Are there secular reasons

Log InRegister Now

Home PageToday's PaperVideoMost PopularTimes Topics

Search All NYTimes.com

Tuesday, March 2, 2010

OpinionWorldU.S.N.Y. / RegionBusinessTechnologyScienceHealthSportsOpinionArtsStyleTravelJobsReal EstateAutos

EditorialsColumnistsContributorsLettersThe Public EditorGlobal Opinion

TimesPeople recommended: The Hard and the Soft 3:16 PMWelcome to TimesPeopleGet Started Recommend

Are There Secular Reasons? - Opinionator Blog - NYTimes.com http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/02/22/are-there-secul...

1 of 21 3/2/10 3:31 PM

February 22, 2010, 6:00 pm

Are There Secular Reasons?By STANLEY FISH

Stanley Fish on education, law and society.

Tags:

Politics, religion, secular discourse

In the always-ongoing debate about the role of religion in public life, the argument most often made on theliberal side (by which I mean the side of Classical Liberalism, not the side of left politics) is that policydecisions should be made on the basis of secular reasons, reasons that, because they do not reflect thecommitments or agendas of any religion, morality or ideology, can be accepted as reasons by all citizensno matter what their individual beliefs and affiliations. So it’s O.K. to argue that a proposed piece oflegislation will benefit the economy, or improve the nation’s health, or strengthen national security; but it’snot O.K. to argue that a proposed piece of legislation should be passed because it comports with a versefrom the book of Genesis or corresponds to the will of God.

A somewhat less stringent version of the argument permits religious reasons to be voiced in contexts ofpublic decision-making so long as they have a secular counterpart: thus, citing the prohibition againststealing in the Ten Commandments is all right because there is a secular version of the prohibition rootedin the law of property rights rather than in a biblical command. In a more severe version of the argument,on the other hand, you are not supposed even to have religious thoughts when reflecting on the wisdom orfolly of a piece of policy. Not only should you act secularly when you enter the public sphere; you shouldalso think secularly.

Whether the argument appears in its softer or harder versions, behind it is a form of intellectual/politicalapartheid known as the private/public distinction: matters that pertain to the spirit and to salvation are theprovince of religion and are to be settled by religious reasons; matters that pertain to the good order andprosperity of civil society are the province of democratically elected representatives and are to be settledby secular reasons. As John Locke put it in 1689 (“A Letter Concerning Toleration”), the “care of men’ssouls” is the responsibility of the church while to the civil magistrate belongs the care of “outward thingssuch as money, land, houses, furniture and the like”; it is his responsibility to secure for everyone, ofwhatever denomination or belief, “the just possession of these things belonging to this life.”

A neat division, to be sure, which has the effect (not, I think, intended by Locke) of honoring religion by


2 of 21 3/2/10 3:31 PM

kicking it upstairs and out of sight. If the business of everyday life — commerce, science, medicine, law,agriculture, education, foreign policy, etc. — can be assigned to secular institutions employing secularreasons to justify actions, what is left to religious institutions and religious reasons is a private area ofcontemplation and worship, an area that can be safely and properly ignored when there are “real”decisions to be made. Let those who remain captives of ancient superstitions and fairy tales have theirchurches, chapels, synagogues, mosques, rituals and liturgical mumbo-jumbo; just don’t confuse the(pseudo)knowledge they traffic in with the knowledge needed to solve the world’s problems.

This picture is routinely challenged by those who contend that secular reasons and secular discourse ingeneral don’t tell the whole story; they leave out too much of what we know to be important to human life.

No they don’t, is the reply; everything said to be left out can be accounted for by the vocabularies ofscience, empiricism and naturalism; secular reasons can do the whole job. And so the debate goes, aspolemicists on both sides hurl accusations in an exchange that has become as predictable as it isover-heated.

But the debate takes another turn if one argues, as the professor of law Steven Smith does in his new book,“The Disenchantment of Secular Discourse,” that there are no secular reasons, at least not reasons of thekind that could justify a decision to take one course of action rather than another.

It is not, Smith tells us, that secular reason can’t do the job (of identifying ultimate meanings and values)we need religion to do; it’s worse; secular reason can’t do its own self-assigned job — of describing theworld in ways that allow us to move forward in our projects — without importing, but not acknowledging,the very perspectives it pushes away in disdain.

While secular discourse, in the form of statistical analyses, controlled experiments and rational decision-trees, can yield banks of data that can then be subdivided and refined in more ways than we can count, itcannot tell us what that data means or what to do with it. No matter how much information you pile up andhow sophisticated are the analytical operations you perform, you will never get one millimeter closer tothe moment when you can move from the piled-up information to some lesson or imperative it points to;for it doesn’t point anywhere; it just sits there, inert and empty.

Once the world is no longer assumed to be informed by some presiding meaning or spirit (associatedeither with a theology or an undoubted philosophical first principle) and is instead thought of as being“composed of atomic particles randomly colliding and . . . sometimes evolving into more and morecomplicated systems and entities including ourselves” there is no way, says Smith, to look at it and answernormative questions, questions like “what are we supposed to do?” and “at the behest of who or what arewe to do it?”

Smith is not in the business of denigrating science and rationalism or minimizing their great achievements.Secular reason — reason cut off from any a priori stipulations of what is good and valuable — can take usa long way. We’ll do fine as long as we only want to find out how many X’s or Y’s there are or investigatetheir internal structure or discover what happens when they are combined, and so forth.

But the next step, the step of going from observation to evaluation and judgment, proves difficult, indeedimpossible, says Smith, for the “truncated discursive resources available within the downsized domain of‘public reason’ are insufficient to yield any definite answer to a difficult issue — abortion, say, or same sexmarriage, or the permissibility of torture . . . .” If public reason has “deprived” the natural world of “its


3 of 21 3/2/10 3:31 PM

normative dimension” by conceiving of it as free-standing and tethered to nothing higher than or prior toitself, how, Smith asks, “could one squeeze moral values or judgments about justice . . . out of bruteempirical facts?” No way that is not a sleight of hand. This is the cul de sac Enlightenment philosophytraps itself in when it renounces metaphysical foundations in favor of the “pure” investigation of“observable facts.” It must somehow bootstrap or engineer itself back up to meaning and the possibility ofjustified judgment, but it has deliberately jettisoned the resources that would enable it do so.

Nevertheless, Smith observes, the self-impoverished discourse of secular reason does in fact producejudgments, formulate and defend agendas, and speak in a normative vocabulary. How is this managed? By“smuggling,” Smith answers.

. . . the secular vocabulary within which public discourse is constrained today is insufficient toconvey our full set of normative convictions and commitments. We manage to debatenormative matters anyway — but only by smuggling in notions that are formallyinadmissible, and hence that cannot be openly acknowledged or adverted to.

The notions we must smuggle in, according to Smith, include “notions about a purposive cosmos, or ateleological nature stocked with Aristotelian ‘final causes’ or a providential design,” all banished fromsecular discourse because they stipulate truth and value in advance rather than waiting for them to berevealed by the outcomes of rational calculation. But if secular discourse needs notions like these to have adirection — to even get started — “we have little choice except to smuggle [them] into the conversations— to introduce them incognito under some sort of secular disguise.”

And how do we do that? Well, one way is to invoke secular concepts like freedom and equality —concepts sufficiently general to escape the taint of partisan or religious affiliation — and claim that yourargument follows from them. But, Smith points out (following Peter Westen and others), freedom andequality — and we might add justice, fairness and impartiality — are empty abstractions. Nothing followsfrom them until we have answered questions like “fairness in relation to what standard?” or “equality withrespect to what measures?” — for only then will they have content enough to guide deliberation.

That content, however, will always come from the suspect realm of contested substantive values. Isfairness to be extended to everyone or only to those with certain credentials (of citizenship, education,longevity, etc.)? Is it equality of opportunity or equality of results (the distinction on which affirmativeaction debates turn)? Only when these matters have been settled can the abstractions do any work, and theabstractions, in and of themselves, cannot settle them. Indeed, concepts like fairness and equality arenormatively useless, except as rhetorical ornaments, until they are filled in by some partisan or ideologicalor theological perspective, precisely the perspectives secular reason has forsworn. Therefore, Smithconcludes, “conversations in the secular cage could not proceed very far without smuggling.”

Smith does not claim to be saying something wholly new. He cites David Hume’s declaration that by itself“reason is incompetent to answer any fundamental question,” and Alasdair MacIntyre’s description in“After Virtue” of modern secular discourse as consisting “of the now incoherent fragments of a kind ofreasoning that made sense on older metaphysical assumptions.”

And he might have added Augustine’s observation in “De Trinitate” that the entailments of reason cannotunfold in the absence of a substantive proposition they did not and could not generate; or Roberto Unger’sinsistence in “Knowledge and Politics” that “as long as formal neutrality is strictly maintained, the


4 of 21 3/2/10 3:31 PM

Previous post Division and Its Discontents By STEVEN STROGATZ

Next post Distant Wars, Constant Ghosts By SHANNON P. MEEHAN

standards it produces will be . . . empty shells . . . incapable of determining precisely what is commandedor prohibited in particular situations of choice.” (In “The Trouble With Principle” I myself argue that“there are no neutral principles, only principles that are already informed by the substantive content towhich they are rhetorically opposed.”)

But no matter who delivers the lesson, its implication is clear. Insofar as modern liberal discourse rests ona distinction between reasons that emerge in the course of disinterested observation — secular reasons —and reasons that flow from a prior metaphysical commitment, it hasn’t got a leg to stand on.

E-mail ThisPrintShare

Sign in to Recommend

Related Posts from Opinionator

The First Tea-Party Terrorist?

Zuckerman Unbound

Harry Reid’s Bipartisan Oblivion

Science and Religion, Lives and Rocks

Just Another Massachusetts Miracle

18 Readers' Comments

All CommentsHighlightsReaders' RecommendationsReplies

230.HIGHLIGHT (what's this?)Patrick McWilliamsSavannah, GA

Twitter


5 of 21 3/2/10 3:31 PM

February 23rd, 20106:58 amOne would think you were presenting a case for presuppositionalism a la Cornelius Van Til. Splendidlydone.Recommend Recommended by 6 Readers268.HIGHLIGHT (what's this?)JeffColoradoFebruary 23rd, 20108:26 amSounds like Steven Smith needs to get out a little more often...

First of all, where does Mr. Smith think that "religious reasons" come from in the first place? "God"?

I think Mr. Smith will have to acknowledge that all religious decrees can't come from the god he believesin, as there are thousands of different religions, each of these religions have many conflicting ideas, andindeed there are hundreds of contradictions within each religion itself.

Mr. Smith needs to acknowledge that in fact "religious reasons" are nothing more than secular reasons,most of which were just thought up hundreds or thousands of years ago in different cultural contexts, byless informed people.

Some of the "religious reasons" make sense and are still valid today. Some were valid once, but no longerare, and some were never valid in the first place.

The reality is that the commandment not to steal wasn't passed on to Moses by God, it was common sensearrived at via secular thought and given religious weight by a priestly ruling class.

The laws against eating pork made sense thousands of years ago in the desert where food spoiled quickly,but today with modern refrigeration it no longer makes sense. The only way to know that it no longermakes sense is via secular reason. In reality the reason for the rule in the first place was almost certainly"empirical observation", by the society noticing that there was a higher incidence of disease associatedwith pork.

So the reality is that there was no "religious reason" in the first place, there was empirical observation,again codified by a priestly class into "religious reason", but originating from "secular empiricism."

And lastly we can move on to the "religious reasons" that were never right in the first place. These comesimply from a misapplication of empiricism and secular reason. The "Old Testament" (Torah) tells us thatthe earth is surrounded by water, that god walks on the clouds, and that the famines, wars, diseases, andother troubles faced by the Jews over the centuries were a product of god's wrath against the Jews for notloving him enough or obeying him properly and for members of the group worshiping false gods againand again.

The reality is that the Jews didn't suffer famines, wars, plagues, and slavery because their god was


6 of 21 3/2/10 3:31 PM

punishing them, the reality is that those things are simply natural forces that afflict everyone, and the Jewsjust happened to be a relatively small and poor group of people surrounded by powerful empires whofrequently dominated them.

So in this case the "religious reasons" provided for the woes of the Jews in the Hebrew scriptures areobjectively and provably wrong and they can well be understood as simply ideas of an ancient anduninformed people trying to make sense of the world. Again, though, their religious reasons, howeverwrong they were, were based on empiricism, flawed as it was.

Once you acknowledge that there are thousands if not millions of "religious reasons" for all kinds of thingscoming from many different religions around the world, you acknowledge that human beings are the oneswho invent these "religious reasons". And once you do that then you have to acknowledge that they arenot fundamentally different from secular reasons, they are just typically based on human guesses abouthow the world works instead of scientific verification of how the world works. Sometimes those humanintuitions are good enough to come up with some valid and meaningful ideas, and sometimes they aren't,but in the end "religious reasons" are no more valid or meaningful than secular ones, and quite often theyare less so.The one thing that %u201Creligious thought has going for it is the idea of a %u201Cjust thirdparty%u201D from whose perspective we can imagine problem and solutions to it. This is really the keyto %u201Creligious reasons%u201D, its what happens when we sit down as individuals and try toimagine what is right and wrong not from our own perspective, but from the perspective of a%u201Cjust%u201D third party that helps us arrive as potentially more equitable solutions that transcendour individual immediate desires.The only problem is that its also very easy to impart all kinds of biases onto this third party as well, andwhen we do that the end result is often justification for many of the worst kinds of human behavior. Sotrying to think from the perspective of an imagined %u201Cgod%u201D can be a useful philosophicaltool, but it can also be a dangerous one, and once again, the only way to tell the difference between thetwo is via that good old %u201Csecular reason%u201D.Recommend Recommended by 369 Readers269.HIGHLIGHT (what's this?)EKBMexicoFebruary 23rd, 20108:27 amA problem with your essay is that you have divided the world into secular and religious (more or less). Wereally don't know whether god or gods exist as we posit them, or whether laws we attribute to god or godsare ours are divinely inspired. For me the difference between secular and spiritual is that some people haveno sense that there is something beyond them, and some people do have such a sense. But all systems,religious and secular, are efforts to organize our societies and give them meaning. No one wants to live anexistence that seems without meaning. That's depression.

We are such limited creatures, our abilities to perceive, so limited by our human nature, that it is hubris tothink that any of us has truly more knowledge by virtue of faith than other people, especially a specificfaith. As others have pointed out, religion doesn't seem to be a defining factor in the morality or ethicalstance of a whole lot of people. For whatever reason, we humans of whatever stripe do better organized


7 of 21 3/2/10 3:31 PM

and cooperative than not, though if the true reality of our lives as determined by a god or by nature or bysome element that we can't even conceive of turns out to be harsh, then wars and plagues and famines maybe the natural way or God's way or the universe's way to keep our population in check if we can't do it anyother way.

Societies have generally perverted whatever system they have started out with. It seems the greedy andthose lusting for power and for empire and those who are self-righteous come to dominate. We haven'tfigured out how to deal with this fact yet at all. Instead of arguing the virtues of religious approaches vs.secular, we should be working on how to find ourselves decent leaders. Perhaps a potlatch system?Recommend Recommended by 57 Readers288.HIGHLIGHT (what's this?)AdamNew YorkFebruary 23rd, 20109:01 amThis article -- and, it seems, the book it is advertising -- rests entirely on a bizarre assimilation of (I wouldventure to say "confusion between") the secular/religious dichotomy and the fact/value dichotomy. Buthardly anyone who identifies as a secularist will concede all values to religionists. Unfortunately, thearticle offers no reason to believe that the secularist is mistaken in his belief that he can engage invalues-talk without, by that very fact, engaging in religion-talk. And for good reason, too, since it's onlyby conceptual gerrymandering that one could ever arrive at the conclusion that all values are necessarilyreligious values, and that the ideal of a secular public sphere is necessarily the ideal of valueless discourse"on the facts only" (an impossibility, even as an ideal).Recommend Recommended by 128 Readers289.HIGHLIGHT (what's this?)martin weissmexico, moFebruary 23rd, 20109:05 amI'm with #9, miss manners. Pragmatic reasoning is social. "The Common Good" is historical, andextending one's laws to the outsider is both the common good and good business. I don't think we need thecryptic language of medieval philosophy to establish rules for government. Nor will religion do. If religionwere the rule, all these Christians who go off to war and/or get rich would be exiled.Humans survived for millenia by community. Thus the word, "common". Thus the existence of acommons in viable communities until another modus operandi, capitalism, destroyed the commons. Nowcapital has diverged from the interests of the people and reason has nothing to do with it. Even though it isthe common people who give money value and who create all value by their labor, the unreasonedechelons of finance and religion extract the wealth of the people.

To paraphrase Napoleon, 'Money has no motherland. Financiers know no patriotism, no decency, onlygain.'

It is the people who will endure, who must endure. Capital, Religion, and even governments come and go.Secular reasoning as the enduring social viability of the people is a whole lot more viable than any


8 of 21 3/2/10 3:31 PM

philosophy. Thus ethics and politics is finally secular. What works for we, the people, will and mustendure. To quote Lao T'se, "Do not go scurrying about for inner peace. You will lose your inner peace."Recommend Recommended by 35 Readers290.HIGHLIGHT (what's this?)lindalipscombcaliforniaFebruary 23rd, 20109:06 amThis quandry is the reason that we have law. And our supreme law of the land prevents "policy" decisionsfrom advancing religion. Policy is just a euphemism for the practical aspect of law. It's where the legalrubber hits the road. Religion has no place in the public reason for the rule, whatever drives the lawmakerprivately. The coincidence of good behavior flowing from both religious and secular sources is anhistorical happenstance, not a determinative underpinning of truthiness of any particular law. Keepreligion out of politics and pay attention to good behavior, which is ultimately successful in helping us allto live together. And by the way, it isn't "liberals" who think like this, it is people of independent mind andreasoning.Recommend Recommended by 41 Readers291.HIGHLIGHT (what's this?)Ken ColstonSt. LouisFebruary 23rd, 20109:32 amThe Roman Catholic tradition of natural law helps overcome the secular-religious divide ; in fact, theEnlightenment split is essentially a result of Luther's and Calvin's denigration of reason as corrupt at worstand narrow at best. Reason can glimpse the transcendental or special status of the human person withoutan appeal to revelation; Aristotle and Cicero saw this before Thomas did. As a powerful example, theRoman Catholic natural law tradition, from the Church Fathers through Thomas to the Council of Trent,has seen the Ten Commandments as not merely voluntaristic commandments made by the divine will butas purified reason's understanding of what makes for the good life and health of the human person as abeing with a special destiny, even the commandment to rest on holy days.Recommend Recommended by 17 Readers312.HIGHLIGHT (what's this?)JC AevaliotisChicago, ILFebruary 23rd, 201012:01 pmI found this article really frustrating, mainly because I think it grossly oversimplifies "secular." Thepremise for Smith, which Fish seems to be quite sympathetic to, is that the secular (based solely ondisinterested observations) is limited to quantitative analysis. I wasn't sure I was reading this right,thinking to myself as I read "he can't be saying that the secular is only good for counting." Then I readthis: "We%u2019ll do fine as long as we only want to find out how many X%u2019s or Y%u2019s thereare or investigate their internal structure or discover what happens when they are combined, and so forth."


9 of 21 3/2/10 3:31 PM

The argument seems to be another retread of the "science tells us what and how and religion tells us whyand what to do."

I reject the premise that there is no basis for qualitative (as distinct from quantitative) thinking apart from%u201Cnotions about a purposive cosmos, or a teleological nature stocked with Aristotelian %u2018finalcauses%u2019 or a providential design.%u201D The argument seems to be that there are no standards ifthere are no absolute meanings.

But there ARE secular philosophers and ethicists and jurists who would bristle at the notion that they'reonly able to do what they do by "smuggling" senses of purpose, teleology, and providence. I freely admitthat religion has been an important source for secular thought, but it is by no means the only source. If Iposit that all meaning and purpose is constructed by human communities and that the only legitimatesource for normative statements is human consensus, I can still use words like "fair" and "just."

I suppose Smith (and maybe Fish) might say that those very terms are inherited from religion and it's justme smuggling. But it seems to me to that this is just another way of saying that empiricism has its place,but that the real heavy lifting will be done by religion. And it really frustrates me.

Fish wraps up with this. "Insofar as modern liberal discourse rests on a distinction between reasons thatemerge in the course of disinterested observation %u2014 secular reasons %u2014 and reasons that flowfrom a prior metaphysical commitment, it hasn%u2019t got a leg to stand on." I'm not sure what he'sreally saying here. Is he saying that liberal discourse as it has been understood is hollow? Or that liberaldiscourse isn't really what it purports to be? It seems to me that perhaps this is an incomplete or outdateddefinition of liberal discourse. I'm not sure that it's a terribly accurate or compelling definition. There are,perhaps, some that would say that "religious" reasons have no place in the public sphere. But that's not, tome, a very serious argument.

Our public discourse is shaped by all kinds of folks who make very public claims that their actions aremotivated by their faith. And that's as it should be. I'll borrow a little bit from Richard Rorty here toconclude. I don't think the meaningful distinction is between secular and religious but between premisesand conclusions. What really matters is what we can convince each other of as we work together to makedecisions that affect our common life. And in that conversation about our public life, I have no businesstelling you what your premises should be. If your premises are religious, so be it. We still have to makedecisions together, so you need to find a way to make me agree with at least some of your conclusions. Mypremises aren't religious, but I still have the responsibility to participate in decisions that affect ourcommon life.Recommend Recommended by 58 Readers314.HIGHLIGHT (what's this?)Elizabeth FullerPeterborough, NHFebruary 23rd, 201012:02 pmNeither science nor religion can explain how things came into being. The Big Bang Theory doesn'taccount for how the elements preceding the bang came to be. The Bible doesn't account for how Godcame into being to create all the rest.


10 of 21 3/2/10 3:31 PM

It is not the province of science to speculate on what we ultimately can't know, can't begin to explain. It isthe province of metaphysics to ask those questions, and the province of religion to create myths that let usknow others share our hunger for knowledge and our frustration over not being able to attain enough.Reasoned discourse is to be greatly admired, but it cannot answer the ultimate questions so many of ushave--questions that exist whether we want to acknowledge them or not.Recommend Recommended by 8 Readers319.HIGHLIGHT (what's this?)micheNovato, CAFebruary 23rd, 201012:03 pmHow ridiculous to posit there can be no ethics, values or judgment without religion. Truth and beauty don'tdepend on belief in a higher power either.Recommend Recommended by 53 Readers327.HIGHLIGHT (what's this?)Tom DSan Antonio, TXFebruary 23rd, 201012:05 pmThank you for this fine essay, Dr. Fish.

Seems that the answer should be pluralism, in which secularism would be one of the contenders for ourattention in the public square. Many religious perspectives should contend there also. Few religious folksadvocate or would ever support theocracy.

The persistently high prevalence of religious views across this country may suggest that secularization isnot a natural trend but rather an interest group's agenda. Let it be a strong and vigorous player on the field.But not the field itself.Recommend Recommended by 8 Readers344.HIGHLIGHT (what's this?)JackieWA StateFebruary 23rd, 201012:09 pmOne need not be a believer to know it is wrong to kill, steal, enslave others (sorry Paul from Tarsus) resistwrongheaded authority (sorry again, Paul). All those actions have been performed by believers in thename of Religion. Whose? Why, their own particular brand, of course--since they all believe their own godand the storyline surrounding him/her/it is the only valid religion.

Recommend Recommended by 31 Readers348.HIGHLIGHT (what's this?)


11 of 21 3/2/10 3:31 PM

plwalshNew HampshireFebruary 23rd, 201012:11 pmThe paranoia of what Karen Armstrong calls the "New Atheists" can be justified by the religious mania ofrecent years. But anyone who has studied the history of religion will know that it is simply impossible fora majority religion (even when that religion is, as in the old Soviet Union, atheism) to impose its "creed"on everyone else. Many have tried; none have ever succeeded. At best, such efforts create a false front ofconformity behind which seething resentment will build, sometimes to a bloody climax, as it has inNorthern Ireland and Iraq.

We can be grateful for the American system of freedom of religion rather than freedom from religion. Ithas kept us in a continous and probably useful mild state of moral irritation while making it politicallyunfashionable to burn heretics or create martyrs. I hope things stay right there.Recommend Recommended by 12 Readers364.HIGHLIGHT (what's this?)KenBostonFebruary 23rd, 201012:21 pmI think many of those posting comments miss the point. Secular Liberal discourse claims objectivity foritself and distinguishes itself from religion through this claim. This claim may be true when it comes toamassing facts, but it is not so when it comes to deciding how to act on them. To take action on the basisof these facts requires some notions of what is good or desirable; such value judgments can never beobjective. So the distinction between Secular Liberalism and Religion on this point collapses.

We might broadly agree on many points, like the value of human life. But this consensus is not based onobjective fact. It is based on widely shared subjective belief that the collection of chemical reactions thatcomprise a human being has value and rights. This is not a supposition that can be empirically proven.

Fish is not arguing for theocracy or overlooking the fact that there is no agreement between religioustraditions on most subjects. He is simply stating--correctly in my view--that Secular Liberalism is not asobjective or empirical as it takes itself to be and that the distinction between it and religious traditions isnot as clear as it would like to believe. Both rely on unproved and unprovable first principles to makevalue judgments--the only ones that really matter.Recommend Recommended by 44 Readers405.HIGHLIGHT (what's this?)Guy ThomptoCedarburg, WIFebruary 23rd, 20102:55 pm"Smuggling" is a bi-directional action. Religions "smuggle" secular ideas into their value stream toprovide instant legitimacy. Religions also "smuggle" rites, calendar driven events, and derived beliefs fromsecular and non-secular sources. To see this go the other direction - from religious beliefs to a secular set


12 of 21 3/2/10 3:31 PM

of norms or rules - would seem to make perfect sense.

There is no science that proscribes or prescribes behavior for humans. The only rules that are codifiedfrom science are related to marriage and reproduction. Today, even these rules are challenged on groundsthat they lack a scientific justification and are merely rules borrowed from religion.

The alternative to having behavioral norms traded between secular and non secular sources is anarchy.Few of us would dare live in such a world.Recommend Recommended by 7 Readers418.HIGHLIGHT (what's this?)JeffNYCFebruary 23rd, 20103:01 pmThe comments to this article reveal that folks just don't get it. For example, Jackie #344 (one of the"highlighted" responses) writes, "One need not be a believer to know it is wrong to kill, steal, enslaveothers (sorry Paul from Tarsus). . . ." Besides the fact that this assertion has nothing to do with the article(it only reveals her vitriolic anti-Christian bigotry), it begs the question: how does she know it is wrong tokill, steal, enslave others? As soon as she opens her mouth to answer, she proves that Fish is right when hetalks about "smuggling" in a priori notions of ethics.

Everyone has deeply held beliefs of right and wrong that are not based on objective data, but on one'scommitment to his own "faith community." And the "faith communities" of secularism and atheism holdsome of the most arrogant, loud, and blind zealots of our day. As Paul of Tarsus correctly wrote,"Claiming to be wise, they became fools."Recommend Recommended by 13 Readers419.HIGHLIGHT (what's this?)j2hessIrvine, CAFebruary 23rd, 20103:01 pmHamlet prefigured the argument in his dilemma - whether to seek guidance from the secular reason helearned at university, or to follow the counsel of the supernatural represented by the ghost. He wasimmobilized until he abandoned both rational and superational to find motivation in the subrationaldomain, "My thoughts be bloody, or be nothing worth!".Recommend Recommended by 1 Readers420.HIGHLIGHT (what's this?)DebraFort Collins COFebruary 23rd, 20103:28 pmA smart man like Dr. Fish can't possibly believe what he's said here--he's just trying to stir things up. Firstoff, he creates a strawman by saying that secular reasoning amounts to "counting X's and Y's." Then,


13 of 21 3/2/10 3:31 PM

Previous post Division and Its Discontents By STEVEN STROGATZNext post Distant Wars, Constant Ghosts By SHANNON P. MEEHAN

according to Fish and Smith, the poor secular bean counter has no way to figure out what to do with theX's and Y's because he's prohibited, by the rules of his own secular reasoning, from using any "values" inhis decision making. Really? I find it hard to proceed.

I don't think that secularists, and especially scientists, argue that they can be completely objective orvalue-free when making policy, "public sphere" decisions. But just because complete objectivity can't beattained, that doesn't mean God needs to rush into that gap. That's like saying, "well, science can't tell usprecisely how the universe began, so it must have been created by God." Here, Fish and Smith are saying,"since empirical evidence really adds up to nothing, policy-wise, given that some value has to be appliedwhen using the data, we should rely on old, religious ways of thinking." God rushes into a perceived gaponce again.

But is there really a gap here? I would argue that secular values that spring from empirical and testabledata, combined with common (not God) sense ideas like "do unto others" gets one down the road a farpiece. Secularists are not value-free-- they just want values that are as free from the taint of all that'swrong with religion as possible.Recommend Recommended by 57 Readers

Search This Blog

Stanley Fish is a professor oflaw at Florida InternationalUniversity, in Miami, and dean emeritus of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at the University ofIllinois at Chicago. His column appears here on Tuesdays. He has also taught at the University ofCalifornia at Berkeley, Johns Hopkins and Duke University. He is the author of 11 books, most recently“Save the World On Your Own Time,” on higher education. “The Fugitive in Flight,” a study of the 1960sTV drama, will be published in 2010.

Inside Opinionator

Stanley Fish

The Conversation

Linda Greenhouse

Timothy Egan

Robert Wright

Olivia Judson

William D. Cohan

Dick CavettMore Contributors


14 of 21 3/2/10 3:31 PM

March 1, 2010

Little Big Men

Many larger-than-life tough guys of the screen, it seems, just don’t measure up.

February 22, 2010

Are There Secular Reasons?

The role of secular reasoning and, yes, religion in public decision-making.

February 8, 2010

How the First Amendment Works

A followup column on the First Amendment and the recent Supreme Court decision, with a discussion ofreaders’ comments.

More From Stanley Fish »

February 26, 2010

What’s Happened to Cultural Discourse?

The discrepancies between what the public wants and what it gets.

February 17, 2010

Why Househusbands Are the Future

With women getting laid off at a much lower rate than men, is it time to encourage dads to stay home withthe kids?

February 10, 2010

Snowed In

Is there any way to get beyond this legislative standstill in Congress?

More From The Conversation »

February 25, 2010

Missing the Tea Party

The Supreme Court’s campaign finance ruling has both angered conservatives and given the Obama


15 of 21 3/2/10 3:31 PM

administration an opportunity.

February 11, 2010

Saved by the Swiss

With some last-minute maneuvering, the Obama administration looks as if it will avoid a test of the limitsof executive power at the Supreme Court.

January 28, 2010

The Next Time

What will the Chief Justice Roberts majority’s next target be next, now that it has experienced the joy ofoverturning?

More From Linda Greenhouse »

February 24, 2010

The Missionary Impulse

Zealous amateurs have damaged the efforts of more legitimate adoption services and relief agencies inHaiti.

February 17, 2010

Allez Canada!

With so much going for it, and now the Winter Olympics too, the Canadian nation nevertheless conductsitself with unbecoming modesty.

February 10, 2010

Slumburbia

It’s not our cities that are in big trouble: what will fill the empty homes and lots of suburban America?

More From Timothy Egan »

February 23, 2010

The First Tea-Party Terrorist?

The man who crashed a small plane into an Austin I.R.S. office hoped to inspire an overreaction.

February 16, 2010


16 of 21 3/2/10 3:31 PM

Zuckerman Unbound

When a wealthy columnist runs for national office, his past writings should help voters evaluate him.

February 9, 2010

Listen to the Iranian People

Why the West should let Iran enrich its own uranium.

More From Robert Wright »

February 23, 2010

Stand Up While You Read This!

Too much sitting still, recent studies in rats and humans suggest, can offset the benefits of even regularexercise.

February 9, 2010

Unorthodox

Ciliates — single-celled organisms and February’s Life-form of The Month — engage in all kinds ofpeculiar sexual activity.

February 2, 2010

Fearless

How did the animals of the Galápagos get so tame and fearless?

More From Olivia Judson »

February 18, 2010

The Great Goldman Sachs Fire Sale of 2008

If everything was really under control after Lehman collapsed, why were Goldman executives dumpingtheir stock by the bushelfull?

February 4, 2010

Mystery Men of the Financial Crisis

Who the heck is Dan Jester? And why isn’t he explaining what he did in the A.I.G. bailout?


17 of 21 3/2/10 3:31 PM

January 27, 2010

For Wall Street, Tough Talk, but Weak Reforms

Obama talked boldly about banking reform, but the plan isn’t bold enough.

More From William D. Cohan »

February 5, 2010

Oh, What a Lovely Mess!

NBC’s recent adventures in talk-show-host management remind one former talk-show host of his ownadventures in prime time with another network.

January 22, 2010

Awesome, and Then Some

An on-set encounter with John Wayne revealed an unexpected side of the actor.

January 8, 2010

Why, I Oughta . . . and I Did

It took a local television host to bring a (professionally) even-tempered first-time author to the boilingpoint.

More From Dick Cavett »

Home Fires

Home Fires: Writing and Rewriting Iraq

March 1, 2010

Home Fires

Home Fires: Retelling the War

February 28, 2010

Steven Strogatz

The Joy of X


18 of 21 3/2/10 3:31 PM

February 28, 2010

All-Nighters

Mind Games

February 28, 2010

The Thread

Health Care’s Clash of the Titans

February 26, 2010

All Contributors »

Opinionator Highlights

Home Fires: Writing and Rewriting Iraq

By MAURICE DECAUL

After a childhood steeped in tales of battle, a former Marine confronts his shame about his “easy war” inIraq.

The Joy of X

By STEVEN STROGATZ

The series moves on to high school math, specifically algebra and formulas.

Mind Games

By JONAH LEHRER

How the nature of the human mind can make it an enemy of sleep.

A Thousand and One Sleepless Nights

By PATRICIA MORRISROE


19 of 21 3/2/10 3:31 PM

People have been searching for ways to induce what Shakespeare called “the honey-heavy dew ofslumber” since ancient times.

Distant Wars, Constant Ghosts

By SHANNON P. MEEHAN

An Iraq war veteran reflects on the psychic toll of killing.

Subscribe

Opinionator RSS

Stanley Fish RSS

Home

WorldU.S.N.Y. / RegionBusinessTechnologyScienceHealthSportsOpinionArtsStyleTravelJobsReal EstateAutosBack to Top

Copyright 2010 The New York Times Company

PrivacyTerms of ServiceSearchCorrectionsRSSFirst LookHelpContact UsWork for UsAdvertiseSite Map


20 of 21 3/2/10 3:31 PM


21 of 21 3/2/10 3:31 PM

Documents

Are there secular reasons