Conflicting axioms at the bottom of religion and government
Are America's founding principles religious? If so, what does this mean for the separation of church and state?
To question the principles of your country could cause you to be accused of treason. So, life, liberty, and happiness are believed to be self-evidently true. If at any point these principles end up failing, then is there anything we can do? We may not be able to question these principles directly. If they fail, they would fail for empirical reasons, and not analytical ones.
On one hand, every country is built on principles that are effectively unquestioned. One of the biggest critiques by the New Atheists of religion is that they cannot even in principle be disproven. What if the same could be said for America’s self-evident truths?
Some of the founding fathers believed the principles of the nation could only work if the citizens are religious. This is a little confusing. On one hand, the church and state are explicitly separated. On the other, some believe the state can’t function properly without religion. By separating itself from religion, a nation can benefit from religion without having to bet on any specific horse. The founding fathers didn’t want the country to be explicitly Catholic, Protestant, etc. The government doesn’t care which religion wins, as long as it happens peacefully, and results in general social cohesion, and national pride.
Religions put forward axioms that they claim to be so fundamental — that they simultaneously take precedence over anything the law require — but also give you stricter rules to follow than anything in the law books. Religions that teach you to oppose your government often don’t work.
Simultaneously, if your government is organized by anything like unquestionable axioms, then what’s the difference between this and religion? This leads us into tricky waters.
In 1890, the Supreme Court defined defined religion as having some relation to belief in a Creator and having certain obligations to this Creator. In 1960, this definition started to include religions like Buddhism that did not themselves include belief in some deity. By 1970, religion boiled down to “deeply and sincerely held moral and ethical beliefs” (Freedom Forum Institute) .
In other words, a religion is not thing more than a set of moral axioms. By this definition, the belief in the equal moral worth of all human beings is itself a religious belief with deep moral implications. This is not to say it’s a false belief, but it is axiomatic. There’s no way any serious person in US public office would ask you to prove that all people are equal. It’s a foundational principle of the American project.
It looks to me like the Supreme Court has made a paradox of the American project.
One way to resolve the paradox is to clarify that the equal worth of all individuals is not a moral or ethical claim, but an axiomatic one for the purposes of creating a functional government.
Another way to resolve this by getting back to the 1890 definition of religion. However, in doing so, we’d open the door to the government explicitly aiding Secular Humanism, Buddhism, and Game~B. I get what they were aiming for: the government shouldn’t arbitrate what’s moral and not moral; it should only concern itself with matters of practical governance
Kurt Vonneget imagined one way that the project of equality could go wrong:
"That dance-it was nice," said Hazel.
"Yup," said George. He tried to think a little about the ballerinas. They weren't really very good-no better than anybody else would have been, anyway. They were burdened with sashweights and bags of birdshot, and their faces were masked, so that no one, seeing a free and graceful gesture or a pretty face, would feel like something the cat drug in. George was toying with the vague notion that maybe dancers shouldn't be handicapped. But he didn't get very far with it before another noise in his ear radio scattered his thoughts.
(Excerpt from the story: HARRISON BERGERON)