between the rock and the cold, cold sea

On campus, one of the things one occasionally notices are the lists for the debate competitions held by the two largest student societies, the Phil and the Hist.

I've been spitting furious since I saw the two propositions that it is thought appropriate to debate for fun this week. This House Believes "That Gay Marriage Undermines Family Values" and "That Man Has Dominion Over The Animals."

I know that college debating societies are an old, old tradition. But is it really too much to ask that they practice their debating skills on propositions which do not require that one side (the Yes side, in this case) argue from hurtful, entitled, unethical assumptions?

Words mean things. Treating subjects which affect the lives of real people as topics for what is, essentially, a game, shows critical lack of empathy. Not to mention a critical lack of awareness of the harm done by repeating poisonous, unethically based arguments. Whether or not one actually believes them - whether or not one is only trying to score points - someone in one's audience might take this more seriously.

(As a point of principle, I believe that in front of an audience, one should never make an argument in which one does not truly believe.)

The first debate proposition is hurtful and poisonous to civil dialogue. No one's "family values" are harmed by committed loving relationships. Not unless one is a bigot, or a misogynist who finds the possibility of a relationship of equals threatening to his self-image. Emasculating, even! (But there's no virtue in dominance, merely constant insecurity.) To propose it as the subject of a debate suggests that both sides have potentially equal claim to validity. Which is to say, that one might with equal virtue and equal aplomb argue for and against the civil rights - the right to isonomia, as the ancient Greeks might say, an equal share in the law - of one's fellow citizens.

This is not right.

The second proposition is perhaps less hurtful, but no less problematic. The formulation of the proposition implies a religious or Victorian-progressive rational for "Dominion," and the use of the "Man" as shorthand for the entire human species is troubling. And as for the word dominion itself...

Dominion, as we all know, is derived from the Latin dominus, "lord," "master." The word dominate also derives from this root.

These words aren't just sounds. Each one carries a specific semantic significance, both in its bare dictionary definition, and in the evocative, implied overtones - the poetics of speech, if you will. "That Men have Lordship over the Animals" (if we interpret the proposition in terms of its implied, as well as its overt, meanings) is neither a neutral proposition, or a neutral formulation. That men may tame, train and kill at will - for as the proposition is formulated, it does not allow the question of ought to enter - is not a morally neutral position for which to argue. It is a position of entitlement, and ultimately, by semantic implication, a destructive one. To have dominion over is close kin to dominate, and dominate is an ugly, violent verb. One dominates through force, not through consensus, or negotiation, or live-and-let-live.

Words mean things. Treating these propositions - these statements - as a game severs them from their actuality, from the thing itself, the lived experience which the words signify. Detached from their living reality, to the debators they may have no actualised meaning, no true weight and freight and significance.

Just words. But words are how we explain the world to ourselves, how we articulate our understanding. By implying false equivalencies, equal ethical weight, when debate is treated as a game where words and statements have no true effect, that understanding is poisoned.

That's a good quarter of the problem with politics. But I suppose that's a rant for another day.

So, the topic for theology this week was religious experience, and its nature. I feel moved to discuss it here, if only to clarify to myself how I feel about it. Somebody should probably stop me.

Some - many, in fact - theologians hold that there is a universal experience of the divine or supernatural. Some, like Friedrich Schleiermacher, hold that it is the experience of a sense of 'absolute dependency' on a greater power, or, like H.D. Lewis, argue that it comes from an apprehension of the limitations of human existence and the human world and the awareness or feeling that there must exist some unconsidered, infinite, or absolute being beyond human existence and upon which human existence is utterly dependent. (Others, like Feuerbach, contend that 'God' is a projection of human desires, but that's not entirely germane to my discussion.)

Theologians who generalise from their own specific experience of religion overlook one thing, however: the problem of the observer.

The problem with constructing theories from specific or personal experience in theology or philosophy is similar to the problem of adjusting for bias in science: one cannot, quite literally cannot, divorce the observer from the thing observed. Thus all conclusions that the Observer reaches about the Phenomenon (unless one takes adequate care to adjust for bias, which is sometimes done in science and never in philosophy or theology) are therefore coloured by the Observer's preconceptions.

'Religious experience' can be intrepreted in different ways. The experiences which believers term 'religious' could be communications from an absolute Being or reality; or they could be an effect of the brain chemicals; or they could be some mix of the two; or nothing of significance at all.

But if one is raised with religion*, in a culture wherein belief in a supreme Deity is the rule rather than the exception, is one not predisposed to view such experiences as communications from the specific Deity which one has been raised to think is present and active in the world? If one is a Christian, one would be predisposed to believe it was God or the Christ, if Muslim, Allah, if Jewish, YHWH, not so?

So how, therefore, can a theologian generalise from their specific experience to a 'universal' theory of religious experience, and thus the validation of a specific framework of belief?

I mean, I've had 'religious' experiences, and I'm a freaking agnostic.**

(I was a deist at the time, and felt quite comforted by the thought that there was Something out there. I've since come to believe it was a false comfort, and self-deluding. There is no redemption and no absolution, and if nothing has meaning, then everything must, and one owes it to oneself and the world to be the best, most decent freaking human being one can be.)

I still have 'religious' experiences, in fact, only now I intrepret them in terms of fluctuations of the brain chemicals. So what makes my interpretations less valid, in the eyes of certain sections of society, than anyone else's, simply because I prefer not to believe in a Deus Pater? Or, for that matter, in the authenticity of revealed scripture?***

*

*Note that my experience and field of study is with Christian religion, and that I'm an agnostic and a skeptic by inclination. As such I hope to wear my biases on my sleeve.

**I was raised by the latest in a long line of Lapsed Catholics, attended a non-denominational - for which read Anglican - primary school and Catholic secondary one, and decided early I had no use for hypocrisy. My declared agnosticism is really a logical progression (from childhood Christianity through adolescent Deism to adult agnosticism) but you know, I still catch shit about it from some people. And not just when I call them on grounds of hypocrisy, either.

***I'm a historian-in-training. The Bible contradicts itself multiple times. If it was indeed 'inspired by God', then to paraphrase theologian Keith Ward, God was very definitely not interested in making himself clear - as a Omnipotent Being ought to be able to, if It so desired.