Happy Furry Puppy Story Time with Norbizness

I'll Give It The Old College Try

[Busy day. Ax Da President and Friday videos, posted last night, are below.]

Come on, look at Gerson and tell me there's a God.

What Atheists Can't Answer by Michael Gerson (in italics) with my inexplicable answer, as at least a situational atheist, in regular type.

British author G.K. Chesterton argued that every act of blasphemy is a kind of tribute to God, because it is based on belief. "If anyone doubts this," he wrote, "let him sit down seriously and try to think blasphemous thoughts about Thor."

Thor is a panty-sniffing degenerate who likes to diddle goats. It pains me to say this, being of Norwegian descent, but it's true. His mystical hammer is filled with candy and is quite harmless.

Proving God's existence in 750 words or fewer would daunt even Thomas Aquinas. And I suspect that a certain kind of skeptic would remain skeptical even after a squadron of angels landed on his front lawn. So I merely want to pose a question: If the atheists are right, what would be the effect on human morality?

It's weird, even the miraculous appearance of Roma Downey and Delta Reese on tens of millions of television sets didn't even convince me! But really, that's kind of a straw-seraphim. Kind of like saying that eight years of governance by the most unsuited of incurious dry-drunks and half-cyborg corporate raiders SHOULD have disabused anybody of the notion of Divine Providence.

If God were dethroned as the arbiter of moral truth, it would not, of course, mean that everyone joins the Crips or reports to the Playboy mansion. On evidence found in every culture, human beings can be good without God. And Hitchens is himself part of the proof. I know him to be intellectually courageous and unfailingly kind, when not ruthlessly flaying opponents for taking minor exception to his arguments.

You know, I was always a little uneasy about Hitchens being on the side of the non-theists. The fact that he's receiving praise from a squirty little douchebag of a Bush speechwriter tends to confirm it.

There is something innate about morality that is distinct from theological conviction. This instinct may result from evolutionary biology, early childhood socialization or the chemistry of the brain, but human nature is somehow constructed for sympathy and cooperative purpose.

On further reflection, I'm beginning to think that he's about to pose a question I can't answer, insofar as going to be totally heavily sprinkled with circular, reactionary logic and unsupported by anything resembling a factual assertion.

[The denouement, with some choice words for the author, is in the extended entry...]

The dilemma is this: How do we choose between good and bad instincts? Theism, for several millennia, has given one answer: We should cultivate the better angels of our nature because the God we love and respect requires it. While many of us fall tragically short, the ideal remains.

And we should also heed his example by killing all women and children in particular villages and constructing crude sulphuric hailstones to rain down on enemy camps with catapults when the Sky Fairy is otherwise occupied.

Atheism provides no answer to this dilemma. It cannot reply: "Obey your evolutionary instincts" because those instincts are conflicted. "Respect your brain chemistry" or "follow your mental wiring" don't seem very compelling either. It would be perfectly rational for someone to respond: "To hell with my wiring and your socialization, I'm going to do whatever I please." C.S. Lewis put the argument this way: "When all that says 'it is good' has been debunked, what says 'I want' remains."

Oh, to explore the mind of the supine, authoritarian-leaning political hack. Critical reasoning, ever replaced by fear and need to obey someone or something. Being a results-oriented person, I personally don't care whether it's Jebus, Buddha, or a fear of prosecution that prevents somebody from bashing my head in, so long as it remains unbashed.

Some argue that a careful determination of our long-term interests -- a fear of bad consequences -- will constrain our selfishness. But this is particularly absurd. Some people are very good at the self-centered exploitation of others. Many get away with it their whole lives. By exercising the will to power, they are maximizing one element of their human nature.

The irony of a Bush Administration official profiting off of the 9/11 carte blanche giving us a lesson on the selfish desire for power is a bit rich. And sometimes, when they have the religious 3-iron in their golf bag of power-mad tricks, it paves the way for such action.

In a purely material universe, what possible moral basis could exist to condemn them? Atheists can be good people; they just have no objective way to judge the conduct of those who are not.

There's no need to condemn them, just fight or imprison them should their actions physically injure or impinge upon the enumerated constitutional or international rights of others. This is a natural impulse and flip side to a child needlessly dying: there's gotta be something else on the other side for them, because I feel bad if there isn't. Unfortunately, this pacifies people as often as it springs them into religious action.

Atheists and theists seem to agree that human beings have an innate desire for morality and purpose. For the theist, this is perfectly understandable: We long for love, harmony and sympathy because we are intended by a Creator to find them. In a world without God, however, this desire for love and purpose is a cruel joke of nature -- imprinted by evolution, but destined for disappointment, just as we are destined for oblivion, on a planet that will be consumed by fire before the sun grows dim and cold.

Apart from the fact that there are probably several billion theists who share none of this idiot's optimism or childlike belief in their super-specialness (undercut by his rhetorical service in a particularly un-Christian, greedheaded, war-mongering Administration), I have never considered familial obligation, charity for my friends or strangers, or a lack of criminal activity in a highly structured society to be a cruel joke. I may need legal guidance and even advice from my friends and family every once in a while, but I definitely don't need the self-interested interpretations of ancient texts from a fearmongering asshole in order to live.

Posted by Norbizness at July 13, 2007 06:41 AM