Godless Conservatives
Mark Oppenheimer writes for The New York Times on the atheist conservatives blogging at Secular Right (I'm friendly with and greatly respect both Walter Olson and Heather Mac Donald). What I appreciate about both of them is that they are both independent thinkers who don't hug a particular party line. There's far too little of that in the punditocracy:
Of the group, Ms. Mac Donald is the one best known for atheism. She has written scathingly of the Christian instinct to give God credit for our good fortune while absolving him of our misfortunes."God's mercy was supposedly manifest when children were saved" from the 2004 Indonesian tsunami, Ms. Mac Donald wrote in The American Conservative in 2007. "But why did the prayers for 5-year-old Samantha Runnion go unheeded when she was taken from her Southern California home in 2002 and later sexually assaulted and asphyxiated?
"If you ask a believer, you will be told that the human mind cannot fathom God's ways. It would seem as if God benefits from double standards of a kind that would make even affirmative action look just."
Few liberals would use "affirmative action" as a byword for injustice -- but very few conservatives would refer to Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh and Mark Levin as members of "the knee-jerk venom squad," as Ms. Mac Donald did a week ago on her blog.
Mr. Derbyshire retains affection for his Anglican schooling -- "I sing hymns in my car," he said -- and Ms. Mac Donald respects many religious people she knows. But she suspects that they can embrace religion only because it has been so altered by secular values.
"We live with a religion that has been tamed, told to mind its manners and told to speak when asked to speak," she said in an interview this week. "I won't dwell on those outmoded religious activities that one is not supposed to remind religious advocates about, such as the burning of heretics and books, pitchforking the wrong type of Christian and opposition to liberal political reform."
For Ms. Mac Donald, politicians -- those beneficiaries of liberal political reform -- can be as bad as the radio talkers.
"I am puzzled," Ms. Mac Donald said, "by the logic of a John Ashcroft saying that while the wonderful people of the Justice Department contributed to keeping America safe, that really the ultimate gratitude is due to God.
"If that is true, why did God leave us vulnerable on 9/11?"
Comments
Does she realize "...burning heretics and books..." is not actually in the Bible? I hope as an atheist conservative I'm not held responsible for her idiotic statement.
Posted by: TomJW at February 19, 2011 8:49 AM
I hope as an atheist conservative I'm not held responsible for her idiotic statement.
What a silly thing to say.
Posted by: Amy Alkon 
at February 19, 2011 8:52 AM
Heather apparently knows her Bible:
John 15:6 "If a man abide not in me, he is cast forth as a branch, and is withered; and men gather them, and cast them into the fire, and they are burned."
Posted by: Amy Alkon
at February 19, 2011 8:53 AM
Book burning in the Bible:
"Many of them also which used curious arts brought their books together and burned them before all men and they counted the price of them and found it fifty thousand pieces of silver. So mightily grew the word of God and prevailed." Acts 19:19-20
Posted by: Amy Alkon
at February 19, 2011 8:55 AM
I'm not a Christian, I'm a religious freethinking person in agreement with (some) esoteric Judaism, for want of a better category. It bugs me how "religion" and "Christianity" get equated in this country. Plenty of religions take different views of the explanations offered by any number of Christian churches.
How come God does good things and not bad things? Obviously, God would be doing both, and at the same time human beings are exercising their free will also. Is God bad if he makes bad stuff happen to us? No because it happens for a reason in the context of our universal souls which regard even the worst badness as a challenge worth taking for the sake of the unfathomable wonderfulness of reaching Nirvana. Something like that.
Now where did I put that pitchfork...?
What the religions need to do is stop threatening people. That'll happen around the time of World Peace- not holding my breath.
Posted by: Alice Bachini-Smith at February 19, 2011 9:01 AM
I've said it before and I'll say it again
Religion is a crutch for people to weak to behave ethically on their own with out threats/promises of punishments/rewards
Posted by: lujlp at February 19, 2011 9:42 AM
John 15:6 "If a man abide not in me, he is cast forth as a branch, and is withered; and men gather them, and cast them into the fire, and they are burned."
But this says you burn the men (branches) after they are already dead (withered). I'm fine with that, because I'm an atheist and want to be cremated after I die, too.
Posted by: Pirate Jo at February 19, 2011 10:07 AM
"Is God bad if he makes bad stuff happen to us?"
If God makes bad stuff happen to us, we have the right to complain all we want and be uncomfortable, but not to judge God - am I understanding that right?
Wasn't that the nature of the Job story? Job had the nerve to say, "I didn't do anything to deserve this!" which pissed God off because that was kind of taking a crack at God and implying he was being unfair. I think God's response in that story was something along the lines of, "It's none of your damn business why I do anything."
God had a bet with Satan to take care of, here, and all the angels were watching! If Job was really a true believer, he'd be helping a bro save some face and not trifling about selfish concerns like his health, property, and family. He was actually pretty fortunate to be the center of so much celestial attention and had no reason to complain about his ten chldren dying, because after all, he got to have ten more. Look at everyone you know who has ever lost even one child, and note how replaceable their parents seem to view them. /sarc
Posted by: Pirate Jo at February 19, 2011 10:23 AM
Funny how few believers seem to notice that God very seldom seems to punish thieves and murderers when the law, for whatever reason, can't punish them. Is the law violating God's will by trying to do something about crime?
Reminds me of what sci-fi writer Ben Bova once said:
"I saw that all through history, whenever there was a major medical breakthrough, it was first met with cries of disbelief, and then cries of 'We've never done that before, so it must be wrong.' Organ transplants, as late as the 1960s, were met by cries of 'They're playing God. This person's heart is giving out, he's supposed to die.' "
Posted by: lenona at February 19, 2011 1:26 PM
"Organ transplants, as late as the 1960s, were met by cries of 'They're playing God. This person's heart is giving out, he's supposed to die.'"
Maybe because they had some inkling of what it would cost the taxpayers?
Posted by: Pirate Jo at February 19, 2011 2:03 PM
I think it's quite easy and not horribly meaningful to criticize the common level of understanding of religion just as it is easy and not horribly meaningful to criticize the common level of understanding of science, for example.
Both 'should' be better, but they're not. Those interested will study them further and perhaps commit the lifetime necessary for deeper understanding.
Professional atheists are notoriously bad at the history of religion and society and often make the most outrageous and superficial claims. It sells books & columns and makes them a living, I guess, but doesn't necessarily shed much light.
Posted by: BBC at February 19, 2011 3:55 PM
Professional atheists are notoriously bad at the history of religion and society and often make the most outrageous and superficial claims
As opposed to the religious people who dont know a thing about their own religions?
Posted by: lujlp at February 19, 2011 4:47 PM
"Professional atheists are notoriously bad at the history of religion and society and often make the most outrageous and superficial claims."
Wow. As opposed to what? That Adam & Eve could speak Parseltongue, Noah zipped around the world like Santa Claus and everything happened in the last ~6000 years?
Religious people suck so much at recognizing reality that Augustine of Hippo protested more than 1600 years ago:
"Usually, even a non-Christian knows something about the earth, the heavens, and the other elements of this world, about the motion and orbit of the stars and even their size and relative positions, about the predictable eclipses of the sun and moon, the cycles of the years and the seasons, about the kinds of animals, shrubs, stones, and so forth, and this knowledge he holds to as being certain from reason and experience. Now, it is a disgraceful and dangerous thing for an infidel to hear a Christian, presumably giving the meaning of Holy Scripture, talking nonsense on these topics; and we should take all means to prevent such an embarrassing situation, in which people show up vast ignorance in a Christian and laugh it to scorn. The shame is not so much that an ignorant individual is derided, but that people outside the household of faith think our sacred writers held such opinions, and, to the great loss of those for whose salvation we toil, the writers of our Scripture are criticized and rejected as unlearned men. If they find a Christian mistaken in a field which they themselves know well and hear him maintaining his foolish opinions about our books, how are they going to believe those books in matters concerning the resurrection of the dead, the hope of eternal life, and the kingdom of heaven, when they think their pages are full of falsehoods and on facts which they themselves have learnt from experience and the light of reason? Reckless and incompetent expounders of Holy Scripture bring untold trouble and sorrow on their wiser brethren when they are caught in one of their mischievous false opinions and are taken to task by those who are not bound by the authority of our sacred books. For then, to defend their utterly foolish and obviously untrue statements, they will try to call upon Holy Scripture for proof and even recite from memory many passages which they think support their position, although they understand neither what they say nor the things about which they make assertion." – De Genesi ad literam 1:19–20, Chapt. 19 [AD 408].
That's Saint Augustine talking. Go argue with him!
Posted by: Radwaste at February 19, 2011 5:15 PM
lujlp, Radwaste: What silly diversionary arguments and assumptions you make. I said nothing of Christian interpretation of history, now did I? Please do not project your neuroses on me. Thank you. If you would like to discuss what I said, fine, but try to stay on topic. We can focus, yes we can!
Posted by: BBC at February 19, 2011 9:20 PM
Professional atheists are notoriously bad at the history of religion and society and often make the most outrageous and superficial claims. It sells books & columns and makes them a living, I guess, but doesn't necessarily shed much light. -- Posted by: BBC at February 19, 2011 3:55 PM
I am not a professional atheist (I actually had to look up the term).
I'm an amateur atheist -- I know enough of the Bible (old and new Testament), the Torah and the Koran to throw the equivalent amateur <religionist> into a tizzy.
I think it's quite easy and not horribly meaningful to criticize the common level of understanding of religion just as it is easy and not horribly meaningful to criticize the common level of understanding of science, for example.
Both 'should' be better, but they're not. Those interested will study them further and perhaps commit the lifetime necessary for deeper understanding.
That said above: Show me one fact in your post that we can refute. I will grant that levels of education in any subject vary -- what are we refuting?
Are you commenting on the lack of belief in the great flood? Or origin of the species? Or belief in general?
Posted by: Jim P. at February 19, 2011 10:25 PM
Bottom line - Mitch Daniels was right: religious conservatives have to pull in their self-righteous certainty and reach a working agreement with "fiscal conservatives" (I put that in quotes because I think it usually includes a lot more than just fiscal policy, such as individual freedom/responsibility as The Goddess often articulates it).
Otherwise we are all sunk.
As a religious Jew, I am sympathetic to the notion that the US Constitution is built on - and assumes - some basic Judeo-Christian moral/cultural norms.
But I have also been on the receiving end of "This is a Christian country" rhetoric that makes my blood boil - and has nothing to do with small government or respecting the Constitution. It's just the mirror image of the far-left's cultural elitism (if you disagree with me you're a racist, etc.)
We MUST pull together a strong majority to roll back the slide to socialism. That is more than enough political/social work for the next 4-8 years.
Posted by: Ben David at February 20, 2011 1:53 AM
Well BBC it kinda hard to discuss what you said, after all you made a decalritve statemnet that then ran off without providing a single example.
Kind of odd, dont you think? After all according to you mulitpule professional atheists make multipule false, easily debunked claims.
So with multipule offenders each with mulitpule offences why didnt you give us just one?
And personally I find it extremly meaningful to "criticize the common level of understanding of religion", why you ask(at least you should be asking)
Becuase most people dont know shit about their relgions history.
You'd be amazed at how many catholics are unaware that their faith's leaders finally admited that the earth revolves around the sun less than 50yrs ago.
Nobody bats an eye that english royal weddings are performed in a tradition created out of nothing by a serial killer to get out of a political wedding to his brothers widow.
Most Lutherans have no idea that their faiths founder proclaimed his own chuch to be a false religion. Or what a bigiot he was.
We should always be critical of people who cant be bothered to think about the things they say they beleive in.
Now how about some examples already?
Posted by: lujlp at February 20, 2011 2:06 AM
In fact here is a short video that sums up religion in a nutshell
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XK7ZDSUvB6E&feature=related
Posted by: lujlp at February 20, 2011 3:15 AM
"What silly diversionary arguments and assumptions you make. I said nothing of Christian interpretation of history, now did I? Please do not project your neuroses on me. Thank you. If you would like to discuss what I said, fine, but try to stay on topic. We can focus, yes we can!"
And immediately the goalposts are shifted and condescension is attempted. Now, somehow, the "history of religion and society" excludes "Christian interpretation". Despite the obvious social and political influence Christianity has had on Western history.
Can you read our money?
"Neuroses"? You're projecting.
Many religious people are inherently dishonest. They have to be to support whatever claim they are currently arguing, because, as Saint Augustine noted, they understand little of the real world.
There are capable people who are religious. When they operate in a discipline that requires logical thinking, they set their religion aside.
I don't know why you have to claim ignorance and mental disorder as properties of your opponents right away, BBC, but I suspect it's because you were out of ideas already. Quick - go find something you can cut and paste!
Posted by: Radwaste at February 20, 2011 5:04 AM
