By PLS
An article about the intelligent design versus evolution controversy in the spring 2006 issue of The Virginia Quarterly Review has set me to wondering if social issues we western secular liberals have failed to address as moral crises at home might also be undermining our credibility with militant Islamists.
It’s not the science of evolution as such that most alarms proponents of Intelligent Design,” writes Michael Ruse in an essay entitled “Flawed Intelligence, Flawed Design.” ID-believing evangelicals are worried about the inevitable (to them) moral consequences of a materialist or naturalistic world view. If evolution through natural selection made us what we are, they fear, there’s nothing to stop society from going to hell in a handbasket, so to speak, and conservative Christians as well as Islamists think American society is well on the way to perdition.
There are many people in the world today, Christians as well as Muslims, who believe that there is no way to promote any kind of moral or ethical code without a God to serve as guarantor, enforcer, validator. This, of course, is nonsense. In the course of civilization there have been many motives for good behavior and fear of god is only one of them. But Ruse thinks we should respond more earnestly to the moral concerns of evangelicals and fundamentalists of various sorts.
So here goes.
How much would it cost us, for example, to forthrightly agree that sexual promiscuity among young teenagers is a behavior to be strongly discouraged, even if we cannot wholly agree on why or what to do about it? I didn’t have a daughter, but I confess that I would have put a great deal of energy and imagination into delaying a daughter’s sexual initiation as long as possible. And I certainly didn’t take a boys-will-be-boys approach to my sons either. Moreover, whatever the gender of one’s offspring, the question of contraception must be addressed, later if not sooner–and hopefully not too late.
One problem (to my mind) is that trying to meet conservatives half way is not always an agreeable experience, by which I mean that it is all too often an unsuccessful operation. The abortion issue is instructive. Many who do not wish to see Roe v. Wade overturned would like to minimize abortion nearly as much as the most committed anti-abortionist.
The trouble is that issues get conflated and confused, so agreement becomes impossible. There are many ways to avoid the unwanted pregnancies that eventuate in abortion, but good numbers of conservative Christians accept only abstinence for contraceptive purposes. Result: no consensus—and (human sexuality being what it is, including among students at Christian schools such as the school where my god-fearing sister taught) unwanted pregnancies, which means otherwise unnecessary abortions as well as child motherhood and heart-breaking adoptions.
Similar dead ends result when western liberals (or secular Muslims) discuss the nature of the good society with Islamists. There’s profound, seemingly intractable disagreement on the role of women. Result: no congenial meeting point.
So, even if we do what Ruse seems to argue we should do, I’m not sure we’ll get anywhere. We liberals have principles that add up to a highly ethical code of life but our secularly derived morality is not recognized as such by those with whom we seek to establish understanding and respect if not perfect commonality.
If someone has a way out of this bind (aside from the inevitable changes that time brings), I’d be glad to learn of it.