Posted on 02/26/2014 3:05:25 PM PST by Notary Sojac
Yesterday, in response to one of the many brouhahas that CPAC seems always to invite, Brent Bozell issued the following statement:
The invitation extended by the ACU, Al Cardenas and CPAC to American Atheists to have a booth is more than an attack on conservative principles. It is an attack on God Himself. American Atheists is an organization devoted to the hatred of God. How on earth could CPAC, or the ACU and its board of directors, and Al Cardenas condone such an atrocity?
The particular merits of the American Atheists group to one side, this is a rather astounding thing for Bozell to have said. In just 63 words, he confuses disbelief in God for hatred for God a mistake that not only begs the question but is inherently absurd (one cannot very well hate what one does not believe is there); he condemns an entire conference on the basis of one participant not a good look for a struggling movement, Im afraid; and, most alarmingly perhaps, he insinuates that one cannot simultaneously be a conservative and an atheist. I reject this idea and with force.
If atheism and conservatism are incompatible, then I am not a conservative. And nor, I am given to understand, are George Will, Charles Krauthammer, Anthony Daniels, Walter Olson, Heather Mac Donald, James Taranto, Allahpundit, or S. E. Cupp. There is no getting around this no splitting the difference: I dont believe there is a God. Its not that Im not sure or that I havent ever bothered to think about it; its that I actively think there isnt a God much as I think there are no fairies or unicorns or elves. The degree to which Im confident in this view works on a scale, certainly: Im much surer, for example, that the claims of particular religions are untrue and that there is no power intervening in the affairs of man than I am that there was no prime mover of any sort. But, when it comes down to it, I dont believe in any of those propositions. Am I to be excommunicated from the Right?
One of the problems we have when thinking about atheism in the modern era is that the word has been hijacked and turned into a political position when it is no such thing. The Oxford English Dictionary defines an atheist as someone who exhibits disbelief in, or denial of, the existence of a god. Thats me right there and that really is the extent of it. No, I dont dislike anyone who does believe that there is a God; no, with a few obvious exceptions, I am not angry at the religious; and no, I do not believe the devout to be in any way worse or less intelligent than myself. Insofar as the question inspires irritation in me at all it is largely reserved for the sneering, smarmy, and incomprehensibly self-satisfied New Atheist movement, which has turned the worthwhile writings of some extremely smart people into an organized means by which a cabal of semi-educated twentysomethings might berate the vast majority of the human population and then congratulate one another as to how clever they are. (For some startling examples of this, see Reddit.)
Which is to say that, philosophically speaking, I couldnt really care less (my friend Andrew Kirell suggests this makes me an Apatheist) and practically speaking I am actually pretty warm toward religion at least as it is practiced in America. True or false, American religion plays a vital and welcome role in civil society, has provided a number of indispensable insights into the human condition, acts as a remarkably effective and necessary check on the ambitions of government and central social-planners, is worthy of respect and measured inquiry on the Burkean grounds that it has endured for this long and been adopted by so many, and has been instrumental in making the United States what it is today. To regret religion, my fellow Brit, conservative, and atheist, Anthony Daniels, writes correctly, is to regret our civilization and its monuments, its achievements, and its legacy. I do not regret our civilization, its monuments, its achievements, and its legacy. And I do not regret religion either.
Constitutionally and legally, America is a secular state, and the principle that the government should be strictly prohibited from making distinctions between myself (an atheist) and my fiancée (a Catholic) is one for which I would fight to the death. (David Barton and his brazen historical revisionism can go hang: This is a republic, dammit.) But nations are not made by laws alone. Suppose we were to run two simulations. In one, America develops full of mostly Protestant Christians; in the other, it develops full of atheists or Communists or devotees of Spinoza. Are we honestly to believe that the country would have come out the same in each case? Of course not. For all the mistakes that are made in religions name, I am familiar enough with the various attempts to run societies on allegedly modern grounds to worry that the latter options would have been much less pretty indeed.
None of this, however, excuses the manner in which conservatives often treat atheists such as myself. George H. W. Bush, who was more usually reticent on such topics, is reported to have said that he didnt know that atheists should be regarded as citizens, nor should they be regarded as patriotic. This, Bush allegedly told Robert I. Sherman, is one nation under God. Whether Bush ever uttered these words or not, this sentiment has been expressed by others elsewhere. It is a significant mistake. What this nation is, in fact, is one nation under the Constitution a document that precedes the under God reference in the Gettysburg Address by more than seven decades and the inclusion of the phrase in the Pledge of Allegiance by 165 years. (In God We Trust, too, was a modern addition, replacing E Pluribus Unum as the national motto in 1956 after 174 years.)
Indeed, given the troubled waters into which American religious liberty has of late been pushed, it strikes me that conservatives ought to be courting atheists not shunning them. I will happily take to the barricades for religious conscience rights, not least because my own security as a heretic is bound up with that of those who differ from me, and because a truly free country seeks to leave alone as many people as possible however eccentric I might find their views or they might find mine. In my experience at least, it is Progressivism and not conservatism that is eternally hostile to variation and to individual belief, and, while we are constantly told that the opposite is the case, it is those who pride themselves on being secular who seem more likely and more keen to abridge my liberties than those who pride themselves on being religious. That I do not share the convictions of the religious by no means implies that I wish for the state to reach into their lives. Nevertheless, religious conservatives will find themselves without many friends if they allow figures such as Mr. Bozell to shoo away the few atheists who are sympathetic to their broader cause.
As it happens, not only do I reject the claim that the two positions are antagonistic, but Id venture that much of what informs my atheism informs my conservatism also. I am possessed of a latent skepticism of pretty much everything, a hostility toward the notion that one should believe things because they are a nice idea, a fear of holistic philosophies, a dislike of authority and of dogma, a strong belief in the Enlightenment as interpreted and experienced by the British and not the French, and a rather tenacious refusal to join groups. Occasionally, Im asked why I believe there is no God, which is a reasonable question in a vacuum but which nonetheless rather seems to invert the traditional order of things. After all, thats not typically how we make our inquiries on the right, is it? Instead, we ask what evidence there is that something is true. Think, perhaps, of how we approach new gun-control measures and inevitably bristle at the question, Why dont you want to do this?
A great deal of the friction between atheists and conservatives seems to derive from a reasonable question. If you dont consider that human beings are entitled to God given liberties, I am often asked, dont you believe that the unalienable rights that you spend your days defending are merely the product of ancient legal accidents or of the one-time whims of transient majorities? Well, no, not really. As far as I can see, the American settlement can thrive perfectly well within my worldview. God or no God, the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and the Declaration of Independence are all built upon centuries of English law, human experience, and British and European philosophy, and the natural law case for them stands nicely on its own. Thomas Jefferson, who penned the Declaration, was not a religious man in any broad sense but a Deist, and his use of the term Natures God in laying out the framework for the new country was no accident. Jefferson was by no means an atheist at least not in any modern sense: He believed in the moral teachings of Jesus; his work owed a great debt to the culture of toleration that English Protestantism had fostered; and, like almost all 18th-century thinkers, he believed in a prime mover. Nevertheless, he ultimately rejected the truth claims of revealed religion (and the Divine Right of Kings that he believed such a position inevitably yielded) and he relied instead on a Creator who looked like the God of Deism and not of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
As David J. Voelker has convincingly argued, Jefferson
rejected revealed religion because revealed religion suggests a violation of the laws of nature. For revelation or any miracle to occur, the laws of nature would necessarily be broken. Jefferson did not accept this violation of natural laws. He attributed to God only such qualities as reason suggested.
Of the nature of this being, Jefferson wrote to John Adams in 1817, we know nothing. Neither do I. Indeed, I do not believe that there is a being at all. And yet one can reasonably easily take Jeffersons example and, without having to have an answer as to what created the world, merely rely upon the same sources as he did upon Locke and Newton and Cicero and Bacon and, ultimately, upon ones own human reason. From this, one can argue that the properties of the universe suggest self-ownership, that this self-ownership yields certain rights that should be held to be unalienable, and that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness. After all, thats what were all fighting for. Right?
Yes, those of us who talk to Him a lot get very close to Him.
What’s wrong with having an interest in helping others? Why must giving be selfless? This is what I don’t understand. When I help someone it is always in my interest to do so and the joy I get from it is what I get in return. I don’t believe in self sacrifice. I’m planning to help a family right now to raise money to send their autistic child to a special school. It is my joy and pleasure to do so but it must never be my moral obligation to do so. That is what you don’t get and the premise that turns man into a sacrificial animal. I hold that man should have self esteem.
I don’t know how you could have possibly gotten from my comments that I support Socialism. I am the arch enemy of socialism. I am for complete, unregulated laizzes faire capitalism. I said that there is no rational justification for Socialism and that is why I find so many atheists to be hypocrites. I choose to be consistent and only hold beliefs for which there is rational justification.
Capitalism is the only moral system and it is incompatible with the morality of self sacrifice. Capitalism is about the achievement of values not their sacrifice.
MOST historical Christianity.
Calvin wasn’t exactly a general influence.
Calvin had no influence on the majority of Christian denominations. Even today Calvinist influenced churches speak for a minority.
And, as you note, even Calvin was quite tentative about several such matters, no doubt as a result of the long history of Christian attitudes.
Obviously.
It is my joy and pleasure to do so but it must never be my moral obligation to do so.
You still don't get it. Christians help others because they want to. Because they have the heart of God. They understand the nature of giving and do so out of love, not because they have to. The Word says that you can't "earn" your way into Heaven. If you do something for someone out of a sense of moral obligation it is meaningless.
Let's say you are a parent and you buy lots of goodies for your child but you never play with them together with the goodies. Has that parent really loved the child? No. You've given them everything but the most important thing, you and your love. All the goodies are meaningless.
Understand?
At the risk of a zot,
Conservatism is not a simple thing, it is in fact complex, various and fluid. American conservatism especially.
Russell Kirk defined it, to the extent it can be defined.
“The Conservative Mind” is essential reading for anyone interested in the philosophical roots and varieties of American Conservatism.
Not Christ, but Joseph Smith!
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That doesn’t answer the question. Why must giving be selfless?
However...
ELSIEthons are still permitted.
Your mourning is about over. Time to get a goat.
They ignore you even better and are less picky about their food.
Nope. My little girl gets a year.
I’m not exactly sure what you’re talking about but if you give expecting something in return then you aren’t really giving. It’s a bribe. Giving is from the heart and done freely, without strings, whether it’s money, a willing ear or something as simple as a loving hug when someone needs it.
Enjoy, Kitty!
It's incredible that he and others like him are just beginning to wake up. Where have they been?
I think the problem is we have different definitions of what selfless means. So let me be precise and say that when I help someone the joy I receive for doing that is my reward. My kindness is a payment for the pleasure I take and the admiration I feel for another. It is not a sacrifice. It is in my self interest to it. We don’t disagree on this but where we disagree is in calling it moral. Giving is no more moral than spending on yourself. When it is seen as moral to produce a value and give it away but immoral to produce a value and keep it for yourself that is what what I consider to be unspeakably evil. Altruism means literally to live for others and not the self. It is not merely kindness.
Religion preaches that selflessness is a virtue. I think it is anti life.
“Calvin had no influence on the majority of Christian denominations. “
Calvin was a major influence on much of western Europe, and in British North America which was heavily Presbyterian. The very regions where free market economies developed.
“no doubt as a result of the long history of Christian attitudes.”
‘No doubt’ to the ignorant perhaps- the bias against capitalism in the west came from Aristotelian thought.
Some of Western Europe, certainly not most of it.
In fact the bulk of the economic bases of the European ascendancy post 1600 were not Calvinist.
Check your industrial history.
And British North America was only minority Presbyterian.
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