Religion in the Digital Age

The regime under which religion — any religion — functions in contemporary secular, democratic Western societies is freedom of belief. After the victory of the Enlightenment, faith became a private affair. Freedom of belief means that everybody is free to believe what he or she chooses to believe, and also that everybody is free to organize his or her personal, private life according to his or her beliefs. But at the same time it means that it is forbidden to impose one’s own faith on public life and state institutions. The work of the Enlightenment resulted not in the complete disappearance of religion but in its privatization, its withdrawal into the private sphere. Under the conditions of the contemporary secularized world, religion has become a matter of private taste — it functions in a way that is analogous to the functioning of art and design. This does not mean that religion is not publicly discussed. However, the place of religion in its relationship with public discussion is the same as the place of art as it was described by Kant in his Critique of Judgment: religion can be publicly discussed, but such a discussion cannot result in any conclusion that would become binding for the participants in this discussion or for society as a whole. The commitment to this or that religious faith is a matter of a personal, private, sovereign decision that cannot be dictated by any public authority — and that includes any democratically legitimized authority. Even more important, such a decision — as is the case for art — does not need to be publicly argued for and legitimized. Rather, it is supposed to be socially accepted without any further explanation. The legitimacy of personal faith is based not on its persuasive power but on the sovereign right of the individual to accept or reject this faith. 

Now, science is, on the contrary, a public affair. Knowledge that is obtained, formulated, and presented scientifically is central to the governing of contemporary enlightened, liberal Western democracies. As Michel Foucault repeatedly stressed, under the conditions of modernity scientific knowledge equals power. Modern technology is based on sciences such as physics and biology. Modern governing practice is based on the positive sciences, such as law, political science, economics, psychology, and sociology. All this means that there can be no freedom of science in the same sense as there is freedom of belief. I n the context of a scientific discussion, every opinion can and must be argued for, substantiated or falsified by certain facts, proved according to certain rules. Every participant in such a discussion is certainly free — at least theoretically — to formulate his or her own positions and to argue in their favour. But one cannot insist on a certain scientific opinion without any justification, against all proof and evidence to the contrary, without producing any arguments that would make one’s position plausible and persuasive to others.