Posted by Hemant Mehta in Rod Dreher, a Dallas Morning News editorial columnist, writes this almost excellent piece on religion and politics, focusing on Mitt Romney and Mormonism.
We get such nuggets as this one:
There are plenty of good reasons for conservative Christians not to vote for Mr. Romney, but his religious beliefs are not among them. Do Christians want to be in the position of rejecting a candidate whose political views and moral values they agree with, solely because they don’t like his religion? On what grounds would they condemn secularists for rejecting Christian candidates?
And this:
Does freedom require religion, as Mr. Romney asserts? Superficially, no, unless you wish to argue that post-Christian Europe is unfree, which is plainly nuts.
But we shouldn’t be so quick to dismiss John Adams’ observation that the U.S. Constitution is made “only for a moral and religious people” and will not work for any other. His point was that maintaining political liberty requires a people capable of governing themselves and restraining their passions for the greater good. He might have said “moral” people, and left it at that, because in his day and in ours, one can find morally upright men and women who have no religious faith and believers who are morally corrupt.
He makes one glaring error, though, with this statement:
But the crooked timber of humanity is frail indeed. If God doesn’t exist, then by what standard do we decide right from wrong? If a society recognizes no independent, transcendent guardian of the moral order, will it not, over time, lose its self-discipline and decline into barbarism? The eminent sociologist Philip Rieff, who was not a believer, said that man would either live in fear of God or would be condemned to live in fear of the evil in himself.
Of course that’s a bunch of %$#&. Atheists can indeed be moral.
As one commenter wrote:
Does acting moral really depend on a belief in the biggest, baddest daddy on the block?
Those of us who have discovered that acting morally is sound, beneficial, socially appropriate, and good for our own sake and the sake of others must be enlightened. No, just humane, reasonable, and empathetic. It’s just plain faith, living and undeluded.
(Thanks to Michael for the link!)
[tags]atheist, atheism, God, religion[/tags]
Condemned? If we must live in fear, then let’s choose something real to fear rather than a bogeyman.
Recognizing our own capacity for evil is part of moral decision-making. Alexander Solzhenitsyn (Gulag Archipelago) said that “the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being.” We all have the capacity for either one so if the fear of our own evil is enough to push us towards good, then let it be. Is it enough of a start?
Of course, it’s a well known fact that the Scythians, Goths, Vandals, Saxons, Huns, Magyars, Vikings, Mongols (and for that matter European Crusaders) and any other group of people we traditionally call “barbarians” were all godless infidels who had no notion of a transcendent being…
I will point out the fact that atheists believe there is no such Guardian setting the moral order of His self-proclaimed followers. The nonexistence of such a Guardian is made clear by their lack of self-discipline and pandemic barbarism.
A system with a guardian of the moral order would not suffer so. The fact that religions suffer the same problems of any human political system is proof positive that no-one superior to humanity is watching the store.
And if god doesn’t exist, then by what standard can we decide what smells bad?
If i were a believer, I definitely would be more scared of prison, than hell.
I think we atheists do use fear to some extent but on real consequences. I don’t fear saying god damn it because there are no repercussions. If I say jesus wasn’t the son of god, no repercussions. If I cheat on my wife, serious repercussions. If I steal something and go to jail, real repercussions. If I see a old woman drop a 20 dollar bill and I pick it up and pocket it I have to live with my conscience eating at me and it would. The last one goes back to the golden rule. Would I want someone to give me my 20 bucks back? Sure.
It’s a fascinating tension at the heart of most religious thinking: We’re the children of a divine being, yet without an eternal watchman we’d rapidly descend into abhorrent behaviour. It’s like saying “I have the most perfectly behaved child in the world, but the moment he thinks you’re not looking the little f*cker’s setting fire to the furniture and torturing cats.” It’s crazy.
Compared to ancient codes written by brutal societies, and the medieval interpretations of intentionally obscure ancient texts?
Postmodernist nonsense…
I think if you scratch at statements like this long enough, the meaning is usually revealed as: “How can I be absolutely 100% sure that I’m right and other people are wrong?”
The answer is that you can’t – but is that a problem? I agree with Old Beezle about Rieff’s statement. What is wrong with being “condemned” to recognizing the human capacity for evil, and especially our capacity to rationalize evil and make it seem “normal”? This is a much saner basis for a free and open society than projecting our fears and desires onto a Supreme Being who is not answerable to human ideas of morality.
Unfortunately we do have some evidence that eliminating religion will not eliminate human self-righteousness.
Aj said:
Still a bit unclear on the concept.
monkeymind,
No, that’s the concept, to be unclear.
Aj, the author was quoting Rieff to bolster his argument that we need an independent, transcendent moral order. That’s pretty much the antithesis of post-modernism.
Whatever you think of post-modernism as a philosophy, we all have to accept that we are living in a post-modern world. If the modernity project had been an unqualified success, we wouldn’t be having this discussion.
monkeymind,
We need to believe that there is one, but in this case, “we” means “other people”. That’s very much part of post-modernism.
“Post-modern world”, “modernity project”, “unqualified success”, I don’t have to accept any of the implications of your second paragraph. It’s complete bullshit.