more suspect than a divinely revealed truth, in part because it IS so difficult to understand, in part because it is often tainted by motives other than universal benevolence. It is not surprising, in other words, to find that oil sponsored research into climate change found little harmful effect from burning petrochemicals, or conversely that environmental interests found considerable harmful effect. If one must take it on faith from the experts, which set of "experts" is more to be trusted? Better, and easier, to reject the whole thing.
There are other examples, but one that is pressing upon me, for reasons that might be obvious, might be titled "The Great Man Theory." I will leave that for a future post, but let me close this with an observation on "belief." Back in my teaching days, I would often be confronted by students who claimed to "believe" something, and felt entitled to their "belief" on equal standing to my "belief." My response came from the "observational" side of "truth." I would say something like the following: "yes, indeed, you can believe what you want to believe. This is America, and we are a free country, and your right to believe what you want to believe is protected by our first amendment. You can believe the moon is made of green cheese, if you are inclined to do so, or choose to do so, but you would still be wrong." Behind this lies an assumption that some beliefs are, well, simply wrong, and those beliefs should be replaced by other, more correct, beliefs. I say, "more correct," and not simply "correct," in part to recognize that observational truth is in essence "progressive," but not "eschatological." There is no "final," once and for all "truth," only an optimistic skepticism. There is always the possibility of a newer, more nuanced "truth," and beyond that the possibility of a Copernican or a Darwinian shift, a new way of looking at reality that fundamentally changes our understanding. Revealed truth, however, is in essence "conservative," in the broadest sense of the word "conservative," and eschatological. There IS a "final," once and for all "truth," and it demands belief. For christians that truth was revealed to us a little over two millennia ago. Although christ's death was no different than any other death insofar as life went on, generation followed on generation, it was a significant death in one respect. The ostensibly divine origin of his revealed truth carried the obligation to preserve it and pass it on from one generation to the next in anticipation of its "final" fulfillment. For christians that fulfillment will come with christ's return, an historical event that will end history "once and for all." There is an obverse, secular side to the story. One might say, for example, that Marx was perhaps the first to give a fully "scientific" account of human history insofar as it eschewed traditional religious doctrine. It was based on observation, was apparently in its outlook, but with his postulation of an end to history in the fulfillment of "communism," he became, not a scientist, but a prophet. No less than Jeremiah, he demanded, and got, belief. The great 20th century battle against the spread of communism was not a battle between contending economic systems, not even ultimately a battle between contending political systems, so much as a battle against the imposition of an alien, atheist faith.
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