"Religion for medicinal purposes"

Several years ago (1997), Objectivist philosopher David Kelley in an interview explained his understanding of the cultural fault-lines in the U.S., framed in terms of how each faction relates to the Enlightenment.

I have to ask up front: Which Enlightenment? Some scholars argue that the Enlightenment had competing and conflicting schools of thought, mainly a radical school started by Spinoza and carried on to fruition by Holbach's Coterie in the mid 18th Century, which wanted to overturn religion and existing social hierarchies; and another school of the Enlightenment friendlier to religious ways of thinking and the established order which culminated in Voltaire and Rousseau. The principals involved understood the divisions at the time, as manifested by Rousseau's falling out with the Coterie despite his earlier friendship with Diderot and his invitations to Holbach's famous dinners; and the mutual suspicion between Voltaire, on the one side, and Holbach and Diderot, on the other.

Setting that aside for now, Kelley characterizes America's christian faction as "pre-Enlighenment," and says about it:

Navigator: What is the standing of the pre-Enlightenment subculture in America today?

Kelley: My best guess is that it encompasses about 40 to 45 percent of the population. And given those numbers, of course, it is politically influential. But looking to the long-term, I think the pre-Enlightenment view is the least influential of the subcultures, simply because it's a primitive world-view and tends not to attract intellectuals.

Navigator: But hasn't the pre-Enlightenment view gained a considerable number of educated and articulate spokesmen over the last fifty years, such as the neo-conservatives?

Kelley: I would say that, fundamentally, neo-conservativism is a reaction to the nihilism of the anti-Enlightenment. So long as the alternative is cast as "religion versus nihilism" some intelligent people will opt for religion and try to defend it. But the intellectual power and influence they exert will always be limited. The more they oppose the nihilistic anti-Enlightenment culture in the name of rationality and man's happiness, the more they make the Enlightenment case rather than the pre-Enlightenment case.

Navigator: Is this the paradox you call "religion for medicinal purposes"?

Kelley: Yes. I coined that term when I started to hear arguments like the following: Religion is important and good because religious people commit fewer crimes. Or: Religious people typically have children inside marriages. Or: Religious people don't go on welfare. In short: Religious people exhibit fewer of the social pathologies that people are worried about today. Sometimes, the argument went further still: Religious people are happier in their work, happier in their marriages, have better sex lives even, better health, lower blood pressure. And people have studies to demonstrate all these things.

What's interesting about this argument, as an argument, is what it does not say. It does not say God exists and you'll go to Hell if you don't do what He commands. It says you should believe in God and follow His commandments because it will benefit you and society in this world. In short, the people who make this argument-typically unphilosophical conservatives-have accepted our world view and are playing by our rules. And if we're aware of that, we can use it to our benefit, by showing how much better for you truly rational values and ideas are.

I interpret efforts to reframe the doctrine of hell, like Rob Bell's, as an example of what Kelley calls "religion for medicinal purposes." Christians like Bell, as Kelley says, apparently advocate that "you should believe in God and follow His commandments because it will benefit you and society in this world," with the added bonus of not having to worry about hell after death. *

Of America's "Enlightenment" subculture, Kelley engages in the Objectivists' habit of Ayn Rand superlativity (Rand did the best at everything!) by saying:

Navigator: Let's turn to the Enlightenment world view, which includes the Objectivist outlook. If you had to pick the person, now on the scene, who is the most articulate spokesman for the Enlightenment culture, who would it be?

Kelley: Well, you took away my prime choice by saying "now." Ayn Rand was the most articulate spokesman for the Enlightenment view, and Objectivism, as a philosophy, is the best embodiment of the Enlightenment view. So I would naturally look to Objectivists as the most articulate spokesmen, though we're not the best known. Beyond the Objectivist circle, there are people who are very good at articulating particular aspects of the Enlightenment culture. But I don't see any single spokesman for all of it.

Navigator: If you had to pick the biggest triumph of the Enlightenment culture during the last twenty-five years, what would it be?

Kelley: I would say that, over the last twenty-five years, the biggest triumph of the Enlightenment view is that people have grasped the concept of their own happiness as a real goal in life. You can see this in the emergence of the self-help industry. Here is a huge industry that hardly existed a generation ago. People today go to seminars, and take classes, and buy books, for no purpose except to be happier in their personal lives. Of course, a lot of it is garbage. There's a lot of self-indulgence, irrationality, and subjectivism involved. But the very fact that the self-help movement exists is a triumph for the individualist, Enlightenment outlook.

Politically, the triumph has been to stop the automatic growth of the state. And I'm afraid I must stress "automatic." The state's still growing. But at least new programs are not being started the way they once were. Moreover, there exists an active libertarian or classical liberal movement. So free market ideas are invoked explicitly to criticize government programs. Individual freedom, including economic freedom, is represented in the political arena. It's savaged in many ways, but it's taken seriously. Twenty-five years ago, to talk about privatizing the post office, or privatizing Social Security, or completely abolishing the FDA, would have been considered a sign of advanced dementia.

So, Kelley says, Enlightenment-oriented Americans seek earthly happiness (the subject of a lot of popular books lately), want limited government, and by implication also value reason, business success and material consumption. This seems largely compatible with the values of the Secular Right, and with mine. We just don't have a high status spokesperson to articulate our point of view against "anti-Enlightenment" intellectuals. (Kelley names Stanley Fish as an example of the latter, though I know little about him; I would propose someone more like James Lovelock, in the scientific community.)

The interview continues:

Navigator: How does the Enlightenment culture stand within the American culture at large? What percentage of the population does it encompass?

Kelley: That is very hard to estimate. In fact, I have had to approach the question by subtracting the percentages involved in the other two subcultures. But I would guess maybe 30 to 40 percent of Americans are basically pro-reason, pro-individualism, pro-freedom. If these people practice religion, it's not a major part of their lives and doesn't seriously get in the way of their pursuit of happiness in this world. If they are politically liberal, or at any rate not pro-capitalist, it is because of mistaken views of freedom rather than hostility to freedom as such.

Navigator: Would you say that the factors which make it difficult to estimate the size of the Enlightenment outlook undercut its influence?

Kelley: Absolutely. Because the Enlightenment outlook doesn't have an identity, people don't see it as a cause to fight for. They may feel embattled by other ideas. They may feel alienated by the anti-Enlightenment stuff coming out of Hollywood and out of the universities. They may feel bewildered by it. And towards the pre-Enlightenment view, they probably just feel contempt. But they have no sense of their own view as a distinctive outlook on the world and as something that needs to be defended.

I would like to see what mainstream social science has to say about Kelley's classification scheme. If an identifiable Enlightenment subculture in the U.S. exists, one, it could use some consciousness-raising to make people aware of its existence and understand the integrity of its ideas; and two, it forms the organic constituency for the kind of future many cryonicists want. We can also seek alliances with the members of the pre-Enlightenment subculture who advocate using "religion for medicinal purposes," because they come closer to our outlook than they realize.

I would just like to see the effort not focus on Ayn Rand, though I don't disparage the defensible ideas she did popularize. Who wants to take the lead in promoting America's Enlightenment tradition who also happens to sound sane and emotionally healthy?

*Speaking of Voltaire and hell:

Tu veux donc, belle Uranie,
Qu'érigé par ton ordre en Lucrèce nouveau,
Devant toi, d'une main hardie,
Aux superstitions j'arrache le bandeau;
Que j'expose à tes yeux le dangereux tableau
Des mensonges sacrés dont la terre est remplie,
Et que ma philosophie
T'apprenne à mépriser les horreurs du tombeau
Et les terreurs de l'autre vie.