I just read yet another meme where self-assured, self-satisfied, secular skeptics were mocking folks who wrangle over the ethical interpretation of the Bible. They snidely ask: Who has authority to interpret? What gives people the right to take some passages “literally” and other passages “symbolically”? And I get the snide mockery: Religion has excluded a lot of people; Religion is rife with hypocrisy; Religion is full of self-contradictions. I get it. But let's unpack this a bit more...
What I find breathtaking is the lack of self-awareness of these self-proclaimed enlightened progressive secular skeptics. The internet troll version of this person is often someone who looks a lot like me, but a bit younger. Mid 20’s to 30’s. Male. White. College educated. If they were to bust out of their ideological echo chamber and talk to people of different ages, genders, sexualities, and cultures, they might very quickly be accused of blindness, privilege, patrimony, hypocrisy, and selfishness.
They might even find that their cherished ethical certainties are largely based on the cultural traditions and norms they have grown up in, and what “feels” right to them, and what benefits them materially, and not on any kind of rigorous intellectual quest to dig down to ethical foundations of their decision making. In short, they might find that the same questions they mock religious people for— how to interpret and who has authority and why— apply equally to them and their world view. They are only able to avoid or ignore these questions for themselves because they are busy pointing fingers at people they have been culturally conditioned to view as “other” or “different” or “deficient” or “bad”.
Because the truth is, most people are pretty shallow ethical thinkers and tend to just parrot what they have received, rather than developing their stances with any kind of intellectual or existential rigor. I have found this to be true after 25 years of working with adolescents and young adults in churches, colleges, and philosophy classrooms. This is the case whether the person is traditionally religious or a practitioner of secular (non)religion.
Most people simply validate the ethical stance that agrees with their preferred culture, their intuitive feelings, and what benefits them materially. One kind of person relies on a set of truisms they have prooftexted from an ancient Book. The other kind relies on a set of truisms they have prooftexted from secular sages. The insufficiencies of both sources can easily be discerned by looking deeply into the Books of Joshua or Psalms or Ephesians or the Quran, or by diving into the works of Plato, Kant, Mill, or Nietzsche. While there is much of genuine ethical value in all these writings, we quickly find Xenophobia, Patriarchy, Prejudice, and Misogyny lurks beneath a cheerful surface reading.
After all, secular utilitarian ethics can lead you to Peter Singer or Ayn Rand, Jane Goodall or Sam Harris. Biblical deontological ethics can issue forth in Martin Luther King Jr. or Jerry Falwell, Mother Teresa or Joel Olsteen. And it is fair to say that the altruistic ethics of Peter, Jane, Martin, and Teresa share much more in common with each other, than they do with those who advocate a selfish and exclusionary interpretation of a similar metaphysical worldview.
In fact, all people have a "canon" (or measuring stick, or authoritative collection) of ideas and sayings that summarize their worldview, which they judge all other ideas and sayings by. In fact, we all use a "canon within a canon" of core ethical commitments to judge everything else in our "canon". For instance, if someone claims to follow secular ethics, they will probably look writings of folks like Peter Singer or Jane Goodall, instead of the ethics of Joseph Stalin or Ayn Rand. If someone claims to be "Kantian", they will probably select his texts on the categorical imperative, and not texts in which he speculates on why women and non-white ethnicities are inferior. And if someone claims to be "Biblical", they will probably judge the violence of the Book of Joshua inferior to the ethics of the Sermon on the Mount. We all use a "canon within a canon", including myself, and this is a good thing.
So, instead of religious people throwing godless heathens under the ethics bus for their lack of religious ethics, and instead of secular people throwing religious zealots under the ethics bus for their adherence to ancient texts, perhaps it would be in our best interest to listen to each other and reason with each other. Because we are all hypocrites. Yet we rarely fully realize it until someone outside of our ideological fishbowl helps us realize it.
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