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From the publication of the Origin, Darwin enthusiasts have been building a kind of secular religion based on its ideas, particularly on the dark world without ultimate meaning implied by the central mechanism of natural selection.

The post Darwinism as religion: what literature tells us about evolution appeared first on OUPblog.

In France today, pork has become political. A series of conservative mayors have in recent months deliberately withdrawn the pork-free option from school lunch menus. Advocates of the policy claim to be the true defenders of laïcité, the French secular principle that demands neutrality towards religion in public space.

The post Secularism and sausages appeared first on OUPblog.

Throughout much of the last century, the idea that we inhabit a somehow disenchanted modernity has exerted a powerful hold in political and public debate. As the political theorist Jane Bennett argues, the story is that there was once a time when God acted in human affairs and when social life, characterized by face-to-face relations, was richer; but this world then ‘gave way to forces of scientific and instrumental rationality, secularism, individualism, and the bureaucratic state – all of which, combined, disenchant the world’.

The post For the love of reason appeared first on OUPblog.

Since the 17th century Western thinkers have struggled with the problem of how to stop conflicts over religious differences. Not long ago, we mostly thought that the problem had been solved. Two rather different solutions served widely as paradigms, with many variations. One was the American Separation of Church and State, and the other French laïcité, usually if misleadingly translated as “secularism”.

The post Separating Church and State appeared first on OUPblog.

Pope Francis’ recent encyclical, Laudato Si, will be surrounded for some time by intense debate among and between journalists, columnists, Catholic journals, political leaders, and environmentally-focused scientists and NGOs. In other words, the fight over how it’s received is well underway. In the 125 years or so that papal social encyclicals have been written, their reception has been hotly debated, with the most infamous such episode occurring in the pages of the National Review.

The post Receiving “Laudato Si”: will Pope Francis be heard? appeared first on OUPblog.

Lynn Davidman, author of Becoming Un-Orthodox: Stories of Ex-Hasidic Jews, not only interviewed former Orthodox Jews for her book; she was a former Modern Orthodox herself. Davidman answered some questions for us about her experience leaving Orthodox Judaism and how it informed her research.

Aside from being the topic of your book, you also became un-Orthodox, and in fact were disowned from your family. How did your own experience becoming un-Orthodox inform your writing?

My own experiences of leaving Orthodoxy informed this book every step along the way. I had been reading and learning about self-reflexivity before I began this project, and I tried to be self-reflexive in every stage of the research, beginning with conceiving this study (which came out of my gut, reflecting my desire to learn about people’s similar—although also different—experiences in leaving). I analyzed my stance in relation to this book and wrote about it within the book. I felt strongly that readers needed to know “where I was coming from” to help them better assess the quality of my analysis. I also described some of my experiences throughout the book, I think a bit in each chapter; because I think it is a much more honest approach and because I think readers are interested in learning about the author and her life.

How did your own experience leaving Orthodox Judaism compare to those you write about?

My own experiences leaving Orthodox Judaism were in many ways easier (despite being disowned). Modern Orthodox Jews engage with the secular world; their philosophy is following Torah and being a person in the world. So, as a Modern Orthodox, I grew up knowing about the secular world of movies, television, plays, etc. I went to a university, which helped me leave, and when I left I knew I could manage well in the secular world.

In contrast, the Hasidic defectors did not know much about the secular world. They grew up speaking Yiddish, and newspapers, television, and other forms of secular media were banned from their homes. They grew up in a community in which they were encapsulated physically, socially, and ideologically. They were taught that non-Jews are threatening and that many of them were like animals. So they were terrified of leaving: they did not have the education needed to find jobs to support themselves in the secular world; they had no idea how to find an apartment, or how to finance it; the men spoke Yiddish and poor English. So they had a lot more cultural learning to do in order to leave than I had. Also they had to “disinscribe” the Haredi markers from their bodies—learn to dress differently (putting on pants was a big deal for the women) and comport themselves in a more open way.

Did any interviews surprise you? If so, what was it that surprised you?

One aspect of my interviews that surprised me is that none of the people I spoke to were fully cut off from their families as I had been. I expected I would find other defectors (than me) had been cut off from their families. Some remained quite distant or not in contact with their families for a few years, but usually became reconnected after the passage of time… or when a grandchild was born. Some, though, have very poor and painful relationships with their families, speaking of emotional distance and pain.

I was also surprised by the sheer amount of abuse—physical, sexual, and emotional—I heard in the stories. One woman knew from childhood that her mother simply did not like her and she still does not get along with her; she told me others (such as a doctor or a relative) could clearly tell her mother disliked her intensely. The stories of sexual abuse were so sad to talk about and many exclaimed about the irony of the abusers being part of a very religious community where they are supposed to be pious.

What do you hope readers will take away from the book?

For one, I want them to take away an understanding of the body as central to all social interaction and institutions. I would like them to see how embodiment is not one aspect of a person but the fundamental ground of everyone’s being. I have a fantasy they will come away understanding we need to reverse Descartes: I think therefore I am and instead have it as “I am therefore I think.”

I hope readers will understand both the uniqueness of Haredi life, and the similarities between defectors and others who change their identities through the medium of the body such as LGBTQ people.

I want to complicate the common sense assumption that all Orthodox Jews are alike.

A deeper understanding of how the perspective of the author shapes written work: both books and articles. I would like them to understand there is no “objectivity” in social science research and therefore the more the author reveals about her perspective, the better they are able to judge the quality of the work.

The post Leaving Orthodox Judaism: A Q&A with Lynn Davidman appeared first on OUPblog.

        

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By John McCormick

Few times have been worse than the present to say anything good about the European Union (EU). It has faced many crises over the years, but none have been as serious as the current problems in the eurozone. Since news first broke of the difficulties in Greece in late 2009, pundits and political leaders have been falling over themselves in their efforts to ratchet up the language of doom and gloom. Under the circumstance, euro-optimists might be well-advised to lay low, and certainly they seem hard to find at the moment.

And yet this is the very time to remind ourselves of the achievements of the EU, because if we are to make sensible choices about where we go from here, we will need to have a clear idea of both its successes and its failures. Whatever happens to the euro, the EU is obviously on the brink of some major changes, generated not just by its immediate problems but also by some broader political and philosophical questions about the meaning and purposes of the European project.

Critics have focused on numerous themes in their recent attacks on the EU, among which is the recurring question of just what it means to be European. The EU is regularly accused of lacking clear purpose, and conventional wisdom suggests that Europeans have too little in common to weather the crises. After decades of convergence, we are now often told that Europeans are moving apart, with a growing backlash against European integration and – more specifically – a right-wing reaction against immigration, and talk of the failure of multiculturalism.

In truth, however, Europeans have a great deal in common , but they are often the last to realize this because they are repeatedly told about their differences, and the EU is repeatedly castigated for its lack of leadership and its failure to make a mark as an actor in the international system. The result is that many can no longer see the wood for the trees. It is only when we compare the European experience with that of other parts of the world that the patterns begin to emerge.

One of the clearest examples of Europeanism (if we understand this term as meaning the distinctive set of values and preferences that drive choices and preferences in Europe) is its secularism. Where support for organized religion is growing in almost every other part of the world, in Europe it is declining, and this is impacting the way Europeans think about politics, science, social relations, and moral questions.

Another example is offered by the redefinition of the role of states. It was in Europe that the Westphalian state system was born, and yet Europeans since the end of the Second World War have been reviewing their association with states: more are thinking of themselves as Europeans, while identity with nations has been growing. Meanwhile, Europeans have been rejecting traditional notions of patriotism, which – thanks to its long association with nationalism – has a bad reputation in Europe.

On the international front, the Europeanist model is notable for its support of civilian over military means for dealing with threats to security, its support for multilateralism over unilateralism, a

By Nathan Schneider Not long after his return from Cairo, where he was doing fieldwork, I spoke with Talal Asad at the City University of New York’s Graduate Center, where he is Distinguished Professor of Anthropology. Distinguished indeed: with books like Genealogies of Religion and Formations of the Secular, as well as numerous articles, Asad’s work has been formative for current scholarly conversation about religion and secularity, stressing both

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By George Levine

How could Darwin still be controversial?  We do not worry a lot about Isaac Newton, nor even about Albert Einstein, whose ideas have been among the powerful shapers of modern Western culture.   Yet for many people, undisturbed by the law of gravity or by the theories of relativity that, I would venture, 99% of us don’t really understand, Darwin remains darkly threatening.  One of the great figures in the history of Western thought, he was respectable and revered enough even in his own time to be buried in Westminster Abbey, of all places.  He supported his local church; he was a Justice of the Peace; and he never was photographed as a working scientist, only as a gentleman and a family man.  Yet a significant proportion of people in the English-speaking world vociferously do not “believe” in him.

Darwin is resisted not because he was wrong but because his ideas apply not only to the ants, and bees, and birds, and anthropoids, but to us.  His theory is scary to many people because it seems to them it lessens our dignity and deprives our ethics of a foundation.  The problem, of course, is that, like the theories of gravity and relativity, it is true.    

At the heart of this very strange phenomenon there is a fundamental crisis of secularism.  Secularism is not simply disbelief; it is not equivalent to atheism.  Many supporters of secularism, like the distinguished Catholic philosopher, Charles Taylor, are believers.  The most important aspect of secularism is that it is a condition of peaceful coexistence of otherwise antithetical faiths.   In a secular state, diverse religions must agree that on matters of civil order and organization there is an institution to which they will all defer in what Taylor has described as “overlapping consensus.”  They may disagree about God but they have to agree that in civil society they will adhere to the laws of the country. 

But what happens when the overlapping consensus doesn’t overlap?  This brings us to a very complicated problem: the authority of the specialist.  In a democratic society, it is the responsibility of each of us to stay informed on issues that matter to the polity, and to make judgments, usually through established institutions, school boards, for example, or national elections.  At the same time, our society usually sanctions the training of professionals, and forces them to undergo rigorous training, tests them to be sure of their qualifications.

Within professions, there will inevitably be learned and crucial squabbling and exploration, and new theories piled on top of old ones, or revising them.  But these squabbles are part of what it is to be professional and they rarely reach the ears of the lay population.  When science as an institution sanctions evolutionary theory (and squabbles about how it works), and its most distinguished practitioners insist that evolution is the foundation of all modern biology and by way of that theory make ever expanding discoveries about our health, a significant portion of the population accuse them of mere prejudice against doubters.   People insist they don’t “believe” in Darwin, when they haven’t read him, don’t understand the theory to which they object, and seem unaware that evolutionary biology, though perhaps founded on Darwin, has long since made the nature of Darwin’s belief irrelevant to the validity of modern science.

Imagine a scientific community that allowed published papers to be reviewed by lay people, or simply published them without being reviewed by experts in the field.  Imagine if The New England Journal of Medicine, or Nature, accepted papers which had not produced adequate evidence to make their cases, or distorted and misrepresented the evidence.  Would that be a reasonable and democratic openi