Barack Obama on Religion and the Public Square

Sen. Barack Obama recently gave a speech on how religion and politics mixes in the public square.
The whole thing is worth reading or listening to but the highlights for me were these statements:

...we first need to understand that Americans are a religious people. 90
percent of us believe in God, 70 percent affiliate themselves with an
organized religion, 38 percent call themselves committed Christians,
and substantially more people in America believe in angels than they do
in evolution.


This religious tendency is not simply the result of successful
marketing by skilled preachers or the draw of popular mega-churches. In
fact, it speaks to a hunger that's deeper than that - a hunger that
goes beyond any particular issue or cause.

In so far as Sen. Obama attributes people's religious tendencies to an innate hunger, I agree with him. Human beings are pattern seeking machines. It irritates the mind to ponder that there is no plan, no god, no afterlife. The culture that arises from humans coming together inevitably produces some form of explanation that answers the big meaning of life questions.

However, just because 90% or even 100% of people believe in a supernatural diety, doesn't make that diety exist. The fact that religious tendency exists does not make it an appropriate framework on which to set public policy. In fact -- creating public policy around religious tendency in the modern age is a recipe for disaster. Its far too easy to wage a crusade/jihad over issues not based in any factual reality.

They want a sense of purpose, a narrative arc to their lives. They're
looking to relieve a chronic loneliness, a feeling supported by a
recent study that shows Americans have fewer close friends and
confidants than ever before. And so they need an assurance that
somebody out there cares about them, is listening to them - that they
are not just destined to travel down that long highway towards
nothingness.


Just because someone likes it when sweet nothings are whispered into their ear, doesn't change the reality of their situation. The poor still wake up poor despite going to church, the sick are still
sick despite fervent prayer, and the dead contribute nothing towards the betterment of this world.

Faith is a seductive pathway which blinds many to things as they are. Faith causes people to translate their reality into a context which fits their framework. Hurricane destroyed your home? It was God will that you survived. Your child killed in Iraq? God works in mysterious ways. Trillions donated to charity, and people are still poor? Well the meek will inherit the Earth.

Faith creates a purposeful disconnect between cause and effect. If shit happens, then there is a higher plan. Reconciling religion within public policy is akin to re-introducing a cancerous growth into someone  whose body has not quite developed an immunity to it. The crutch that religion offers is itself the source of infection.

While I respect Sen. Obama and consider his thoughts well worth considering, in the end he is wrong.  People have a right to their opinion, but not to their own facts. Religion causes people to feel entitled to their own facts -- whether it be Creationism or 72 virgins. The inherent dissonance between reality and religion's perspective of reality will always cause conflict. This conflict is something which the public square can do without.