There really is a divide in the US between groups of people. And the main source of the division is religion. The world is divided into people who have various traditional beliefs and derive their model for life by living those traditions. And many others who have developed what they suppose are more "modern" beliefs. The former include adherents to all the major religions. The later include many who have "new" faiths, or think they have discarded faith in religion in favor of secular religions such as materialism, athieism, Communism, 'liberalism', etceteras...There really is a gap between the perceptions of these people. Bridging that gap will take a lot of work. But the first step in bridging the gap is to understand why it exists.
The reason why a gap in understanding exists between people who consider themselves "rational" liberals, is that most of us don't understand what religion is about. For the "believer" religion is what they have received from their teachers and is truth, clear and simple. Things like abortion are not things that can be rationalized, but sins. Sin is departing from what is correct and leads to suffering, if not in this life then after it in the "afterlife." Faith is a source of comfort and a guide. To such people the logic of their religion flows from this connection to the truth. And the truth is apriori. Experiences are used to justify the faith, but the faith is a-priori.
For rationalists, faith flows from experience and an accumulation of wisdom. If something is fictional it cannot be true. Faith can never be a-priori, but must be founded in things that can be verified in the material world or at least understood by philosophical understanding. Even so apparantly rational people fall sway to religion. Communism, Libertarianism, and other beliefs, appear to be wholly rational and scientific until you examine their assumptions carefully, and then you find a "faith" aspect even there. And often people believe in these things with the same "a-priori" faith approach that they decry in others.
Thus you find incongruous observations. Such as Communists persecuting Buddhists and Christians in the name of "Materialism" and yet insisting on orthodoxy as if Communism were a faith substitute. It's not an accident that faith based and "non violent" movements such as the Falun Gung scare them more than Capitolists do. Their faith is basically an "anti faith." It involves discarding or cutting off the wisdom of the past on the basis that it is anachronistic. To see that wisdom reformatted and presented rationally undermines the premise on which they proceed...more...
Posted by cholte at July 9, 2004 06:07 AM