Jürgen Habermas is quoted here (via here) as having said this the other day:
For secular citizens, this same ethics of citizenship entails the duty of reciprocal accountability toward all citizens. Reciprocity in this sense also entails not dismissing religious utterances as mere nonsense in the public sphere.
Of course one doesn’t want to get worked up about something reported second hand but if Habermas really said that it’s very disappointing. The propositional content of religious utterances in the public sphere - or anywhere else – is indeed mere nonsense. In public discourse it may often be neither polite nor politic to point this out but it’s an option that has to be there. Otherwise we end up either patronizing religious people or shutting up because we are afraid of them.
This doesn’t mean that religious belief can be ignored in public debate. The number of religious people makes this impractical and undesirable. However, their views and demands can’t a priori be given greater weight than that of those of any other group and they must be subject to the same level of scrutiny and criticism. If religious people are willing to say their piece in the public square on that basis then good for them but I suspect that a lot of them are not.
It would also be interesting to know if Habermas was calling for all religious utterances to be treated seriously or only those coming from members of the big religions. If we aren’t going to dismiss Roman Catholicism as mere nonsense then what are we going to say when the Moonies and Scientologists come looking for respect?
Now something else entirely. Further down in the same article you’ll find this about Judith Butler:
She underscored the multiplicity of Jewish values and experiences and offered a courageous critique of Israeli state violence.
So, a world renowned (God knows why) academic criticizes Israel in an address to an audience of colleagues at NYU and is held to show courage in so doing. In the thrall of what kind of world view would you want to be in order to not to find something odd about that?
