Legal Commentary

Belief in One God: "The Single Worst Idea In History"

By Kevin Funnell

Cultures fight wars with one another. They must do so because values can only be asserted or posited by overcoming others, not by reasoning with them. Cultures have different perceptions, which determine what the world is. They cannot come to terms. There is no communication about the highest things...Culture means a war against chaos and a war against other cultures.
---Alan Bloom, The Closing of the American Mind

An extended family member was recently ranting about all the "damage" that "organized religion" has done over the ages. She believes in a "higher power" that is--as best I can sort it out from her inarticulate explanations--a kind of nebulous "wind spirit," perhaps a giant Koala bear in the sky who waves a benevolent paw over creation once in awhile and who, like a much-beloved and doting Grandpa, wants everyone to munch eucalyptus leaves and just "be happy." She's bought off on her father's "whatever-floats-your-boat" theology and seems really angry that "true believers" in monotheism (such as yours falsely) are such closed-minded dunderheads, prone to "exclusiveness" and, in her mind, the originators of eons of violence and divisiveness.

She brought to mind an article I read almost five years ago in The Spectator by Mark Steyn, a nonbeliever in Christianity (or any form of monotheism, as best as I've been able to determine) who, nevertheless, "believes" that Judaism and Christianity are essential for the survival of Western civilization, a civilization he deems worthy of saving purely on the basis of reason. Steyn is not a gentle soul when it comes to skewering his opposition. If my relative thinks that I'm a hard-core hard-ass, I've got absolutely nothing on Steyn. However, he skewers "the Godless opposition" in ways that are as amusing as they are revealing.

Peter Watson, the author of a new book called Ideas: a History of Thought and Invention, from Fire to Freud, was interviewed by the New York Times the other day, and was asked to name ?the single worst idea in history?. He replied:

?Without question, ethical monotheism. The idea of one true god. The idea that our life and ethical conduct on Earth determines how we will go into the next world. This has been responsible for most of the wars and bigotry in history.?

And a Merry Christmas to you, too. For a big-ideas guy, Watson is missing the bigger question: something has to be ?responsible for most of the wars and bigotry?, and if it wasn?t religion, it would surely be something else. In fact, in the 20th century, it was. Europe?s post-Christian pathogens of communism and Nazism unleashed horrors on a scale inconceivable even to the most ambitious Pope. Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot: you?d look in vain for any of them in the pews each Sunday. Marx has a lot more blood on his hands than Christ ? other people?s blood, I mean ? but the hyper-rationalists are noticeably less keen to stick him with the tab for the party.

So the big thinker would seem to be objectively wrong in what, for a secular rationalist, sounds more like a reflex irrational bigotry all his own.

Steyn proceeds to make logical conclusions based upon the facts, rather than politically correct prejudices, in defense of the benefits of a shared religious belief, especially Christianity. An attack on Christianity (represented by the movie The Chronicles of Narnia) by Guardian columnist Polly Toynbee prompts some especially pungent observations by Steyn:

?Here in Narnia,? she sneered, ?is the perfect Republican, muscular Christianity for America, that warped, distorted neo-fascist strain that thinks might is proof of right.? The first half of that sentence I don?t particularly disagree with, the second is just plain sad: no one who trades in language for a living should bandy phrases like ?neo-fascist? so carelessly. But Miss Toynbee went on to cite a more sober objection to Narnia.

Aslan, she writes, ?is an emblem for everything an atheist objects to in religion. His divine presence is a way to avoid humans taking responsibility for everything here and now on Earth, where no one is watching, no one is guiding, no one is judging and there is no other place yet to come. Without an Aslan, there is no one here but ourselves to suffer for our sins, no one to redeem us but ourselves: we are obliged to settle our own disputes and do what we can.?

Sounds very nice, doesn?t it? But in practice the lack of belief in divine presence is just as likely to lead to humans avoiding responsibility: if there?s nothing other than the here and now, who needs to settle disputes at all? All you have to do is manage to defer them till after you?re dead ? which is pretty much the post-Christian European electorates? approach to their unaffordable social programmes. I mentioned in the Daily Telegraph a couple of weeks back the amount of mail I get from British readers commenting with gloomy resignation on various remorseless trends in our island story and ending with, ?Fortunately I won?t live to see it.? When you think about it, that?s actually the essence of the problem: hyper-rationalist radical secularism reduces the world to one?s own life span. Why try to ?settle disputes? when you?ll be long gone? Faith is one of those mystic cords that binds us to our past and commits us to a future.

So I?d say Polly?s got it all wrong. The meek?s chances of inheriting the earth are considerably diminished in a post-Christian society: chances are they?ll just get steamrollered by more motivated types...

[...]

A rationalist ought still to be able to conclude that, as a societal model, Christianity is more rational than Eutopian secularism. If Matthew, Mark, Luke and John cooked the whole racket up, it?s nevertheless a stroke of genius to anchor the whole phony-baloney rigmarole in the birth of a child and his triumph over death. Whether or not there is a hereafter, new life is our triumph over death here on Earth. A religiosity centred on eternal life will by definition be a more efficient organising principle for an enduring society than a secularism focused on the here and now, with ?no other place yet to come?, as Polly Toynbee puts it...

[...]

What?s so rational about putting yourself out of business? On both sides of the Atlantic, the godly will inherit the Earth: in the United States, blue-state birthrates mean that in 20 years America will look a lot less like John Kerry?s Massachusetts and a lot more like Texas and Utah; Europe will look a lot less like an Amsterdam sex club and a lot more like Clichy-sous-Bois. Post-Christian Europe will also be post-European. If you?re cool with that, fine. If you?re not, you might want to rethink the lazy slurs about America?s ?neo-fascist? religiosity. Merry Christmas. Happy Eid.

To me, one of Steyn's most telling points, and one that initially spurred the post-9/11 "rebirth" of my belief in Christ, is one he makes almost in passing, the "challenge of Islam, a religion whose afterlife appears ? at least according to many of its more bloodcurdling spokespersons ? to reward ?wars and bigotry?."

But the question then is what kind of society is best equipped to defend itself against such a challenge?

Steyn does not believe that a secularist society that values the thoughts embodied in John Lennon's song Imagine (no heaven, no hell, no afterlife) will produce people possessed of any fiber more robust than "fey passivity." For me, there's "the rub." Steyn's pointed out the obvious many times before: secularists are losing the breeding battle to Islam and to "radical" Christianity. Their "thoughts" and "beliefs" don't provide enough spiritual fuel to animate them to perpetuate themselves, much less oppose by force a more robust culture that hates their "thoughts" and "beliefs." They're doomed, and time is their enemy. However, inasmuch as they don't believe in an afterlife, and, therefore, are concerned principally with their own lives here on Earth, they adopt the stance of Louis XV (Après moi le déluge: "After me, the flood.").

Only tribes with strong "glue" infused into the very marrow of their common beliefs will be bound together tightly enough to give them a chance to prevail against people for whom a common set of strong core beliefs are a given. I don't care if the vapid, rootless, and utterly narcissistic secular humanists eventually waste away and yield inevitably to the Christians who out-populate them on a daily basis. What I do care about -- and what scares the living hell out of me -- is that while they're wasting away, their poisonous influence, magnified because they appeal to the powerful beast in all of us, will fatally weaken our society, regardless of the number of "believers" within it.

Full post as published by Counseling Kevin on August 06, 2010 (boomark / email).