You can be an atheist and you can be a sadomasochist.  You can be an atheist and a psychopath.  You can be an atheist and be fascist.  To be a communist, you practically have to be an atheist.  It doesn’t commit you to anything.  But it certainly does not commit you to the absurd belief that if you don’t have a supernatural belief you have no morals.  ~ Christopher Hitchens

If you have not yet seen the film Collision, I highly recommend it.  In it Christopher Hitchens takes on Christian apologist Douglas Wilson in a series of lively debates on the validity and value of Christian theism.  Hitchens’ trademark rhetorical style is on full display and does not fail to entertain even as it instructs.  Again and again Hitchens levels devastating blows to Christianity’s reputation as he makes the case that not only is Christianity untrue, but that it is a “wicked cult”.  The inconsistencies inherent in Christianity are serious problems that Christians must make sense of in order to convince thinking people to embrace their system, and Hitchens makes this painfully clear.

At the same time, Wilson puts Hitchens on the defensive repeatedly on one critical point:

I want you to give me the evidence for an objective moral standard that governs all of us.  You can’t appeal to innate anything because those conflict.  You can’t appeal to the general consensus because those differ over time.  You haven’t given any evidence whatever for all your comdemnations of this that or the other thing.  I can understand an atheist saying, “There is no God; eat, drink, and be merry for tomorrow we die, and I’m going to embrace nihilism.”  I understand that.  What I don’t understand is the fierce puritanical denunciations of Jerry Falwell, and all the different people just doing their thing—doing what protoplasm  does at these temperatures and under these conditions.  Why the denunciations?

Hitchens replies:

It’s not unlike what professor Haldane said about the universe.  It’s not just stranger (or he put it queerer) than we understand, it’s stranger or queerer than we can understand.  I’m happy that the arguments of ethics and morality and philosophy remain unresolved.  See, I don’t look for certainty.  I don’t look for a final teleological verdict.  I know that I will always be arguing: why is it that the kicking of a pregnant woman in front of me is incredibly repulsive?   And yet I could demand the killing of her and her unborn child in different circumstances.  This argument will go on and probably can’t be resolved.  It doesn’t mean we have to capitulate the situational ethics.  But it is NOT improved, let alone solved, by the introduction of a supernatural authority. A supernatural authority is of no help to us.  And it may order us to do things that a secularist would cringe from doing, such as murdering his son to please a stone-aged idol, for example.

And then, as Hitchens stutters and stammers, Wilson attacks:

You say that the basic questions of morality are unresolved.  Here’s the deal: why don’t you write like they are unresolved?  [With] virtually everything you write (I think many times correctly) you denounce [them] as if they are completely and totally resolved.

Look, Christopher.  There is no God.  Shit happens.

Feels So Real

Even atheists are inclined to believe that a real ethical standard exists because it feels like it does.  Hitchens illustrates this here:

You see a woman thrown to the ground in the street by a man, or two men, and kicked hard in the stomach—a kick to the uterus.  What is your instant reaction?  Is it one of revulsion, or not?  Who is going to say they are indifferent?  You are perfectly welcome to do so if you like.  Do you need divine permission for this?  I would say not.  Add another question.  The woman is visibly pregnant.  Does that make it seem more revolting to you?  Is your revulsion thereby increased?  Who would not say “yes” to that? … Where do you think you got that knowledge?  Did you get it from Sunday School?   I believe this is our common moral property; without it, we’re lost.

But this is blatant appeal to the emotions of his audience.  It is not reason.  It is either a cheap trick and he knows this, or Hitchens himself cannot see that even he clings desperately to a faith—faith in the existence of an objective morality that we must know exists because we can simply feel and know.  It feels so true, so it must be.

We do experience moral indignation and moral admiration as if they are very real.  In fact, we experience this moral sense with such compelling clarity and realness that it is almost impossible to convince us that we ought to question it, let alone dismiss it.  Our conscience can “see” what is good and what is evil just as clearly as our eyes can see what is black and what is white.   This is why movie directors are rarely burdened with audience confusion as to who is the “good guy” and who is the “bad guy”.  Movies work because people almost universally recognize the “good” and the “bad” instantly without any coaxing or explanation.

But is this feeling of objective morality sufficient grounds to accept its existence—particularly for an atheist?  This is the same line of reasoning theists use regarding the existence of God—ironically, a line of reasoning most atheists gleefully scoff at, seeing it as delusional.  Christians feel the presence of God in their “heart” and so they know he exists.  But atheists succumb to the very same line with regard to objective morality.  They know what they feel.

Theists claim that an authoritative entity must have forcefully imprinted this sense of morality on our minds.  The Apostle Paul refers to it as the law “written” on our hearts:

…when Gentiles, who do not have the law, do by nature things required by the law, they are a law for themselves, even though they do not have the law. They show that the requirements of the law are written on their hearts, their consciences also bearing witness, and their thoughts sometimes accusing them and at other times even defending them.   (New International Version, Romans. 2:14-15)

The theist would go on to assert that in the absence of a divinely revealed ethical standard that there is no authoritative ethical standard.  The atheist has to concede that the theist has them on this point.  The atheist has to step back and realize that in losing a moral authority, he no longer has a platform on which to stand that entitles him to say, “That is wrong!”  He is no longer entitled to make that statement and have it understood in the traditional sense: a proclamation of universal, objective truth with regard to a platform of universal objective morality.  The atheist no longer has the luxury of such a platform.

When you point this out to an atheist they squeal.  Hitchens suggests that Wilson is “insulting” in making the “fantastically rude” claim that without Christianity that we “would not know right from wrong”.  Wilson retorts that he knows that Hitchens has “a very acute sense of right and wrong” but that Hitchens is not in a position to “give an accounting” for his morality given that he believes that our nature is evolved, and that our morality is also subject to evolution.  A morality in a state of evolutionary flux is not objective, and is therefore not authoritative.

In response, Hitchen’s preferred rhetorical tool is to discredit Christianity rather than deal with the untenability of his own position.  He loves to talk about the frightening displays of divine wrath in the Old Testament.  In so doing, Hitchens makes many valid points—but that is an attempt to evade the point.  Sure, maybe Yahweh of the Old Testament is a questionable source of moral authority.  Fine.  But with him out of the way, what is the atheist left to work with?  From what is the atheist going to form his objective morality?  His feelings of “rightness” and “wrongness” are not good enough.

Indecisive Breakup

As Hitchens illustrates, the atheist’s enthusiasm for the dismissal of God is not accompanied by equal enthusiasm for the dismissal of moral objectivity.  While he may be pleased to lose the “totalitarian system” (as Hitchens puts it) of morality imposed by God on him, he isn’t so enthused in losing the entitlement to impose his own system of morality in his expectations of others.

In actual practice, morality and religion are so closely linked that it is difficult to see where one ends and the other begins, or even which causes the other.  Morality informs religion as religion informs morality.  Hitchens rightly labels this religion-morality relationship as a “feedback loop”. He says that, “as far as I can tell, religion gets its morality from humans.”  Maybe it does.

Yet, Hitchens calls Christianity a “wicked cult”.  The very term “wicked” presupposes and invokes Christian moral authority.  During the late medieval period the witch-hunt was on, as the witch was seen as the antithesis of Christian morality.  ”Wicked” derives from wicca or wicce—the Old English terms for a “witch”.  So in a very literal, etymological sense, calling Christianity wicked is like calling Christianity un-Christian—it’s an oxymoron.  Hitchens finds himself caught in the middle of the very feedback loop he himself describes.

I trust that the irony was not lost on Hitchens.

Wilson touches on this irony in his response to Hitchen’s assertion that substitutionary atonement (or as he calls it, “vicarious redemption”) is “immoral”:

You’ll notice that he’s not critiquing the Christian faith by appealing to a standard that overarches all human beings and that is obligatory for all of us.  When he says things like, “substitutionary atonement is immoral,” well—by what standard?  Who says?  What do you mean “immoral”?  What worldview considers it to be immoral, and why is that worldview in charge of the Christian worldview?  All ultimate truth claims are, to use postmodern jargon, totalizing.  You can’t talk about everything without talking about everything.  What Christopher has to do, in order to critique the Christian faith, is borrow ethical standards from the Christian faith and run a reductio where he says, “According to the standards that you adopt, as Christians—here let me climb into the Christian car and drive it into a tree.”  That’s what he’s doing.  But he doesn’t have any car to drive of his own.  Substitutionary atonement is immoral—how come?

Whether you believe that morality derives from religion and supernatural authority, or you believe that our “innate” morality fuels religion, atheists have to frankly acknowledge that they are indebted to religion for its development of morality, even if they maintain the position that religion is not the genesis of morality. At one point in the film, an audience member points out the seeming high morality of European countries known to be predominantly secular.  But that secularism is a recent circumstance.  This sets up Wilson to make a powerful observation: if you look at the countries where Christianity has historically had its its roots planted most deeply, you are looking at the nations that we today consider to be “the first world”—the safest, freest, most prosperous, and most enjoyable places on earth to live.

The atheist icon, Friedrich “God is Dead” Nietzsche , makes some particularly fascinating commentary on the influence of Christianity.  He criticizes Christianity harshly.  But he criticizes it for the opposite reason that Hitchens does.  In Nietzsche’s mind, to promote natural selection and survival of the fittest is to embrace the highest morality.  He saw Christianity, not as a threat to universal human rights, but as a threat to natural selection in humans because it promotes the notion of universal rights—in other words, universal objective morality!  And for this reason he labels it “poisonous” and an affront to “noble humanity” and the “aristocratic”:

The poisonous doctrine, “equal rights for all,” has been propagated as a Christian principle: out of the secret nooks and crannies of bad instinct Christianity has waged a deadly war upon all feelings of reverence and distance between man and man, which is to say, upon the first prerequisite to every step upward, to every development of civilization—out of the ressentiment of the masses it has forged its chief weapons against us, against everything noble, joyous and high-spirited on earth, against our happiness on earth…. To allow “immortality” to every Peter and Paul was the greatest, the most vicious outrage upon noble humanity ever perpetrated.—And let us not underestimate the fatal influence that Christianity has had, even upon politics! Nowadays no one has courage any more for special rights, for the right of dominion, for feelings of honourable pride in himself and his equals—for the pathos of distance…. Our politics is sick with this lack of courage!—The aristocratic attitude of mind has been undermined by the lie of the equality of souls; and if belief in the “privileges of the majority” makes and will continue to make revolutions—it is Christianity, let us not doubt, and Christian valuations, which convert every revolution into a carnival of blood and crime! Christianity is a revolt of all creatures that creep on the ground against everything that is lofty: the gospel of the “lowly” lowers.  ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

It is difficult for atheists, who have no objective moral platform on which to stand, to judge Nietzsche’s views as “evil” or “unjust”.  As Wilson would say, “by what standard do you say this?”  The most an atheist might say is that Nietzsche’s views are distasteful or unpleasant in some way.  But objectively wrong?  How come?

“Might makes right” is the natural order.  Uncle Nietzsche would label today’s atheists as cowards for not having the “courage” to recognize as poisonous superstition this “equal rights for all” nonsense that we get from Christianity!  What pansies!

Atheists seem to be unaware of the influence religion has had on them.  The notion that there is objective morality is entirely a religious concept.  There is no naturalistic defense for an objective universal morality.

Hitchens notes that societies throughout history have embraced strikingly similar standards of right and wrong—societies untouched by Christianity.  While this is true to a degree, it is not true that these societies have typically embraced these standards in a universal sense.  While there is always some sense of moral duty in any community (otherwise it would collapse), that duty almost always vanishes beyond some arbitrary delineation.  Racism, sexism, nationalism, and classism have always been the norm.

Sure, we may be born with some innate moral sense that we injected into religion.  But only religion is capable of taking that moral sense and developing it into something universal, objective, and authoritative.  You have to have authority to do that.  You have to have God.  Whatever innate moral inclination we may have, religion (particularly Judeo-Christianity) took that inclination and upgraded it significantly.  Atheists want to take that “upgraded” morality while dismissing the God that made it possible.

Atheists who still embrace a sense of universal objective morality, while dismissing a supreme moral authority, have not gone all the way with their beliefs.  They say they want to break up with God, but having been apart for a few weeks, they realize they liked some things about that relationship that they aren’t quite ready to throw away.  Atheists are quite indecisive regarding this relationship.

Again, the atheist’s enthusiasm for the dismissal of God is not accompanied by equal enthusiasm for the dismissal of moral objectivity.  While he may be pleased to be free of God’s imposition of morality on him, he isn’t so excited about losing the entitlement to impose his own system of morality in his expectations of others.

This breakup is clearly not finalized.

Take a look at this.

Life on other planets—does it exist?  We want to know.  Why?  Perhaps we suspect that life on this planet is ultimately doomed and so we hope that the opportunity for life exists elsewhere.  Is it that we simply find life fascinating, and any new exotic form tickles our wonder?  Is it because we are looking for a greater intelligence from which we may learn?  Are we seeking new friends?

Whatever the driver, this idea of life on other planets tickles our curiosity—particularly that of atheists.  But there is no direct evidence that extraterrestrial life exists.  Existing clues merely suggest plausibility.  Statistically speaking it may seem likely.  But at the moment, there is no solid reason to believe in ET life.  And yet curiosity persists.

Look at the science fiction films that atheist nerds so adore.  This ET life motif is so thoroughly pervasive in these stories, e.g., Star Trek and Star Wars.  I suspect that if it was somehow proven that life only exists on Earth that these tales would be robbed of their soul; they would no longer be compelling, rendered irrelevant and uninteresting. Atheist sci-fi fans would be desperately saddened with this revelation.

There is no proof for ET life, and yet as long as there exists no proof that it does not exist, our curiosity is not dissuaded.

After all, isn’t speculation with regard to the plausible, yet not provable, kind of what makes science fiction interesting?

In fact, one might say that the possibility of ET life seems so plausible and even so likely that to not be at least a little curious would be arrogant geocentrism.

Layered Reality

We derive the term atom from the Greek atomos which literally means “not cuttable”.  The funny thing is that, as we use the word today, it is a misnomer.  Once upon a time it was thought that the atom was the lowest level of reality, but we now know that it is not.  Atoms are composed of electrons, protons, and neutrons.  Additionally, protons and neutrons are made up of quarks.  Calling an atom “atom” was premature satisfaction that we had “found it”.

But science will never be satisfied that it has finally discovered the lowest foundation of reality.  Why should it?  In retrospect we see that up to the present, to have stopped at any stage of this exploration would have been grave error.  The deeper we explore, the more we uncover.  We can’t stop searching.  We see that our tenacious curiosity has served us very very well.

And yet, in this quest, do we not expect to eventually encounter the “not cuttable” particle?  This grand stage set on which all things do what they do, that we call the universe, must have a floor or a wall somewhere, right?

In the final scene of the Truman Show, the bow of Truman’s boat literally pierces a hole in the wall of his universe.  What is his reaction?  Is he satisfied that he has discovered the edge of the world and so he goes home?  No, he beats his fist against the wall in frustration and then finds the door that leads him off the stage to a layer of reality entirely new to him.

What will we do when we run into the wall of our universe?  Is that where we throw our hands up in the air and our curiosity stops?

Of course not.

This reality that we perceive—is that all that there is, or is there something beyond?

Another recurring sci-fi theme is the notion that the reality presented to us isn’t the only one, e.g., The Matrix and The Truman Show.  As is the case with ET life, there is no direct evidence of any layer of reality other than our own, and yet atheist sci-fi fans continually indulge their curiosity with the possibility that there might be.  Again, these stories would be rendered irrelevant if it was somehow proven that our reality was it.

We know how plausible is the notion of multiple layers of seemingly real existence because, technologically speaking, we are so close to creating it ourselves.  We know that it is only a matter of time before technology allows us to directly project virtual reality on the mind.  The direct neural virtual reality experience of The Matrix is coming.  Imagine only ever existing in the virtual reality world depicted in The Matrix, yet seeking the foundation of that “reality” just as scientists do with our reality here and now.  You would eventually break reality down into bits in computer memory or pixels on some finite resolution display apparatus, and then have no access whatsoever to the underlying system that makes the bit or pixel seem real.

Perhaps quarks are the bits and pixels of our reality?  Maybe, maybe not.  Doesn’t matter.  When we finally discover the bits and pixels of our universe, not only will we not feel satisfied in “finding it”, we will desperately look for the system that makes those bits and pixels real to us.  And, in fact, atheist sci-fi fans haven’t waited for the exploration of quantum mechanics to stall; they are already speculating.

Again, science fiction literature speculates with regard to the plausible, yet not provable.  To speculate about multiple layers of reality seems entirely reasonable for a rational atheist.

There is no proof for multiple reality layers, and yet as long as there exists no proof that they do not exist, our curiosity is not dissuaded.

Knowing how plausible it is to create a perceived alternative reality with technology, it would seem to indicate not only arrogance to conclude with certainty that our universe is, in fact, the only layer of existence, but also a profound lack of curiosity.

What About God?

So what is God?  Isn’t God a combination of these two speculative sci-fi motifs?  Isn’t the idea of God merely an ET life form existing at another layer of reality?  Is it outside the bounds of plausible rationality to speculate on the possibility?

What confuses the matter is that, in our world, theism is almost entirely predicated on manuscripts such as the Old Testament, the New Testament, the Book of Mormon, and/or the Koran—manuscripts thought to be inspired.  Smart people have subjected all of this literature to rigorous criticism, and to atheists it all reads as something less than divine—a collection of stories loaded with insoluble contradiction that impresses as, frankly, purely human weakness: pride, envy, greed, and wrath.  And hell, if religion demands reverence for a God that actually writes this stuff then they are damned by their own thought-crime; they are incapable of sincerely respecting and worshipping such a God.

So it seems pretty clear that an intelligent atheist cannot honestly believe or endorse this stuff.  It’s all superstitious mythology written by not-so-thoughtful people—just normal everyday people.  If you’re one of The Smart Kids, you are out on this crap, right?

BUT!  The fact is that existing manifestations of theistic belief have nothing whatsoever to do with the reasonableness of theistic curiosities.  It may very well be that these individuals who believed strongly enough in God to write the literature were wrong in their writings; maybe they were batshit insane.  But what if those writers were just the sci-fi fanatics of their day?  What if it was all mere speculation on their part?  Should we be so dead set against these unconvincing manuscripts that we completely dismiss any curiosity with regard to the existence of God?

Would this not be something like someone 2,000 years from now saying, “ET life can’t possibly exist; look at how dumb those Star Wars movies were!”

The Smart Kids

Atheism is the domain of The Smart Kids.

Atheists may indulge their curiosity with regard to ET life and multiple reality layers (notions for which no proof one way or another exists) without fear of derision.  They do it all the time.  But if you combine the two and wonder as to the existence of God, then The Smart Kids will consider you an ignoramus.

On this point, have committed atheists arbitrarily stifled their natural curiosity?

Atheists typically highly value open-minded, plausible, rational pursuits of curiosity.  Atheists are welcome to speculate, and even write stories, about ET life and multiple reality layers, stuff for which no proof exists one way or another.  That’s all cool.  You can be curious about these things and you get to stay in The Smart Kids Club.  But if you just take it one step further and wonder whether or not there might be a higher layer of reality, and whether or not someone in that layer wields a lot of control over our layer, namely God, then you get kicked out of The Smart Kids Club.

It may very well be reasonable to dismiss existing religion, manuscripts thought to be divine, and any obligation or fear attached to any of these things.  But does that also mean that mere curiosity as to the existence of God is despicably irrational?

Is the derision related to rational inquiry at all?

Collective Identity vs. Inquiry

Growing up in a Christian household, I was frustrated with the questions that I was not allowed to ask.  Rational inquiry was suppressed with the threat of exile.  There were questions that you weren’t allowed to ask, or even if you did ask them, you weren’t allowed to pursue them diligently.  Questions such as:

How is the Bible inerrant when these passages so clearly contradict themselves?

How is it inspired when it is clearly in error?

How can God know the future perfectly and yet experience so much frustration and anger with what was already known would transpire?  

When I asked these question, people would question my devotion to God.  I was a “doubter”.  I didn’t have enough faith.  If I pushed too hard people would say, “I’m not sure that you’re really a Christian when you ask questions like that.”  The message was that I was not allowed to ask these questions if I was going to be allowed to remain in The Christian Club.

And this makes sense.  Religion, like any other collective group, has to protect its identity.  If they let just anyone call themselves Christian, the idea of “being a Christian” becomes meaningless.

And so I had to drop out of The Christian Club.  I became an atheist.

So atheists correctly note that religious people are more interested in finding a community of like-minded people with whom they identify than in actually seeking truth.  But have atheists themselves managed to escape this same inclination?

What is the atheist’s priority?

It seems that maybe even people who don’t believe in God need a community with which they can identify and engage in fellowship—a community with a doctrinal statement of acceptable beliefs.  A lot of people need this, and that’s fine.  Just don’t call it intellectual.  Don’t call it open-minded.  Don’t call it scientific inquiry.  Call it what it is: collective identity.

As for me, I’m an atheist and I don’t go to church—either the kind with God or without God.

Being an American does not imply collective identity.

Being an American is not about national pride.

Being an American does not mean the inheritance of, or the obligation to adhere to, any particular culture.

Being an American does not mean particular privilege.

Being an American does not mean that I have special, particular “American” rights that only apply to “Americans”.

Being an American does not mean an inheritance of moral superiority.

Being an American means realizing that people throughout the world can also be American if they embrace the American idea.

Being an American means recognizing that the government itself  is not America, even if its behavior happens to be consistent with America.

Being an American does not demand that I must acknowledge the government, its policy, its police, or its military as American.

Being an American sometimes means that I condemn government policy that is specifically not American.

Being an American means that I take pride in my own achievements.

Being an American means that I alone accept responsibility for my failures.

Being an American does not mean that I get credit for the good things that other people do who call themselves American.

Being an American does not mean that I am responsible for the bad things that other people do who call themselves American.

Being  an American means that I don’t expect to like all Americans.

Being an American means I don’t expect all Americans to like me.

Being an American means that I do what I want to do.

Being an American means that I allow others to do what they want to do as long as it doesn’t harm others.

Being an American means that I will never use force on peaceful people merely because I don’t like them or how they choose to live their lives.

Being an American means that I will never force peaceful people to do something simply because I believe that it is the “right thing” for them to do.

Being an American means that I will condemn the use of force against peaceful people—even if I don’t like like them, and even if most others don’t like them.

Being an American means I that I stand prepared to defend myself and that which is mine against violent aggressors.

Being an American means that I approve of others who stand prepared to defend themselves and that which is theirs against violent aggressors; as a fellow American, I may even help defend them.

Being an American means that I don’t stop other people from doing what they want to do because I know that they, as Americans, will also not stop me from doing what I want to do.

Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others.

—Thomas Jefferson

Almost all of these movements arose out of a condition of encroachment, oppression, or violence. This means that most of these groups began with an excellent cause and were justified in their advocacy. The problem is that most of these niche movements will continue to exist and operate long after they have achieved justice and fairness. The reason is that these advocacy groups were never founded on any kind of a rational principle, rather they were founded on the basis of self-interest—a group of people were not happy with the way things were working out for them. But self-interest is no ethical principle at all. Unrestrained self-interest is the lack of ethical principle. At first this seems obvious, but it gets fuzzy when self-interest and ethical principle happen to overlap.

Consider two activist causes that start good, yet sour.

The Religious

Good: A totalitarian regime sees religion as a danger—a higher authority threatens their claim to power. Religious assembly is outlawed, and participants are imprisoned or executed. The religious, because their peaceful congregation does violence to nobody, justifiably campaign for their interests. Say their campaign is successful. Maybe they defeat their oppressors via democratic election or revolution. Perhaps they move to new territory and establish a safe haven settlement for their practice. One way or another they overcome oppression and are now free to practice their religion without fear. This is good.

So the political campaign for religious interest ought to disband, because they have defeated the threat to their rights. They may resume their religious practice in peace. They ought to recognize that they are done. But the campaign not only does not stop; it, in fact, becomes more aggressive.

Bad: Why settle for merely being allowed to practice religion in peace when you can agitate for the invocation of state power to advance your religious interests? If you seek to maximize conversion to your religion, it becomes tempting to utilize government force to promote your beliefs and impede competing beliefs. Or maybe you remember the oppression of the religious and you simply want to use force to fend off anything that looks like it might turn into a threat one day, whether that be other religion, or secular associations—a preemptive strike, so to speak, to smother the threat before it becomes one. Let’s do it to them before they do it to us. Perhaps you want to outlaw certain types of sexual behavior that are incompatible with your religion. Maybe you want to outlaw public displays of sinful sexuality. Or maybe you want government to promote your religious literature at the public’s expense, while banning literature that mocks and denigrates your religious belief system.

At this point, the campaign for religion has crossed a very objective line. While it once merely defended the right to peacefully operate, it now agitates for measures that impede other’s rights to peacefully operate.

What went wrong? The problem is that this religious campaign was never rooted in the principle that people have the right to conduct their affairs in peace as long as this conduct does not impede anyone else’s right to conduct their affairs in peace—the principle of liberty. Instead, it was rooted in a more simplistic principle: what is good for my religion is what is right—the principle of self-interest. Period. Initially, liberty and self-interest overlapped, so the political campaign for religious rights was just. But once liberty was attained, agitation for additional political measures beneficial to religious self-interest actually became evil.

The Secular

The same example may be used for secular advocacy.

Good: A totalitarian regime utilizes religion to justify their claim to power—denial of that religion’s legitimacy threatens the regime’s claim to power. Religious allegiance is a legal requirement. Failure to pay homage to the church via service attendance, display of symbols, or financial offering leads to a conviction of heresy that is tantamount to treason. These heretics are imprisoned or executed. The secular, opposed to supporting this institution with time, money, or endorsement, justifiably campaign for their interests. Say their campaign is successful. Maybe they defeat their oppressors via democratic election or revolution. Perhaps they move to new territory and establish a safe haven settlement where they are free to live in the absence of religious dictate. One way or another they overcome oppression and are now free to dismiss religion without fear. This is good.

So the political campaign for secular interest ought to disband, because they have defeated the threat to their rights. They may resume their secular life in peace. They ought to recognize that they are done. But the campaign not only does not stop; it, in fact, becomes more aggressive.

Bad: Why settle for merely being allowed to live your life in peace, free of religious dictate, when you can agitate for the invocation of state power to advance your interests in a secular society? If your vision is that of a world free of meddlesome Christians pestering you to pray, or to attend Church—a world where intellectual inquiry is no longer hindered by fears of The Great Sky Ghost, it becomes tempting to utilize government force to promote intellectual inquiry and to impede superstitious nonsense. Or maybe you remember the oppression by the religious and you simply want to use force to fend off anything that looks like it might turn into a threat one day, whether that be religion, or an overly passionate dedication to any authority or belief system—a preemptive strike, so to speak, to smother the threat before it becomes one. Let’s do it to them before they do it to us. Perhaps you want to outlaw mean sounding talk of eternal damnation for sinful behavior. Maybe you want to outlaw public displays of religion that impress you as hateful. Or maybe you want government to promote your atheist literature at the public’s expense, while banning literature that preaches anti-scientific nonsense that confuses people and distracts them from truth.

At this point, the campaign for secularism has crossed a very objective line. While it once merely defended the right to peacefully operate, it now agitates for measures that impede other’s rights to peacefully operate.

What went wrong? The problem is that this secular campaign was never rooted in the principle that people have the right to conduct their affairs in peace as long as this conduct does not impede anyone else’s right to conduct their affairs in peace—the principle of liberty. Instead, it was rooted in a more simplistic principle: what is good for my secularism is what is right—the principle of self-interest. Period. Initially, liberty and self-interest overlapped, so the political campaign for secular rights was just, initially. But once liberty was attained, agitation for additional political measures beneficial to secular self-interest actually became evil.

But We’re The Good Guys

We have this nasty tendency to pick sides and to then cheerlead for that side, sometimes literally, to the death. Religious people are the good guys because they have truth on their side. The secular are the good guys because they have truth on their side. The Americans are the good guys because America is “exceptional”. A particular ethnic group is made up of good guys because they have been the oppressed underdogs for a long time.

Our enthusiasm for “our team” causes us to lose sight of any principle that might have initially justified our advocacy. The “goodness” of our team is a bygone conclusion—because we are good, anything that advances our interests is automatically good. And so, because we are the good guys, we reserve for ourselves “good guy” privileges, namely the privilege to use force on other people.

That is horseshit. The goodness or badness of an activist cause is continually a matter to judge. Good or evil is never inherent. A thing’s moral status is continually a matter of behavior, not what it is, where it came from, or what it represents. You might stand for something that is good, but once you resort to force to realize your vision, you become evil.

While I only present two examples here, if you consider any other political advocacy group, they virtually all continue to pursue political power even after they have attained their liberty. Liberty isn’t enough for them. They want to wield political force against others. And this force takes multiple forms. It may be as extreme as launching military force, or as seemingly mild as spending another’s tax dollars on something they do not approve of. It is evil oppression in either case.

I have friends from all over the political spectrum who urge me to sign up to support a particular niche political advocacy group. And honestly, many of these groups are operating mostly at the “good” stage, but they still show signs of crossing to the dark side. It is in their DNA to “go evil” because they were not founded on the principle of attaining liberty, but on the principle of self-interest.

Just Stop

Once a political activist movement achieves liberty, it needs to stop. It has achieved its goal. This doesn’t mean that a movement may not continue to peacefully educate, and persuade. It is simply to say that a movement seeking to lobby government has to stop once they have rescued themselves from forceful oppression—they have attained liberty.

A force for good cannot become the very thing that it abhors in its oppressors. Remember, your oppressor believes that he is the good guy as well.

If I had a chance, I would like to communicate to members of OWS that
the Federal Reserve is easily the most dangerous part of the 1%. The
Reserve’s policy of creating money devalues the savings accounts of
the 99% and encourages debt. It encourages conspicuous, wasteful
consumerism. The cheap credit credited by new money benefits the 1%
at the expense of the 99%.

The slideshow explains it best:

http://www.matt.com/SlideShow/

What is a right?  Where does it come from?  Perhaps Merriam-Webster can help:

• right: something to which one has a just claim (So what makes a claim just?)
• just: acting or being in conformity with what is morally upright or good (What is moral?)
• moral: conforming to a standard of right behavior (What is right?  Oh crap.  That’s where we started.  And where do we get this “standard” from?)

Useless.

If you’re a theist, and you believe that God has revealed to us rights and wrongs, it’s simple; God grants and ultimately enforces those rights.

What if you don’t believe in God?

Here is the dark truth.  Unless God exists, there is no reason to believe that anything within our universe has the authority to dictate a “standard of right behavior” that applies to everything in the universe.  If you are atheist/agnostic, and you insist that such a standard does in fact exist, then I have to ask, “Where does it come from?”  But there is no place for it to come from because there is no authority to serve as the origin of such an ultimate standard.  Since there is nothing from which the standard could originate, it did not originate, and therefore it doesn’t exist.  The only way such a standard can exist is if you accept the reality of a supernatural overriding force or entity that serves as the origin of an ultimate “standard of right behavior”; now you are back to believing in God.

One might reply, “So that means that in the absence of God you are allowed to do whatever you want to anyone or anything?”  To that I would say, “Yes!  I am!”  No transcendent authority exists to say otherwise.

But one thing that does exist is happiness.  We are born with the inclination to not only survive and reproduce, but to maximize our satisfaction and minimize our suffering.  While I may be “allowed” to do anything I want to anyone, operating with absolutely no restraint is not the smartest thing to do if I want to maximize my happiness.  And the reason is that humans are powerful.

No living thing poses as much a threat to my happiness as another human.  Humans are dangerous.  Any healthy adult would find it very easy to kill me, hurt me, or ruin my property or my life.  At the same time, I could do the same thing to just about any other human.  We humans live in a state of perpetual vulnerability to each other.

On the other hand, no other living thing possesses as much potential to contribute to my happiness.  Other humans compose music, love me, entertain me, grow food, laugh with me, play with me, pay me, write literature, create art, have sex with me, teach me, and fascinate me.

So while we are “allowed” to do anything to anyone or anything, at some point in our history we humans recognized that restraint in our interaction with one another makes life much safer and much more enjoyable.  It makes us happier.  ”Right” is not a standard from on high.  ”Right” is whatever approach promises to maximize my happiness.

Even though we don’t all agree on what makes us happy as individuals, we have been able to isolate a couple of broad shared principles that serve as foundational components of our happiness with human civilization: We have a right to our property (including our own bodies) and the expectation that other people will not touch it without our permission, and we have the right to expect others to do everything that they have agreed to do.  All other “rights” that we talk about extend from those two foundational principles.

And if someone says, “I don’t agree with those rights, because there is no authority to dictate them,” he can do that.  The problem for him is that to the extent that he abandons restraint and violates other people’s bodies or their property, other humans will abandon their restraint with respect to him.  By going “outlaw” you expose yourself to the danger of unrestrained human force.  Most people opt not to do this because it would not maximize their happiness.

So if you don’t believe in God what are rights?  In the ultimate sense, they don’t exist at all.  But with respect to other humans they exist because we invented them for each other. Humans invented rights for each other because they realized that there is more happiness to be gained in interacting peacefully with other humans—the most powerful organisms we know of—rather than forcefully.  There is no cosmic system of accountability that demands that we respect these made-up rights, it just tends to work out best for us if we do.  And so we do.

But this relationship we have with other humans is unique.  In terms of our relationships with other living things and natural resources we often find that the most happiness we have to gain is in forcefully harnessing them.  We do not generally maximize our happiness with respect to chickens in granting them a right to live.  It generally makes us happier to forcefully deprive them of their life and to eat them.  And so we do.  We do not generally maximize our happiness with respect to the earth in leaving no mark upon it.  It generally makes us happier to mine and drill it for resources.  And so we do.

Still, there is happiness to be had in conserving the Earth’s resources.  We are mesmerized by vast expanses of unadulterated landscape.  Our curiosity is captivated by the complex inner-workings of an ecosystem that—while arising spontaneously—operates incredibly well, feeding and sustaining itself, with little malfunction.  We are pleased with the maximization of happiness even in the animals we raise for food.  We prefer that the animals we eat live happy rather than miserable lives.  And we do not want to consume resources so quickly that we create a crisis of shortage.

Balancing the happiness derived from the conversion of natural resources into useful products with the happiness derived from an unmolested ecosystem is difficult.  But before we can begin to discuss this balance we need to frankly admit to ourselves that it is not a question of ethics, rights, or morality.  We made up rights for ourselves because it works for us, not because we are subservient to any cosmic system of justice, which does not exist.

The vast majority of humanity is not convinced that making up rights for the Earth would make us happier.  So we don’t do it.  And if this means that we humans are selfish—concerned only with our happiness—there is no problem because neither the Earth nor the universe will hold us accountable for our self-centeredness.

And if, in the face of all human opposition, some people still maintain that the Earth has rights, then they will have to admit to themselves that they have faith in the existence of a higher order that does dictate a standard of rights, ethics, and justice.  Most people do, and we call them theists.

Anyone who asserts that the Earth has rights is operating on the basis of faith in a supernatural authority.

There is no rational atheistic argument for the inherent rights of the Earth.

…would – and this is important, I think – stop killing poor foreigners with cluster bombs and Predator drones. Unlike the Nobel Peace Prize winner-in-chief, Paul would also bring the troops home from not just Afghanistan and Iraq, but Europe, Korea and Okinawa. There’d be no need for a School of the Americas because the U.S. wouldn’t be busy training foreign military personnel the finer points of human rights abuses. Israel would have to carry out its war crimes on its own dime.

Even on on the most pressing domestic issues of the day, Paul strikes me as a hell of a lot more progressive than Obama. Look at the war on drugs: Obama has continued the same failed prohibitionist policies as his predecessors, maintaining a status quo that has placed 2.3 million – or one in 100 – Americans behind bars, the vast majority African-American and Hispanic. Paul, on the other hand, has called for ending the drug war and said he would pardon non-violent offenders, which would be the single greatest reform a president could make in the domestic sphere, equivalent in magnitude to ending Jim Crow.

Davis notes the leftist’s readiness to abandon principle, as long as that principle is defiled by their own man:

Democratic partisans – liberals – are willing to trade the lives of a couple thousand poor Pakistani tribesman in exchange for a few liberal catnip-filled speeches and NPR tote bags for the underprivileged…liberals, especially the pundit class, don’t much care about dead foreigners. They’re a political problem at best – will the Afghan war derail Obama’s re-election campaign? – not a moral one. And liberals are more than willing to accept a few charred women and children in some country they’ll never visit in exchange for increasing social welfare spending by 0.02 percent, or at least not cutting it by as much as a mean ‘ol Rethuglican.

We are so consumed with fighting for our side that we are apathetic when our own party abandons our core principles.  This touches on a post I made a while back on the danger of the us vs. them mentality.