Professor Tony Coady's (CAPPE, University of Melbourne) 2009 special lectures:
16 October, Faculty of Philosophy, University of Oxford
"
How Dangerous is Religion?"
Abstract: The idea that religion is dangerous has come to prominence recently partly as a result of terrorist attacks, often suicide bombings, carried out in Western cities by people professing a brand of Islamic fundamentalism. Partly in reaction to these attacks as well as to the political successes of fundamentalist Christian movements within Western countries, especially the United States, there have been a number of books attacking religion that have made much of the dangers of religious belief. These criticisms merely articulate a widespread belief in the dangers of religious commitment which has itself often been a presupposition or explicit premise in arguments for the nature and value of a liberal, secular state. This talk will attempt to evaluate the alleged dangers of religion on a number of fronts, for example, the tendency of religion to promote violence, to foster undesirable character traits such as subservience to authority, and to engender civil disharmony through the urge to bring about conformity to a singular truth. It will be argued that the case against religion on these grounds is much weaker than it seems and that this has consequences for the constitution of a secular state that will be more fully explored in the next lecture.
22 October, St Cross Special Ethics Seminar, St Cross College, Oxford
"
Religion, Public Reason and the Liberal State"
Abstract: Modern liberal democracies are uneasy with religion for a number of reasons, many of them related to its perceived dangers as discussed in the first lecture. But quite apart from such dangers, it seems that there is a case for placing certain restrictions and provisos on the activities of religious people and on their modes of interaction with the political order. One of the most obvious of these is the protection of freedom of religion which entails some restriction of the exercise of political powers by religious bodies, such as churches. One thing that “the separation of church and state” means is that there should be no religious tests for public office; another is that the civil rights of citizens should not be abrogated by the power of religious authority and this makes the idea of an established state religion at least highly contentious. These restrictions should be welcome both from the viewpoint of religious integrity and democratic political pluralism. But beyond these qualifications to the role of religion in political life, there are various forms of what I will call “exclusionism” that try to give principled reasons for excluding religious concerns and reasoning from the public arena. Philosophers such as Robert Audi and John Rawls are exclusionist though Audi’s is a stronger form than Rawls’s. In different ways, they employ an idea of “public reason” as an ideal that restricts the role that religious values and beliefs can play in political discourse and practice. These outlooks will be discussed and criticised, and some rather different suggestions will be made about principles that should govern the intervention of religious people into the political arena.
Kahane, G., and Savulescu, J., (forthcoming), The Welfarist Account of Disability in Cureton, A. and Brownlee, K., (eds), Disability and Disadvantage (Oxford: Oxford University Press)
Savulescu, J., Foddy, B. Rogers, J., (2006) “What should we say?”
Journal of Medical Ethics; 32:7-12.
Duncan, R, E., Savulescu, J., Gillam, L., Williamson, R., Rogers, J. , Delatycki,
M. B., (Forthcoming) 'Holding Your Breath: Interviews With Young People Who
Have Undergone Predictive Genetic Testing for Huntington Disease” Am J of
Medical Genetics (In press)
Savulescu, J., Hope, R.A., (2006) “The Elderly and Ethical Financial Decision-
Making” in eds. Clark, G. L., Munnell, A. H., Orszag, M. The Oxford Handbook
of Pensions and Retirement Income (Oxford: Oxford University Press).
