Over at Andrew Sullivan's blog, there's an
extended discussion going on about his TIME Magazine piece
When Not Seeing is Believing. The first couple of pages provide an insightful critique of fundamentalism that would run nicely in the pages of Free Inquiry: "In today's unnerving, globalizing, sometimes terrifying world, such religious certainty is a balm more in demand than ever..." The observation of the importance of certainty to fundamentalism gels with my own observations, and Sullivan sees some problems clearly.
FI's editors would be less enthsiastic about running Sullivan's pitch of his brand of religiosity, which he actually tries to ground in considerable uncertainty. One, Sullivan argues that God must be inherently mysterious. Granted, an omniscient God would know a lot of things we don't, but he would also be capable of revealing some of what he know to us, and that revelation, by virtue of coming from a perfect God, would be infallible. It is difficult to see a clear reason for God not to do this. On this point, the fundamentalist logic is impeccable.
A somewhat more interesting argument is that true religious faith requires uncertainty. This is interesting because he is arguing against fundamentalism using an assumption which I have argued is indespensible:
the idea that belief beyond evidence is admirable. Fundamentalists couple it to staunch certainty, Sullivan says it requires uncertainty.
One problem is that Sullivan doesn't see how this principle fuels an insane certainty: any defects in the evidence can be explained by saying that God is testing us, that he wants to give us the chance to chose to believe. This allows fundamentalists to turn every doubt into evidence for their worldview, which ends up beyond criticism.
Second, Sullivan really only differs from the fundamentalists in matter of degree. Enlightenment thinkers said the wise man proportions his belief to the evidence, fundamentalists have the righteous man with beliefs frequently way out of proportion to evidence, Sullivan advocates beliefs only a little out of touch with the evidence. In doing so, he encourages the mental climate in which fundamentalism prospers.
There is a related post which merits coment. In the TIME piece, Sullivan throws in a remark about the
secular-fundamentalist death spiral, which a reader asked him to explain:
I'm talking about the polarization in America between religious fundamentalists who proclaim their inerrancy and certainty as the only legitimate form of religion and the secular atheists who agree with them. There's no question in my mind that America is suffering from a dialogue in which excessive fundamentalism spawns an understandable but misguided anti-religious sensibility that borders on contempt for all people of faith.
Perhaps some secularists have gone overboard attacking religious liberals, but we have to get out of the mistake opposite to what Sullivan condemns: the idea that fundamentalists have "hijacked" religions. The truth, as Sullivan seems to aknowledge, is the holy books themselves. If they were flawless, inerrancy would be wonderful. It is one thing to admit a person can count as religious without accepting a given text as inerrant. However, the complacency of religious moderates needs to be corrected. Sullivan has been better than many here, but still at times seems slow on the uptake.
UPDATE:
Check this
