Cordially
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, I’m 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 don’t believe there is a God. It’s not that I’m “not sure” or that I haven’t ever bothered to think about it; it’s that I actively think there isn’t a God — much as I think there are no fairies or unicorns or elves. The degree to which I’m confident in this view works on a scale, certainly: I’m 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 don’t 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.” That’s me right there — and that really is the extent of it. No, I don’t 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 couldn’t 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 religion’s 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 didn’t “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 I’d 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, I’m 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, that’s 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 don’t you want to do this?”
A great deal of the friction between atheists and conservatives seems to derive from a reasonable question. “If you don’t consider that human beings are entitled to ‘God given’ liberties,” I am often asked, “don’t 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 “Nature’s 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 Jefferson’s 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 one’s 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, that’s what we’re all fighting for. Right?
“acolyte of Ayn Rand” ?
That is a bizarre suggestion to come out of a historical argument. I am a Catholic, of the conservative variety. If I am an acolyte, it is of our holy mother church.
Ayn Rand was a brilliant Jewish intellectual with a huge grudge against her enemies, a righteous grudge indeed, but she went off the deep end.
Her best contribution to us (all of us) was that she obsessed about her enemies, and thus knew them very well. Her description of the leftist intellectual system and milieu in her novels is not only precise, it is prophetic. She compares, on these matters, with Orwell, Whittaker Chambers, Arthur Koestler, Milovan Djilas.
Her own philosophical/moral system is on the other hand was the result of her own hubris. She apparently felt that she had to create a theory of all, abandoning all tradition and religion. And of course when any person tries to do that they create an absurdity.
She is well worth reading.
As for Diamond in #236 - No it doesn’t.
US society was NOT created by Calvinist/Presbyterian ideas.
They were a minority then and quickly became an even smaller minority. And historically speaking, in terms of economic development, technological development, and cultural prominence, far from the leading edge.
The best part of what exists here now, and what has historically been the secret of the success of the United States, is the result of a multitude of factors.
Some British officials far away from America said some things at some times, suffering no doubt in a fog of ignorance and misinformation (their general state of confusion and overall incompetence is well known). These are not unimpeachable authorities.
The development of the Revolution, and the actual course of the Revolution, and its detailed history, are very well known, and very accessible. This record does not lead me to the conclusion that some special weight should be given to the Presbyterian influence in America.
A good answer.
Perhaps a better way to phrase my question would be, “From where does your moral compass originate?”
If your moral compass originates with customs and traditions, then they are subject to change with the vicissitudes of culture. Consider how prenatal infanticide and sexual perversion are widely accepted today. In fact, it is considered “ethical” by our culture to protect these things against any who would speak against them.
Perhaps I should have included some more of the non-Calvinistic historian quotations so as to avoid even the mere appearance of Presbyterian special pleading.
The testimony of Emilio Castelar, the famous Spanish statesman, orator and scholar, is interesting and valuable. Castelar had been professor of Philosophy in the University of Madrid before he entered politics, and he was made president of the republic which was set up by the Liberals in 1873. As a Roman Catholic he hated Calvin and Calvinism. Says he: "It was necessary for the republican movement that there should come a morality more austere than Luther's, the morality of Calvin, and a Church more democratic than the German, the Church of Geneva. The Anglo-Saxon democracy has for its lineage a book of a primitive society — the Bible. It is the product of a severe theology learned by the few Christian fugitives in the gloomy cities of Holland and Switzerland, where the morose shade of Calvin still wanders . . . And it remains serenely in its grandeur, forming the most dignified, most moral and most enlightened portion of the human race."...The testimony of another famous historian, the Frenchman Taine, who himself held no religious faith, is worthy of consideration. Concerning the Calvinists he said: "These men are the true heroes of England. They founded England, in spite of the corruption of the Stuarts, by the exercise of duty, by the practice of justice, by obstinate toil, by vindication of right, by resistance to oppression, by the conquest of liberty, by the repression of vice. They founded Scotland; they founded the United States; at this day they are, by their descendants, founding Australia and colonizing the world."...
"If the average American citizen were asked, who was the founder of America, the true author of our great Republic, he might be puzzled to answer. We can imagine his amazement at hearing the answer given to this question by the famous German historian, Ranke, one of the profoundest scholars of modern times. Says Ranke, 'John Calvin was the virtual founder of America.'"…
All this has been thoroughly understood and candidly acknowledged by such penetrating and philosophic historians as Bancroft, who far though he was from being Calvinistic in his own personal convictions, simply calls Calvin "the father of America," and adds: "He who will not honor the memory and respect the influence of Calvin knows but little of the origin of American liberty."
Cordially,
These worthy gentlemen seem a bit - removed - from their subject. And rather odd sorts of authorities regarding the development of political institutions among the Anglo Saxons. Again, I repeat my charge of cherry-picking. If you want to delve into 19th century historians of this subject, try Macaulay, from whom you will get a detailed, nuanced, and very different picture.
Spot on..!
Ethics teaches us what is sin according to man.... Man is always in flux....changing
What is "moral" on the other hand...teaches us sin according to GOD everlasting....
Works for me....
“These worthy gentlemen seem a bit - removed - from their subject. And rather odd sorts of authorities regarding the development of political institutions among the Anglo Saxons”
You were provided with the comments of British contemporaries of the American Revolution who made the same point.
It is obvious you will find fault with everyone who sees the role of Calvinism in the development of both free markets and American culture, to the point that you make contradictory objections. In one case you dismiss the contemporary British opponents of the American revolutionaries. In the next case you dismiss observers who weren’t close in time to the events in question. Your objections smack of invincible ignorance.
Free markets developed in Christendom. The Catholic traders of Italy played a big role with double entry bookkeeping, the Catholic Fuggers were the bankers of Europe. But the greatest expansion of free markets and political freedom developed in British North America with its heavy Presbyterian influence. A fact that will persist despite your chirping to the contrary.
I cannot find anything in Macaulay that controverts what these historians have written on the subject. More cherry picking, I suppose, to your mind, but in fact Macaulay helps corroborate them regarding political institutions among the Anglo Saxons
3. CALVINISM IN ENGLANDCordially,
A glance at English history readily shows us that it was Calvinism which made Protestantism triumphant in that land. Many of the leading Protestants who fled to Geneva during the reign of Queen Mary afterward obtained high positions in the Church under Queen Elizabeth. Among them were the translators of the Geneva version of the Bible, which owes much to Calvin and Beza, and which continued to be the most popular English version till the middle of the seventeenth century when it was superseded by the King James version. The influence of Calvin is shown in the Thirty-Nine Articles of the Church of England, especially in Article XVII which states the doctrine of Predestination. Cunningham has shown that all of the great theologians of the Established Church during the reigns of Henry VIII, Edward VI and Elizabeth were thoroughgoing predestinarians and that the Arminianism of Laud and his successors was a deviation from that original position.If we search for the true heroes of England, we shall find them in that noble body of English Calvinists whose insistence upon a purer form of worship and a purer life won for them the nickname, “Puritans,” to whom Macaulay refers as “perhaps the most remarkable body of men which the world has ever produced.” “That the English people became Protestant,” says Bancroft, “is due to the Puritans.” Smith tells us: “The significance of this fact is beyond computation. English Protestantism, with its open Bible, its spiritual and intellectual freedom, meant the Protestantism not only of the American colonies, but of the virile and multiplying race which for three centuries has been carrying the Anglo-Saxon language, religion, and institutions into all the world.”[5]
Cromwell, the great Calvinistic leader and commoner, planted himself upon the solid rock of Calvinism and called to himself soldiers who had planted themselves upon that same rock. The result was an army which for purity and heroism surpassed anything the world had ever seen. “It never found,” says Macaulay, “either in the British Isles or on the Continent, an enemy who could stand its onset. In England, Scotland, Ireland, Flanders, the Puritan warriors, often surrounded by difficulties, sometimes contending against threefold odds, not only never failed to conquer, but never failed to destroy and break in pieces whatever force was opposed to them. They at length came to regard the day of battle as a day of certain triumph, and marched against the most renowned battalions of Europe with disdainful confidence. Even the banished Cavaliers felt an emotion of national pride when they saw a brigade of their countrymen, outnumbered by foes and abandoned by friends, drive before it in headlong rout the finest infantry of Spain, and force a passage into a counterscarp which had just been pronounced impregnable by the ablest of the marshals of France.” And again, “That which chiefly distinguished the army of Cromwell from other armies, was the austere morality and the fear of God which pervaded the ranks. It is acknowledged by the most zealous Royalists that, in that singular camp, no oath was heard, no drunkenness or gambling was seen, and that, during the long dominion of soldiery, the property of the peaceable citizens and the honor of woman were held sacred. No servant girl complained of the rough gallantry of the redcoats. Not an ounce of plate was taken from the shops of the goldsmiths.”[6] Macaulay, History of England, I., p. 119.
Prof. John Fiske, who has been ranked as one of the two greatest American historians, says, “It is not too much to say that in the seventeenth century the entire political future of mankind was staked upon the questions that were at issue in England. Had it not been for the Puritans, political liberty would probably have disappeared from the world. If ever there were men who laid down their lives in the cause of all mankind, it was those grim old Ironsides, whose watchwords were texts of Holy Writ, whose battle-cries were hymns of praise.”[7] The Beginnings of New England, pp. 37,51.
http://www.apuritansmind.com/arminianism/calvinism-in-history/
[empahsis mine]
The attached is a fine example of cherry picking. What you want is a full history of English political institutions, which Macaulay will give you. A couple of quotes will not substitute for his work entire, and those two quotes, I assure you, do not reflect his main themes.
And, for what its worth, you will find Macaulay generally sympathetic to your loyalties, so it should prove to be a good read for you.
I didn't say they did. Do you disagree with the substance of his statements in post 249, or those of Smith, Fiske or Bancroft in the same post on the significance of Calvinism and Cromwell in the history of political liberty? If you don't disagree then you have lost the argument. If you do disagree, why?
Cordially,
I disagree with the thrust of the piece because it is dreadfully incomplete. This is what happens when this type of argument is attempted. Some is purported to stand for all. Note that Macaulay in the bits quoted deals with only a few of the matters at issue.
Is there any other specific reason that you disagree with the statements of Smith, Fiske and Bancroft, et al regarding the significance and critical importance Calvinism in the development of England and America, other than they apparently are not nuanced enough for your taste? Why are they wrong? Where are they inaccurate? Do you have any specific evidence other than a single, broad demographic statistic to support your assertion that US society was not created by Calvinist/Presbyterian ideas?
Cordially,
Certainly.
The point with respect to the Presbyterians is that they were but one element in the development of British institutions, and some of the positive effects were not things they created but due to reactions against them. Note that you are quoting from some of Macaulay’s essays, not his history. The Calvinist fanaticism was important in winning the English Civil war. What happened later was that the Calvinists warred with each other, switching the Scottish branch to side with the anti-parliament Stuarts for a generation, and the English branch turned into a military dictatorship and a totalitarian state against which there was an enduring revulsion, which created a potent counter-force.
The Calvinists were never so powerful again, being something of a dreadful warning of the dangers of excess.
Their influence was therefore ultimately that of a driver to create moderating institutions.
And that is how one must deal with history. True history is not something from which one can legitimately grab scattered facts to pursue some conviction. One must rather collect all the facts, all the arguments, and weighting them all, in mature judgment, present a nuanced decision.
It is like being a judge hearing a case, but more so. You must listen to both the defense and the prosecution, and as well to the case of circumstance, as everything that happened historically is the result of chains of circumstance, none of which ultimately are decisive and the chain could have been broken anywhere.
The only way to approach a legitimate study is to obsessively gather facts, all the facts.
Cordially
On the circumstances of history -
Any event is the result of long chains of circumstances, all of which are essentially points at which a roll of the dice, metaphorically speaking, could have shifted things to, perhaps, a very different present.
Peculiarly deadly Calvinists are one factor. However, they are not the only factor. In English political history consider the potential of a Charles II with a male heir. Or if his brother wasn’t a prat. Or a William III who lived longer with a proper heir, where Parliament did not gain power over weak women monarchs or a foreign dynasty with little local backing.
We have real life experiments (history is full of “natural experiments”). France had its peculiarly deadly Calvinists too, in the previous century. They won their own civil war, even putting one of their own, Henri IV, on the throne, which the English ones never quite managed. But the chain of circumstance went in a very different way - probably because there were pre-existing conditions in France, the result of many different chains of causation, and events moved differently after as well in other chains of causation.
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