Poor Paul Harsanyi. Apparently, he drew the short straw at National Review and was stuck condemning skepticism about God … as a self-proclaimed atheist. It all comes to a head in this broken kaleidoscope of, well, fear:
It is also the case that we need more people in the pews to save the Republic. Mostly because God-fearing Americans tend to be more serious about other vital institutions. Maybe it’s because they believe in something bigger than themselves — or even the CDC, if one can imagine such a thing. Inalienable rights make sense to the person of faith in the same way a pliable set of guidelines that perpetually bend to accommodate the vagaries of contemporary life does not. Putting man above God as the final arbiter of “rights” is a haughty and perilous enterprise, as we witnessed in virtually every tragedy of the 20th century. There is far too much of that going on.
As an atheist, he should be well aware that the last verified appearance of a divinity appears to be … never. As such, ideas pertaining to governance coming from the religious sector must be considered contaminated with notions about a creature about which no one knows much, including that pesky question concerning actual existence. Such ideas, not necessarily grounded in reality, well, one can still make the argument that there’s merit in how long they’ve survived, i.e., refinement via social evolution, but most religions with which I’ve had some reason to look have little use for democracy, particularly those unconscious of the word hubris.
But Harsanyi wants to hand religions, which he’s admitted have engaged in century-long wars over fine points of theology – and they weren’t formalities – a Get Out Of Jail Free card, while condemning humanity for its efforts at governance.
But governance is humanity’s responsibility.
If Harsanyi is going to cling to atheism as a position on the divine, then he must be willing to admit that it’s up to humanity to find a way to govern that brings stability to society; furthermore, since he’s already demanding that his view on the divine be respected for truthfulness, and by stating it, yes, he’s demanded that respect, then he should also demand that truthfulness be part of governing. I’m not asking that he present a plan, because governance is hard and, as overpopulation increases, it’ll get worse. But understanding that respect for reality and truth, rather than relying on religious ideas of governance based on a titular, and, depending on your divinity selection, chronically angry and murderous divinity, should lead to a better governance model. It’ll at least increase the odds.
Just making assertions such as
And, obviously, if you’re willing to throw away a few thousand years of history, what’s a mere 200-odd years of constitutional law?
may sound clever and convincing, but my response is Y’all mean like Trump, his high powered allies, and the January 6th insurrectionists? SCOTUS and abortion? The intellectual progenitors to the current crop of Republicans, the 1861 traitors, who relied so heavily on Biblical text for justifying their defense of slavery?
He’s written easy, throw-away lines without much thought, and that makes him look uncaring. He may have been trying to be clever, but it doesn’t work. A direct acknowledgment that theocracies, and belief in the unlimited power of a divinity that fails to even communicate with us, has not gone over well is a critical first step in questioning how to turn out good American citizens.
