Freedom and Gay Marriage

Most people love to advertise their support for freedom. But what galls me is when people support freedom in their words but deny it in their actions and in their voting. It is easy for us to see this hypocrisy in totalitarian regimes, but it occurs frequently in our own society. The following is a contemporary example that has been bothering me for a few years.

We hear our politicians talk about spreading freedom to other countries in one breathe, and then in the next breath we hear them advocate that we deny freedom for gays to marry. "Denying gay marriage" is an abstract term to most people, so it helps to think more specifically. What would you say if the government did not permit you to marry the person you chose? Surely that would be severe curtailment of your freedom. In the same way denying gays the right to marry is a severe restriction on their freedom.

We outlaw certain actions that cause harm to others, such as stealing. But the harm has to be real. For example, a general discomfort with interracial marriage is not a sufficient harm to justify denying people the right to marry outside their race. So what specific and real harm does gay marriage cause that would be enough to deny them the right to marry? If a gay couple living next door to you got married, how would that harm you specifically? Would that harm your marriage? If not, then what business do we have telling gays they are not permitted to marry?

Freedom from Certitude

What is it like to lose one's faith? That is an interesting question and one I have asked myself as I look back on my experience. There are a lot of aspects to it including gains and losses. In this post I want to describe one of my chief gains.

The main benefit I feel is one of intellectual freedom: freedom to pursue the evidence where ever it leads. There is no need to claim I know the truth if I'm unsure. There is no rush, no deadline, no evil consequences for doubt.

This contrasts sharply with what I felt as a Christian. My attitude was that not only were my central beliefs true, but they had to be true. While I may not have sufficient evidence at the moment, or I may encounter contrary evidence, I was certain that after all was said and done my beliefs would be vindicated.

This attitude of certitude is fostered and encouraged in evangelical circles, and at first blush does not sound so bad. It enables people to express themselves with great confidence. People say things like "God wants you to do such and such," or "If you don't believe this message you're going to hell." But now as I look back on this, I see this attitude of certitude in religious things as very harmful.

Firstly, very bold statements are made about things which to which we have no access to verify. The usual justification is that: if is says so in the Bible it must be so. This is a very strong dogma that is relied on extensively by preachers and missionaries as it allows them to speak with authority. But what is the justification for this? The Bible doesn't itself claim to have no errors, and even if it did that would be circular reasoning to use it to justify itself. The various arguments about divine inspiration fail to demonstrate this dogma; we simply cannot know who was inspired and what inspiration would imply about their words. For example, if God inspired fallible humans, it could be that even their inspired sayings or writings could have errors. Why not? There are lots of reasons for doubting the infallibility of the Bible, but I won't go into that now. Ultimately Christians seem to simply accept the dogma "on faith" and then apply it. Thus they begin their path of certitude.

Here are some of the unfortuate implications of this venture into certitude. It is like one is trying to solve a problem in a textbook, but one has looked up the answer in the back. So it doesn't really matter how one solves it, as long as one's explanation looks superficially okay (enough to fool the examiner) and gets the correct answer. There is an enormous temptation to jump to the conclusions that one "knows" must be right. One doesn't have to justify all the steps one takes or consider all the alternatives before one gives a definative answer. This is the route taken by appologetics books: they start from the answer, find plausible reasons for it and dismiss anything that doesn't agree with it.

Another unfortunate consequence is that evidence is devalued, both positive and negative. I realize that my attitude was that whatever evidence I found had got to support Christianity if it is properly interpreted. Conversely negative evidence must be apparent only and break down when properly understood. I could say that because I had already "seen the answer." Hence there is a tendency among Christians to be uncritical of evidence used to support one's beliefs and to disregard negative evidence. For example, I remember someone bringing up the problem of God ordering masacres in the Old Testament and asking how that was compatible with God being good. I didn't find it hard to simply claim that God was not bound by the constraints that bind us. I started with the assumption that my beliefs about God and his goodness must be true, and so any negative evidence like this must be wrong and so there was no need to treat it seriously. Only now do I see how careless I was towards knowing the truth.

Another common consequence of religious or biblical certitude is young-earth creationism, or the slightly more subtle old-earth but still anti-evolution beliefs. We know the answer in the Bible: the earth was created 6000 years ago, and all humans are decended from Adam and Eve who were created from dust and a rib, and so evolution must be wrong. It doesn't really matter what the evidence is, the scientific establishment must be wrong in its understanding. Christians don't need to study the evidence; as long as they find some appealing reasons why evolution can't be right in the creationist literature, they are happy to accept it. That is how I was when I was applying to universities. I remember being asked in an interview if science obviated the need for religion, and to counter this I pulled out a "fact" that disproved evolution (in this case it was that the dust on the moon was only a couple inches deep and if it were billions of years old it would be much deeper -- a long before disproven reasoning that was still being published by creationist literature). Or I could have used the complexity of the eye to "disprove" evolution without the need to study the genetic and other evidences for how the eye has evolved.

The field of ethics is often short-circuited by certitude. People start with quotes from the Bible, (often ones that confirm their own prejudices) and then don't feel the need to reason why these should be morally binding on us. For example, the gay marriage debate is skewed by people who base their views on ancient views enshrined in the Bible. Is it really harmful to anyone else if gays can marry each other? How will it harm your marriage? Isn't that better than their not marrying?

My main problem with this type of certitude of faith is that it is an intellectual cocoon. One lives in a protected environment where one can disregard anything that would upset one's beliefs. And there is no need for real justification of one's beliefs; one can simply quote a verse or two from the Bible and it is settled. It is a comfortable place to live: away from the moral and epistemological uncertainties of this world. I see my loss of faith as an emergence from this cocoon into the wide world of truth seeking.

Faith or Freedom?

I find it interesting listening to politicians advocating a greater role for faith in the running of our country, from faith-based charity groups, to prayer in schools and the government, and simultaneously claiming to protect individual freedoms. Are these goals of spreading faith and increasing freedom compatible or do they clash? Plenty of groups advocate their faiths as the solution to our problems. But the strength of secularism and the separation of church and state in this country has kept this in check. It is not, however, too hard to find societies where faith is central to the running of the country. There are many countries that openly proclaim this. But has their pillar of faith been a solution to their problems? Surely is opposite is true; when faith-based groups gain power they invariably use their faith as a means of repression and elimination of individual freedoms. Naturally they ask why they should permit people to do things that are contrary to their principles? So the rules and regulations they create, governing what one can read, watch, say and believe, are for the moral good of the individual and country. Consider how many countries still ban speaking out against the official concept of God (i.e.. blasphemy) and reward this speech with a death penalty.

Christian groups are likely to reply that the problem is not that faith is supreme, but that the wrong faith is supreme. That is, if the Christian faith were in charge all would be better. But is it true that if the Christian religion were enshrined in our constitution and governing our every action, we be a better and freer nation? We might be better in the same way as the mullahs perceive their countries are better because of their state faith. They point to lower divorce, lower crime etc. in their countries to show how their faith improves their countries, but if so surely at an enormous cost of individual freedom. I propose that with Christianity in charge we would also have a similar loss of freedom. The key reason is that religious faiths (at least the monotheistic ones) have a pessimistic view of human beings: we're lost, we're evil, we're unable to do anything really good on our own, etc. Giving lost, sinful creatures freedom would lead to evil triumphing, and so true freedom would be a terrible state of affairs.

Instead the ideal Christian state is an authoritarian one in which God is in control and we all submit to him and obey his commands. That is how heaven will be in any case. On this earth realizing that goal is difficult as God doesn't seem to take actions on his own. Nevertheless the ideals of authority, submission and worship of that authority pervades Christianity. So as a result numerous people from the pope down on to individual pastors are eager to claim God's authority and decry any behavior that is displeasing to God. If they had political power they would surely use it to restrict any actions displeasing to God. Consider all the recent vitriol directed against gay marriage based on it being displeasing to God. Great efforts are being exerted by born again Christians to create a political ban of it. They reason: why should someone have freedom to do what God disapproves (even when it harms no one else)? I dread to imagine the growth of social control and the loss of freedoms if political power becomes subject to God's authority as determined by voting Christians.

Perhaps a classic argument formulated by Saint Paul claims that people in their natural state are slaves to sin and the Christian faith offers them freedom from that. The idea is that sin is an addiction, and faith in God releases one from that and so enables one to live in freedom. There are big flaws in this claim however. It is true that addictions or compulsive behaviors effectively limit our freedom, but unfortunately these aren't solved by faith in God. I think what Paul is talking about is an ideal of a sinless life that he has, and that he is unable to achieve it as a non-Christian. But it is pretty big leap to say that not being able to achieve an ideal, or that one makes mistakes, is equivalent to being enslaved. (Especially when the ideal is somewhat suspect.) In addition, how is the Christian free if he is still unable to achieve this ideal, and actually is no better at achieving it than the rest of mankind? But the main problem with Paul's argument is his concept of freedom. Consider this illustration. One lives in a totalitarian state. One is free to do whatever one likes so long as one submits to the ruler and obeys all his commands. Is that freedom or the opposite? That is the kind of freedom Christians advocate: so long as you submit to God, worship him and obey all his commands you are free to do whatever you like. If you reject this offer of "freedom" then the fury of hell awaits you. So you are not even free to say no.

If religion-inspired pessimism about the human state is the enemy of freedom, what is its promoter? Surely it is the optimism of humanism. Humanism believes we can conquer our downtrodden state of affairs and build a better world. We each should be set free to pursue and realize our individual and corporate potential. This may be tempered with a condition that we not harm others in our pursuit, but surely the greatest gain for everyone to be free to do as he wishes. It is this trust and optimism in human nature that is the basis for the freedoms given to us by our constitution.

Not surprisingly many religions show great distain for humanism. But hand in hand with this they show distain for freedom. So I think the choice for our country is pretty clear: faith or freedom.