Human Nature and the Freedom of Public Religious Expression (review)

A central point of debate in contemporary political theory is the proper place of religious and other metaphysical beliefs in public discourse. The late John Rawls, perhaps the most influential political philosopher of the twentieth century, argued that political discussions should be based on "public reason." By basing public discussions on a shared rhetoric of rationality, citizens supposedly would be able to maintain a stable democratic process, despite their often conflicting religious and metaphysical beliefs. Rawls's argument suggests that, when engaging in public discourse, citizens must separate shared beliefs from those that are part of their subjective religious experience.

Stephen G. Post disagrees and, ironically, looks to scientific reason for support. Drawing on the Natural Law tradition and recent research in health care and neuroscience, Post attempts to revive the Aristotelian notion of looking to scientific research for insight into ethical questions. He offers empirical data that support the main premise of his argument: "Human nature appears to include a powerful spiritual and religious inclination." Post then posits the Natural Law tradition to connect this premise to his conclusion: "A good society must include a correlative freedom for the individual to express this inclination in public domains, constrained only by laws against harming others" (1).

In the first two chapters, Post relies upon recent research in health care and neurological research to show that humans are religious creatures—beings inclined toward what he rhetorically calls a "Creative Presence." He begins by reviewing empirical research on spirituality and "limit situations," a Jaspersian concept that refers to "circumstances of major disruption in which one's control over outcomes is severely diminished or entirely eradicated" (23). Limit situations include severe cases of substance abuse, physical and mental illness, and diagnoses of terminal illness. Post is "less interested in how spiritual life affects illness outcome than . . . in how illness seems to bring spirituality and religion to the surface as a means of coping" (26). He turns to research surrounding religion and physical illness that suggests religiousness "is a significant factor in reducing stress related to physical illness; recovery from illness; illness prevention; prevention of heart disease; mitigation of pain; amelioration of suffering; adjustment to disability; timing of death; and recovery from cardiac surgery in the elderly. . . . Religion has a beneficial role in physical illness prevention, coping, and recovery" (34).

Sounding suspiciously like a Social Darwinist, Post claims that those "persons with the capacity for religious experience have a consequent selective advantage over others; eventually, they will dominate the population pool by evolutionary laws" (55). Unfortunately, his shift in emphasis from the universality of the religious inclination to the "benefits" of the religious inclination severely limits the larger aim of the essay. He works his way out of a kind of empiricist naturalism by calling on the Natural Law tradition. Because human beings display a universal inclination to publicly express religious beliefs, they should be free to express their religious convictions publicly. But because a benefit from religiosity is not nearly as rhetorically persuasive as a religious desire, his case is weaker than it might be since the latter transcends naturalism. Post bases his argument for the freedom to publicly express religious beliefs on universal inclination to publicly express religious beliefs. But using empirical evidence that shows a universal benefit from religious expression rather than a universal desire, Post weakens the major premise necessary for his conclusion.

Post next delves into recent research on what he calls "neurotheology" which apparently offers evidence that the "spiritual and religious inclination is 'hard-wired' in the brain" (57). While this evidence may not conclusively prove the universality of the religious inclination, it does make "the objectivity of a Creative Presence as the summum bonum . . . remarkably plausible" (91). Post wonders why the evolutionary process sustained the religious inclination to remain if it had no extra-religious purpose.

Post depends on Natural Law theory to connect the universal religious inclination to human...