More of the Meme
August 13th, 2010
Rand Paul on the “You Have to Be a Christian to Be Good” bandwagon:
I’m a Christian. We go to the Presbyterian Church. My wife’s a Deacon there and we’ve gone there ever since we came to town. I see that Christianity and values is the basis of our society. . . . 98% of us won’t murder people, won’t steal, won’t break the law and it helps a society to have that religious underpinning. You still need to have the laws but I think it helps to have a people who believe in law and order and who have a moral compass or a moral basis for their day to day life.
The clear implication is that if you’re not a Christian, then you don’t believe in law and order and you don’t have a moral compass or a moral basis for your day-to-day life.
How charming.
This is your basic Straussian crap. Er, not “yours” but, oh, nevermind.
Here’s a critique of Strauss:
“Strauss was just one of several influential American “philosophers” . . . who failed utterly to recognize that American democracy actually came, right out of the box, with its own theology, based on the rejection of “external authority” (supernatural gods) and “absolutism” (religious self-righteousness) in order to achieve a society in which the people could think for themselves and approach the control of their own destinies.
. . .
“Strauss saw JudeoRoman religion (which Jefferson ousted from the American political arena for very well-defined reasons) as a necessary opiate for those being controlled (the people) in the interest of those rightfully in control. Strauss, in other words, did not see government “of, by and for the people,” he saw a JudeoRoman two-tiered world of the powerful and the powerless. In this, he missed the rather obvious, that JudeoRomanism also provides the justification for self-righteous, despotic dominion. The Straussian world was created entirely outside the boundaries of Jefferson’s democracy, as if Jefferson and Franklin couldn’t possibly have known anything about theology.”
Rand Paul is just dredging the same channel that Palin uses, the typical self-righteous certainty of publicly-religious twits.
From CNN’s exit polling of 2004:
WHITE EVANGELICAL/BORN-AGAIN? — Yes (23%)
Bush 78%
Kerry 21%
MOST IMPORTANT QUALITY — Religious Faith (8%)
Bush 91%
Kerry 8%
also, for a laugh:
TRUST BUSH TO HANDLE THE ECONOMY? — Yes (49%)
Bush 93%
Kerry 7%
Half the electorate are clearly idiots.
What he actually said, fairly clearly, if that people who are Christians profess to believe in a set of moral laws and values which are beneficial for society. He did *not* say that people who are atheists or Muslims or whatever don’t necessarily share these beliefs. But you could be a “good” atheist or Muslim and not believe in the “do unto others” Golden rule, for example. Nothing in your professed belief system compels you to follow it and you could personally decide not to. A Christian could decide that as well, but he would consider that he was doing something wrong, “breaking a law” in essence.
He also said that our Western society has been built with Christianity as a fundamental basis. Historically, that’s been true. Only in the last 50 years or so would anyone even question that statement, and it remains true today. Of course there have been many other influences, but nothing as pervasive and important as Christianity.
Your whole basis for outrage is a logical fallacy. He said “I think Christians are good people”. You logically infer “I think non-Christians are bad people” which he never said, and which doesn’t logically follow.
Perhaps what Luis was addressing was a sense of Christian “self-righteousness” rather than true humanitarianism. Where is the “humility” that Christianity was once based on? Why the obsession with ostracizing homosexuals just because they do not conform to social norms? Not to mention the frequent imposition of so-called “Christian family values” on the rest of society when we do not meet their self-imposed standards.
And are all those Catholic priests [although not Presbyterian, Catholics are still Christians in my book] accused of molesting young boys following their own “moral compasses”? I have not heard many apologies from the religious Right regarding these ever-increasing incidents. What world is Rand Paul living in?
Remember Jimmy Swaggart? What a bunch of phoney lies that guy spewed out. While he was doing all the sins he could, the rest of us were just trying to keep up with him. [Maybe he was one of those 2% who lost their moral compasses…]
As a non-member of any religious organization, I feel the world has seen enough wars, violence/suffering imposed on it by religious zealots and mis-guided Christian values. Blocking Gay marriages is just the beginning.
If God is not a Christian, Jesus does not despise homosexuality, and the Bible does not propagate the religious Right, who, then are these self-righteous hypocrites following? Are they too blind to see their own lack of humanitarian values? Is there no one among them who has the balls to say “Enough! This is not what Jesus meant us to be.”
He also said that our Western society has been built with Christianity as a fundamental basis. Historically, that’s been true.
The Greeks and Romans built the basis of European civilization while polytheists and animists.
Then a desert goatherd religion mutated and took over as Christendom, but the history of the 2nd millenium was purging Christianist bullshit from the culture. We’ve still got a little way to go, but we’re getting there.
Ironically, we’ve sorta traded places with Islam. 1000 years ago Islamic culture was, in some areas, the enlightened and science-friendly.
As for America itself, if you read my above you’ll see reference to Jefferson and Franklin. The United States was a creation of the Enlightenment, which had basically zero to do with the JudeoChristian religious tradition. It was a movement AWAY from the power of priests and received wisdom, and part of the scientific tradition of questioning authority and thinking for oneself, both things utterly inimical to organized Christianity.
I have a problem with “JudeoChristian religious tradition”. Christianism was a break, a “revolution” against Judaism: the God of the Old Testament and the God of the New Testament are two differents gods. “An eye for an eye” is alien to Christianism. Talking about judeochristian religion seems to me like talking about capitalist-comunist economics.
Um, not really. Again, Paul:
If you posit Christians as a group which have such things, the corollary is necessarily that others do not.
And if Christians are the ones who have this, then which are the groups that do not?
On the contrary–it MUST logically follow. Even under the most charitable reading, his statement clearly expresses the idea that Christians are more moral and law-abiding than other groups. If that is not true, then Paul’s statement lacks any meaning whatsoever. After all, if Christians are exactly as moral and law-abiding as other major groups, then having a nation which is predominantly Christian would not make a difference.
Paul was saying that our moral basis stems from a Christian heritage, that we are a good country in large part because most of us are Christians. That cannot fail to mean that non-Christians are less moral by nature.
As for morality, let us not forget that being religious is not always a benefit. Take a survey from four years ago asking if torture could be justified. 56% of Catholics said “often” or “sometimes,” as did 49% of white protestants and white evangelicals. Secular Americans: 35%. Now, say what you want about torture being perhaps necessary (thought the facts disagree with you), you cannot argue it would be moral unless you took the “ends justify the means” road, which is morally shaky itself. Note also that the official teachings of the Catholic church are that torture is never justified.
It is a common conceit among many Christians that Christians are simply more moral because they are Christians–and some even believe that Christians are the only ones who are truly moral. It comes from the Christian belief that morality issues from God, and that if you don’t believe in God, then you cannot have that moral basis–you are, at best, just imitating Christian goodness. This even leads people to believe that killing practicing gays is moral–because the Bible says so, and if the Bible says so, then it’s moral. Most Christians will not go that far, but the Bible does say so (Leviticus 20:13). Others have a more visceral basis, believing that man sins by nature and only fear of hell keeps us in line, and so secularists must be prone to evil because they don’t believe in ultimate justice.
As for Paul’s “98% of us” figure, I am not sure where he gets that–1% of the population is incarcerated, while 3% are either in jail, on parole, or on probation, so maybe he took that average. But it should also be noted that Christians are over-represented in prisons, while secular Americans are vastly under-represented.
In fact, I know of no statistical or other kind of evidence which at all supports the thesis that Christians are, in fact and in practice, more moral. It is simply a claim based upon that conceit. In fact, evidence to the contrary is not hard to find. Crime rates in Bible Belt states tend to be higher than in more secular states; although that is likely more a reflection of economic status and its effect on crime than it is on religion and crime, one thing it does demonstrate (along with figures on prison populations) is that Christianity or religion in general does not have a strong effect, if it has indeed any effect at all, on restraining people from committing crimes, which is what Rand Paul clearly stated it did.
SOUSA-POZA:
What you say is indeed true in theory, and maybe in many places in the world–but in the U.S., many Christians are all about Jesus in theory, but are all Old-Testament in practice. “An eye for an eye” is not at all alien to Christianism is the U.S.; many Americans allow Old Testament laws to trump New Testament philosophy, especially when it comes to real-world applications.
In fact, the term “Christianism” has come, in the U.S. in recent years, to refer to political Christians, the extremists who take unyielding views and want the state to back up those views with law. These people also tend to take the more Old-Testament views.
Matthew 5:38-41:
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. took these words to heart, and used them in practice, to fantastic success. Ghandi embraced the philosophy, also to great effect. Modern-day American Christianists abhor the spirit of this sentiment, see it as giving in to bullies, and would sooner gouge out an eye and knock out a tooth.
While I don’t agree with everything Matthew says, his imperative, “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you” was way ahead of his time. Pity that very few Christians–at least in America–follow this teaching. They worship vengeance instead.