“You heard it here first – we were not born in the Garden of Eden.”
– Tara Smith, talking at the Adam Smith Institute last week, with reference to the idea that we get to inherit something called Original Sin.
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Here in the secular world we’ve long rejected (quite properly) the doctrine of “corruption of the blood”. Unfortunately, the Catholic Church didn’t get the memo.
I aim to commit New and Innovative Sins…
As much as I agree with Libertarians in terms governmental policy, you can always count on them to willfully back up their abject ignorance of religion with ill-informed appeals to outdated caricatures. Modern Magdeburg Centuries. Plus ca change…
JeremiadBullfrog, I hate to break it to you, but people such as Tara Smith have an excellent understanding of religion, hence her disdain.
The idea of Original Sin is essential to Christianity. It always bemuses me when someone pinpoints a particularly irrational aspect of religion, and religious folk sniff that this is a “caricature”.
But were we conceived in the Garden of Eden? (Actually I find the doctrine of original sin as bad as “submission” in Islam.)
Perry, when I was turning 18 I thought I wanted to try everything. Then I read a large part of the oeuvre of the Marquis de Sade and realised that my imagination and tastes were in fact very limited. Oh alright, boringly conventional in many ways…
The non-existence of God would leave those of us who believe in limited government in a bit of a quandry.
It seems to me that if there is no God, all morality is meaningless because ‘your morality’ may not be the same as ‘my morality’. If ‘my morality’ involves creating a totalitarian government, and I have the power to do that, why should I care about what ‘your morality’ says?
It’s almost endearing the way atheists come at you with centuries old ideas as if they were new and exciting instead of the subject of innumerable debates, books, and articles. “You heard it here first” is nonsense of course. Atheists have been going on about this sort of thing for quite a long time, mostly unconvincingly.
If for no other reason than practical politics, libertarians need to reconcile themselves with the fact that there are people like me, minarchists by just any reasonable definition but also convinced that the theists are right and there is a God. In case you were wondering, he’s also Orthodox/Catholic but that argument’s for another day.
Johnathan, when you posted that SQOTD you did realize that this thread would quickly degenerate into an unsatisfying and ultimately pointless debate about religion, right?
(Link) (Link) (Link)
Freedom is alien to the natural man. His innate desire is to subdue and subjugate his fellows, and he disdains liberty in all its forms. As such he sees only the two options: subjugate others, or be subjugated by another (slave-master).
What is true freedom ultimately: it is risk, unpredictability, self-reliance, decision-making.
Regardless of your beliefs on the matter of original sin, you must agree that humans tend to want a human to tell them what to do. A desire not conducive to liberty.
Freedom is alien to the natural man. His innate desire is to subdue and subjugate his fellows, and he disdains liberty in all its forms. As such he sees only the two options: subjugate others, or be subjugated by another (slave-master).
What is true freedom ultimately: it is risk, unpredictability, self-reliance, decision-making.
Regardless of your beliefs on the matter of original sin, you must agree that humans tend to want a human to tell them what to do. A desire not conducive to liberty.
[Sigh.] Smited again.
Fading joy, how quickly thou art past!
I know what Jesus has done in my life.
His whole ministry was and is saving us from the mortality that is born of sin.
What is sin, by the way?
The non-existence of God would leave those of us who believe in limited government in a bit of a quandry.
It seems to me that if there is no God, all morality is meaningless because ‘your morality’ may not be the same as ‘my morality’. If ‘my morality’ involves creating a totalitarian government, and I have the power to do that, why should I care about what ‘your morality’ says?
Tara Smith is an Objectivist, see Atlas Shrugged:
“A code of values accepted by choice is a code of morality.
“Whoever you are, you who are hearing me now, I am speaking to whatever living remnant is left uncorrupted within you, to the remnant of the human, to your mind, and I say: There is a morality of reason, a morality proper to man, and Man’s Life is its standard of value.
“AH that which is proper to the life of a rational being is the good; all that which destroys it is the evil.
“Man’s life, as required by his nature, is not the life of a mindless brute, of a looting thug or a mooching mystic, but the life of a thinking being—not life by means of force or fraud, but life by means of achievement—not survival at any price, since there’s only one price that pays for man’s survival: reason.
“Man’s life is the standard of morality, but your own life is its purpose. If existence on earth is your goal, you must choose your actions and values by the standard of that which is proper to man—for the purpose of preserving, fulfilling and enjoying the irreplaceable value which is your life.
“Since life requires a specific course of action, any other course will destroy it- A being who does not hold his own life as the motive and goal of his actions, is acting on the motive and standard of death. Such a being is a metaphysical monstrosity, struggling to oppose, negate and contradict the fact of his own existence, running blindly amuck on a trail of destruction, capable of nothing but pain.
Sadly, the objection
“It seems to me that if there is no God, all morality is meaningless because ‘your morality’ may not be the same as ‘my morality’. If ‘my morality’ involves creating a totalitarian government, and I have the power to do that, why should I care about what ‘your morality’ says?”
is without weight in terms of whether or not a god exists. Equally so in terms of whether morality exists.
Consider — those who believe in a god do not, by any means or stretch of the imagination, share a singular morality. Nor is recourse to a deity definitive in any moral discourse. Further, of course, we have the objections raised so tellingly by Plato. Either an act (or thing) is good because god wills it to be so, in which case morality is subjective and whimful, or an act (or thing) is good “on its own merits” in which case morality transcends deity.
I prefer a view of the world that is sufficiently objective to claim that morality transcends deity.
no hugs for thugs,
Shirley Knott
Really? I almost fell asleep after just a couple of pages…
? And how does the supposed fact that your (non-totalitarian) morality is sanctioned by God change that equation?
revver, you are making an unsubstantiated generalization.
The idea of Original Sin is essential to Christianity. It always bemuses me when someone pinpoints a particularly irrational aspect of religion, and religious folk sniff that this is a “caricature.
The sin we are born into, “Original Sin” as the church has called it, is indeed why Jesus died for us.
But being God who became man, being perfect while human, death could not hold Him (death was the result of sin) and He rose from the dead.
Anyone who calls on the name of Jesus and accepts His substitutionary death for their sin, will experience deliverance.
There is no problem with the concept of original sin as a self check, it works well as an easily understandable base story for keeping in mind that people (especially ourselves) aren’t perfect.
What problem exists is in the mind of the unthinking. Those who are so easily faked out when simple story analogies get turned into a group generalisation – then the story nicely becomes a handy hammer to smash any convenient “nail”.
It doesn’t matter whether it is religious zealots or anti-religious zealots, whichever side starts flailing about making gross generalisations with such a simple concept is being a tit. (me included:))
Since time immemorial (or at least since ‘1984’) it has been written into the “secular” creed that it is a most holy thing to hate and attack any “religious christian” because such an attack gains extra credits in the “amn’t I wonderful” lovefest of popular culture (as directed and applauded by the MSM). The irony that these attacks are perfect examples of exactly the poor type of religious actions they pretend to rail against, is ignored.
It’s practically unheard of now (except for the odd real thinker like Clarence Thomas) to find ‘secular’ people who examine simple religious concepts from their positive as well as negative aspects while taking the simplification/parable-ising nature of the story concept into account. Like Duh!
/rant over. Return to Rapture :p
Gawd! Here we go agin, Angels dancing on the head of the head of a pin…
I thought Jesus, the son of God, becoming human flesh and blood, absorbing our “Sins” and in dying and being resurrected, was supposed to absolve us of that “Original” sin.
So what gives? That was the whole point of the new Testament wasn’t it? Did we invent some new ones, or are we carrying on with the old ones? And who gets to say what is sin but God?( Well us humans of course, because we invented the whole thing).
Why is a new born babe a “Sinner” when it has done nothing but breathe eat and shit?
And why does God need a Civil Service? He is omnipotent isn’t he? he can do anything including making the sun stop in the sky, and time run backwards, so why does he need flunkies in the shape of Angels, Archangels (hi Gabriel! love and peace in the New Testament, birth of Jesus, violence and mayhem in the Koran) to do his “bidding” for him?
God has a son, according to Christian Mythology, and a Holy Ghost (whoooo spooky!) but no Mum and Dad and no wife. Hmmm.
I would love to believe in God, but the asshole doesn’t seem to be taking my calls to reveal himself in all his fuckin majesty and settle the issue once and for all.
Too much of a “Sinner” I guess.
Fuckin Smitebotted again!
Isn’t “Original Sin” just a lyrical way of stating that we are all flawed from birth? Just like “Let there be Light” sounds better than “The Big Bang” (to my ears at least).
Johnathan–First of all, your statement confirms my criticism. Do you even know what the concept of Original Sin is without having to google it right now? Or are you basing your ideas on some kind of caricature that it has to do with a literal Garden of Eden or, as Laird apparently believe, something called the “corruption of the blood”. Libertarians, as much as I agree with them and think that they very often have them most rational policy solutions, nevertheless seem to throw reason out the window when it comes to evaluating religious beliefs according to fundamental philosophical criteria.
Second, I checked on the website for the Adam Smith Institute, and all I could find about the Tara Smith talk was a bulletin for it. Would you like to provide some context for your support of her remark, or are you content to beat me down with a rank appeal to authority?
The Biblical story of the Fall may be fanciful, but the condition ‘original sin’ purports to explain is real enough, and universal: call it ‘survivor guilt’, the sense that we must do wrong simply to live.
We did indeed, although possibly not through Adam and Eve’s disobedience, somehow become ‘as gods, knowing good from evil’ – knowledge we can only imperfectly act on in a world of finite resources, and can’t ignore.
There’s a profound insight in the story of the Fall: the priests latched onto the disobedience part, of course (sacerdotal religions tend to be big on not disrespecting The Man), but the real ‘sin’ was developing a moral sense that unfitted us for the world we have to live in.
It depends on whether one takes “Original Sin” to be literal guilt for eating the forbidden fruit, or a representation of the idea that men are morally weak by nature.
Dorothy Sayers (as devout a Catholic as ever was) addressed the issue in a bit of dialog in The Documents in the Case. Mr. Perry, a CoE parson, in conversation with some old friends who happen to be scientists, says:
“…your ape-and-tiger ancestry provides me with a scientific authority for original sin. What a mercy the Church stuck to that dogma, in spite of Rousseau and the noble savage. If she hadn’t, you scientists would have forced it back on her, and how silly we should have all looked then.”
Human beings are highly prone to self-deception, and tend to play negative-sum games very eagerly. Don’t want to call that “original sin?” Fine. Give me another name for it.
Peter (a “Jungian” atheist)
“You heard it here first – we were not born in the Garden of Eden.” – Tara Smith,
“You heard it here first.”
Isn’t her claim to be “first” a little … self-elevating? Given that hundreds of thousands (at least) have stated the same thought over the last 2,000 years?
I didn’t bother to read the rest of the post because it is too stale, and self-congratulatory people bearing hoary views should at least try to be entertaining.
Well, actually, no: “This world is older than any of you know. Contrary to popular mythology, it did not begin as a paradise.” (Rupert Giles, on the first episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer)
I don’t imagine that anyone has discovered an original sin in the last 3,000 years. But that doesn’t mean they don’t keep trying, that creative urge has been there all along.
Chuck, I’m not sure I agree. I suspect that “Reality TV” makes the grade…
Edward:
Your point seems to assume that the only way one could have any sort of objective moral code is one handed down by some sort of Supreme Being whose identity and existence is unknowable and unprovable.
Not very plausible. I happen to think that it is possible, taking into account certain facts of reality, to arrive at some kind of objective, rational code of morality without recourse to the acceptance-by-faith approach involved in religion.
JeremiadBullfrog:
I know what the Original Sin means. That is why I attacked it. The doctrine states that one is born with sin, from the very start. In other words, a person can be damned without having literally done anything; it is a doctrine that severs the notion of sin from action. This undercuts notions of responsibility. It is an absurdity.
As for what you think about libertarians, well, you should have realised of course that we come in different shapes and sizes. Some take religion as an inspiration; some, like me (a lapsed Anglican), regard it as a source of confusion and error.
I attended the event and jotted down her remark in my notes. My “authority” is that I can hear and write.
However, it is much simpler, imo, to view it from the rational viewpoint which to me came down to the question:
Can order occur spontaneously in randomness?
By order, I do mean ALL and any order, including the order inherent in positive and negative, any form whatsoever. And randomness not just those bits of already occurring order (which one somehow takes for granted) floating around in what may seem randomness.
I would suggest leaving “doctrinal concepts” until one has allowed the reality of God to touch ones’ life. 🙂
What Hmm said.
There, I made a me-too comment.
John, you have been asking this question for a long while now, after it having been answered in the affirmative almost as long ago. Can we please move on?
“Isn’t her claim to be “first” a little … self-elevating? Given that hundreds of thousands (at least) have stated the same thought over the last 2,000 years?”
You are being obtuse. She is saying that *precisely* to make the point that this is hardly a startling revelation. It is called a ‘rhetorical device’.
Verity, Prof Smith was being sarcastic. Do I have to explain everything to you good people?
As for whether it is self-congratulatory, well, I suppose that means anyone who has limited tolerance for beliefs based on faith rather than evidence is such. I plead guilty.
Alisa, it has only been answered to the extent that one takes for granted that “it just is”.
(Apparently) random bits (of order) can certainly bunch up and create some form. But only because they consisted of order in the first place.
So that is no answer, just another declaration of faith.
Even our respected Brian Cox has the grace to say: ‘We just don’t know’, regarding the origin.
No. It has not been answered.
John, the answer was to the question ‘can it?’ – which it can, until empirically proved otherwise. Now, if you ask ‘has it?’ or ‘does it?’, then the answer is indeed ‘we don’t know’ – moreover, the question is in fact unanswerable.
Exactly. So now can we move on?
Theology?
Here?
O.K.
Do I believe that the Garden of Eden was a physical place and that we all come from two people called Adam and Eve?
No.
But do I believe that God created people?
Yes.
I believe God created people – via biological evolution.
Having upset just about everyone – I will go on (in case there is someone I have not upset yet).
Do I believe in original sin?
I believe that human beings have a dark side – a taste for sin. I only have to look into myselt (at the pleasure I get from thoughts of crimes – terrible acts) to know this (at least about myself).
However, do I believe in predestination?
In the doctrine that before the start of the world God decided who would be saved and who would not be – and that this choice (about “the elect”) was in no way based on the conduct of these people.
In short that everyone is utterly vile (that we not only have a dark side – but that it controls us, making us shit) and that God just reaches down and (by a prewritten plan) just happens to save some people and not others – without regard to any efforts to live a good life that they have made.
No I do not believe this.
And I know perfectly well that my lack of belief in this doctrine makes me not only anti Calvinist – but also makes me anti Augustine (I dislike Augustine for lots of other reasons as well, his belief that unbabtised children go to Hell, his denial of the possibilty of human progress on Earth, his support of the use of force and fear in matters of religion,……)
I do not believe in the centuries of efforts to “interpret” Augustine so that he does not “really” mean what he says he means (on predestination – and on lots of other stuff also).
Well perhaps I am wrong about this – after all many learned people who have studied Augustine all their adult lives (such as the present Pope – for whom I have great respect) would argue that I am mistaken, that Augustine is a much more humane and rational person than I believe him to be.
However, I will not pretend I agree – in fact I think these good people (including Benedict) are seeing themselves in the words (asking themselves “what would I mean if I wrote something like that – how do I fit it in to my own beliefs”) not just taking the bald fact (the bald fact that Augustine may have just meant what he said) on board.
So I am a Pelagian, or at least a semiPelagian (it is hard to tell – as the works of Pelagius do not survive).
I will go even further – just in case there is some person reading this I have not yet offended.
I believe in God – but I do NOT believe that people go to Hell simply because of lack of belief in God.
In fact I firmly believe that I will meet athiests in Heaven – they will rather surprised that they are there of course, but they will be there.
Now I should have managed to irritate just about everyone…..
You are a treasure 🙂
He is. Without a smiley.
Most of what I read on Samizdata is enlightened political discourse from authors with much to teach me.
Then, of course, there are the occasional lapses into base spirituality bashing. It is at these times that I do not feel so far behind.
Paul,
I found Augustine particularly good on Predestination. Instead of grounding the doctrine in the idea of a sovereign God who controlled all things (as most modern writers do) he grounded the idea in grace. If salvation is based, in part, on either my goodness or my attempt to do good then heaven would be full of proud sanctimonious people who spent eternity looking down at those who just weren’t good enough. Go to any church which teaches the idea that “you have to be good enough for God to let you into heaven” and you’ll find just the sort of people I mean: eternity in heaven with these people would be hell.
If, on the other hand, we’re saved by grace alone (as Augustine argued) then there is utterly no room for pride.
About faith in God: Would be interested to know if you have an alternative system of deciding who goes where which doesn’t lead to utter despair or total pride.
Anyway, glad to hear that you agree with some concept of original sin. Not sure how we can understand the world any other way.
Well, I see that my smited post has finally appeared at May 24, 2011 07:09 PM, long after everyone else here had moved on so far that it was lost in the mists of antiquity. Pity; I think the three cartoons I linked are quite relevant, and make the point far better than I could.
I don’t know when or why I became an atheist. I suppose it just happened after I thought about things long enough. The one question that pulled me towards theism is: “Why is there something and not nothing?” The one question that pulled me towards atheism is: “Why didn’t an intelligent designer design something better than birth defects, leukemia, and all the rest?” I guess the second question won out.
What I’m left with, though, is the fact that I watched my mother die, painfully, over a period of nine months; and now, almost 2 years later, I still find myself saying, “She is sitting on a cloud with lovely wings and a harp enjoying unlimited and eternal happiness.” Without that, the thought of my own death just frightens me too much.
Time to bring this back. No one does it better than Larkin:
Unresting death, a whole day nearer now,
Making all thought impossible but how
And where and when I shall myself die.
Arid interrogation: yet the dread
Of dying, and being dead,
Flashes afresh to hold and horrify.
The mind blanks at the glare. Not in remorse
– The good not done, the love not given, time
Torn off unused – nor wretchedly because
An only life can take so long to climb
Clear of its wrong beginnings, and may never;
But at the total emptiness for ever,
The sure extinction that we travel to
And shall be lost in always. Not to be here,
Not to be anywhere,
And soon; nothing more terrible, nothing more true.
Larkin certainly understood the limitations of the position he had chosen!
Actually, no, Alisa.
The implications of randomness turning to order are significant.
In fact they sit on the border of awareness as to how time can stand still, we can be in two realms at the same time, and that space and time can curve.
Of course they are, John. But once you try to use that to prove the existence of God (or lack thereof), you are left with one equation and two variables – i.e. with an unsolvable problem. My suggestion to move on was not based on my lack of interest, but on the idea that matters of faith are best left unargued.
Well, bear in mind here that criticising religion and justification by faith rather than reason is not the same as bashing spirituality. Very much not the case.
I often hear it said that without religion, there is no spiritual side of life. It is a bit like those who claim that without God, there is no morality. I find it amazing how often even really smart people just accept this without much pushback.
Johnathon:“I find it amazing how often even really smart people just accept this without much pushback”
You realise you are wishing the ‘smart’ people to fight a precept of truth ?
If you wish them to fight for you what first principles are you going to give them to stand on ?
This is why I swore off theological debates when I was in my 20’s. They’re a pointless waste of time, as no one on either side is ever convinced by the other. (And it annoys the pig.)
The pig?
Reality is interesting even if its acceptable parameters have been substantially conditioned by those loyal to the Frankfurt School and similar.
I guess it’s reality we need?
Yeah, that’s what religion is ALL about! Religious people are religious because they believe the Torah/Bible/Koran literally! This blog is revolutionary.
BTW, I’m sure it’s a complete coincidence that as the % of Westerners that are religious Christians declines, crime, taxes, government spending, divorce, fatherlessness, business regulations all increase in their frequency and degree.
Also, I hate to break it to all you sophisticated anti-religious dogma people, but evolution is a self-fulfilling prophecy and is not falsifiable. Kind of like how belief in God is a self-fulfilling prophecy.
@Jonathan Pierce:
I fear that morality, in practice, is a “credence good,” “a good whose quality characteristics cannot be determined before, during, or even after use” (Keith R. Brouhle). In principle, it might be possible to say objectively that one set of morals is better than another in utilitarian terms, but in practice it generally is not, even assuming that we can get people to agree to use utilitarian reasoning. The world is too complicated and people are too prone to flatter themselves. I would like to think that I and my fellow libertarians are better at avoiding self-deception than our competitors, but they feel the same way about themselves. We can’t prove our correctness to their satisfaction and they can’t prove their correctness to us.
So in practice, political movements (Marxism, libertarianism, etc.) do the same thing in promoting their moral claims that churches do in promoting their supernatural claims: they create an illusion of consensus. Chase away all the infidels and then take a vote. There is also the problem of pedagogy. I am left with the conclusion that, by the time we have a secular institution that can teach morality effectively, we have something that is quasi-religious.
The need to maintain an illusion of consensus is why political movements are so hostile to apostates.
See also James M. Buchanan on economics as science vs. economics as “the pure logic of choice.” By the time you get ideas that are really interesting, they are no longer verifiable.
@Laird:
You are going to get me into sooo much trouble with Jesus and Mo….
This is a fragment of something I’ve been working on for a while, which seems apposite:
And yes, I do wave my hands quite a lot when I talk.
Drat. The blockquote command submerged all the italicised words in the original, which were what the last line: “And yes, I do wave my hands quite a lot when I talk” was supposed to ruefully note.
Alisa: It comes from a saying: Never try to teach a pig to sing. It wastes time and annoys the pig. I think it originated with Mark Twain but I couldn’t swear to it.
frak: Huh?
Paul (on the Pelagian heresy) stole my thunder. Again.
I cannot answer that question. What I can say is that they need a philosophy based on reality, on the choices that Man must make to live and flourish.
Frak:
You sound a bit upset. Actually, you mention the Koran, and as you should know, millions of Muslims believe that every word of that book is holy writ, to be followed closely on pain of damnation. They are prepared, in some cases, to do very evil things in protection and advance of that religion. In times past, the same applied to Christians.
To the extent that religions are no longer the baleful force of old, it is to the extent that they have eroded in the face of reality-based philosophy.
I suppose we could reduce much of religion to a sort of vague, mushy “happy-feel-good” series of emotions, like listening to nice music or something.
Correlation is not causation. The decline of morality and religion might be connected, but that does not mean that religion is necessary for morality, which is the point I am making (and which seems to be falling on some deaf ears around here.)
Johnathan,
Reality-based philosophy means nothing. I think people’s beliefs are revealed by their actions. Religious people act in accordance with libertarianism with greater frequency and degree than atheists and agnostics (see voting patterns and other evidence below).
Observance of religion erodes with the erosion of manners, traditional values, rewards for saving long-term, and the nuclear family and it erodes with the rise of fiat currencies, feminism, mandatory public education, and big government.
Also, if we define “reality-based philosophy” as not believing in Judaism, Islam, and Christianity, then those who subscribe to “reality-based philosophy” are reproducing at below replacement levels in the West. The future belongs to those who show up for it.
Hatreds of atheists, foreigners, and agnostics have been replaced by hatreds of racists, traditionalists, nativists, and deniers of the new religions of: A) all races are =, B) feminism = good, C) Democracy = good. Virtually everyone needs to worship something and be part of a group that is struggling against an ‘other’. This is sadly built into our psyches.
And if there were causation, how would you know?
Religious Catholics, religious Jews, and religious Protestants are all more likely to vote for lower taxes, vote for lower spending, not divorce, not commit robbery, and not commit murder than secular Catholics, secular Jews, and secular Protestants, respectively.
Divorced, working, and childless women are more likely to vote for Democrats in the US and Labor in the UK than married, non-working, and non-childless women, respectively.
Among Christians, attending Church with more frequency is correlated with voting for smaller government and committing less crime. Ditto Jews for attending Temple/Shul.
States in the USA that are more religious vote for smaller government on the state level, vote for smaller government on the national level, and are more likely to have constitutional amendments requiring their state legislatures to balance their budgets. The state with one of the highest (if not the highest) religiosity by virtually any measure was the only one where Bill Clinton came in 3rd in the 1992 election – Utah. I suspect similar correlation is found among the provinces of Canada, etc.
The great sorting out of voters in the USA that happened in the wake of the FDR regime and culminated in the Reagan Revolution pushed social conservatives (in the American sense) and fiscal conservatives (in the American sense) into the same political party. Correlation does not mean causation, but we see a similar thing in Canada with the Conservatives and the UK with the Tories.
And that is really the heart of why it upsets me greatly when otherwise intelligent folks on the good side of our struggle against statism bash religious people. Religious people empower our movement against statism. The more religious they are, the more likely they are to be allies and the more likely they are to be more passionate allies.
Well, for you and other highly intelligent and open-minded individuals this is true. And, in theory, it is true. But this does not hold true for the great mass of humanity – if we define libertarianism as morality.
Johnathan,
Let us define morality as libertarianism. So, people are more moral as they violate the natural rights of others less. By this measure, religiosity is positively correlated with morality.
The sectors and institutions that underpin the Left are also highly secular. Primary examples being universities, MSM, and non-military government workers.
In fact, the ONLY government workers that vote Republican and Tory are military folks (even when adjusting for men being vastly over-represented) and these government workers also happen to be rather more religious than other government workers. ANOTHER COINCIDENCE!!!!1!!one!
American history. First Great Religious Awakening led to the pro-liberty American Revolution. Second Great Religious Awakening led to the pro-liberty abolition movement.
Since I’m in such a cheery mood, I’ll generously add that atheists also annoy me because they are not Skeptics (of the sort that accept that they cannot prove that anything exists).
The truly rational man believes nothing he cannot prove and he is depressed beyond measure. This is not a fun experience. For their sake, I hope atheists do not begin to genuinely believe only that which they can prove.
I find such utilitarian arguments in favour of religion fascinating: it is tantamount to saying “believe in the fanciful because of the objective benefits”. Regressing that line of thinking that can be very entertaining but it does show the core weakness of the religious argument.
It also does rather miss the point that (1) most people in the world are at least nominally religious (2) most people vote for statists (3) the most elections everywhere in the advanced world offer functionally interchangeable statists to vote for and the outcome of said elections is largely irrelevant and usually utterly irrelevant to the advancement of liberty.
The correlation is not causation point JP made is very germane.
Oh My. John B you are condident and bold.
One of the problem of theological commentary on science is it seems ignors anance. I know a little science but a bit more than nothing.
Evolution is an eorganising concept with great predictive power that is corroborated on a big and small scale all around us. Student scholasticism will always be able to show that it could be false, because it can should than anything could be false. It is as much science as just about anything is science and the Church of Rome and the Church of England are both entirely comfortable with it. I gather quiet a lot of biblical literalists in evangelicals mostly in the US disagree with the sophisticated theologians on this.
It is almot impossible to have a serious conversation on “ID” with all that chat about information and order when people are not familiar with entropy etc. To talk about “random bits of order” is lovely.
We can show in the lab and outside it how order can be created spontaneously locally, in the presence of an entropy flow – net entropy increased but order appears in certain places. We can go this with crystals, fluids, etc and it is a useful framework for thinking about biology too. That is why we need fuel/food to avoid death.
If you want to call the “blue touch paper” God, while understanding that it is nothing more than a quantum-blip of space that expands, thats your choice. I am glad that lots of smart scientists continue to expore how it might come about and test their ideas based on things like predictions about stuff like anisotropy in the cosmic background radiation.
Are you a fan of the “mad/bad/true” argument? (an offensive and trite peice of apologetics that is easy to knock holes in). Because most people who vere towards ID usually are?
Absolutely, Jonathan. Perhaps you should ask God if He is real? I can’t do that for you.
Your time frame is selective, only going back to the days after Satan had well and truly politicised (secularised) the church.
[The devil is the master of deception and distortion as shown by the effectiveness of the Harold Camping circus.]
That was not how Jesus set things up as can be clearly seen if one simply reads His words.
Why did God allow such corruption of the church to take place?
Man has free will and must choose.
Is God a libertarian?!
Perry,
Hm. I did not argue that anything exists outside the physical realm and I did not ask anyone to believe in the fanciful.
Again, I’m sorry, but you saying that I argued that religion (let alone any particular one) is true does not mean that I actually did so.
Yep. Looking at the birth rates it’s almost like evolution selects for it… or something like that.
Indeed, and look at the power centers of the Left. Harvard, Ivy League, OxBridge, Keynesian economists, the EPA, the NYT, the Guardian, career politicians, NGO staffers, the State Department, professors, mainstream journalists. They’re so full of highly religious Church-goers! Oh, actually…
Largely true, but not entirely. The highly religious states of South Carolina, Utah, and Kentucky have produced the only 3 Senators truly fighting for fiscal sanity in Jim DeMint, Mike Lee, and Rand Paul.
In America (and I suspect in England and other Western nations as well) elections did offer a stark choice between statism and small-government in the 1800s. Government then was smaller and Americans then were far more religious. I know, I know – it’s another one of those pesky coincidences. It couldn’t possibly be that the Left replaces worship of God with the State (and concepts like AGW that enlarge the government’s power).
And if there were causation, then how would you know?
Bouvs,
If you think evolution has predictive power, then you don’t understand what it is.
It is not falsifiable. In science, you can run an experiment to prove something false. In so doing, prior to the experiment you can say that if X results from Y action, then Z hypothesis is falsified. No such experiment can be applied to evolution.
This is about logic.
Frak:
You forgot Paul Ryan who’s from WI. Regardless, I’m with you, to an extent. I don’t think that religion is the only or the best way to “good morality”/libertarianism/whatever, but the point may be that for most people it is the easiest.
Sorry – don’t have time for a long reply at present.
Hypotheses are tested as groups. Individual hypotheses can always be protected by ad hoc assumptions. (Imre Lakatos etc.).
Evolution has an important role in fields as diverse and immunology, or the medical understanding of pre-eclampsia, water-snail shell thicknesses, etc alone paleotonogy, genetics and biochemistry.
ID has never so far as I know produced a useful scientific programme. It is based on the same dubious apologetic strategic as mad/bad/true, of the taking 2 poorly defined alternatives and after knocking down two straw men options presuming the other poorly defined alternative must be “true”.
Actually I was suggesting the opposite. You seem to be arguing that believing in the un-true is the way to secure more liberty.
But you were the one suggesting causation so…how would you know? And I would point out you are using a tiny sample of voters worldwide as your example.
Alisa,
Well, I was only talking about Senators, but Paul Ryan I would not include in this camp. Mike Lee, Rand Paul, and Jim DeMint have acted against their political interest to lower taxes, spending, and regulations. Paul Ryan has not – he is merely the face of the GOP establishment’s payment to the Tea Party.
Paul Ryan’s plan is designed for the GOP establishment to appease the Tea Party. The Republican Study Committee’s (RSC) budget is FAR more conservative than Paul Ryan’s. Rand Paul’s budget is FAR more conservative than the RSC’s. Jim DeMint and Mike Lee are the only Senators to have endorsed Rand Paul’s budget. They did so to push the debate radically in the direction Samizdata wants the direction pushed in.
Rand Paul’s budget balances in 5 years. Rand Paul defeated Trey Grayson (now the Director of the Institute of Politics at the Harvard Kennedy School) in the GOP primary by winning the hearts of the most religious Christians of Kentucky. The debate is being pushed in the direction Samizdata wants by the values and interests of highly religious Christians that go to Church weekly.
These folks will not be invited to speak at the Harvard Kennedy School, but it’s VERY worthwhile for libertarians to bash them and the culture that shapes their views because they are so, so, so ignorant of “reality-based philosophy”.
Bouvs is absolutely right. If intelligent design can come up with a single, testable, robust theory or prediction, I’ll be most impressed.
(Drums fingers on desk)
The general tone of Frak’s comments suggests to me he is only wants to hear evidence that confirms his beliefs. All too human.
Christendom was in its ascendant in the Middle Ages, a period not exactly known for encouraging notions of limited government and respect for individual liberty. Serfdom prevailed across much of Europe, albeit with pockets of liberty in the towns and some city-states, and places within the Hanseatic League.
And of course religious enthusiasms have been behind such delightful episodes as the Spanish Inquisition, or, less brutally, the Prohibition period in the US that did so much to fuel organised crime.
And anyone who has paid any attention to how things go under Islam need take little convincing that this religion is hard to reconcile with notions of liberty.
Of course, many Christians have been libertarians and liberals – Lord Acton springs to mind – but then again, there have been Christians who have held all kinds of political beliefs, some very collectivist. The fact that at present so many socialists are unbelievers no more proves the value of Christianity than anything else. Things vary.
Perry’s point stands. Just because a lot of people with whom you agree are also religious does not, as of itself, prove the truth of religion, any more than the fact that some socialists are atheists proves that atheism is wrong. Coincidences are sometimes just that, nothing more.
No one here is bashing them, frak. What some (myself not included) are bashing here is religion, not its adherents – a big difference that you should pay attention to if you are to engage in a serious discussion on the matter.
Exactly.
I’m saying that there are traits of conservative/traditional/religious culture that:
A) shape views generally favorable to voting for and supporting small government
B) foster communities that can thrive without big government
I am also humbly suggesting that it’s slightly unproductive to bash the only major segment of Western nations that votes favorably to the cause of fiscal sanity.
Perry,
Please see my last post.
Johnathan,
Again, I have not argued once in favor of the truth of religion.
I’m saying that traditional religious culture in the Western world is highly hospitable to small government. I think that high religious observance fosters culture that can survive and thrive without big government.
Before social security the elderly were cared for by women (who were not working).
Before massive welfare, Churches fed, clothed, and sheltered the destitute until they could get back on their feet.
Before government started massively subsidizing college and imposing public education, young men either learned useful things or worked very early in life.
Before government mandated equal opportunity with respect to gender in the workplace and university, young women had babies and cared for the young instead of placing them in state-subsidized and/or run schools and nurseries (staffed by unionized big-government voters).
When religion was more widespread, there was a culture that prevented teenagers from becoming drug-addicted, etc, but now we have government to take care of that.
There are countless more examples.
Humans do not exist in a vacuum.
Culture, government, spending, religion, etc are all intertwined. Theory is one thing and libertarianism is certainly neat, but in reality, if you want government to be smaller, then the process is much easier to achieve if the culture is more traditionalist. And this is facilitated by conservative, traditional religion.
A bit slippery: the overall thrust of your remarks suggests that there is truth in it, unless you are making the point that people who believe in X are more or less likely to be behave in a certain way.
And I have provided counter-examples: Prohibition, previous persecutions of minorities (Jews, etc) that rather points in a different direction.
To repeat an earlier point, the reason why religion today is arguably compatible with liberal-leaning beliefs is because of developments such as the separation of Church from State, the scientific revolutions of the past 300 years, etc.
In the UK and Western Europe (maybe not in the US), I see no real correlation between, say, Catholicism or Protestantism and support for limited government, free markets and the like. I just cannot see that at all. It is a theory that needs a lot more evidence.
Johnathan,
Well, whenever I provide an example of religiosity being highly correlated with small government, I get the ‘causation is not correlation’ response, which suggests we’re both “all too human”. It’s slightly telling that you still have not told me what you would have to see to admit that big government causes secular culture and secular culture causes big government.
My view is simple. Culture matters. People don’t exist in a vacuum like theories do. In theory, it might arguably be nice to live in a world without religion and without big (or any!) government.
For those of us who want to affect the real world, though, it’s helpful to take note of what seems to help the cause of small government. I have looked at reality and noticed that Utah’s culture produces people whose interests and values align with smaller government.
At elite (and secular) universities in America Austrian Economics is literally the butt of jokes told by economics professors and AGW is holy dogma. The Left has not eliminated the human need to worship – the Left has replaced what is worshipped.
Personally, worshipping something that doesn’t exist might not be the worst alternative.
The burden of proof does not rest with me. You want to make an assertion, you need to prove it rigorously. I have pointed to examples of where manifestations of religious belief, past and present, have coincided with highly authortarian social and political systems. That does not necessarily prove the opposite, of course, but nonetheless, it is a counter-factual.
I never said otherwise. Of course the prevailing culture matters. We live in an age where most “right thinking” people are happy for the state to demand we give up a fairly big chunk of wealth to help our fellow man. I would argue that this altruism-by-force gains much of its underlying support from the lingering impact of Christianity. (“I am my brother’s keeper”, etc).
Frak, Jonathan is right in that your point only seems to hold in the US context.
Amen brother. Indeed.
frak has social statistics on his side. See (atheist) Guenter Lewy’s book, Why America Needs Religion: Secular Modernity and its Discontents. The Mormons are doing something right. My review.
But frak, what you say about belief systems is very naive. Human beings have working hypotheses, with various levels of confidence and commitment. We use binary language (believe or don’t believe), but the underlying behavior is fuzzy (degrees of confidence).
However, although religious people may be for a smaller state, they are typically directing their loyalties elsewhere. If you believe in God, then you believe this is towards God and his representatives on earth, the church. If you do not believe in God, then it can only be to the church, an organization centered on increasing its power and influence and ruled by a small cadre of elites. A state by any other name.
To take the example of the LDS in Utah, sure, they may be anti-federal govt and somewhat survivalist in their outlook but by my understanding, the church effectively rules the state (and much more so Salt Lake City itself) and stories I have heard of the church cast it as very controlling and domineering.
After all, it’s not like the Catholic church meekly withdrew when Luther nailed his theses to the door.
To waylay any misinterpretation of my potentially slightly ambiguous first paragraph, I am saying that a religious person would see religious loyalty in another as directed to God and a holy thing but a non-religious person would see that same loyalty as merely being towards a very human church.
JP American Prohibition was not, in the main, a religious movement (that is a modern myth), in fact it was highly Progressive (see Jonah Goldberg’s “Liberal Fascism” – and Mr Goldberg is not a Christian).
Nor was modern American racism, in the main, a religious movement – nor was it in other nations. Indeed (again) it was a highly Progressive movement.
Jamess.
Grace – so is it granted to everyone?
I see no evidence that Augustine thought it was.
Augustine had something in common with me – he could not read Greek either.
But then I am not a 5th century theolgian. Even Roger Bacon (in the England of the Middle Ages) managed to learn Greek – so he could read scripture in the original, but not Augustine (at a time when every educated Roman could find tutors to teach him Greek, and most still did).
Nor did Augustine show any great desire to visit the Holy Land – remember for most of his life this would have been easy, the comming of the Vandals (the first of many new pirate powers in the Med) only came at the end of his life.
On the hand Augustine’s – POLITICAL powers were second to none.
That is how he was able to brand anyone who did not agree with his INNOVATIONS (for he MADE UP doctrine – he invented it, on several points) branded as “heretics”.
This is highly impressive – invent new doctrine (radical new doctrine) and not only avoid the charge of heresy, but also have anyone who opposes your innovations branded a heretic (even support the use of physical violence and torture against them, before Augustine a minority position among Christians, whilst saying how much it pains you to support such a policy – how you love them really and …..).
Sunfish – how do you think Augustine would have done in Chicago (I seem to remember that, in your youth, you knew something of the place)? I suspect he would have felt right at home.
Oh I am not ‘anti-religion’ any more than I am anti-cosplay or anti-gasta rap or many other things I do not do myself… I just do not find them useful/fun/agreeable etc. My inamorata is a believer and that does not cause either of us problems.
The Samizdatistas are about evenly split between Atheists/Believers and we all get on just fine. But the notion religion is a pre-requisite or even a dependable indicator of a propensity for liberty is, I think, simply not true.
‘Christian socialism’ is far more common than ‘Classical Liberal Christianity’ outside the USA. If you think religious folk prefer small government by virtue of being religious (as opposed to following some specific sect that might advocate liberty for example), well maybe in some parts of the USA but as that is certainly not the case in much of the rest of the world, thus I cannot see that you are making any useful broader point.
Paul,
I’ll grant you that Augustine had problems. Would you mind being more specific on the doctrines that he “invented”?
If salvation is at heart determined by us then we’ll end up in despair (if we think we’re unable to achieve it) or boastful (if we think we have). Consistently in the Bible the first application of the doctrine that we’re saved by grace is that we can’t boast. I’d rather deal with not knowing why God chose some then dealing with eternity surrounded by boastful people.
We are responsible, we have free will.
We cannot save ourselves, it is by God’s grace. An unearned gift received by acknowledging it.
And we do not see in perfection but “through a glass darkly”, so we do not have the full, full story.
Salvation is by God’s grace but we have to personally avail ourselves of it.
It is difficult to discuss the things of God from the realistic/actual (unspoken, unthought, meta context) premise that He does not exist!
@Perry: Do you have statistics on how socialism correlates with religion outside of the US? I would expect official state religions to embrace socialism because it legitimizes a more powerful state, and independent ones to oppose it because they view the state as a competitor.
I assume you are joking as…
(1) I made no such claim, just that the obvious prevalence of statist ‘Christian Democrat’ Parties (statist big state ‘conservatives’) and ‘Christian Socialists’ outside the USA means the reverse is clearly not true
(2) how can you meaningfully statistically correlate such observations given how nebulous religious affiliations and actual believes are?
Perry wrote: “‘Christian socialism’ is far more common than ‘Classical Liberal Christianity’ outside the USA.”
You later wrote of “the obvious prevalence of statist ‘Christian Democrat’ Parties (statist big state ‘conservatives’) and ‘Christian Socialists’ outside the USA.”
I will cast aside for the moment any pretensions about being scientific here. In my neck of the woods (admittedly, Houston, Texas), it is painfully obvious that “The New Left” is a quasi-religious movement, and that there is hostile competition between it and evangelical Christianity (the “strict” end of the “lenient-strict” scale). As a libertarian atheist, I am living in No Man’s Land.
You seem to be saying that this hostile competition is peculiar to the US. How can this be? Here are some possibilities:
1. You don’t see competition between strict Christians and The New Left because you don’t have very many strict Christians in Europe.
2. You don’t see this conflict because European socialism is not dominated by The New Left.
3. European political parties reflect popular opinion poorly or have anachronistic names.
4. You set the bar too high. You are asking whether Christianity is “a dependable indicator” of non-socialism, where I am merely asking whether it raises or lowers the odds.
O.k. I’ll add my tuppence worth – though I do agree this does get tiresome.
@laird ( along time back on the thread)
“Johnathan, when you posted that SQOTD you did realize that this thread would quickly degenerate into an unsatisfying and ultimately pointless debate about religion, right?”
Of course if you make a quote like this to debate essentially about theology. For other then to complain about “angels dancing on a head of a pin” is pathetic, if you don’t like the debate don’t join in, or is it the fact that complainants don’t like things to be a self congratulatory circle jerk?
The quote interesting enough as far as it goes but adds nothing to a debate from entrenched positions.
Veering off a little, personally I find theism sits well with me and find atheism, especially “the new atheism ™”, usually trite, self congratulatory and held by the most unthinking of trendy metropolitans. But that is all forgivable and each to their own what I d despite is the increasingly ugly tones of utilitarianism and material totalism and even totalitarianism that go with it. In more enlightened times we sought not to “make windows into mens souls.”
Finally atheists have to keep company with such w*nkers as AC Grayling – did you see that drivel he put put out trying to construct and atheist bible? – Deliberately culling literature but unable to utter the word God in it? What a childish little nob yes I know that is assertion and ad hominem thats what view points are surely?? 🙂
“The idea of Original Sin is essential to Christianity.”
No, the idea of the Golden Rule is essential to Christianity.
“but evolution is a self-fulfilling prophecy and is not falsifiable”
Of course it is easily falsifiable, it just hasn’t been yet.
IOW, extinction happens.
Hovis, some of the “New Atheists”, as they are styled, may or may not be “self-congratulatory”, or indeed nasty pieces of work. Hitchens – sadly dying of cancer – seems a decent sort, ditto Sam Harris. Dawkins is obviously brilliant on his academic field, but he does write some tosh on politics and world affairs. But then again, I have encountered Christians of all types of personality, raging from the lovable to the opposite.
Ad hominem rarely works with me.
Nope. The idea that it requires the death, the sacrifice, of Christ on the Cross to save Man from his sins cannot be understood if you don’t buy into the doctrine that Man is born as a fallen, corrupt being and requires external help from a Supreme Being.
However hard people try and finesse it, OS is a key element of the revealed religion of both the Old and New Testaments. To deny it is not very convincing.
As for the Golden Rule, I am not sure what you mean.
James I have already talked (at some length) about the doctrines Augustine invented (in so much as anyone invents any idea – as one can always find some person before who has taught something at least similar).
He took it upon himself to interpret scripture in new ways – and without bothering to learn either Hebrew or Greek (the languages of scripture) or visiting the Holy Land.
These things would have been easy for him (he was not really 5th century – most of his life was 4th century, when for a wealthy Roman a Greek education was easy to get, and travel was easy also).
The New Testiment does not jusify using force and fear in religion (still less using weasel words about how one loves the people one is persecuting – how one is doing it for their own good and……).
Nor does scripture really uphold Predestination (although a few lines here and there can be interpreted this way – by someone who wants to do so).
Remember what John B. writes above.
God grants us grace if we choose to accept it.
Certainly that means their are no athiests in heaven (if one chooses to interpret “accept it” as meaning believe in God), but it still rests on CHOICE.
That is exactly what the doctrine of Predestination DENIES.
And please no weasel words about God being outside of time so…….
Either we choose or we do not.
If we choose then Presdestination (and Augustine) is false.
If we do not choose then (as Erasmus pointed out) scripture is in vain, the Bible is left worthless.
One thing that we have not really considered is the politican and cultural side.
In Augustine we see a rejection of the idea of progess in this world (perhaps a shadow of the idea that this world is the creation of the evil power not of God – and idea that Augustine was held, but then claimed to have rejected).
But Christianity did not need to go that way.
Roger Bacon was not “just” a theologian (asking that people learn the ancient languages and study scripture directly), he was also a man who thought that the future would see machines that would allow people to travel under the sea, or in the air, and that we would create things that would allow us to ……
And he thought this was GOOD.
Much like the British monk who (centuries before) built himself a handglider – yes he broke his leg, but he TRIED (Augustine would never have done anything of the sort – or admired anyone who did try).
Roger Bacon would most likely have been horrfied by the name of Pelagius – after all he was the baddie (that had been taught for centuries – even though it was Pelagius’ teaching unbabtised children that the Church followed NOT the teaching of Augustine that the little babies went to Hell to be tormented forever – WHAT SORT OF MAN TEACHES THAT?).
However, in Roger Bacon I think we see the spirit of Pelagius – or (at least) a spirit different from that of Augustine.
The Church (even in the Middle Ages) was not always the wicked oppressor of popular history books and television programmes.
There was a lot of GOOD in the Church (yes even in the Middle Ages – inspite of the terrible crimes committed).
And that good side of the of the Church was, at its heart, antiAugustine in spirit.
Peter Taylor- here’s an idea for you. Before WW1, the British were almost militantly Protestant. After that war, when British power seemed to be ebbing, Church attendance also ebbed.
If american power were to ebb, would church numbers go down? do they equate worldly power with spiritual blessings?
@’Nuke’ Gray:
> If american power were to ebb, would church numbers go down?
Not according to Laurence Iannaccone. Note “the rush hour of the gods” following US occupation of Japan. See also his paper, “Introduction to the Economics of Religion.”