After leaving the hospital shortly after eight, leaving Peter cheerfully delving into David’s offerings, the four friends made for Pat’s Tavern. To the surprise of absolutely no one, they found Jason and Nate there before them, so they pulled up a few more chairs and settled in. Sunday evening was not as crowded as Saturdays, but there were still quite a few customers. Bryce went up to the bar to get the drinks, rather than waiting for a waitress to come around. As it happened, the proprietor, Pat Flaherty, was the one to ask for Bryce’s order. As Pat poured four drafts, Bryce asked, “See any more of Campbell or Lomax?”
“No, and I hope I never do,” Pat replied. “But they’re still causing me trouble. Their lawyer, Ed Cuttlesworth, served me a summons to answer for kicking them out,” Pat worried.
“If I were you, I’d call Mark Castleman. Do you know him?” Bryce asked.
“Only by reputation. But I think he might be more expensive than I can afford,” Pat said.
“He’s involved in defending the students who were unjustly suspended this past week.”
“Oh, I read about that in the paper. So Mr. Castleman is involved, is he?” Pat enquired.
“Yes. So’s my dad, but he’s in Lincoln, in Nebraska, and a third lawyer from Ohio. It seems there’s a connection between all those campus problems and the Campbell and Lomax and Cuttlesworth coterie. I suspect Mr. Castleman will be very generous in working with you,” Bryce suggested.
“Thanks. And that round is on the house,” Pat replied.
After catching Jason and Nate up on the situation with Peter Boyington, and David’s contribution to his enjoyment, Jason cleared his throat and announced, “I have been considering Bryce’s conditions for resuming our philosophical roundtable. As I recall, the first point was that the pope, here, admitted he might have been a wee bit over zealous.”
Bryce blushed at that description. “First of all, I’m not the pope, and this is not a matter of doctrine. I can admit I might be wrong. But so far I’ve seen nothing to convince me of that. All I hear are clich�s and slogans. But, more seriously, Damon has been on me without ceasing of late about me being too negative. I have to admit, he has a point.”
At that, Damon stood and took a bow, then raising his hands over his head like a winning boxer, then took another bow.
“Oh, for heaven’s sake, I’m not that hard to convince I might have been off a little,” Bryce protested.
“Yes you are,” Damon insisted. “I think our friends would agree with me, but remember, I know you better than anyone here, and I have the support of the person who knows you best.
With considerable foreboding, Bryce asked, “Who’s that?”
“Your mother, or course. Only this afternoon she told me you were the stubbornest little boy she ever knew,” Damon insisted, attempting to tousle Bryce’s hair.
Blushing furiously and ducking Damon’s efforts, to the great amusement of his friends, Bryce said, “I’ve got to speak to Mom about telling family secrets.”
“Believe me, your stubbornness is no secret,” Jason commented.
“Okay, okay, I surrender,” Bryce threw up his hands. “As I so graciously admitted last evening, I might have overstated my case just a bit. Can we move on?”
“Not until you tell us just where these gross exaggerations are located,” Jason insisted.
“Get me a refill while I make a list,” Bryce said.
As Jason got up to get refills, Bryce pulled out a note pad and began to write. By the time Jason returned, he had quite a list.
“Okay. I’m not sure I can recap everything, but a few items are, perhaps, more germane to the main theme of our discussions than others. Briefly, I stick with what I said about America being a Christian nation from the outset until about a generation or so ago. But maybe I was too optimistic ... yes, optimistic. I am not a natural pessimist ... about the acceptance of Catholics. During the 1940s and 1950s there was a great wave of positive feelings towards Catholics, based in large part on our enthusiastic support of the war effort against Nazi neo-paganism and Soviet atheistic communism. As I said, this culminated in the election of Kennedy in 1960. But the successes of people like Blanchard, and the continuing activity of the POAU and the ACLU and the KKK indicate that anti-Catholicism was by no means dead. The counter-culture movement of the 1960s and 1970s rejected all traditional values, and all representatives of authority, and the Catholic Church represents both. After all, in the minds of the average American, a scandal about some Protestant preacher in some small town is pretty much dismissed as an isolated incident, but a scandal involving a Catholic priest is immediately associated with a huge national and international organization involving millions of people. So, we get blamed for every failing of every recognizable Catholic, from an abusive priest to a drunken senator from Massachusetts. That only confirms existing prejudices. The anti-Catholic feelings of the earlier period were built on by the anti-establishment feelings of the counter-culture. So there really was not that time in Eden I indicated in an earlier session with you guys. At best, it was a promise, an indication of what might have been. But I insist the national consensus on the basic Judeo-Christian code of ethics, founded on a creator God who establishes an objective standard of right and wrong, was real, and has since dissipated.
“That’s number one. Second, I’m willing to admit that I was perhaps just a little too pessimistic about the present. I should have known better. After all, as he has not ceased to point out, my life partner is a black man, and his condition is considerably better than most blacks could expect fifty or a hundred years ago. Moreover, he is my life partner, and this kind of arrangement could not be openly acknowledged fifty or a hundred years ago. I admit, advances have been made in the acceptance of blacks and gays, and I should have known better than to ignore this in what I said earlier. That does not negate my belief that we have lost a lot along the way. As I said before, it seems that gains in one area are balanced by losses in another, so whether we as a nation are any better off is, I maintain, a matter of valid dispute.
“Satisfied?” Bryce concluded.
“No, but it’s a start,” Jason replied.
“Well, before I go any further, I insist that you be on the hot seat for a while. Tell me, oh so progressive one, just how you anticipate achieving this tolerant and enlightened society you talk about,” Bryce insisted.
“I’ve said it over and over,” Jason replied. “As more and more people are better educated, things will get better.”
“You used the word ‘better’ twice there,” Bryce pointed out. “This implies some standard by which to judge what is good and what is not. Tell me, where does this standard come from if not from our Judeo-
Christian past?”
“Common decency,” Jason replied.
“I’m sorry, but I don’t know what that means,” Bryce played dumb. “Explain to me what ‘common decency’ means and what are its claims to authority.”
“Authority?” Jason questioned.
“Well, you might not like the word, but if something is going to serve as a standard, that is some kind of authority,” Bryce insisted.
“You’re being purposely difficult,” Jason complained.
“No, I’m trying to be rational. You talk about a society based on reason, but you don’t seem to be willing to explain and defend it on a rational basis. All you do is rely on slogans, like ‘the common good’ and ‘acceptance’ and ‘diversity.’ If these things are the basis for a rational society, you ought to be able to explain and defend them rationally. That’s all I’m asking,” Bryce insisted.
Jason sighed. “You do demand an explanation of the obvious.”
“Jason, that’s the whole problem,” Bryce said. “What is obvious to you is not necessarily obvious to someone else, and what is obvious to me is certainly not obvious to you.”
“Okay, okay! Where do you want me to start?” Jason surrendered.
“You say you believe that our society is getting better as a result of more education, and use this as the foundation for your contention that a stable secular society can exist with no reference to God or religion. I want to know where you get the idea of what is ‘better’ and how you support the idea that we are in fact achieving that better society. If this is not what you’ve been saying, and I’ve misinterpreted you, correct me now. Oh, and this is not just between Jason and me. The rest of you can jump in at any time, and on any side, especially mine,” Bryce invited with a grin.
“If you’ve modified your previous statements a little under pressure from Damon, I guess I have to admit I’ve given more thought to what you call my assumptions under prodding from you, Bryce. And I also suppose I ought to be grateful that you’re making me do this, although I don’t particularly want to,” Jason admitted.
“Why not?” Nate asked.
“It seems to me to be a useless exercise. In the end, we’re going to end up just where Damon said we would a week or so ago, agreeing that we can’t agree,” Jason predicted.
Bryce commented, “That’s probably true. But I found it useful as a way to correct some of my more extreme statements. They were founded more on emotions than on facts. That might be the case for others besides me,” he hinted. “Besides, if we understand each other better, we’ll know where not to go to avoid irritating each other.”
“Or where to go when we want to get each other’s goat,” Mike said with a grin.
“I’m assuming we agree not to press those buttons too much. We do want to remain friends,” David said.
“Sure, but I enjoy seeing Bryce turn red from time to time,” Mike replied.
Bryce grinned at that. “You can call me a stuck up snob as long as I can call you a wetback in return.”
“From you, I’ll take that, but not from someone who actually means it,” Mike responded.
Damon chuckled. “That’s kind of like brothers in the ‘hood calling each other ‘nigger.’ If anyone else did it, those would be fighting words. And, I hasten to add, I don’t see any other brothers here.”
“Don’t worry, Damon. We’ll find some other way of embarrassing you,” Jason promised.
“So, Jason, you know that I believe in the objective truth of the Christian religion in its Catholic manifestation. What do you believe in?” Bryce asked.
“I believe in science, reason, human intelligence,” Jason replied.
Bryce immediately asked, “Why?”
“Huh?”
“It’s a simple question. Why do you believe those things ought to form the basis for our ideas of what is good or evil?” Bryce replied.
“It’s obvious,” Jason said with some exasperation.
Bryce grinned. “Not necessarily,” the historian responded. “Science as we understand it is a relatively recent phenomenon, and societies existed and flourished for centuries without it, and also without reason in the philosophical sense of the word, that is, organized logical thinking as described, for example, by Aristotle. I don’t think you can dismiss ancient Egypt as an uncivilized society, or ancient Persia, either, much less India or China.”
“Oh, boy! We got the historian pumped up,” Nate commented.
“Seriously, it’s obvious that fairly decent human societies can exist without the things Jason mentioned as the bases for his beliefs,” Bryce insisted. “And, I might point out, all of them existed based on religion in one form or another.”
“So? They also existed without Catholicism,” Jason quickly pointed out.
“Okay, I grant that. The specifics I believe in are not necessary for a stable human society. But at least my larger contention, that religion and belief in God is the foundation for all successful societies, is not called into question by history. But go ahead, Jason. What else do you believe in?” Bryce challenged him.
“I believe in what is called humanism,” Jason said. “Not, I hasten to point out, the Renaissance thing Bryce is going to start spouting about if we’re not careful, but the current ideas of people like Isaac Azimov and Carl Sagan and others. Human beings are capable of forming societies without any of the supernatural explanations earlier times found necessary. Supernatural explanations arose in earlier times because people did not understand how nature works, but with advances in science during the past two centuries, we don’t need that any more.”
“So, you’re saying that God and the supernatural are not necessary for a rational explanation of how the universe works, or as a foundation for a working human society,” Bryce summarized.
“Right. As someone said, ‘I do not find that assumption necessary,’” Jason answered.
Bryce grinned. “I think you are referring to a reported conversation between Napoleon and the scientist Pierre Simon LaPlace. As I remember it, Napoleon mentioned to LaPlace that his voluminous work on how the universe worked did not mention God, and LaPlace replied, ‘Je n’avais pas besoin de cette hypoth�se-l�.’”
“Speak English,” David demanded.
“Oh? We’re already abandoning multilingualism?” Bryce teased. “It’s pretty much what Jason said: I have no need of that hypothesis.”
“Show off,” Damon said.
Bryce grinned. He was having fun. But he turned to Jason and added, “Let’s leave aside the physical universe, and look at the moral universe. Do you maintain that you can really have a stable society, with some kind of civic morality, which will bind society together without reference to God or religion?”
“Certainly,” Jason asserted.
“What then is it based on? Where do the ideas of what is acceptable and what is not, what is good and what is not, come from?” Bryce pressed.
Jason replied, “The common good. A rational society is based on the common good.”
“Why should I care about the common good?” Bryce asked.
“Oh, come on!” Jason exclaimed.
“It’s a valid question, I think,” Bryce insisted. “If we have a society held together only by what some people have decided is for the common good, then at least two questions immediately present themselves to the rational mind. First, who decides what is in the common good, and second, why should I as an individual care about this common good.”
“Hummm. Well, I guess in response to your first question, I would have to say that the majority decides what is in the common good,” Jason replied. “I’ll have to think about your second question for a while.”
“All right. Let’s say for the sake of argument that the common good is determined by the majority. This is our standard of what is right or wrong in our secular society. So, where does that leave the minority?” Bryce asked.
“Oops,” Damon quietly commented.
“Where there is a majority, there is also a minority,” Nate noted.
“Um, ah, yeah, I guess there is a minority,” Jason conceded.
“Are the minority then automatically evil because they disagree with the majority decision about the common good?” Bryce pressed.
“I’m definitely not comfortable entrusting everything to the majority,” Damon inserted.
Jason rejected Bryce’s description. “I wouldn’t say evil. Rather, misguided, ignorant, or misinformed.”
“So, you think the minority would agree with the majority if they were properly guided by reason, intelligent, and informed?” Bryce deduced.
“Yeah, sure,” Jason incautiously agreed.
“I find that an unwarranted assumption, Jason,” Bryce noted.
“So do I,” Nate inserted. “Can you provide any evidence to support this assumption?”
“You guys are constantly rejecting the evidence of greater education and toleration, but it seems obvious to me that as people become better educated, they are less apt to rely on supernatural explanations of the universe,” Jason replied.
“You’re back to talking about natural phenomena, like comets, earthquakes, evolution, or disease,” David noted. “I thought we were supposed to be talking about the moral or ethical universe. And, I have to agree wtih Bryce, you keep repeating the same things, referring to the common good and to education, without defining them.”
Jason looked exasperated. “The same is true about this moral universe you talk about as about the physical universe. More educated people tend to be more liberal politically, and about such things as race relations, gay rights, divorce, abortion, pornography, freedom of expression, and all kind of related things.”
“And you think all these things are good?” Bryce asked.
“Well, yeah,” Jason replied.
“I think there can be rational disagreement on a good many of those items. They certainly have not served to create a greater consensus in American society, a larger majority to support some hypothetical common good. If anything, the country is more divided over these things now than ever before. And your side is not always winning,” Jason noted.
“There are some temporary setbacks,” Jason confidently predicted, “but with more education things will definitely swing around in the liberal direction.”
“And, in your opinion, greater education is more or less equal to greater reason, greater intelligence?” Bryce questioned.
“Sure,” Jason agreed.
“Then, it sounds like you’re saying that those of us who are believers are in some fundamental way less intelligent than those of you who are not,” Bryce deduced.
“Hey,” Jason objected. “I didn’t mean to insult anyone.”
“We went through this before, when I was at fault for assuming you guys could not deal with my position on a rational basis, without ending our friendship. I was wrong then. Let’s not repeat my mistakes,” Bryce declared.
Jason was clearly embarrassed, but he met the logic of the argument face to face. “Nothing about you guys personally, but I guess I do believe that your position is less intelligent, or less rational, than mine.”
“So, if I can push you a bit further, it seems to me that you’re saying that the common good should be determined by some educated, secular, elite, not really by the majority,” Bryce decided. “Do you want to put it to a nation-wide vote tomorrow whether gay marriage should legally equal in all ways to traditional marriage?”
Jason seemed embarrassed by this question, but he sucked it up and agreed. “There are so many prejudices to be overcome, so much ignorance, that we have to be guided by leaders, people like Sagan, until the general population is better educated.”
“Oh, oh. I see problems with this,” Damon noted.
“So, a self-appointed progressive elite are to set the standards of what is acceptable or non-acceptable in society,” Bryce concluded. “You do realize that this has been tried at least twice before in recent history, with equivocal results at best,” the historian in the group noted.
“I’m sure you’re going to tell us about them,” Mike teased, “so go ahead.”
“Jason’s approach is essentially the same as that developed in the second half of the eighteenth century by Rousseau,” Bryce stated.
“This is recent?” Damon asked.
Bryce ignored that, and proceeded, “The first time anyone tried to put Rousseau’s theories into practice was during the French Revolution. It was what Robespierre called the Republic of Virtue.”
“That sounds encouraging,” Jason noted.
“Well, everyone else called this period the Reign of Terror,” Bryce immediately ended his enthusiasm. “It resulted in some 17,000 executions of so-called ‘counter-revolutionaries’ over a ten month period in Paris alone, and many times that in France as a whole. After less than a year, Robespierre was overthrown and executed by his former allies, and things gradually swung back to the right, and France ended up with the military dictatorship of Napoleon.”
A disappointed Jason concluded, “Well, I suppose there were problems applying the theory to practice. What’s your other example?”
“The Russian Revolution,” Bryce declared. “After Lenin took over in 1917, he instituted what he called ‘the dictatorship of the proletariat.’ All sorts of efforts were made to erase the influence and values of the earlier society. The same kinds of ‘re-education’ programs were employed wherever communism came to power. All traces of the influence of traditional society and religion were attacked, using all the technology available to modern society. Of course, Lenin was succeeded by Stalin, who was responsible for immeasurably more executions than Robespierre.”
With some bitterness, Jason declared, “I suppose next you’ll tell me that Hitler was another example of the same thing.”
“It’s not as obvious, but a case could be made for that contention,” Bryce asserted.
“How so?” Mike asked. “I thought Hitler and Stalin were enemies.”
“Oh, they were,” Bryce agreed. “But there were still striking similarities between them. Marx called his philosophy ‘scientific materialism,’ and Hitler based his racial theories on what he considered the latest scientific outlook. According to many scientific authorities in the later nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, racism was the cutting edge of scientific fact. It was an application of the Darwinian theory of the survival of the fittest. Hitler believed that his so-called Aryan race was the most evolved form of humanity, the master race, and his movement was in the interest of this superior type of mankind, the wave of the future.”
“But that’s bad science,” Jason protested.
“That’s the way we see it today, and, of course, there were scientists who disagreed with this outlook even at the time, but many representatives of the scientific community were among the supporters of some kind of racial theories. A good part of the religious opposition to Darwinism was that it gave support to racism. That’s simple historical fact,” Bryce stated.
“I never heard that before,” Jason objected.
“That’s because you believers that science will solve all our social and ethical problems have a tendency to interpret the history of science selectively. You see whatever leads to the present outlook as good science, and what does not as bad science, regardless of the outlook at the time in question. There are lots of dead ends in this field, just as in any other. As I said when we were discussing the Inquisition, it’s important to see things in the context of the times. You can’t ignore the fact that many historical figures represent both what you call good science and what you call bad science. Paracelsus spent more time trying to turn lead into gold than he did on distinguishing chemical elements. Brahe spent more time casting horoscopes than charting the paths of the stars. Newton spent more time trying to interpret prophecies in the Old Testament and in the Book of Revelation than he did on his calculus or his physics.”
“You’re kidding!” Jason exclaimed in disbelief.
“No, I’m not. Check it out. Don’t take my word for it. What is good science in one age is superstition in another,” Bryce asserted. “A lot depends on the assumptions you begin with.”
“I’m totally confused,” Damon declared.
“So am I,” David said. “It doesn’t seem like there’s a clear line between the rational and the religious outlook.”
“I’ll have to check out those scientists,” Jason hedged. “But that does not change my belief that we can still develop a working, stable society based on the common good and the natural goodness of humanity.”
“That natural goodness of humanity argument is another contribution of Rousseau to modern thought, but, as I’ve pointed out, efforts to implement this theory have been equivocal at best. There is absolutely no evidence to support that theory. And it brings us full circle, trying to determine what is the common good, and who decides. From my perspective, eliminating God and belief in the supernatural automatically eliminates the greatest common good of humanity, namely eternal salvation,” Bryce stated.
“You can’t prove that such things even exist,” Jason responded. “I prefer down to earth, tangible benefits, like improved health care, longer life expectancy, reduced infant mortality, higher standards of living, greater acceptance of minorities.”
“And you assume those things are necessarily good,” Bryce said.
“How can you question that!” Jason cried.
“As a matter of fact, I don’t, but I am pointing out that such things are compatible with my definition of the common good, which includes a loving God, whereas you have failed to come up with a coherent definition of the common good in a purely secular society,” Bryce asserted.
“I thought we covered that. The common good is determined by what the educated, progressive elements in society say it is,” Jason stubbornly insisted.
“But on what are those educated, progressive elements basing their idea of the good? Is what is considered progressive today going to be considered progressive in ten years? Is this just some kind of consensus among one segment of the population, something which might change over time?” Bryce asked.
“Of course. Our ideas do change over time. Not to get too personal, but look at how our ideas of race and gender have changed within a fairly brief period of history,” Jason declared. “Our ideas change as we acquire more facts, like the fact that homosexuality is determined by genetics.”
“I do appreciate not being stoned, as required by Leviticus,” Bryce admitted. “But I think I have studied the issue of homosexuality as much as anyone here, and I categorically deny that my actions are determined by genetics.”
“You do?” David exclaimed in surprise.
“That’s not what the scientists say.” Jason insisted.
“Yes, it is,” Bryce insisted just as adamantly. “Read the studies. If you are talking orientation, then I can agree, but if you’re talking about gay activity, then it’s a different story. It’s always a matter of probability, influence, tendency, or the like. There is nothing which determines specific actions. There is always room for choice. I could have chosen to live in the closet, and never have sexual relations with another male. Like most gays, I can function with a female if I really want. I could have chosen a life of celibacy. Tendencies or proclivities do not mean determination. There is no one on one cause and effect.”
“Aren’t you just being stubborn? Admit it, it doesn’t really matter whether you have a choice or not, as long as you’re comfortable with the outcome,” Jason declared.
“No! I deny that categorically!” Bryce exclaimed. “I think it matters immensely. If choice is merely an illusion, and we are completely determined by factors over which we have no control, then we are no more than the beasts of the earth, and there is no meaning to life.”
“In a very real sense, we are no different than what you call the beasts of the earth, just more evolved,” Jason insisted. “And as far as meaning is concerned, life means whatever we want it to. There is no objective meaning to the universe.”
“If I really believed that, I think I would kill you immediately, and myself next,” Bryce asserted. “In fact, I might just be one of those guys who get some kind of automatic weapon and take out as many people as possible before I die. Why not?”
Jason looked astonished by this declaration. “Don’t you think that’s kind of extreme?”
“Yes, I do. But that’s because of my set of assumptions about the nature of good and evil. I think I can defend that kind of action based on your assumptions, though,” Bryce decided.
“I would never ...” Jason began.
Bryce interrupted. “And I am very glad you secularists are not consistent.”
“Damn you, Bryce,” Jason fumed.
But at that point Pat Flaherty appeared. “You boys have been having a heavy discussion, I guess, but it’s closing time.”
“Practical reality always seems to trump philosophy,” Damon noted.