Posted on 02/19/2020 4:31:44 AM PST by Kaslin
In the latest edition of "The Rubin Report" podcast, two people I adore, Dave Rubin and Heather Mac Donald, dialogue about some of the great issues facing America. Interestingly, though both are secular, Dave opened the interview asking Heather about God and religion.
She began by saying that she is not conservative because of religion but because of her commitment to empirical truth. It is empirical truth that leads her to affirm, for example, "the necessity of the two-parent family" and "most traditional values."
Heather is right that one cannot be committed to empirical truth and be a leftist (though one can be a conservative or a liberal). Left-wing assertions that men give birth; that America was founded in 1619 (when the first enslaved black was brought to the American colonies); that people can be lifted from poverty on a mass scale without capitalism; that there are no innate differences between men and women; that America is a racist nation; that women are paid less than men for the same type and amount of work because they are women; and innumerable other leftist assertions are all false.
But while a secular conservative may be committed to the two-parent family because of empirical truth, marriage and family are not "empirical truths" nearly as much as they are religious values. Few secular arguments to get married and/or have children are as compelling as religious ones. That's why religious people are so much more likely to get married and have children.
Mac Donald said: "(P)eople who I respect enormously ... whether it's Dennis Prager or Michael Medved ... are making the argument that you cannot have a moral society without a foundation of religious belief."
That is precisely the argument nearly every founder of America made. Not all were Christ-centered Christians, but virtually every one believed that inalienable rights come from the Creator, and only from the Creator. And none (except perhaps Thomas Paine) believed that America could endure if it were to become a godless society.
Mac Donald: "Part of my resistance to this is simply I don't find claims of petitionary prayer and the idea of a personal loving God consistent with what I see -- what I call the daily massacre of the innocents. To me it's a very hard claim to make that I should expect God to pay attention to my well-being when He's willing to allow horrific things to happen to people far more deserving and innocent than I am. So, for me, it's partly just a truth value. I cannot stomach what appears to me to be a patently false claim about a personal loving God."
I agree with Heather's premises but not with her conclusion. I have never believed that God has any reason to pay more attention to me than to any other innocent human being. And I, too, "cannot stomach" the "daily massacre of the innocents" -- so much so that I have written how I find the commandment to love God the hardest commandment in the Bible.
But what I also cannot stomach is the thought of a universe in which the horrible suffering of innocents is never compensated by a good and just God: The good and the evil all die; the former receive no reward and the latter no punishment.
The problem of unjust suffering troubles every thinking believer. But the Jewish theologian Milton Steinberg offered a powerful response: "The believer in God has to account for unjust suffering; the atheist has to account for everything else." Between the two, I would argue that the atheist's burden is infinitely greater. And insurmountable.
Mac Donald: "(T)he idea of what started the universe -- we can't really answer that. I think to say, 'God' -- that's just a placeholder for ignorance. That doesn't help."
Maybe we really can't answer what started the universe. But, as Charles Krauthammer, a great secular conservative, said, "The idea that this universe always existed, that it created itself ex nihilo -- I mean, talk about the violation of human rationality. That, to me, is off the charts." God, therefore, is not "just a placeholder for ignorance." Since science can never and will never answer the question "Why is there anything?" attributing the origins of the universe to an intelligent force (which we call "God") strikes me as the most rational explanation.
Rubin: "I might have to get you in here with Prager."
Mac Donald: "I'd love to."
I'd love to, too.
Mac Donald: "Where are we all headed? What is the meaning of life? To me, anybody who claims ... he doesn't find meaning in life when there is Mozart and Haydn -- to invoke a Dennis Prager favorite -- or Beethoven or John Milton or Aeschylus or Anthony Trollope --"
Rubin: "Or just waking up with purpose for whatever you do."
Mac Donald: "Exactly ... trying to do the best you can do. I don't find life meaningless for one second."
Haydn began every manuscript with the Latin words "in nomine Domini," "in the name of the Lord," and ended his manuscripts with the words "Lauds Deo," "Praise be to God." I would ask Heather and other secular conservatives: Do you or don't you identify the steep deterioration of the arts with the death of God and religion? Is a secular society capable of achieving artistic achievement equal to that which was accomplished in tribute to God?
As for meaning, you -- and I -- may find meaning every day in trying to do the best we can do, or in great works of art. But, as I know you will agree, that does not mean life has any ultimate meaning. If there is no God, we are nothing more than self-conscious stellar dust. And stellar dust has no meaning.
We really need to continue this dialogue. In the meantime, for what it's worth, I want to say to both of you, who do so much for our country, God bless you.
“...when He’s willing to allow horrific things to happen to people far more deserving and innocent than I am.”
I’m more and more of the opinion that people who profess to think like this don’t want to see the forest for all those damn trees. It’s is their wall which blocks out what they don’t want to see. WHO ever said that earth is the place where all things are resolved? God SAYS that the human mind cannot encompass what He has prepared for us. My guess is that anyone who has seen it would gladly go thru 10 crappy lifetimes to reach it.
John Adams when asked his opinion of the French Revolution. “I know not what to make of a nation of 40 million atheists.”
In these later years it occurs to me that each religion has one thing in common. They all seem to divide people into those who live lives of gratitude for the experience and those who rebel. Those who hate having to live this life are free to do so.
Just my Humble Opinion but Christians have it better because what we believe in is based on the factual witness of the events in Galilee. Seems to me the one command we are exhorted to in the highest is “be grateful”.
I watched that interview & wondered if Dennis Prager would have a response. I’d love to see them all together.
Dennis, how about a response to Jesus who said, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”?
Dennis makes denial of Christ sounds innocuous. But nothing could be further than the truth.
“marriage and family are not “empirical truths” nearly as much as they are religious values. Few secular arguments to get married and/or have children are as compelling as religious ones.”
I find using religious arguments in America as the greatest reason for marriage and family is to lose the argument in America. We are a protestant nation which interprets religion subjectively. You’ll simply get a “my truth and your truth” argument back.
Empirical truth is objective (there nothing non-religious about it) and defeats secular ideas every time. But you have to know the subject which of course liberals don’t.
I should add that “marriage and family” are not religious values. They are biological ones, the antiquity of which is unknown. So the author starts with a false premise.
I see that Dennis Prager views the Left in a similar way that I do, in that he does make a distinction between Leftists and Liberals. (I think Dennis Prager is great, but I know there are some who have an axe to grind with him about this or that...I am just glad he is on our side)
I have been making that distinction for years, and I boil it down to the fact that many "liberals" simply haven't thought their views through, and superficially believe or accept things that are mutually exclusive. I believe that many "liberals" don't succumb to the same crippling cognitive dissonance that turns almost all leftists into violent, totalitarian thugs, just because the liberals don't think it through enough to generate that dissonance.
Often, as liberals get older, have more life experiences or "get mugged", they do have to think them through, and when they do, they can often become Conservatives. This is why the famous quote (often attributed to Winston Churchill, but others may have said it): "If You Are Not a Liberal When You Are Young, You Have No Heart, and If You Are Not a Conservative When Old, You Have No Brain" is so true.
And it also explains why "Leftists" are so violent and irrational. They don't believe in empirical truth. They believe that what they think should be truth...IS truth, and anyone who disagrees is keeping that "truth" of theirs from becoming reality. And the reason they are so internally conflicted is because in their minds, they HAVE thought it through and somehow, in their brains, pounded that square peg into a round hold. All the edges that break off are the cause of their cognitive dissonance that makes them so unpalatable to normal people.
It explains their childish behavior, because they have never had to grow up intellectually.
And it also explains how on the surface, they can claim to be Christian, but promote tyranny (while professing to love freedom) open homosexuality and unlimited abortion. So they become violent, intolerant, and tyrannical.
Heather is one smart cookie.
IMO yours is a well thought out post. I can only add that anecdotally I’ve met many scientists who were committed to empirical truth within their fields but believed liberal ideas for anything outside it. I attributed that to ignorance.
I think it’s true that empirical truth and leftism are mutually exclusive. Leftism seeks a human state that is anti-human; never was and never will be.
I have thought about that, how people who are not stupid or intellectually weak in their area of expertise, but somehow seem to be in another galaxy when it comes to issues outside their specialty.
Thomas Sowell wrote a great book on this called “Intellectuals and Society” which addresses this type of thing. It is why we get actors, who may be very good at what they do, assuming that they can transfer that talent to whatever else may exist...and it doesn’t always work that way.
Someone who is brilliant at calculus may have no conception of the laws of economics, but many make the jump to assume that they do.
For my part...I am just an Internet commentator...:)
There are no Liberals running for the Dems. They are all Socialists or Marxists.
That is true, I don’t contest that at all. They have to have consciously thought about these things but papered over the inconsistencies in their heads.
However, I do believe there are a large number of people who haven’t even thought that far, but think a way on certain subjects, and never get to conflict.
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