Posted by Eugene Volokh:
Religious Arguments and the Possibility of Changing Minds:
http://volokh.com/archives/archive_2005_05_29-2005_06_04.shtml#1117647626
A reader writes:
The key step in explaining the difference between religiously and
secularly-motivated moral claims is almost reached in the excerpt
from your most recent correspondent, but he�s not quite there.
After your counterpoint about, �My gut feeling says X� being on no
firmer grounds than �My deity whom you don�t believe exists says
X,� there is another point open to the side endorsing the
principled difference between the religious and secular claims.
This point is that Rawlsian (or another variety, but I think most
are familiar with it from Rawls) reflective equilibrium is possible
between the gut feeling and an overarching ethical principle, and
may lead to the gut feeling changing (or to the principle being
dismissed). Reflective equilibrium is not, as far as I can tell,
possible between a deific decree and an overarching ethical
principle, because the deific decree cannot be reconsidered.
It seems to me that there are two problems here.
1. I don't see why people's arguments for laws somehow become
illegitimate -- or the laws enacted based on those arguments become
unconstitutional, as some argue -- simply because the people refuse to
reconsider their arguments. Many people are quite unwilling to
reconsider certain fundamental moral principles, for instance their
rejection of infanticide, slavery, rape, and the like.
Perhaps one can fault these people for not being sufficiently
reflective; perhaps all of us should be willing to challenge even our
deepest beliefs. But it seems to me that in a democracy, the obstinate
and unreflective are just as much entitled to enact their views into
law as those who are constantly reexamining their moral commitments
(even if the unreflective people, religious or secular, may be
properly faulted at times for being too self-confident about matters
on which they should have more humility.)
2. As best I can tell many people's religious beliefs are indeed
subject to reconsideration. Quite a few people change their religions,
or at least their denominations. Many others drift from more
literalist readings of their sacred texts to less literalist. Many
change their understandings of divine decrees, which in many instances
are quite ambiguous or incomplete. (As I understand it, Christian
views on abortion come from interpretation and inference, since the
Bible doesn't explicit focus on this.)
Many change their views about how much of their religious law should
be enacted into secular law. They sometimes change these views as a
result of deliberate reconsideration; and sometimes, as with secular
people, they change them because their intuitions and outlooks are
changed over time by new experiences. The process of reflective
equilibrium that my correspondent describes -- the process of one's
overarching philosophies affecting one's intuitions and vice versa --
psychologically operates for those religious people as well as for
secular ones. And, conversely, there are many secularists who are
quite rigid in their worldviews, uninterested in considering the
possibility that their understanding may be mistaken or incomplete,
and psychologically inclined to resist revising their views.
So this again reinforces my view that religious people are as entitled
to enact their religious views into law as secular people are entitled
to enact their secular moral views into law.
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