Heather McDonald has been steadfastly arguing over at NRO that political conservativism doesn't need to have a God, and that in arguing the success of Judeo-Christianity, many religious conservatives may be confusing cause and effect (I think there's a powerful Anglosphere angle here...). While I'm not a conservative, I agree with everything in this post.

In my opinion, Andrew Sullivan does a good job on this topic. Quote:

There's been an interesting exchange over at NRO. Just scroll for the last couple of days. The Buckley view, apparently, is that it is perfectly possible for a conservative to be an atheist, but that respect for religion and a lack of disrespect for the faithful is also part of conservatism. I tend to agree. The only thing I'd add is that "religion" is a very broad and inchoate term for the purposes of this discussion. It matters a great deal what kind of religious faith we're talking about. Faith is not, to my mind, an on-off switch, in which you either believe completely or not at all. This model is shared by fundamentalists and atheists, but not by many, many Christians.

The most natural religious complement to conservatism is a faith in God, tempered by a deep humility about our ability to know surely much about what God is, an emphasis on mystery, on charity, individual responsibility, and sacramental worship. But when religion becomes absolutist and abstract and political, when it become fundamentalist, it is much less compatible with conservatism, and, in the end, actively hostile to it. What we are seeing resurgent in the world today is the rise of a religious sensibility - in Islam, Hinduism, Judaism and Christianity - which has far more in common with the statist absolutist totalitarianisms of the last century than with, say, Anglicanism or post-Vatican II Catholicism. In fact, as I argue in my book, I think the collapse of the last centuries' totalitarianisms has opened a cultural and psychological vacuum for this kind of religion to occupy, as it once did before the Enlightenment. A passage from my upcoming book makes the point:

"In this non-fundamentalist understanding of faith, practice is more important then theory, love more important than law, and mystery is seen as an insight into truth rather than an obstacle. This is the Christianity that the conservative clings to; and it is a form of Christianity the fundamentalist rejects. That is his right. But it is the great lie of our time that all religious faith has to be fundamentalist to be valid."

No disrespect to Bill White's post, but I have to think about it more before I can post on it with any reason. So, I'll go in a different direction.

Western civilization has given birth to many political philosophies: absolute monarchism, totalitarianism, republicanism, etc.. as well as many ideologies (forgive the lack of a better term): nazism, communism, capitalism, etc.. so I think when we consider "Western Civilization" as respect for the rule of law, individual rights, and free market democracy, we tend to ignore that we have spawned many political cultures, some of which have been insanely evil.

I see there being two children of the Enlightenment. One, the British model (or the American Revolution) focused on the idea of freedom under God. The other, the French model (French Revolution) focused on the idea of freedom from all including God. The American Revolution was essentially non-violent on a social level (i.e. mostly military) and generally embodied what we see today as Western Civilization. The French Revolution, alternatively, was a barbaric and murderous affair and (to many) was a prequel to other bad Western things like Communism and Nazism (and all held Man was the final arbiter). Why is the American revolution remebered for the Declaration of Independence and the French Revolution remembered for the guillotine? I would argue that it was the respect for religion, or at least the moral code imposed from the Judeo-Christian religion, that separated two remarkably similar revolutions into two vastly different fates.

Whether or not God exists or religion is true is irrelevant to the discussion at hand. I argue that the closer groups have held to religion (and the associated moral code) in the West, the closer they have historically attained the pinnacle system of Western Civilization.

I think McDonald is wrong. There can be atheist conservatives, no doubt, but 99/100 times they subscribe (as well or better than believers) to the major sections of the moral code of Judeo-Christianity.

Individuals can believe that God does not exist but still keep to the Judeo-Christian moral code. I do not believe large groups and societies can, at least for long. In this manner, I think what we see as conservatism is dependent on God because only God (whether he exists or not) can inspire enough people to "keep to the code" to perpetuate the good Western Civilization instead of falling into the traps of the bad Western Civilizations.

Rand,

You claim not to be a conservative, but I find that somewhat hard to believe. What do you consider yourself? Libertarian? You definitely strike me as a follower of the Classical Liberal philosophy (Adam Smith, Edmund Burke, etc..) Many would consider that the benchmark of rational conservatism (as opposed to right-wing militants or religious fanatics, which sometimes votes like conservatives).

The book title is

"The Anglosphere Challenge: Why the English-Speaking Nations Will Lead the Way in the Twenty-First Century"

I thought we were the ones who screwed up the last two or three centuries. Especially the United States style American, English speaking nation.

I thought we were the ones who screwed up the last two or three centuries. Especially the United States style American, English speaking nation.

What would that screwup consist of? Was it the Industrial Revolution with the vast decrease of infant mortality and extension of lifespan and wellbeing, or was it the advent of democratic constitutional government? Then there was the worldwide abolition of slavery, courtesey of the Royal Navy and the Union Army. Yeah, we have a lot to answer for.

As for the Christianity question, I am fairly sympathetic to crediting the positive role of religion. Greek democracy was pretty much a dead duck by the advent of the Christian era. It was the fusion of Greek phiosophy and Jewish monotheism under early Latin Christianity that preserved Greek individualism through the Dark Ages; it was medieval constitutionalism, and the Latin Church's doctrine of co-equal and distinct religious and civil spheres that created the space for civil society to emerge into in the late Middle Ages, and it was the survival of Common Law in England, and the avoidance of a standing land warfare establishment, that created the legal space for this independent civil society to flourish independent of a centralizing state.

People can theorize that this might have happened elsewhere and without the historical legacy of Christianity, but the more you look into the recent scholarship, the less likely that supposition becomes.

Dear "blank" poster,
I was being tongue in cheekish. English speakers have nothing to be sorry for.

The entire idea that ANY one group of people is responsible for all the woes of the world is ridiculous. It's usually some rabid or radical, or extreme opinioned, sub-group that is actually to blame. Regardless of that groups or sub-groups race or language of course.

You don't have to speak English to be evil or dangerous. Look at Ted Kennedy.

More Heather McDonald via Andrew Sullivan:

I agree with Jonah [Goldberg?] that the truth claims of religion are “slippery.” Yet I hear them made all the time. A recent article on The Da Vinci Code in The American Spectator stated that it was a matter of “historical fact” that Jesus was born of a virgin and ascended to heaven after the crucifixion. I simply don’t know what to make of that statement or its appearance in a powerful, justly respected journal of conservative opinion. It does not conform to what I thought was a common understanding of “historical facts.” Ditto when the president claims that freedom is God’s gift to humanity. He is not talking here about free will. I see little evidence in the Bible that God advocated the democratic government that we are bringing to (or imposing on) Iraq, not to mention the gender quotas that we fixed for the Iraqi National Assembly. The Bible seems to be relatively easy about slavery, patriarchy, and despotic tribal leadership; its concerns lie elsewhere. And if the freedom that we have created in the West is indeed God’s gift, it sure took a long time for us to open it.If it turns out that our conception of political freedom is in fact a human creation growing out of very specific cultural soil, that may explain why it is not blossoming forth as we expected it to following the invasion of Iraq.

Very interesting comments.

And yes, Andrew Sullivan is posting useful stuff on this topic.

I am not sure if this approach is useful but to some extent religion can be thought of as culture taken to extremes, memes refined and simplified to the point of beliefs. Thus religion becomes a subset of culture. In such a context morality, honour, freedom ideals, economic ideologies, etcetera, can be seen as based in culture, whether that culture gets codified into a religion or not.

"You claim not to be a conservative, but I find that somewhat hard to believe. What do you consider yourself? Libertarian? You definitely strike me as a follower of the Classical Liberal philosophy (Adam Smith, Edmund Burke, etc..) Many would consider that the benchmark of rational conservatism (as opposed to right-wing militants or religious fanatics, which sometimes votes like conservatives)."

Of course it never occurs to you that people might exist who do not fit into your superficial classification scheme - or who might occupy multiple slots.

Sully quoted the worst part of her article - her infantile Biblical analysis. The root problem seems to be an underlying assumption that Christians are supposed to do everything the good guys did in the Bible.

Mosaic law was drafted for a specific people at a specific time for a specific purpose, not to outline government framework for all peoples. The only Biblical foundations for Christian government are the rules of right and wrong that apply to everybody, most of which are a subset of "don't steal." Patriarchy was a necessity back then when heads of state were commanders-in-chief who directly led troops into battle - it was not a universal command for future governments.

(Can anyone imagine any our recent presidents leading sword-wielding troops?)

Where did she get the notion that the tribal leaders were despotic by design? The Bible overall assumes Rule of Law - that Law outranks all men, including the State. You can't be a despot unless you outrank the Law.

According to the Bible, God compromised with the Hebrews on the common custom of slavery; Rev 18:13 condemns the slave trade. This isn't the only example of such compromise. The Law allowed for divorce - which, excepting for cases of adultery, Jesus condemns in Matthew 5:32. Also, after the Hebrews complained about not having a king, God through Samuel gave them one - after warning them that he'd eventually hit them with eminent domain abuse, excessive taxation, a military draft, and even conscripting young women to be "perfumers and cooks and bakers" for the State (1 Samuel 8). The King will be a fink, sayest the prophet of the Lord.

One more thing on slavery: Paul taught obedience to authority in general (does that make him pro-monarchist?) and didn't except for slaves. He also undermined slavery by telling slaves to "serve wholeheartedly" while tellimg masters to "treat your slaves in the same way" (Eph 6:7-9).

Brent, I think a key difference between as you put it the "British" and "French" models is that "respect for religion" translates in practice to not infering with a person's beliefs or thoughts. OTOH, if you are actively attempting to "free" someone from religion using the State, then at some level you are using the force of the State to change someone's thoughts and beliefs. It also implies some degree of elitism and disrespect since your subjective belief systems and thoughts are somehow better than those of the people you are attempting to "free".

I think however there are other reasons that the French revolution turned out so poorly. The US revolution was primarily against an external enemy. So there was little remaining conflict between US citizens afterwards. OTOH, the French revolution was against the elite of France. Most were civilian. I think this lead a level of violence against fellow citizens that you don't get in a more straightforward military campaign (and I know of Britain's execution of civilians, guerilla warfare by the US, and the Cherokee wars).

As a result, when the respective wars ended, you had a variety of interests and a number of well-established small countries that had to be placated in the US while a single radical ideology took control in the French revolution. So the former case required some sort of fair distribution of power while in the latter, power was in the hands of a single ideology.

I think this discussion of the intersection of religion and conservatism that Heather MacDonald started is very good. Like Heather, I am essentially an atheist. Like her, I also subscribe to the basic conservative principles of individual rsponsibility, self-reliance, and delayed gratification. Although I do agree that christianity generally supports these values, I do not believe that belief in christianity is necessary to realize these values. This is her contention at American Conservative and I see no reason why this should be seen as controversial.

When I was in high school, I came to the conclusion that individuals are autonomous "free agents" and that "morality" is simply a form of contract law between such autonomous free agents. Based on this, I concluded that the "golden rule" is the only form of morality that is necessary for a modern technologically prosperous society and that the "golden rule" is entirely based on empathy and self-interest.

It was later, when I was in college, that I found out that this personal philosophy (that I derived entirely impirically, I'll have you know) is called "libertariansim" and that "Ayn Rand" was an exponent of this. That was the first time I had ever heard of "libertarianism" and "Ayn Rand". My point being is that what I believe here is entirely based on impiricism.

The reason why I do not believe in any religion, nor do I believe it essential to a properous dynamic society is that its metaphysics and epistimology is not impirically derivable. Hence, I do not consider it to be a "legitimate" concept for understanding the world around us as well as human psychology.

My other hangup with religion is that it refuses to accept the principle of individual self-ownership. This is unacceptable to me. I will never, on my life and love of it, accept any phylosophy, ideology, or religion that refuses to accept the principle of individual self-ownership. I simply refuse to do it.

I think because of this stance, christianity seeks to regulate human behavior above and beyond the minimum necessary to ensure that we all get along in a civil manner.

This is where I stand with religion and, I strongly suspect, so does Heather MacDonald.

By far, the most insightful comments on this issue are by Razib over on his science blog at:

http://scienceblogs.com/gnxp/2006/08/god_morality.php

Christianity claims that God created, and thus owns, everything, so in that sense it cannot support the idea of individual self-ownership. It states that there is an objective code of ethics to which all humans are equally subject.

But Christianity also stands against society's ownership of the individual. The morality that binds equally also protects equally - freedom from murder, theft, and slander were the same for everyone despite the arbitrary status systems devised by humanity.

The claim that Christianity goes beyond the necessities of human civility would take an entire book to address (and a very thick one at that). Christianity has ideas on what is and isn't ethical or psychologically healthy, and many of those claims are highly contested. Many are also shared by other religions and/or supported by secular sources. Each should be addressed separately.

Support for inidividual liberty is a matter of faith. Empirical study can prove whether such-and-such is injurious to someone, but not that we should have any reason to value that someone. Futhermore, atheists and most other schools of thought have no explanation, even philosophical, to legitimize objective ethics. Monotheists say that rights come from God. Some claim that objective morality doesn't exist, but those types tend to run into problems living consistently with that frame of mind.

We Don't Need No Stinkin' God

I think you're wrong here Rand. I think we need some more proactive Gods. A couple of thousand years and what have we had? A few bleeding statues and a Marian tortilla here and there. We need our Gods to start taking their jobs a bit more seriously.

Let's start with the old "Taking God's name in vain" thing. If Allah were to start getting publicly Koranic on a few of the Imams, Mullahs and other assorted politicians who are deciding that God's aims happen to coincide exactly with their dreams of power, maybe a few of the survivors might get a bit more humble.

The Christian God could get biblical on the likes of Roberstson and Falwell and I for one would love to see Al Gore, in the middle of one of his tedious green tirades hit with a flash of lightning, a crash of thunder and a Motherly voice from above saying, "How's that for global warming, Al"

I'm sure you can come up with your own canditates for divine intervention.