A-religulous?

I've been pondering the ethics of writing about religion from a position of agnosticism. My work aims to be more than merely descriptive: analytical with a politics of social justice. I find some theologies obnoxious, morally repugnant. But who am I to tell someone else what to believe? As an historian I attempt to understand how particular religious cultures come to be. I'm almost comfortable pointing out how they have been different in the past, or how an historically continuous, but more morally palatable tradition might develop. But I balk at more straightforward judgements.

I was quite confronted then by the conclusion to Bill Maher's recent mocumentary Religulous (2008). The film points out the ridiculous, the violent, the intolerant in the more colourful ends of the major monotheistic religious traditions. Then, at the end, Maher delivers a lengthy straight to camera monologue condemning all forms of religion as leading to violence, fulfilling their own prophesies of armagedon. Maher becomes an evangelist for atheism. Given the his jocular tone through the film up to this point I was expecting a "live and let live" sort of ending. His bald condemnation of spirituality took me by surprise. And got me thinking.

In one sense, Maher is actually in a more honest position than I. He is speaking for his own position. I am looking over my neighbour's fence, telling them how they could be better. I am a cultural busy-body: not a particularly complimentary metaphor. Other liberal academics and cultural commentators might like to position themselves as a GP, a cultural doctor, curing the ills of the world. But this metaphor only works if the 'patients' come to you. Going out searching for patients, seems less (para)medic, more vigilante.

One way around this dilemma might be to collapse the boundary between religious and secular within society. If people of (varying degrees of) different faiths constitute a civil society, then any member of that society can perhaps rightly comment on any faith to the extent that it effects that society. But this sounds so insipid, easy. I'm looking for a more rigorous ethical basis for my critique.

And, as has been happening more and more lately, I find myself falling back on/reading with interest, Marxist types. In this instance (courtesy of Justin Neuman) I'm looking at Terry Eagleton's 'Reason, Faith, and Revolution: Reflections of the God Debate' (2009).

More, when I've actually read it.