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The Secular Conscience: Why Belief Belongs in Public Life
From Washington to the Vatican to Tehran, religion is a public matter as never before, and secular values ― individual autonomy, pluralism, separation of religion and state, and freedom of conscience ― are attacked on all sides and defended by few. The godly claim a monopoly on the language of morality, while secular liberals stand accused of standing for nothing.Secular liberals did not lose their moral they gave it away. For generations, too many have insisted that questions of conscience ― religion, ethics, and values ― are "private matters" that have no place in public debate. Ironically, this ideology hinders them from subjecting religion to due scrutiny when it encroaches on individual rights and from unabashedly advocating their own moral vision in politics for fear of "imposing" their beliefs on others.In his incisive new book, philosopher Austin Dacey calls for a bold rethinking of the nature of conscience and its role in public life. Inspired by an earlier liberal tradition that he traces to Spinoza and John Stuart Mill, Dacey urges liberals to lift their self-imposed gag order and defend a renewed secularism based on the objective moral value of conscience.Dacey compares conscience to the press in an open it is protected from coercion and control, not because it is private, but because it has a vital role in the public sphere. It is free, but not liberated from shared standards of truth and right. It must come before any and all faiths, for it is what tells us whether or not to believe. In this way, conscience supplies a shared vocabulary for meaningful dialogue in a diverse society, and an ethical lingua franca in which to address the world.
269 pages, Hardcover
First published March 1, 2008
7 people are currently reading
273 people want to read
About the author
Austin Dacey
4 books10 followers"Austin Dacey is a philosopher who writes on the intersection of science, religion, and ethics.
He serves as a respresentative to the United Nations for the Center for Inquiry, a think tank concerned with the secular, scientific outlook. He is also on the editorial staff of Skeptical Inquirer and Free Inquiry magazines. His writings have appeared in numerous publications including the New York Times, USA Today, and Science."
"Austin Dacey is a writer and human rights advocate based in New York City. His writings have appeared in numerous publications including the New York Times, USA Today, and Science. In 2008 he released The Secular Conscience: Why Belief Belongs in Public Life. Arguing for the central role of conscience in political and moral discourse, the book "lifted quite a few eyebrows" according to the New York Times. Embraced by figures as diverse as Sam Harris and Father Richard John Neuhaus, The Secular Conscience was noted in North American, European, and Arabic media, and called "timely and important" by Asharq Alawsat.
As United Nations representative for the Center for Inquiry, Austin Dacey has participated in international debates regarding freedom of expression, religion, and the "dialogue among civilizations," speaking before the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva and other fora. In 2007 he helped to organize the Secular Islam Summit. He holds a doctorate in applied ethics and social philosophy and has taught most recently at Polytechnic Institute of New York University."
He serves as a respresentative to the United Nations for the Center for Inquiry, a think tank concerned with the secular, scientific outlook. He is also on the editorial staff of Skeptical Inquirer and Free Inquiry magazines. His writings have appeared in numerous publications including the New York Times, USA Today, and Science."
"Austin Dacey is a writer and human rights advocate based in New York City. His writings have appeared in numerous publications including the New York Times, USA Today, and Science. In 2008 he released The Secular Conscience: Why Belief Belongs in Public Life. Arguing for the central role of conscience in political and moral discourse, the book "lifted quite a few eyebrows" according to the New York Times. Embraced by figures as diverse as Sam Harris and Father Richard John Neuhaus, The Secular Conscience was noted in North American, European, and Arabic media, and called "timely and important" by Asharq Alawsat.
As United Nations representative for the Center for Inquiry, Austin Dacey has participated in international debates regarding freedom of expression, religion, and the "dialogue among civilizations," speaking before the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva and other fora. In 2007 he helped to organize the Secular Islam Summit. He holds a doctorate in applied ethics and social philosophy and has taught most recently at Polytechnic Institute of New York University."
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January 7, 2009
This book is pretty heavy in its philosophy for a general readership, but worth the slog. Dacey argues that the problem with modern secular liberalism stems from what he calls the Liberty Fallacy: that because matters of conscience are matters of individual Liberty, they’re also not open to question or criticism. This fallacy results in ethical waffling and a reluctance to criticize ideas from other cultures.
By contrast, Dacey argues that religious belief is private, but conscience must be open and up to debate. He weaves a long and interesting discussion of the issue, exploring the way that open societies have fostered respect for human beings and a separation of church and state, and that closed societies often violate those two elements. He also suggests that regardless of personal reasons, public debate ought to function from a consequentialist perspective, namely that discussions about ethics and morals should focus on the human impact of those decisions. He argues for an ethics of the golden rule.
Two interesting things emerge at the end of the book.The second to last chapter is a warning call to Europe, particularly, about fundamentalist Islam. Dacey argues that in refusing to debate conscience decisions made due to religious reasons, secular liberals are giving away their culture. He suggests that fundamentalist religious countries are railing against secularism, and Europe doesn’t get it.
The secular, open society has met its antithesis. It comes in many forms: Salafist jihad, clerical totalitarianism, the rule of sharia law. What unites them is the willing sacrifice of freedom and human rights before a sacred order and their dependence on Islam for their existence. And yet there are millions of secular liberal Muslims, and potential alternative interpretations of the faith abound. One would think that secular liberals would be at the center of this struggle. Instead, reluctant to “impose” their values on others, fearful of the taint of American imperialism, most are submerged into silence. The result? Public discussion of Islam tends to veer between chauvinistic denunciations by conservative Christians … and useless overgeneralizations by politicians. Words are liberals’ first weapon of choice. Unfortunately, they now find themselves facing something they’ve sworn they not to talk about–religion. If it is to rise to the historical moment and engage with both faces of Islam, secular liberalism needs a new self-understanding. (185)
And then, in Chapter 11, he cites Open Source as a key model for modern knowledge generation. Ha!
The traditional model of conscience is a mirror of revelation. Not a voice from an angel in a cave or a burning bush, but a revelation from within, a “still, small voice.” But from where? In the picture of conscience developed in this book, the model is not a revelation but a network. The network of open source ethics is a public, collaborative and critical enterprise that builds up a storehouse of shareable answers to challenges faced by a community. The sound of conscience is the clamor of conversation, not the eerie whisper of revelation.(202)
And finally:
If secular liberalism is to continue to stand for reason and freedom, the separation of religion and state, personal autonomy, equality, toleration, and self-criticism, secular liberals must stand up for these values in public debate. This means returning conscience to its proper place at the heart of secular liberalism. Matters of conscience–including religion and values–are open. Like the sciences and open source methods, they are fit subjects of public discussion, they are guided by shared, objective, evaluative standards, and they are revisable in light of future experience. The point of open, secular society is not to privatize or bracket questions of conscience, but to pursue them in conversation with others. Like a free press, conscience is freed from coercion so that it may perform a vital public function: reasoning together about questions of meaning, identity, and value. (209-210).
I give this four out of five stars because it's pretty dense, and might be a slog for the casual reader.
By contrast, Dacey argues that religious belief is private, but conscience must be open and up to debate. He weaves a long and interesting discussion of the issue, exploring the way that open societies have fostered respect for human beings and a separation of church and state, and that closed societies often violate those two elements. He also suggests that regardless of personal reasons, public debate ought to function from a consequentialist perspective, namely that discussions about ethics and morals should focus on the human impact of those decisions. He argues for an ethics of the golden rule.
Two interesting things emerge at the end of the book.The second to last chapter is a warning call to Europe, particularly, about fundamentalist Islam. Dacey argues that in refusing to debate conscience decisions made due to religious reasons, secular liberals are giving away their culture. He suggests that fundamentalist religious countries are railing against secularism, and Europe doesn’t get it.
The secular, open society has met its antithesis. It comes in many forms: Salafist jihad, clerical totalitarianism, the rule of sharia law. What unites them is the willing sacrifice of freedom and human rights before a sacred order and their dependence on Islam for their existence. And yet there are millions of secular liberal Muslims, and potential alternative interpretations of the faith abound. One would think that secular liberals would be at the center of this struggle. Instead, reluctant to “impose” their values on others, fearful of the taint of American imperialism, most are submerged into silence. The result? Public discussion of Islam tends to veer between chauvinistic denunciations by conservative Christians … and useless overgeneralizations by politicians. Words are liberals’ first weapon of choice. Unfortunately, they now find themselves facing something they’ve sworn they not to talk about–religion. If it is to rise to the historical moment and engage with both faces of Islam, secular liberalism needs a new self-understanding. (185)
And then, in Chapter 11, he cites Open Source as a key model for modern knowledge generation. Ha!
The traditional model of conscience is a mirror of revelation. Not a voice from an angel in a cave or a burning bush, but a revelation from within, a “still, small voice.” But from where? In the picture of conscience developed in this book, the model is not a revelation but a network. The network of open source ethics is a public, collaborative and critical enterprise that builds up a storehouse of shareable answers to challenges faced by a community. The sound of conscience is the clamor of conversation, not the eerie whisper of revelation.(202)
And finally:
If secular liberalism is to continue to stand for reason and freedom, the separation of religion and state, personal autonomy, equality, toleration, and self-criticism, secular liberals must stand up for these values in public debate. This means returning conscience to its proper place at the heart of secular liberalism. Matters of conscience–including religion and values–are open. Like the sciences and open source methods, they are fit subjects of public discussion, they are guided by shared, objective, evaluative standards, and they are revisable in light of future experience. The point of open, secular society is not to privatize or bracket questions of conscience, but to pursue them in conversation with others. Like a free press, conscience is freed from coercion so that it may perform a vital public function: reasoning together about questions of meaning, identity, and value. (209-210).
I give this four out of five stars because it's pretty dense, and might be a slog for the casual reader.
June 3, 2024
A PROPOSAL FOR A RENEWED “SECULAR ETHICS” IN SOCIETY
Author Austin Dacey wrote in the Introduction to this 2008 book, “Secular liberalism is in disarray. Abroad, the confrontation with Islamic totalitarianism shakes the complacency of the open society. At home, liberals are soul searching. This book attempts to show how they can reclaim the language of meaning, morality, and value in the culture wars at home and in the struggle for toleration abroad. They must remove the gag order on ethics, values, and religion in public debate; hold religious claims accountable to public criticism; rediscover the secular moral conscience; and advance a moral case for their values of personal autonomy, equality, toleration, self-criticism, and well-being… secular liberals… could subject religion to due public scrutiny when it encroaches on politics. Just as important, they can advance their own positive moral vision in public affairs without fear of ‘imposing’ their beliefs on others. By embracing the open, public role of conscience, secularists could rededicate themselves to the future of their tradition.” (Pg. 21)
He explains, “Because ‘private’ is equated with ‘personal’ and ‘subjective,’ questions of conscience were placed out of bounds of serious critical evaluation… If conscience is beyond criticism, however, liberals cannot subject religion to dur public scrutiny when it encroaches on society. The result: in public discourse it is [not] acceptable to … ask obvious policy questions such as whether faith-based social programs are actually proven more effective than secular alternatives… Call this liberal confusion the Privacy Fallacy… This confusion begins in … thinking that because conscience is free from coercion, it must be free from criticism, reason, truth, or independent, objective standards of right and wrong… This is the Liberty Fallacy.” (Pg. 14-15)
He points out, “Some say that those who sincerely seek God with an open heart will find him, and that closed hearts explain why experiences of God are not as widely and reliably distributed among people as experiences of rocks, trees, and Volkswagens. But wouldn’t those with closed hearts be precisely those most in need of an experience of God? Why would he leave them, of all people in the dark?... But we don’t know what constitutes a hardened heart, except that it tends to block the experience of God… The last, desperate attempt to explain why God is absent from experience supposes that God has his reasons for remaining mysterious that our miniscule nerve cells just cannot grasp.. In an open society, religion is private and free like this: it is none of the government’s business. However, it does not follow that religious belief is … immune from scrutiny by others. Freedom from coercion does not entail freedom from reason. Text-based faiths are inherently open to the public…” (Pg. 95-96)
He states, “the fine-tuning of the universe would imply theism only if we knew that the life-permitting values of the fundamental constants are brute facts that won’t be explained by any deeper physical laws. However, there is no consensus in physics about this… It is simply too soon to say what the naturalistic, nontheistic explanation of cosmic fine-tuning might be. Meanwhile, it would be folly to base a sweeping metaphysical conclusion on a highly speculative, unfinished frontier of advancing science… The point is that, no matter what the ultimate conclusion, religion and science are in conversation. That would not be possible if religion were shuttered from objective investigation altogether.” (Pg. 102-103)
He observes, “What Would Jesus Do? is a good question. But a more important question is, WHY would he do it?... It was… Socrates who, in Plato’s telling of his dialogue with Euthyphro… [where] Euthyphro defines holiness as what is loved by the god. To this Socrates responds with his all-time best question: is it holy because it is loved by the gods, or do the gods love it because it is holy? Neither answer to the question… looks inviting to the religious moralist. If holiness if just whatever the gods love, then the gods’ evaluation appears arbitrary of subjective. If, on the other hand, holiness is loved because it is holy, then the gods’ evaluation appears superfluous.” (Pg. 142-143)
He outlines, “There … is the question of MORAL MOTIVATION: can you be a good person and decent citizen without belief in God or supernatural religion? I have … suggested that love unaided is enough to give us reasons to consider the interests of our neighbor. The most generous philanthropists… in the history of the world have been secular, freethinking people.” (Pg. 148)
He summarizes, “the point of the open secular society is not to privatize or bracket questions of conscience, but to pursue them in conversation with others… Religious institutions ought to be private, but the religious conscience is not. The Privacy Fallacy must be abandoned. Sectarian reasons cannot be barred from public debate; they must be held to the same critical conversational standards as all serious contributions to public debate. Religion inevitably makes truth-claims that are susceptible to examination and evaluation by others and continuous at many points with the sciences… So-called religious experience is not a reliable guide to truth… Faith cannot escape the judgment of reason.” (Pg. 210)
He concludes, “Secular ethics begins with the reality of love, the desire for the good of the other for the sake of the other… The value of well-being is real. It is constituted by facts about human nature and the world, and without these facts we cannot explain our desires, regrets, and reasons. Your good gives you reasons… Secular liberals aren’t skeptics about ethics. The real skeptics about ethics are those who think that human beings are incapable of fairness, responsibility, care, and compassion without divine enforcement. In politics, a renewed secular liberalism that embraces conscience can do justice to the religious and moral convictions of the citizens of pluralistic democracies… It places on affirmer footing the traditional liberal commitment to freedom of conscience… Conscience is what unites thinking persons and free peoples across ethnic, national, and creedal lines, and in its unfolding through public conversation, our moral lives are measured out. Conscience cannot be found in duty to God, for it is conscience that must judge where one’s duty lies, and so the faithful cannot hold a monopoly on morality. Before any of us is a member of the Body of Christ, the Umma, or the Chosen People, we are all members of the community of conscience, the people who must choose for themselves.” (Pg. 211)
This book will interest those looking for philosophical analyses of secular ethics, as opposed to religious ethics.
Author Austin Dacey wrote in the Introduction to this 2008 book, “Secular liberalism is in disarray. Abroad, the confrontation with Islamic totalitarianism shakes the complacency of the open society. At home, liberals are soul searching. This book attempts to show how they can reclaim the language of meaning, morality, and value in the culture wars at home and in the struggle for toleration abroad. They must remove the gag order on ethics, values, and religion in public debate; hold religious claims accountable to public criticism; rediscover the secular moral conscience; and advance a moral case for their values of personal autonomy, equality, toleration, self-criticism, and well-being… secular liberals… could subject religion to due public scrutiny when it encroaches on politics. Just as important, they can advance their own positive moral vision in public affairs without fear of ‘imposing’ their beliefs on others. By embracing the open, public role of conscience, secularists could rededicate themselves to the future of their tradition.” (Pg. 21)
He explains, “Because ‘private’ is equated with ‘personal’ and ‘subjective,’ questions of conscience were placed out of bounds of serious critical evaluation… If conscience is beyond criticism, however, liberals cannot subject religion to dur public scrutiny when it encroaches on society. The result: in public discourse it is [not] acceptable to … ask obvious policy questions such as whether faith-based social programs are actually proven more effective than secular alternatives… Call this liberal confusion the Privacy Fallacy… This confusion begins in … thinking that because conscience is free from coercion, it must be free from criticism, reason, truth, or independent, objective standards of right and wrong… This is the Liberty Fallacy.” (Pg. 14-15)
He points out, “Some say that those who sincerely seek God with an open heart will find him, and that closed hearts explain why experiences of God are not as widely and reliably distributed among people as experiences of rocks, trees, and Volkswagens. But wouldn’t those with closed hearts be precisely those most in need of an experience of God? Why would he leave them, of all people in the dark?... But we don’t know what constitutes a hardened heart, except that it tends to block the experience of God… The last, desperate attempt to explain why God is absent from experience supposes that God has his reasons for remaining mysterious that our miniscule nerve cells just cannot grasp.. In an open society, religion is private and free like this: it is none of the government’s business. However, it does not follow that religious belief is … immune from scrutiny by others. Freedom from coercion does not entail freedom from reason. Text-based faiths are inherently open to the public…” (Pg. 95-96)
He states, “the fine-tuning of the universe would imply theism only if we knew that the life-permitting values of the fundamental constants are brute facts that won’t be explained by any deeper physical laws. However, there is no consensus in physics about this… It is simply too soon to say what the naturalistic, nontheistic explanation of cosmic fine-tuning might be. Meanwhile, it would be folly to base a sweeping metaphysical conclusion on a highly speculative, unfinished frontier of advancing science… The point is that, no matter what the ultimate conclusion, religion and science are in conversation. That would not be possible if religion were shuttered from objective investigation altogether.” (Pg. 102-103)
He observes, “What Would Jesus Do? is a good question. But a more important question is, WHY would he do it?... It was… Socrates who, in Plato’s telling of his dialogue with Euthyphro… [where] Euthyphro defines holiness as what is loved by the god. To this Socrates responds with his all-time best question: is it holy because it is loved by the gods, or do the gods love it because it is holy? Neither answer to the question… looks inviting to the religious moralist. If holiness if just whatever the gods love, then the gods’ evaluation appears arbitrary of subjective. If, on the other hand, holiness is loved because it is holy, then the gods’ evaluation appears superfluous.” (Pg. 142-143)
He outlines, “There … is the question of MORAL MOTIVATION: can you be a good person and decent citizen without belief in God or supernatural religion? I have … suggested that love unaided is enough to give us reasons to consider the interests of our neighbor. The most generous philanthropists… in the history of the world have been secular, freethinking people.” (Pg. 148)
He summarizes, “the point of the open secular society is not to privatize or bracket questions of conscience, but to pursue them in conversation with others… Religious institutions ought to be private, but the religious conscience is not. The Privacy Fallacy must be abandoned. Sectarian reasons cannot be barred from public debate; they must be held to the same critical conversational standards as all serious contributions to public debate. Religion inevitably makes truth-claims that are susceptible to examination and evaluation by others and continuous at many points with the sciences… So-called religious experience is not a reliable guide to truth… Faith cannot escape the judgment of reason.” (Pg. 210)
He concludes, “Secular ethics begins with the reality of love, the desire for the good of the other for the sake of the other… The value of well-being is real. It is constituted by facts about human nature and the world, and without these facts we cannot explain our desires, regrets, and reasons. Your good gives you reasons… Secular liberals aren’t skeptics about ethics. The real skeptics about ethics are those who think that human beings are incapable of fairness, responsibility, care, and compassion without divine enforcement. In politics, a renewed secular liberalism that embraces conscience can do justice to the religious and moral convictions of the citizens of pluralistic democracies… It places on affirmer footing the traditional liberal commitment to freedom of conscience… Conscience is what unites thinking persons and free peoples across ethnic, national, and creedal lines, and in its unfolding through public conversation, our moral lives are measured out. Conscience cannot be found in duty to God, for it is conscience that must judge where one’s duty lies, and so the faithful cannot hold a monopoly on morality. Before any of us is a member of the Body of Christ, the Umma, or the Chosen People, we are all members of the community of conscience, the people who must choose for themselves.” (Pg. 211)
This book will interest those looking for philosophical analyses of secular ethics, as opposed to religious ethics.
October 4, 2009
I'm giving this book a 3 as an average score; some parts are pretty good and worth reading (ex, the chapter "original virtue"), and others are not.
February 21, 2016
There are a number of intelligent and thoughtful people in the western world who state as a matter fact, that our laws are grounded in the Judeo-Christian tradition. President Obama wrote in "The Audacity of Hope", "Our law is by definition a codification of morality, much of it grounded in the Judeo-Christian tradition."
The suggestion in most such statements is that the basis of the underlying morality and justness of our laws is its Judeo-Christian origins. Austin Dacey does a fine job of arguing instead that our law are just and moral despite the Judeo-Christian traditions. Women's rights, abolitionism, tolerance of minority religions are only three of many movements that have their origins in secular thought.
In "The Secular Conscience", the author argues that the origin of the whole set up of a state apparatus that protects individual rights is to secure their well-being and actually prevent the interference of Judeo-Christian religiosity in our private lives.
The book was a slow read, with a number of very dense and re-readable paragraphs - all the more reason to put this in the category of a "must read" for your run-of-the-mill secular athiests out there. (I am sorry - my only reading recommendation for all you people overflowing with religiosity is The Bible). The bonus for me was that I was led to another interesting book in the copious references and bibliography listed in the book. Now if I only had more time....
The suggestion in most such statements is that the basis of the underlying morality and justness of our laws is its Judeo-Christian origins. Austin Dacey does a fine job of arguing instead that our law are just and moral despite the Judeo-Christian traditions. Women's rights, abolitionism, tolerance of minority religions are only three of many movements that have their origins in secular thought.
In "The Secular Conscience", the author argues that the origin of the whole set up of a state apparatus that protects individual rights is to secure their well-being and actually prevent the interference of Judeo-Christian religiosity in our private lives.
The book was a slow read, with a number of very dense and re-readable paragraphs - all the more reason to put this in the category of a "must read" for your run-of-the-mill secular athiests out there. (I am sorry - my only reading recommendation for all you people overflowing with religiosity is The Bible). The bonus for me was that I was led to another interesting book in the copious references and bibliography listed in the book. Now if I only had more time....
June 18, 2008
As a society, we need to debate issues of conscience and morality. Dacey's subtitle, Why Belief Belongs in Public Life, suggests that everyone's opinions (both believers and nonbelievers) should be heard in the public square. However, everyone's beliefs and values should also be debated vigorously in the public square. You can to bring your religious values to the debate, but be prepared to defend them according to the usual standards: "honesty, rationality, consistency, evidence, feasibility, legality, morality, and revisability."
March 20, 2015
Lots of good thoughts in the book, plenty to get you thinking. Wasn't always impressed with the flow of the writing, and the last few chapters just felt like previous essays he'd written and tacked on. Overall good!
August 21, 2008
I appreciate that Darcy is neither a dogmatic naturalist nor a credulous mystic.
Want to read
April 15, 2009I like this guy. I was listening to this interview with him:
The Soul of Secularism with Austin Dacey
The Soul of Secularism with Austin Dacey
February 24, 2010
Please keep writing Mr. Dacey. This was a must read for me and picqued my interest in the intersection of religion and politics.
October 21, 2009
A great thesis but poorly written.
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews