God and Man at the Air Force Academy

You've probably been following this story already. I, for one, find it very, very frightening.

Oddly enough, I've just been pondering how we might achieve more consensus in this country, and wondering whether people like me should soften our stance on the separation of church and state. It would be a violation of American principles to allow the Ten Commandments to be posted in the courthouse, but, I was thinking, it might not result in that much real, tangible harm. So maybe we should consider it, I was thinking...

Then a story like this comes along, and I'm reminded of the real dangers of mixing religion and government institutions. One thing we have to remember is that many religions, including many (especially conservative) flavors of Christianity, tend to be--intellectually speaking--especially aggressive and invasive. That is, their very nature impels them to try to expand their influence. They are in some respects the intellectual equivalent of kudzu. If you don't take active steps to keep them in check they simply WILL take over.

So for awhile I was thinking: O.k., maybe we allow the Ten Commandments in the courtroom (despite the bogus arguments in favor of it), keep 'In God We Trust' on the cash, permit organized prayer at football games, whatever. Many conservative Christians have somehow gotten it into their heads that the country is actively anti-Christian, and these things seem very important to them--and often seem not so important to me--so perhaps making these concessions would reassure them and let us all move on to more important issues. Sure, the message is clear in all those cases: you atheists aren't real Americans. But, what the heck? I'm a big boy. I could live with that.

But I was wrong. As James Madison pointed out, although having, e.g., a representation of Moses in the Supreme Court is not by itself a big deal, the real danger is that it could be used as a fulcrum by those who would try to force more religion into public life. He was, as usual, right on the mark; those who want to post the Ten Commandments in courtrooms frequently point to that representation of Moses (and to 'In God We Trust' on our money) as evidence that it's permissible to mix religion and government. They use these examples as beach heads from which to launch more significant attacks on American principles of government.

It really is true in this case that if we give an inch, they'll take a mile.

This puts us in an awkward position. If we fail to make a big deal out of seemingly insignificant issues, then we are greasing the rails for more religious intrusion into government. But if we do make a big deal out of such issues, we seem petty or churlish or anti-religious. So the trick, I suppose, is to adopt the latter strategy but make it abundantly clear at every point why we are doing what we are doing, and that it is NOT, in fact, because we are anti-religion.

Heck, atheist that I am, even I'm not particularly anti-religion, and have much more in common with intelligent, liberal religious types than I have with, say, the American Atheists or with certain unreflectively physicalistic/naturalistic scientists. In fact, more and more I think that it's fundamentalism in its various guises that's the problem, not religion per se. I expect, in fact, that there are many good things about many religions.

So long as they are kept out of government, anyway.