On Sincerity

Atrios has an interesting post on a question that I touch here regularly: the religious motivation of values. I've mocked certain leaders of the religious right because I doubt there sincerity. Atrios has this to say about that, responding in different post to this statement by Ed Kilgore:

Here's how the regression from mockery of politics to mockery of religion to mockery of religious sincerity tends to work: Some people hold abhorrent political positions that they justify with religious principles you happen to consider a bunch of atavistic Hooey. You attack the positions on their dubious merits. You then go over the brink and attack the underyling Hooey. But since you think it's Hooey, you go on to suggest that the Hooey, being Hooey, is just a mask for very different motives (e.g., misogyny) that can be deplored without discussion of religion. Not being a regular consumer of Amanda Marcotte's blogging at Pandagon, I can't say for sure this is her pattern, but it is common in criticisms of religious-based opposition to equal rights for women and/or gays and lesbians.

Atrios responds:

I do agree that questioning the sincerity of peoples' faith does anger them. On the other hand, appealing to the sincerity of their beliefs is a way of privileging them, to put them in the realm of privileged discourse, as well as removing the person's responsibility. I don't really care if the desire to discriminate against gay people, or turn the uterus into state property, is motivated by sincere religious conviction. I don't think religious conviction, sincere or otherwise, makes your beliefs somehow special. If you think your misogyny or homophobia is sanctioned by God, it doesn't make you not a misogynist or homophobe.

Now, as one who has questioned the sincerity of belief in people such as James Dobson and Donald Wildmon, I should probably take a bit to explain that, if not justify it (the justification should, if I do it right, take care of itself). Another thing that's been cooking here is Jack Balkin's comments on the beliefs of the Christian right in the Ted Haggard matter -- Haggard and his fellows, according to Balkin, simply reject the idea of same-sex orientation as something innate and see it as temptation from the moral dictates of their god.

The thing that makes this an issue is the attempt to enforce these beliefs in the political realm, and it's there that I have trouble giving any credit to the Dobson Gang for sincerity.

It all revolves around the question of morality, which, in spite of what you may have heard from such luminaries as William F. Buckley, Jr. (One of the great howlers of the twentieth century: "Morality is an absolute.") or anyone else, is fluid and, if I may say so, tailored to the needs of a particular society at a particular time. What it boils down to is that morality is, in most instances, something that grows out of belief, and, as Atrios says, "people believe different stuff." (Yes, adherence to rationality and skepticism is as much a matter of belief as adherence to the idea that trinkets made of bone and hair have spiritual power.)

(Atrios has a series of posts on this, particularly one linking to this wonderful post by Mithras. Digby also weighs in.

At any rate, back to doubting the sincerity of the Christianists.

I have trouble believing that anyone can repeatedly espouse positions that fly in the face of all available evidence, particularly when those doing so reap great financial and political rewards for doing it. Take James Dobson, for example. He consistently misrepresents evidence concerning gays and child sexual abuse, child rearing, he's quoted quite cheerily Paul Cameron's gross distortions of other people's research, he has distorted others' research himself, has refused to acknowledge corrections he has received from many sources and, in the most recent case concerning his distortions of research in an OpEd for Time, engaged in specious arguments that "the data supported his conclusions" when in fact they didn't. And yet I'm supposed to believe that he is sincere.

I believe there is a commandment that says something like "thou shall no bear false witness." This is in the Bible, which Christians of Dobson's stripe insist is the inerrant word of God. Am I mistaken here?

Either the man is a cynical politician or he's delusional. (I'm sure there's a third possibility, but since Dobson lives in a black/white world, we'll play along for now.)

In other words, I'm basing my doubts about his sincerity on evidence, which is what one does when one is a post-Enlightenment American with training in science. The rhetoric heats up whenever there's an election, and now that the Republican party, through some vestigial instinct for self preservation, has started to move away from the Dobson Gang, there are calls of "payback time."

And, as Atrios quite rightly points out in the paragraph I quoted above, why give people like Dobson a free pass because their prejudices spring, at least ostensibly, from religious belief? If you're a bigot because of your religious beliefs, your still a bigot. As Atrios puts it:

I've had this conversation with anti-choice progressives, who think it's important for me to understand that their anti-choice views come from a sincere religious belief. The thing is, I just don't care. The fact that your political beliefs are motivated by your religion doesn't make them special to me.

This ties in with a couple of recent posts by Tristero over at Hullabaloo, here and here. He's coming from a slightly different angle, but I think plugging him in here is valid. Tristero's point is that you don't get any bonus points because your beliefs are based in your religion. (And at this juncture, the term "beliefs" is getting entirely too slippery -- for this post, it's been limited to the area of those beliefs centering on morality (and I mean as a real thing, not a checklist), social justice, and doing what society is basically supposed to do, which is take care of its members. All of them.)

So, the bottom line at this point is complete agreement with Atrios and Tristero: OK, your beliefs are sincere because they come from your religion. So what?

(PS -- this is the post I mentioned in the last post or two, and no, Jim Wallis isn't in it. I think I was probably going to write something on his piece and wound up junking it. Chalk it up to a shift in mode from verbal to visual. This hasn't been easy, you know.)