The Swerve: How the World Became Modern, by Stephen Greenblatt

a review by Edd Doerr

Yaakov Malkin’s 2007 book Epicurus & Apikorsim (which I reviewed in ARL’s Voice of Reason No. 128, page 15, at arlinc.org) tells the fascinating story of how Greek philosopher Epicurus (341-270 BCE) and his Roman poet/”publicist”  Lucretius (95-50 BCE) vastly influenced thought in the Greco-Roman empire and may be considered the forerunners of today’s naturalistic humanism. Epicurus was so influential that Jewish religious leaders of the period used his name in Hebrew, Apikoros, to mean “heretic” (plural “apikorsim”) to this day. Malkin then showed that Epicurus and Lucretius, author of the long Epicurean poem “De rerum natura” (On the Nature of Things), influenced such influential post-Renaissance thinkers as Spinoza, Locke and Thomas Jefferson.

However, even before the collapse of the Roman empire in the late fifth century the recently “established” Christian church began extirpating Epicureanism wherever it possibly could. After the empire’s collapse all that was left of the work of Epicurus and Lucretius were references to their work buried in various Greek and Latin texts. For all practical purposes the two philosophers’ thought and writing were blanked out for a thousand years, an entire millennium. So, how did their work come to influence the modern world?

That is the story that Harvard humanities prof Stephen Greenblatt tells in The Swerve, the story of  Poggio Bracciolini (1380-1459), Florentine scribe, scholar of Greek and Latin literature, “book hunter”, and lay (emphasis on “lay”) aide to several popes. In 1417, after his boss, Pope John XXIII, was deposed by the Council of Constance, Bracciolini took the time to search through German monasteries for ancient Greek and Latin books written on papyrus or vellum or whatever he could find, books that were endlessly and mindlessly copied for centuries by monks who paid no attention to the content of what they were copying. The Florentine, who knew of Epicurus and Lucretius from their frequent mentions in classical literature but had never actually seen De rerum natura, was elated when he actually found a copy of it. He had  the it copied and sent off to Italy, where more copies were hand reproduced. After Gutenberg invented the printing press in mid-century the book “went viral”, as we would say today, in Latin and in French, German, English and other languages.

Try as it might, the church was unable to dam the flood, and Epicurean/Lucretian thought spread unstoppably. And that, writes Greenblatt, is what stimulated the Enlightenment, modern thought, science, and political and philosophical thinking and writing. Greenblatt  refers frequently to Bracciolini and other scholars of the period as “humanists”, defined as “the scholars in the Renaissance who pursued and promoted the study of the ancient Greek and Roman cultures, and emphasized secular, individualistic, and critical thought.” Not once, though, does he refer to what today we call naturalistic humanism. In the book’s very last paragraph, however, he does write this: “’I am,” Jefferson wrote to a correspondent who wanted to know his philosophy of life, “an Epicurean.”

While we can be thankful to the monasteries for preserving many ancient books that time, chemistry and “bookworms” (literally) would not have allowed to survive, however unintentionally, the church itself does not come off looking good at all. Greenblatt does not hesitate to air a great deal of very dirty laundry.

The Swerve is  a great read, a book one can’t easily put down, with little sparkles of wit and a wealth of historical knowledge. Let’s give it five stars.

Separation Of Church & State: A Challenged Principle

by

Allan Powell, Professor Emeritus, Philosophy, HCC

Separation Of Church & State: A Challenged Principle

          American political values rest on several fundamental principles clearly stated by the founders of our republic. We do not debate the separation of powers or the supremacy of civilian dominance of military forces. Strangely however, there is an open and active resistance to the concept of a separation of church and state. Yet, this idea should be a most natural policy when it is remembered that most European settlers came here to escape tyrannies where church and state were combined. They were keenly aware of the abuse of power when two of the most conservative social forces conjoin.

          Separation is imperative because of the potential for religion to sanctify evil and claim divine approval for misdeeds. However, while it is important and necessary to keep a constant vigil to block the collusion of church and state, the task is difficult because of public apathy and a shortage of funds.

          There are, nonetheless, a number of religious denominations which are active in supporting the separation principle. They support organizations that monitor the many attempts to breach the wall of separation. It is costly to hire lawyers to bring the cases into court, support the publication of journals and maintain a speaker’s bureau to hold meetings for public education.

          The most durable and powerful source of support are the words of those who wrote the original documents such as James Madison and Thomas Jefferson. Also useful, are the opinions given in Supreme Court decisions. Former President, James Madison declared that, “The number, the industry, and the morality of the Priesthood, and the devotion of the people have been manifestly increased by the total separation of the Church from the State”. This should carry special weight since Madison was regarded as “the Father of the Constitution”.

          Thomas Jefferson made a direct connection between the principle of separation and the Constitution (1^st Amendment) in a letter to the Danbury Baptist Church in 1802. Jefferson writes, “Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legislative powers of government reach actions only and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature would make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, thus building a wall of separation between church and state”.

          A recent issue of one of these journals gives a list of the kinds of actions they expect from the new members of Congress. It will be evident that there will be no rest for those who struggle to keep a “wall of separation” between church and state. First will be a new effort to advance “voucher schemes” that John Boehner (House) and Mitch McConnell (Senate) call “school choice expansion”. They are actually referring to charter schools. Others (e.g. Ted Cruz), have vouchers in mind. These “schemes” are a way to funnel taxpayer money to sectarian schools.

          Analysts are expecting an increase in what is called “religious freedom exemptions” made possible as a consequence of the Supreme Court decision in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores. It will be recalled, that in this case certain employers could now, on the grounds of religious freedom, make medical decisions effecting employees. It is supposed that the door has been opened for more extensions of religious liberty. It is likely that there will be attempts to expand the teaching of creationism and to restore prayer in public schools.

          There is some concern about the increase in the practice of some churches to abuse their tax exempt status by becoming involved in partisan elections. A study of voting turnout of the 2014 election shows that the religious right had a much larger voter turnout while there was a notable decline in other voter categories. Ralph Reed is reported to have openly stated that his group distributed 20 million voter guides in 117,000 churches. These guides were claimed to have been given to Republican voters.

          On my desk are two journals that I have supported for 30 and 40 years respectively. Both have been reporters of the whole range of issues involving the separation of church and state. It is saddening to conclude that there is little improvement in maintaining the “wall of separation” from abuse. Our efforts appear to be somewhat like those who fight forest fires. After you have struggled painfully and get out that fire, you get word that there are two more up the road.

Allan Powell, Professor Emeritus, Philosophy, HCC

‘Religious Right’ are politically stronger than ever

by Edd Doerr, president, Americans for Religious Liberty

 ‘Religious Right’ are politically stronger than ever

James Haught’s March 22 article, “Cultural change is slow but deep,” accurately reported demographic shifts in religion in America, but that’s not the whole story. The “nones” or religiously unaffiliated may be 20 percent of our population now, but in the November 2014 elections — in which only 36 percent of eligibles bothered to vote — exit surveys showed that only 12 percent of voters were “nones.”

Further, while very conservative churchgoers, usually labeled the “Religious Right,” are diminishing somewhat in numbers, they are politically stronger than ever. They and their political allies nationwide have:

1. Advanced their agenda of diverting public funds to faith-based private schools through vouchers and tax credits, even though American voters between 1966 and 2014 have rejected such measures by an average 2-to-1 margin in 28 state referendum elections from coast to coast; and this is damaging the public schools serving 90 percent of our kids.

2. Increased restrictions on women exercising their rights of conscience and religious freedom when deciding to terminate problem pregnancies for medical or other serious reasons.

3. Denied climate change – involving carbon dioxide buildup in the atmosphere, resource depletion, toxic waste accumulation, deforestation, desertification, soil erosion and nutrient loss, rising sea levels (40 percent of world population lives in coastal areas), shrinking biodiversity, and increasing sociopolitical instability and violence, all of which is fueled by human overpopulation – thus endangering our whole planet.

4. Increased federal and state court rulings that undermine the constitutional church-state separation that protects the religious freedom of each and every one of us.

There is indeed a culture shift, but our country is not out of the woods by a long shot. Americans of all persuasions — Protestants, Catholics, Jews, the “nones” and others — need to work together to stop the erosion of our basic values before it is too late.

(Note: Jim Haught is editor of the Gazette, and he and I are both columnists in Free Inquiry.)

More socially advanced countries are less religious

By Mathew Goldstein

Dr. Alex McFarland, host of the national Stand Strong Tour, was quoted recently as saying the following: "From a societal standpoint, any time we reject a belief in God and, thereby, a belief in absolute morals based on the Word of God, we see the disintegration of a healthy society. From the breakdown of the family and the killing of the unborn to the rejection of the rule of law and of moral boundaries, the consequences are far reaching."  Given the large number of people with diverse religious affiliations who very confidently express similar unqualified sentiments, the question to ask here is what does the available evidence say about the relationship between a society being healthy and a society being religious?  To answer this question someone needs to identify measures of how healthy and religious a society is, take those measurements, and evaluate the results.

We have new data addressing both questions.  On April 13 the international polling organization WIN/Gallup released the results of a massive new survey into religion worldwide.  The latest update of the Social Progress Index was published the previous week.  This was also a mammoth undertaking, painstakingly assessing the nations of the world against a battery of benchmarks divided into three categories: “Basic Human Needs”, “Foundations of Wellbeing” (health and basic education), and “Opportunity” (personal rights, freedom, tolerance and advanced education).  Now we need someone to combine the data and see if the correlations support McFarland's assertion.

This is a task for Epiphenom. Epiphenom found that the Gallup poll allows us to rank 59 countries by the percentage of citizens who are non-religious.  The least religious countries scored highest on the Social Progress Index and the most religious countries scored worst. This trend is apparent across all three categories.

Back in 2009 Epiphenom showed the less religious countries were also more peaceful, and research since then has shown that they are more democratic, have less corruption, more telephones, do better at science, have less inequality and other problems, and are generally just less dysfunctional and have better quality of life.  Regardless of the underlying cause and effect direction, and regardless of how frequently many different people adamantly assert otherwise, there is only one properly justified conclusion here:  A non-religious society and a healthy society are mutually compatible.

Morality, consensus, standards, and axioms

By Mathew Goldstein

The distinction between a definition in the abstract and a practical operational method for applying that definition is sometimes important, yet it tends to be under appreciated.  As Jason Rosenhouse argues in his recent blog article A Few More Words About Morality "One of the most overwrought questions in moral philosophy is the question of whether morality is objective or subjective."  Following the abstract definition "... something is objectively true if it is true independently of what anyone thinks about it."  However, to apply this abstract "objective versus subjective" distinction we need an operational method to render it concrete.

Jason Rosenhouse makes the following argument:  "The point is that appealing to the consensus is just the best we can do when trying to distinguish what is objectively true from what is a subjective belief.  I see no reason why we cannot apply the same standard to discussions of morality."   Thus, by comparing the laws of different democratic countries we can find consistencies regarding what is deemed criminal and cite this consensus to establish an objectively moral baseline.

Obviously consensus is a flawed method of determining what is true.  Consensus has historically been wrong in the context of morality.  Therefore being moral entails rejecting the consensus when it fails the “don’t hurt people unnecessarily” standard underlying morality.  Since consensus is a flawed method for concretely applying the abstract principle, this result does not mean that morality as a principle lacks objectivity.  Instead it means that humans are, for a variety of reasons, imperfect in distinguishing what is moral from what is immoral.  

Furthermore, in the context of reaching a consensus there is also a question of commitment.  Lack of commitment plays some role in historical failures of the consensus to uphold morality, particularly when people perceive a conflict with their own self-interest.  Jason Rosenhouse briefly addresses the lack of commitment issue by acknowledging that commitment is where morality becomes more subjective.  He says "Moral assertions have to be defended on some basis, and in any system of reasoning something has to be taken as axiomatic."  Mr. Rosenhouse is correct.  His article is short so, if you have not done so yet and are interested and in this topic, go ahead and take a few minutes to read it.

Rules for making a valid argument

By Mathew Goldstein

The following five rules for making a valid argument are universally applicable.  I mention them here because they are too often not followed.*

• We are restricted to following the evidence and going only where it takes us.  The only proper way to justify our conclusions about how the universe functions is overall best fit with all of the available evidence.  Empirical evidence comes first, conclusions follow.
• We must accept our accumulated knowledge of the natural world. We are obligated to acknowledge the validity of scientific explanations because they are historically successful.  You don’t get to advance your hypothesis about how the universe works by throwing out accumulated human wisdom!
• We must accept that we don’t know anything about the nature of entities outside this universe. Deities and afterlives and the like are sometimes defined as existing outside human experience.  The proper adjective for imagined entities that have no basis in human experience is 'fictional'.
• To determine how the universe functions we need to look beyond what is going on inside someone's head by citing information that is universally accessible.  Human psychology is notoriously unreliable as a source of knowledge. When someone announces that they have knowledge of the mind of god, citing their personal interpretation of their personal experience, they are discussing their psychology.  
• We are obligated to define our factual assertions about how the universe functions clearly and unambiguously.  Karen Armstrong-style platitudes are empty noise. Insofar as “God is Love” says nothing discernible about how the universe functions it is literally a meaningless, throw-away phrase.

PZ Myers criticized Greta Christina for her recent article proposing 6 unlikely developments that could convince her to believe in God.  PZ Myers complained that Ebonmuse and Greta Christina are 'conceding too much' by engaging in 'what if' arguments to demonstrate the application of the first criteria for valid argument from the above list. PZ claims that the latter four criteria (his four criteria were defined somewhat differently, see his article http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2015/04/04/it-is-not-close-minded-to-demand-reasonable-kinds-of-evidence/) are prerequisites that theists can’t meet and therefore discussion should end there. I disagree. While it is arguably true that theists always fail to simultaneously meet all four of the other criteria simultaneously, those four criteria are corollaries of the first criteria. The insistence on starting with, and being dependent upon, empirical evidence is not secondary to the other criteria. Providing examples of how to apply the first criteria concedes only the supremacy of empirical evidence and is not rendered irrelevant or useless because theists fail to simultaneously meet all of the other four criteria.

* This list of debate rules was inspired by a recent public disagreement between bloggers Greta Christina and PZ Myers and borrows from what they wrote.

A Review of Liberty’s First Crisis: Adams, Jefferson, and the Misfits Who Saved Free Speech,

Liberty’s First Crisis: Adams, Jefferson, and the Misfits Who Saved Free Speech, by Charles Slack. Atlantic Monthly Press, 2015, 34o pp, $26.00.

a review by Edd Doerr

Freedom of speech, press, assembly and petition, like religious freedom  and church-state  separation, were/are intended to be protected by the First Amendment to our Constitution. However, in 1798, less than a decade after the Bill of Rights was adopted, the Federalist controlled Congress and President John Adams enacted the Sedition Act, which was immediately used to prosecute/persecute the slightest printed or spoken utterance that annoyed the Federalist establishment. Even a sitting member of Congress, gutsy Mathew Lyon of Vermont,  was subjected to a sort of Star Chamber trial and sent to prison while running for re-election, which he won big while behind bars. Public reaction to these alarming clampdowns on freedom of speech and press led to the crushing of the Federalists and John Adams in the 1800 elections and the rise of Jefferson and the “Republicans” ( or Democratic Republicans, not to be confused with today’s Republicans).

The whole story is beautifully laid out  in Charles Slack’s terrific new book, a “five star” opus that you just can’t put down.

Slack’s final chapter fast-forwards to an overview of today’s situation, both in the US and internationally. Even in the most advanced modern democracies freedom of expression is being burdened with a newly concocted “right not to be offended” that threatens the prior right. Slack concludes that the US stands virtually alone with its “Parchment Barrier” to safeguard the right to free expression, just short of “yelling Fire! in a crowded theater”. He sums up: “The Bill of Rights’ first great accomplishment was to formally declare rights off-limits to government meddling.” But, the author warns, there are still those in our country, some liberals as well as conservatives, who would tighten down on freedom of expression.  It’s too bad that our federal and state highest courts have of late shown inadequate devotion to the religious liberty portion of the First Amendment, but that is beyond the scope of this book.
Posted by Gary Berg-Cross

Appeal to lawmakers: Evaluate bills on strictly secular criteria

By Mathew Goldstein

Some people argue against implementing any aid in dying law on the grounds that any such law will disrespect the ideal of facing difficulties resolutely. Struggle and tragedy are a part of life.  Being resolute in confronting adversity is the proper approach to living well.  However, living with struggles and difficulties is not therefore a public policy goal to be protected by government laws.  Laws by themselves cannot eliminate all adversity.  But insofar as there are opportunities to implement laws that mitigate or reduce struggle and difficulties we should be favorably inclined to do so.  By implementing laws aimed at reducing suffering we are not challenging or disputing our responsibilities to resolutely confront the ongoing or occasional difficulties that we experience.

People who unconditionally oppose aid in dying laws tend to rely on secular language to avoid limiting the appeal of their argument to religious people.  Their talk of adverse "cultural" impact resembles a veil covering the religious motivation behind their opposition.  There is a dissonance between holding to the conviction that a benevolent God created humans in "His" image and accepting the notion that it is proper to legally authorize terminally ill people to voluntarily hasten their own deaths.  It is this dissonance with the religious beliefs that some lawmakers esteem, not any actual adverse cultural impact, that appears to motivate their unconditional opposition to aid in dying laws.

We all agree that people who are unconditionally opposed to hastening their own death should not do so.  We who are not theists harbor no illusions that humans have a transcendent purpose different from all other animals or that voluntary human self-hastening of death contradicts the desire of a deity.  There is no God imposing suffering on people to build their character, punish them for misdeeds, or qualify them for heaven.  A revised aid in dying bill may be introduced again in the Maryland General Assembly next year.  We appeal to Maryland lawmakers to make an effort to put aside any metaphysical qualms they may have and evaluate all proposed laws, including this one, strictly on secular criteria.