Craig Biddle, editor of The Objective Standard, pushed a piece in the Summer 2006 volume titled Religion v.s. Free Speech. Though nearly a decade old, this article is timely given the recent Charlie Hebdo attacks which have been cast as an attack on free speech. The article was brought to my attention by a friend and I offered to provide some criticism of it which I will do below. Though I have invested some time in the brief critique below, I must stop short of laying out my view of a more accurate representation of the relationship between religion and free speech in general. Yet I hope the summary thoughts below are valuable and useful.
There are three categories of critique I’ll give:
1: Hasty generalization to all religion.
2: Subject/jurisdiction error.
3: Claiming his specific interpretations are necessarily true.
My first and most important critique begins with the title itself. If it were merely a title, I might excuse it as sensational. But it is, in fact, a fair representation of the argument contained in the article. Biddle repeatedly applies his interpretations not just to the immediate context, nor even merely to all times for a specific religion, but to all religion in general. In short, he declares that the death penalty for prohibited speech is an essential component of (all) religion, and that those who disagree aren’t actually religious. He does this countless times through out, saying, “on the premises of religion,” and, “On the religious worldview,” and, “the basic tenets of religion,” and, “According to religion,” and, “Practicing religion,” and, “While some religionists … according to religion,” and so on and so forth.
In the course of defending his argument he admits not all religious people come to the same conclusion. About those whose views don’t fit his narrative, he libelously says, “some religionists do not take the holy books seriously.” He demands we accept his interpretation as applicable to all true religion of any kind. I’ll address an example of his specific interpretations later. For now, it is fair for me to point out that Biddle hastily generalizes (as in the logical fallacy) to form his conclusion. Without even addressing the details, this should be obvious to the average reader. The argument, as presented, completely fails on this point alone.
Biddle’s subject/jurisdiction error is more subtle. He says, “Rights are principles specifying the kinds of actions that a person should be free to take.” That statement is a reasonable characterization of one part of the concept of rights. However, it is lacking essential components beyond its mere sense. The concept of rights is incomplete without subjects (who possesses a right) and jurisdiction (how far the right of the subject extends). More completely, rights are principles specifying the kinds of actions (sense) that a person, group, entity, etc. (subject) should be free to take, and how far, where, when, etc. (jurisdiction).
Biddle says, “as long as people believe that rights come from God, they will be unable to understand rights or to properly defend them.” What Biddle really does here is disqualify people who believe in God from understanding or defending rights. He wants to claim jurisdiction on the basis of his belief that the subject doesn’t exist and, therefore, can’t delegate. But his grounds for doing so is not proving that the subject doesn’t exist. Rather, he claims the subject’s delegates doesn’t comprehend rights and therefore cannot have jurisdiction.
The existence or non-existence of a god doesn’t undermine a (potentially / theoretically) true god’s jurisdiction. If such a god does, indeed, exist, Biddle would be denying said god proper jurisdiction with respect to rights and their defense. He effectively replaces the (claimed) true god with himself by claiming that religious people can’t possibly understand rights. Biddle’s basis for doing so is intellectual superiority (you don’t understand). Usurping jurisdiction is a common method of violating rights. Biddle may want to say is “there is no God,” but instead of arguing over the subject, he usurps jurisdiction on the basis of some supposedly superior understanding of rights. In this attempted end run around (a) god, he undermines jurisdiction itself.
Finally, he confidently presents his interpretation as authoritative. I won’t harp on this point, but it is well illustrated by the notion that religion necessarily means believing, “God created the universe six thousand years ago.” It is only a subset of the adherents to the subset of religions that rely on Genesis who believe that particular interpretation. Even if we limit our view to Christianity, we find that the young earth interpretation is not universally held, and the reasons for adhering to the young earth view are varied. For example, the conclusion to Coming to Grips with the Early Church Fathers’ Perspective on Genesis gives a nice summary of surprising (non-literal) early church interpretations leading to the young earth view. Even if Biddle meant to say, for example, that Christianity (not all religion) demands a young (6,000 year-old) earth belief, that would pigeon hole Christians into Biddle’s “faith” rather than present an accurate representation of reality.
What Biddle attempts to do is show that religion and free speech are incompatible. He fails to do so primarily due to hasty generalization. In the process, he undermines jurisdiction and presents mere interpretation as universal truth. This hostility towards religion in general is discriminatory and counter productive. Many arguments in favor of freedom of speech (not to mention other elements of modern rights theory and practice) are fundamentally religious.
A better approach to opposing religious intolerance of freedom of speech might involve contrasting specific intolerant religious interpretations with reasonable and widely-accepted interpretations within the same religion which uphold freedom of speech. Such a task is beyond the scope of this essay and has been accomplished many times before. Too bad Biddle wasn’t objective enough to include such work in his diatribe.