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?
Good questions, and I am no atheist, but these aren’t that hard to answer.
No thinking atheist will discount the effect of religion on human behavior, despite not sharing such beliefs. That can seem cynical and it probably is to a degree. As Voltaire said, “If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him.”
Some atheist answers inserted below just to indicate some directions of answers -
Where do your rights come from?
Tradition, the social contract, biology, enlightened self interest, etc.
Why do you wear clothes ?
Fashion, social acceptance, desire to avoid social friction, mating strategies, survival, comfort, etc.
Why are there seven days in a week?
A social convention, tradition.
How do you know what is good and what is evil?
There is no such things as good and evil, just biological optimums or the opposite, enlightened self-interest, etc.
If everything came from nothing out of nowhere,
if life is just a curious side effect of an unknowing and uncaring cosmos,
if when you die, you are just so much compost,
then why seek anything other than a life of self-gratification and a painless extinction?
Biological programming towards reproduction and the survival of progeny; biological programming towards the survival of the group, etc.
The atheist won't kill you for not agreeing with them.
The other two groups have been known to do that frequently, with great vigor and perseverance.
I do not buy this Atheism claim. Every body has a ‘god’. Whatever any soul places their faith/trust in is their god. It really does not matter in the long term scheme of things, all ‘souls/spirit intellect’ return to the Maker that sent them. And all souls/spirit intellect get the opportunity to return with a blank slate.
Just saw you on another thread getting ready to pop popcorn and watch the Christian denominations go at it.
Guess you were a little premature.
Communism is based on atheism, last I heard tell it was responsible for more than 100+ million deaths.
The atheist won’t kill you for not agreeing with them.
Wrong. Communism’s atheists have killed millions for not agreeing with them.
So, if anybody places their faith/trust in themselves alone, they are either an atheist or an anarchist?
Would it matter either an atheist or an anarchist? Sorry we all leave this flesh journey and return to the Maker whether we believe or not. Might as well accept reality.
Yes, it’s gotten to where it’s noteworthy to see the phrase used correctly.
Unless you’re dealing with Communist atheists. Also, I don’t recall hearing Christians killing people for disagreeing with them. Maybe in the past, but not today.
Where do your rights come from?"
Our Constitution and the moral characteristics of our founders and the degree to which that morality can be retained in our culture and present day politicians. (hence my world view that our culture is circling the drain)
Why do you wear clothes?
Mostly to stay warm but also, admittedly, to minimize the envy of others.
Why are there seven days in a week?
Human quantification of our planet's yearly journey about it's sustaining star is just ...human quantification. At the week level, I'm sure biblical utterances had something to do with their ultimate design.
How do you know what is good and what is evil?
I don't know, I just do. How about you?
If everything came from nothing out of nowhere, if life is just a curious side effect of an unknowing and uncaring cosmos, if when you die, you are just so much compost, then why seek anything other than a life of self-gratification and a painless extinction?
That's a question each of us must ask ourselves. The answer defines who you are.
I was an altar boy back when the mass was still celebrated in Latin. I sense that I respect truth more than most. My religious beliefs have changed due to my constant search for truth. At this stage of my life I am who I am and believe what I believe for what I feel are the right reasons. I am always willing to admit that I am wrong as I certainly have a history of that. But I keep searching for truth.
Your beliefs are probably different than mine but that doesn't bother me as I am only answerable to my own perceptions of truth. That is why I am baffled as to why a homogenous group of like-thinkers are so concerned about what I believe.
The fact that I was born human.
Why do you wear clothes?
I would prefer not to.
Why are there seven days in a week?
The observed rotation of the earth and its orbit around the sun.
How do you know what is good and what is evil?
Evil is what tramples on somebody else's life or property. Everything else is good.
If everything came from nothing out of nowhere, if life is just a curious side effect of an unknowing and uncaring cosmos, if when you die, you are just so much compost, then why seek anything other than a life of self-gratification and a painless extinction?
Exactly.
[ Conservative atheists are the ones who vote conservative and seldom mention their beliefs and don’t seek out groups to join so they can proclaim their atheism.
Agenda atheism is about as compatible with conservatism as agenda homosexuality. ]
NAILED IT
"Let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. Reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle. " ~George Washington
I am speaking anecdotally. Where there is a hankering for amorality, there it is atheists and satanists. If you want "proof" and numbers you'll have to drink something stronger than I.
"The sacred rights of mankind are not to be rummaged for among old parchments or musty records. They are written, as with a sunbeam, in the whole volume of human nature, by the hand of the divinity itself; and can never be erased." Alexander Hamilton
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