Diary Oct. 19

A quarter of the Tour has passed - four universities done - and the first lesson has sunk in to my thick skull. It is this:

People who come from societies permeated with religion come to associate values, principles, and morality with religion. Religion, for them is where values originate. When they enter a country (like ours) and discover that it is secular they then naturally slide into the belief that this country, because it has no religion , has no values, principles, morality - that people here do not care for the higher things in life.

Muslims I talk to often think of Canadians as being only interested in cars, houses, sex and status. They slide easily into thinking this because in finding that there is no visible religion here, they jump to the conclusion that Cnadians have no values, no principles, have no morality, no concern for the higher things in life. It is tempting for such people from 'religious societies' to see our secular lives as low, meaningless, lost, wasted.

So the first job must be to try to explain to them that values can come from sources other than religion. A simple and familiar lesson in the philosophy of value.

In truth we have family values, we value our children, parents and grandparents. We value family life and we value our communities. We accept collective responsibility for the poor, the sick, the unemployed. We value peace, education, we value those whom we love, have come to love. What else is on the list? Surely we value, we need, a meaningful life which for us means having a useful role to play in our family and community. We value art, self-expression, on and on. And we have political values: equality of women and men, rule of law, etc.. These values come from the Renaissance (pre-Christian), the Great Revolutions (in England, France), the Reform movements of the 19th and 20th Centuries. Are any of these values distinctly Christian? I'd like to hear about that because, frankly, at the moment, I doubt it. Muslims and Hindus both emphasize charity, forgiving, etc. so the case has to be made, if there is a case to make.

That we have values other than materialism, sex and power is obvious to me but is not likely to be even plausible to those who have only ever lived with religious values. In these people's experience, values come from religion. To people from religious cultures, we are value barren. To them our 'secular' society is a society without values. For them subtract religion and you subtract values.

I think we can show them that this is bad math. Secular society, we have to show them, is not the same as a society without values. How to make this case, now that's the next question.

This will be the new thrust of my presentations in Montreal in the next weeks.

Next week I'm heading off again for Fredericton (to give a paper on Free Speech) and then, after that, it's points West.