By Jim Sala

Religion is here to stay.

Even in respect to the prognostications of great thinkers like Freud and Nietzsche (thinkers whose books increasingly fill schools, libraries, and bookstores) religion remains. The modern world-view has changed what it means to be religious, it has redefined ideas like faith, eternity, and God; but it has not left religion behind. Science booms under the demands and economics of our democracies. Religion scampers behind with as much fervor and as many believers as ever. In a postmodern world that both violently separates and repressively combines faith and reason - even against the advice of the great spiritual philosophers who believed more in the complexity of truth - it is an inexplicable fact that the hard-iron truths of religious faith still dominate. Our lexicon and our ethics, our laws and our schools, still operate on the founding principles of Christianity.

Pick up any local paper and you will find it saturated with religious articles. Religion is not just a mainstay in the media interest pool, it is the foundational belief system from which the writers, journalists, politicians, and theoreticians draw from for their statements. The religious ethic is the language, the mathematical construct, that serves as predicate to the theses and conclusions of so many stories and opinions. Religious ideas are true, as they say, a priori, the things that exist as truth before the discussion begins.

The reason religious discussions are problematic in America is that many people object to this dialectical strategy. The people who established the foundation of this country believed that religious discussions were often spurious and questionable at best because of their basis in personal opinion and their relatively conflicting cultural truths. There were many religions and they all claimed different truths and they were, in fact, more like competing theories than truth. The Deist sensibilities of many of the non-atheistic Founding Fathers were a far cry from Christian Dogma that permeates the media of today. The distinction between these two things, it seems, is at the heart of the problem that hinders the beginning of a good debate on the subject. A good debate might be the very thing that stands between coexisting faiths and violence.

There are many more objections to the truth-claims of popular religion. The question of diversity, or cultural relativity, is only a minor component of the empirical (or atheistic or material) philosophical attacks on religion. The effort here is not to provide evidence on either side of the issue, but to expose the nature of the disagreement between what we might call the religionist and the objector. The debate must be seen and understood as a debate - perhaps, as an experiment - in order for it to serve its function. Part of this debate must consist of a discussion about the nature of the differences between believers and non-believers and their argumentative styles in history.

Man has done his part to make the world a violent and unpredictable place. In almost every noticeable and newsworthy fracas, the religious debate remains the foundational issue of the disagreement. The clash is sometimes between an ordinary citizen and a religious fundamentalist, such as the pro-life violence of the last decade. The belief system of the ordinary citizen, it must be noted, is not at issue. The same is true of the church bombers. More often, the clash is between two rival faith-based belief systems. The tensions between Christians and Muslims and Jews - faiths that are not in fact very dissimilar - are a testament to this idea.

Philosophy at its best attempts to define the terms of any discussion as clearly as possible. This push for clarity is what makes it an attempt at a scientific and reasonable debate. The debate between secular objector and religionist is just such a debate - if structured properly. The newsworthy violence (especially at present) consists mainly of religious disagreements between people of different faiths. This will inevitably fail to meet the standards of our definition of debate. Herein is a discussion of methodology mainly and not results. The religious man attempts to define the ethical elements of his world through faith and intuition. The objector believes that this attempt is erroneous and will result in misinterpretation and violence. The objector often, but not always, suggests the alternate route of science or empiricism.

If one side of the disagreement believes himself right beyond reproach, if he becomes incorrigible, then it is not an honest debate. Both sides must agree to explore and they must proceed as one would proceed in any such discussion. The Socratic method, one might say, is the primary historical tool for the successful completion of this project. It is clear that if we value the insight of a thinker such as Francis Bacon, we must believe that though this process does not guarantee success, it facilitates the closest approach to it.

The current denial of the value of Muslim faith by mainstream Baptists is an example of the non-dialectical nature of the clash. The clash is inevitable and exacerbated by political strife and global politics in general. It would be imprudent and clearly useless to attempt to structure a debate between rival religionists. It is the religionist, and the multi-cultural aspect of faith, that is ultimately up for questioning. This is the question at the heart of an honest debate that has, in our times, been for the most part ignored in lieu of inter-faith rivalries and purely faith-based and esoteric queries. An example of this inter-faith problem can be highlighted by specific examples from America�s largest protestant denomination, the Southern Baptists, whose International Mission Board publishes �prayer books� in an attempt to �enlighten� other religions to Christian truth. The latest book targeting Muslims is of the same nature as a previous publication that claimed �900 million souls lost in the hopeless darkness of Hinduism.�

(http://www.timesofindia.com/today/09worl1.htm , Ramesh Chandran, author)

The history of philosophy clearly demonstrates that it is the structure of an argument between competing thought-systems that is directly related to the utility of its conclusion. The structure of the argument between inspired religionists and Copernicus was, by design, such that science was ultimately able to claim clear victory. In contrast, the classical empiricist and rationalist debate in philosophy, one mediated in part by Emmanuel Kant, resulted in a cyclical return to the very question at the heart of our debate. It was never even partially solved to any rational satisfaction and resulted, centuries later, in the continued debates between enlightenment thinker and Romantics. The problematic, though sometimes fruitful, lack of resolution was and is apparent in the common suspicions regarding Darwin�s theories. The apparent paradox could then be found in the basics of the philosophies of the greatest thinkers. Examples of these thinkers would then be Freud and Nietzsche. The existence of this contradiction did not alter the conclusions founded by these men, but did clearly serve to enhance their discoveries. These were not men, as it is often misinterpreted, that were, to choose a careful word, nihilists. They were, in science and history, the opposite. The modern and enlightenment findings in truth were, respectively, man�s potential for control of his instinctual subconscious and man�s potential control of the much needed revaluation of all morals.

The lack of coherent debate, between religionists and objectors, has clouded another important issue: that being the definition of Christianity itself. A more lucid exploration - through factual history - might reveal a twofold existence of this thought system. Christianity, unlike Buddhism, was inherently separate from philosophy by design. This is the reason that Eastern cultures did not experience a near philosophic vacuum during the first millennium. With the enlightenment, the return of Aristotle, the rise of empiricism, and even the influences of the East, came the rise of Western philosophy to its now preeminent position. An intellectual discovery might reveal the existence of two separate visions of Christianity. These two would be conventional, popular, dogmatic Christianity - a religion in every respect of the word - and philosophical Christianity. The latter being a more philosophically structured and defended spirituality, based sometimes on conventional Christian stories, but more often separate from the real history of Christian development. The philosophical tradition, infused by the very nature of dialectical and true philosophical thought, grew from the seeds planted by rationalist philosophers and substantially from Socrates and Plato. If Plato was to inspire the oft misunderstood and critically acclaimed philosophy of Augustine, then it is philosophy itself which carried this branch of thought to St. Thomas Aquinas, Pascal, and eventually to Kierkegaard and Kant.

Without a clear understanding of the difference between these two things, the difference between religion and philosophy itself becomes blurred. When someone is speaking of God are they speaking of philosophical notions of God or of historical notions of God. There can be no philosophy if there is no skepticism, in some form, and this is what differentiates these two systems. Common Christianity is dogmatic by nature. It is this condition that makes it violent and admirable at the same time. If Socrates is right that no man does what he believes to be wrong (a very interesting and paradoxically puzzling assertion) then it is only in the name of absolute truth that inspired violence erupts.

Any reader of John Stuart Mill is acutely aware of the distinction therein regarding useful epistemological truths for man. In this case, Mill�s writing often serves as a defense of philosophy itself. Free speech and skepticism are the things valued in any social education and in politics. The man who understands both sides of an issue is the man best equipped to decide what serves as truth. If this is accepted, common Christianity can be seen as the near opposite of this process. Common Christianity is based on the intuitions and feelings of individuals that communally agree to enforce their discovery on the common philosophy of a civilization.

The reason that philosophical Christianity rose to power is that common Christianity itself became susceptible to the scientific truths of philosophical enlightenment. A dominant example of this is the attack, on Christianity, by the historically and factually driven philosophical problem of evil. If God is omnipotent, why is he unable to alter the historical fact of man�s failure? Regardless of how one stands on the issue, it is clear that Christianity, a system of facts (God�s omnipotence and benevolence), was weak to defend against such reasoning. The very tool that many thought would topple common Christianity came to its aid. Philosophical Christianity defended a more dogmatic system with the very dialectical and scientific processes that were often thought to be its opposite.

The argument can then be made that the two types of Christianity, seemingly incompatible, serve as another example of religious confusion. But this is not within the scope of this discussion. This discussion does however center around the need for clear philosophical debates between religionists and objectors and the eventual concern for the consequences of these debates theoretically. For instance, in the primary debate regarding the political actions of the United States, often regarding problems with Jefferson�s separation of church and state, there may be little success because of the absence of basic philosophical actions. These actions may include the clarification of the real issues, the real terminology and the real and actual questions. In regards to the separation, an important focus may certainly be demanded on the difference between our cultural climates. In Jefferson�s time our country may have been infused, in language, with theology, but clearly in action it tended toward deism and its consequences (one being the separation between God�s demands and man�s rights). In modern times, and especially with the renewed and patriotic clash between Islamic and Christian theology, dogmatism is king. It might be noted that in modern times the object of philosophical dialectics - the embrace of the discussion of diverse viewpoints in particular - has as its objects sympathy, altruism and political motivations. This is not in the historical tradition of philosophy which would have put a greater emphasis on truth.

A tough question might be, for the renewed success of America: What do we do if the population itself has grown unable to comprehend real philosophy and yet has been imbued with the power to act on their perception of it? Is it possible that the masses have never been able to find the courage to work with philosophical ideas, which would negate the comforts of satisfied truth, but have found in America the right to express those things that are most dangerous in the minds of men, the perceptions of truth? These perceptions of truth, clearly, are based on intuitive feelings, gut feelings, and the repetitive education to these ideas of similar design.

Can America save itself from freedom?