Apologies because this blog has been a bit intemperate recently (not in the drinking and sleazing sense, I’m afraid, just in terms of presenting too vitriolic a stance.) Spending too much time on the Internet can do that to you. You can end up in a sort of ranting bizarro-world version of the religious fanatic’s brain space. It’s easy enough to let enthusiasm tip into fanaticism. That’s part of the problem surely.

We aren’t really obsessive ranters at WhyDontYou blog. Well, maybe you have to replace really with only.

All the same, there seems like something of an encroaching tide of unreason that we have to deal with somehow. There is another Guardian article by Mark Ravenhill (You can see I got my money’s worth out of the paper today, for a change.) The title is Can we really let students skip drama classes on religious grounds? It’s time liberals fought back The drama classes focus is a bit specialist for me, but Mark makes some very strong points about liberal rational values and how they need defending.

I was seeing the consequences of the culture wars that have played themselves out across American society for the past 20 years. The social conservatives, closely aligned to the churches, have fought – and in some places defeated – a perceived liberal bias in the media, arts and the entertainment industry. And liberals, who had come to see their own values as simply common sense and the inevitable result of human progress, have realised that those values have to be fought for.

He concludes with a rallying cry for universities, as liberal institutions, to defend their liberal values, rather than allow students to opt out of activities they claim to contravene their religious beliefs.

Culture wars, so long avoided in the UK, are brewing. Liberals are going to have to fight hard. There should be no opt-outs when it comes to culture. We believe in our values.

I am not sure that I can go along with this argument completely, given that it seems to focus on drama students being unwilling to act in plays that contravene their moral codes, which must be an issue that affects less than one in a few million people. However, I think the point that those of us who assume that our values are intrinsically rational need to examine those values closely. Looking at the truth of things is a strength that can stop us becoming fanatics without us losing the will to defnd our values.

Self critical thought; teasing out the historical development of our values and examining how they our beliefs might just serve particular interests in society. These are strengths integral to rational thought. Our moral codes rest on more than just being told that a superior being decided certain actions are right or wrong. That shouldn’t make us feeble. It surely makes us stronger. If we believe that this world is the only one that exists and that our time is finite, we should actually care about what happens in our lives and societies and act to defend rationality wherever we can.

Religious Intolerance, Liberal values, fanaticism, rationalism, philosophy, society, social,