(1) The Leiter counterexample can easily be extended to meet the proposed exemption criteria. Just stipulate that the rural boy sincerely believes failing to carry on his family tradition will result in his own eternal damnation. (This belief need not itself be part of the family tradition; it might just be his own idiosyncratic belief.) You may accept this and think it provides sufficient grounds to justify an exemption, but in that case you aren't proposing a "religious exemption," you're proposing a "sincere afterlife belief exemption."
(2) A crucial feature of *religious* beliefs is that they are embedded in communal life. Any attempt to ground religious exemptions in *individual* beliefs and interests is going to miss the mark.
(3) Most importantly: No major religion claims that the *purpose* of following its rules is to obtain afterlife benefits. The rules express a vision of the good life. Afterlife benefits are supposed to be a consequence of the good life, not its purpose. If we try to justify our religious exemptions based on "expected, prudential consequences," we undermine our main reason for respecting religions' claims over their followers, which is that they offer those followers a vision of the good life that is not directed towards any "expected, prudential consequences" whose importance can be assessed by people who are not followers of the religion.
Religious exemptions are best understood as attempts to accommodate value systems that diverge from, and may be incommensurable with, the mainstream values of secular society (which are also the mainstream values of academic philosophy). We shouldn't expect to discover a consistent set of principles concerning the justifiability of such exemptions, because the whole point of such exemptions is to create spaces for ways of life *outside* our usual conceptions of what is justifiable.
1) I think his afterlife belief should qualify as religious in a legal sense, and get special treatment as a result. (His belief might not actually satisfy the folk concept of “religion”, but corporations don’t satisfy the folk concept of “person”, and that’s no objection to their not receiving that label under law.)
2) The fact that religions are communal will be legally relevant, in the sense that the fact that someone’s community believes X will be evidence relevant to whether the belief is something they’ve made up to qualify for religious exemptions.
3) I think it’s fine for my argument if the purpose of religion isn’t the afterlife (or any feature of the afterlife—e.g., union with God). All that matters is that religious people do, in fact, think their this-worldly commitments have eternal consequences.
(2) This reduces the importance of community to its evidential role (the existence of a community provides prima facie evidence that an individual's afterlife beliefs are sincere). I disagree, preferring to see the importance of community in terms of its role in constituting value: the existence of the community, not the sincerity of the beliefs, is what makes the beliefs important.
(3) To tease apart the relevant considerations, consider the following:
- Kita believes seatbelt wearing is instrinsically morally neutral. He also believes the world is ruled by an evil demon who hates seatbelts and condemns seatbelt wearers to eternal torment.
- Yaji worships a benevolent goddess who teaches that every time a person wears a seatbelt, they are enacting moral horrors on a scale beyond human comprehension. The goddess is benevolent, so she doesn't inflict any punishment on seatbelt wearers in the afterlife, she just cares deeply about the intrinsic evil of seatbelt wearing and enjoins her followers never to commit such a heinous sin.
Your principles indicate that Kita should get a seatbelt exemption. But what about Yaji? To me, his case seems to get much closer to the issues involved in contemplating the justifiability of religious exemptions.
Cool you cited Rich! He’s a friend and co-author of the AI paper we talked about.
I think the appeal to afterlife is intuitive, but I ultimately don’t think it works as an argument for the special status of religion.
The reason is, more or less, what Raz says: Why should we respect people’s mistaken views about the afterlife when it comes at the cost of doing egregiously unjust things?
E.g., you could think you will go to hell if you don’t sacrifice your child. It would be a genuine breach of your conscience if the state prevents you from doing this. But the state should prevent you anyway. Why?
The reply: well, there are limits to these things. If it’s child sacrifice, that’s really bad! But if it’s homeschooling, then that is less bad and maybe is modest enough to warrant an exemption.
I think the problem is, well, who decides just how bad either case is? You can plausibly have someone whose conscience is equally seared at the idea of not being able to sacrifice their child or not being able to homeschool them.
So, maybe religious exemptions need to go on other grounds.These are my quick, initial thoughts in a Walmart parking lot.
Oh! Two more things that may be helpful, should you continue this argument.
1. Check out Melissa Moschella's _To Whom Do Children Belong?_ There, she gives an argument for the parental right to raise one's child religiously through a similar appeal to conscience (though I don't think she draws on the afterlife).
2. Matthew Clayton has a paper where he argues that, "under certain circumstances, political liberalism requires direct engagement with the religious views of the unreasonable, including offering religious arguments to show that their particular interpretation of their faith is mistaken. [This requires] that political liberals give up the claim that the view is a wholly non-sectarian, purely political view, and accept that, under certain circumstances it is a partially comprehensive version of liberal theory."
Only a few thoughts off the top of my head, being my first substack reply and having had a long day:
The role of religion in providing meaning and value, and the way in which we frame our experiences, also contributes to its significance. Values and meaning in this life, and one's destiny in the afterlife, certainly combine to give one a huge amount of 'skin the game' relating to their beliefs. It's a burden the person willingly takes on, like a soldier who volunteers to possibly kill and be killed for their own personal reasons. The philosophies you cited such as Objectivism and wokeness may not incorporate the afterlife, but they still incorporate meaning and values.
This framing may also justify not imposing a religion on others, since they (like civilians in wartime who did not want to engage in combat) did not volunteer to accept the credal burden of said faith (perhaps having their own chosen one).
I see three problems here:
(1) The Leiter counterexample can easily be extended to meet the proposed exemption criteria. Just stipulate that the rural boy sincerely believes failing to carry on his family tradition will result in his own eternal damnation. (This belief need not itself be part of the family tradition; it might just be his own idiosyncratic belief.) You may accept this and think it provides sufficient grounds to justify an exemption, but in that case you aren't proposing a "religious exemption," you're proposing a "sincere afterlife belief exemption."
(2) A crucial feature of *religious* beliefs is that they are embedded in communal life. Any attempt to ground religious exemptions in *individual* beliefs and interests is going to miss the mark.
(3) Most importantly: No major religion claims that the *purpose* of following its rules is to obtain afterlife benefits. The rules express a vision of the good life. Afterlife benefits are supposed to be a consequence of the good life, not its purpose. If we try to justify our religious exemptions based on "expected, prudential consequences," we undermine our main reason for respecting religions' claims over their followers, which is that they offer those followers a vision of the good life that is not directed towards any "expected, prudential consequences" whose importance can be assessed by people who are not followers of the religion.
Religious exemptions are best understood as attempts to accommodate value systems that diverge from, and may be incommensurable with, the mainstream values of secular society (which are also the mainstream values of academic philosophy). We shouldn't expect to discover a consistent set of principles concerning the justifiability of such exemptions, because the whole point of such exemptions is to create spaces for ways of life *outside* our usual conceptions of what is justifiable.
Thanks for these objections!
Some comments:
1) I think his afterlife belief should qualify as religious in a legal sense, and get special treatment as a result. (His belief might not actually satisfy the folk concept of “religion”, but corporations don’t satisfy the folk concept of “person”, and that’s no objection to their not receiving that label under law.)
2) The fact that religions are communal will be legally relevant, in the sense that the fact that someone’s community believes X will be evidence relevant to whether the belief is something they’ve made up to qualify for religious exemptions.
3) I think it’s fine for my argument if the purpose of religion isn’t the afterlife (or any feature of the afterlife—e.g., union with God). All that matters is that religious people do, in fact, think their this-worldly commitments have eternal consequences.
(2) This reduces the importance of community to its evidential role (the existence of a community provides prima facie evidence that an individual's afterlife beliefs are sincere). I disagree, preferring to see the importance of community in terms of its role in constituting value: the existence of the community, not the sincerity of the beliefs, is what makes the beliefs important.
(3) To tease apart the relevant considerations, consider the following:
- Kita believes seatbelt wearing is instrinsically morally neutral. He also believes the world is ruled by an evil demon who hates seatbelts and condemns seatbelt wearers to eternal torment.
- Yaji worships a benevolent goddess who teaches that every time a person wears a seatbelt, they are enacting moral horrors on a scale beyond human comprehension. The goddess is benevolent, so she doesn't inflict any punishment on seatbelt wearers in the afterlife, she just cares deeply about the intrinsic evil of seatbelt wearing and enjoins her followers never to commit such a heinous sin.
Your principles indicate that Kita should get a seatbelt exemption. But what about Yaji? To me, his case seems to get much closer to the issues involved in contemplating the justifiability of religious exemptions.
Cool you cited Rich! He’s a friend and co-author of the AI paper we talked about.
I think the appeal to afterlife is intuitive, but I ultimately don’t think it works as an argument for the special status of religion.
The reason is, more or less, what Raz says: Why should we respect people’s mistaken views about the afterlife when it comes at the cost of doing egregiously unjust things?
E.g., you could think you will go to hell if you don’t sacrifice your child. It would be a genuine breach of your conscience if the state prevents you from doing this. But the state should prevent you anyway. Why?
The reply: well, there are limits to these things. If it’s child sacrifice, that’s really bad! But if it’s homeschooling, then that is less bad and maybe is modest enough to warrant an exemption.
I think the problem is, well, who decides just how bad either case is? You can plausibly have someone whose conscience is equally seared at the idea of not being able to sacrifice their child or not being able to homeschool them.
So, maybe religious exemptions need to go on other grounds.These are my quick, initial thoughts in a Walmart parking lot.
Happy to see this!
Oh! Two more things that may be helpful, should you continue this argument.
1. Check out Melissa Moschella's _To Whom Do Children Belong?_ There, she gives an argument for the parental right to raise one's child religiously through a similar appeal to conscience (though I don't think she draws on the afterlife).
2. Matthew Clayton has a paper where he argues that, "under certain circumstances, political liberalism requires direct engagement with the religious views of the unreasonable, including offering religious arguments to show that their particular interpretation of their faith is mistaken. [This requires] that political liberals give up the claim that the view is a wholly non-sectarian, purely political view, and accept that, under certain circumstances it is a partially comprehensive version of liberal theory."
https://philpapers.org/rec/CLAWGC
Thanks for these!
Only a few thoughts off the top of my head, being my first substack reply and having had a long day:
The role of religion in providing meaning and value, and the way in which we frame our experiences, also contributes to its significance. Values and meaning in this life, and one's destiny in the afterlife, certainly combine to give one a huge amount of 'skin the game' relating to their beliefs. It's a burden the person willingly takes on, like a soldier who volunteers to possibly kill and be killed for their own personal reasons. The philosophies you cited such as Objectivism and wokeness may not incorporate the afterlife, but they still incorporate meaning and values.
This framing may also justify not imposing a religion on others, since they (like civilians in wartime who did not want to engage in combat) did not volunteer to accept the credal burden of said faith (perhaps having their own chosen one).