Many people think that religious belief should be private and have little or no role in public life. One of the reasons given for this is that permitting a role to religious belief would lead to irresolvable disagreements and so, when it comes to public life, only secular arguments should be considered. The idea is that then everyone can engage in debate on a level playing field instead of some appealing to their own religious beliefs.
This approach can appear in one of two guises. The first is not hostile to religion and thinks that it should be valued and perhaps protected in certain ways. A problem with this is that if religious belief is considered as a purely private matter, it becomes difficult to differentiate between different religious beliefs and this gives rise to all sorts of questions. For example, should all religious beliefs, irrespective of their content, be respected and protected just because they are religious? In a recent article about a conscience clause, we noted that one commentator expressed his concerns as follows, “once we start legislating to allow religious exemptions and other mad laws will suggest themselves.” The concern seems to be that if religious belief is brought into the picture, it will be difficult to place any constraints on it.
As a result of this kind of reasoning, the first view seems almost inevitably to lead to a second, more hostile, view towards religion. As the philosopher Roger Trigg writes in his book Religion in Public Life (Oxford, 2007, p. 33):
Many want to avoid deciding between religions, or different religious practices. It may seem simpler for politicians to keep clear of the whole subject. Yet the inescapable conclusion must be that if all religions are treated alike, and ‘religion’ as such is to be treated as one, undifferentiated category, it is being tacitly assumed that they are all equally silly, and beyond the scope of reason.”
This second approach has been embraced wholeheartedly by the new atheists, who want to see religion being completely excluded from public life. They consider all religious belief to be irrational because they equate faith with ‘belief without evidence’. Certainly, where Christianity is concerned, this is simply incorrect since this is not the Christian understanding of faith.
There are other problems too. One issue is that while it treats all religions equally, indeed as equally silly as Trigg puts it, it also elevates their own non-religious view to pre-eminence. It is rather convenient that they think that all beliefs except those most similar to their own should be marginalized in public life. The new atheists would like to think that they have provided such convincing arguments against all kinds of religious belief that their viewpoint is justified, but this seems to be mere wishful thinking on their part as many people (both religious and non-religious) have argued.
Another problem is that it requires all religious believers to be set aside their most deeply held beliefs in public life. The difficulty with this is that it seems like a very unreasonable demand in a liberal democracy and fails to recognize that religious belief can be a powerful motivating force for good in society. A further problem is that it is highly implausible to think that all religions should be equated either in terms of the rationality of their beliefs or in terms of their practices. This concern can easily be recognized by those who are not religious believers themselves.
As regular visitors to this site will know, we think there are good reasons to believe in God and in the central claims of Christianity. We don’t expect politicians to debate the details of different religious beliefs, but we do think that the marginalization of religious belief from public debate is unwarranted and unhelpful. Whether one is sympathetic or hostile to religion, there is no good reason to think that different religious beliefs and practices cannot be discussed in a reasonable way either in terms of their rationality or their contribution to the good of society.