Simon’s post about lying reminded me of an interesting (I hope) thing I read years ago, bout deception, speech, and oath-taking.
I think maybe it was Stephen Pinker who pointed out that, while animals can practice deception, (2 of the most famous examples being a bird feigning a broken wing, and an opossum playing dead) it’s NOTHING compared to the deception we could promulgate once we developed speech! We can send other people on far-flung spurious quests. We can reinvent our own pasts, we can deliberately misrepresent our future intentions .
Therefore, he said, no sooner did we get good at talking than we saw the need for some category of speech that could not be used for lying. Sacred speech. Oaths, where you call down upon yourself misfortune , or the vengeance of a deity, in the event your words aren’t true. A person would be too scared to lie while touching the Sacred Rock, or standing under the Sacred Oak, or while raising a hand to Heaven, or after kissing a sacred Book.
I wrote an article called “Upon our Oaths” for Pa Lawyer Magazine a few years ago, about how prevalent oath-taking is in our secular society.
Since then ,people have begun to notice this “ceremonial Deism” and, of course object to it.
The threat of imprecation can be replaced to some extent by reference to the penalties for perjury or unsworn falsifications to authorities, although technically those can’t cover future conduct. And, for the super-religious of any persuasion, there is the option to “affirm” rather than swear.
It just doesn’t have the éclat of “May I be stricken dead right here and now if I am not telling the truth!”
Do we still have a need for “sacred speech”? Could we still believe in such a thing?
ST UnWoked & UnVaxxed! 
Most Americans still believe in God, though. I really don’t think our society is nearly as secular as some think it is.
And birds can play dead too! I witnessed this in real life. It was the cutest thing-somehow, a very small bird made his or her way into my parents’ home. Upon discovery, it was just laying there, as if dead, so my Dad pulled out a broom and started sweeping this bird toward the front door. Throughout the sweeping process, the bird still appeared to be very much dead. Then, the second it was outside the house, the poor thing immediately took flight and flew away. So cute. We were a little shocked, because birdy really had us fooled-we really though he was deceased. It was surprising and wonderful to see him fly away 🙂
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Hi, Hyp! “Ceremonial Deism” seems to have existed since the nation’s founding, as a way to find broad enough agreement to foster support for freedom of/for religion in public life. It’s an umbrella that allowed America to include in its self-identity a sense of being a virtuous and moral people – as John Adams described in his discussion re: what sort of polity could best function in a constitutional republic. Sadly, democracy/mob rule – as it seems to be currently lived out – neither admits of nor requires – such a constraint. Thanks for the post!
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oh, I’m Al for Ceremonial Deism. We need some kinda civic religion and that served us well for a long time. And as Justice O’Connor once wrote, it is part of the very fabric of our constitution.
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I notice you’ve put the serviceability of Ceremonial Deism in the past tense, Hyp. It seems alive and well in many aspects of public life; what makes you say it’s not currently serving us? What do you think has replaced it? I’m curious….
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I say it because of incidents like officials like Keith Ellison being sworn into office on the Koran instead of the Bible, for one thing. And the idea which I’ve heard expressed that anyone taking an oath should not be required to publicly declare faith and fear of a particular deity; that is a private matter of conscience. The longstanding and ongoing controversy about “under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance. When I wrote my article, I concluded that of course we could do without ceremonial deism, but: we wouldn’t. Everybody likes the hieratic, they like the feeling of awe, however fleeting. I’m not so sure about that any more. I hope I’m wrong.
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P.S.::I’m firmly in the camp of Justice O’Connor—can’t remember the issue in tne particular case, but she wrote that these expressions of Deism are part of the very fabric of our Constitution.
Yuh. But sadly now there are people, who say,”Right, then! Obviously we must scrap the Constitution in its entirety!”
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If Keith Ellison is an “Americanized” practicing Muslim (highly dubious) then I didn’t object to his being sworn into Congress on the Koran; nor did I object to Kashyup Patel’s being sworn in as FBI Director on the Gita. There’s room for that. Patel upholds the country’s ideals; his faith functions in the context of the prevailing Deistic Judeo-Christianity that surrounds us in the developed West. (See Tom Holland’s _Dominion_.) Humans are made with a “God-shaped hole”. Marxism’s substitution of the State (Fatherland/Motherland) for a deity bears this out. Hoping neither of us lives to see a scrapped Constitution.
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