The Godless Rise As A Political Force
Secularist, humanist, freethinking nontheists and atheists are coalescing into a movement with a real agenda.
by Paul Starobin
Saturday, March 7, 2009
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Mr. Starobin appeared on CSPANs Washington Journal this morning (I suppose he may have attended religious services at another time - Saturday evening, perhaps). I enjoy listening to the Washington Journal on Sunday mornings (on those Sundays that I attend religious services in the evening due to work commitments). For what may be to some people obvious reasons, Democrat callers predominate. And such was the case this morning. Mr. Starobin demurred on making public his own religious leanings, but he appeared to be sympathetic to the atheists, secularists, freethinking non-theists, agnostics and unchurched he lumped into the Godless class (it's all about class and identity politics, after all, isn't it?)
Obviously, a brief radio interview cannot cover the sound and detailed analysis I'm sure is contained in his undoubtedly insightful article. But, we can discern from his subtitle and his exposition on CSPAN that it really is all about political power and the godless are indeed attempting to shape themselves as an identity group in order to get in on the victim gravy train that has its nexus at Union Station.
But back to the moonbattery that call in to CSPAN on Sunday mornings. The impression they gave me was that they had drunk the Sam Harris (brights vs dulls) KoolAid. I have a major problem with this way of looking at things. Mostly because it is so damn untrue. If Sam Harris and the other 4 Jackasses of Atheism
(Hitchens, Dennett, Dawkins, Harris) and their witling lemmings who called into CSPAN are bright and Avery Cardinal Dulles Fr. James V. Schall, George Weigel, Michael Novak and Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI are dull then I'm unsure what those words mean. To be fair, the Godly callers were mostly Evangelical or Fundamentalist Christians whose doctrines are a fair match for the weak arguments of the neo-atheists.
But therein lies another beef I have with those unreasonable defenders of what they think is reason. How is it that the best arguments of the neo-darwinists and neo-atheists are so damn weak? Perhaps the true atheist intellectuals are not being published in the US. Or perhaps there aren't any. Is Camille Paglia the best they can do? Ward Churchill? Spittle-spewing haters like Harris and Hitchens? I've seen their arguments and they are weak. They mostly depend upon strawmen, misrepresentations, false causality, ad homenim and appeal to (their own) authority.
I can understand why Hitchens drinks. I would too if I were a nominally intelligent person who was determined to convince others that their chipped and faded veneer of rationality is the patina of Reason. What bare logic that may be found in their defense of a negative proposition is lost when it filters down to the true believers calling in to CSPAN on Sunday Morning. It washes out to something like: I don't fall for that religious mumbo-jumbo, I think for myself; therefore I am smart. You believe in God, so you must not think for yourself; therefore you are dumb. This is disproved by the very existence of Bill Maher - and Bill Buckley. When your most prominent apologists are comedians Penn & Teller, you've got to suspect that your dogma is a joke.
The CSPAN moderator asked of several callers if they would support a politician who was an atheist but all of whose policies you otherwise supported. A reasonable person could be expected to answer that question affirmatively. Perhaps he was looking for proof of the unreasonableness of 'dulls'. However, at the same time, the godless tended to call in on the Democrat line while the faithful called in on the Republican line. Surely this is obvious evidence of the pragmatic reason driven intelligence of Democrats and the unreasonable illogic of Republicans in the thrall of the Radical Religious Right.
No.
It is exceedingly unlikely that a politician who viewed reality through an atheist lens would arrive at policies with which I agreed. Atheism is nothing new in human history. Nor are the subsequent beliefs that man is perfectible by man or that politics is the highest form of human endeavor or that the ends of perfecting man and his society justify the means of achieving those seemingly lofty goals. Those sorts of beliefs, today, result in the Obama pledge to 'remake America' and 'perfect our Union' by means of increasing government intervention into people's lives.
While the Christian view of reality; that we are creatures endowed with immortal souls who have inherent dignity and free will but who are fallible and whose perfection comes from Someone above and outside of ourselves leads to a very different conclusion. Human dignity must be respected by means of personal freedom. Our fallen nature cannot be perfected by psychological, pharmacological, neurological or genetic manipulation. The state's role then is to protect our freedom to live dignified lives in pursuit of our own salvation.
Those who seek to immanentize the eschaton are bound to fail. It isn't the way the world is made.
CCC 676: " the Church has rejected even modified forms of this falsification of the kingdom to come under the name of millenarianism,576 especially the "intrinsically perverse" political form of a secular messianism.577"While I was getting that off of my chest, I read an article in the March issue of First Things by Jean Bethke Elshtain, entitled While Europe Slept. Mike Novak posted it on his blog: http://novak.livejournal.com/428104.html#cutid1
A topic for another post. Read it. I'm sure I cannot do it justice.
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