Does conservatism require God?

This whole discussion has an air of unreality. Let us back up for a minute.

If in fact, in objective reality, outside your opinion and mine, God (whatever that means) does not exist. Then in fact life has no meaning but the meaning we assign to it, and we are, as the whole post assumes, looking into the abyss. We are IN the abyss, whether we realize it or not. Oh, we can shore up this situation by accepting one or another religious fable, but in the end, we're doomed.

But suppose that God (whatever that means) does exist. Suppose that (which follows) there is an over-arching meaning to our lives, one not imposed by us any more than gravity is imposed by us, but which just IS, whether we recognize it or not.

Then the question becomes, which societies will recognize the law of gravity, and which will build their structures on the idea that we really can jump off cliffs and not fall? I would suggest to you that under this assumption, societies which are so deluded as to jump off cliffs WILL fall, leaving the sane societies behind to rebuild what's left.

It is best to recognize that there can be no overarching moral authority in our culture because anyone can simply choose to ignore it and there will be no discernable consequences. Authority is dead and an Obama presidency will no doubt bury it at any number of levels.

The question then becomes, will the Benedictine Option be permitted, or will it end up in a Wacoish holocaust?

I had a friend in seminary who was an atheist. He was there studying dead languages, interested in devoting his whole life to dead languages and scripture, but the idea of God was lunacy to him. But he saw the necessity for order. He tried to find ways of substituting patriotism for true religion, the hopes that the state could function as the centerpiece of a coherent moral philosophy. It lead us to have some frightening conversations.

The worry over how traditional believers are to function in a society in which we are a distinct, sometimes unwelcome minority is a real one. I don't think libertarianism is the answer. As much as I'd like to be able to embrace the "live and let live" attitude of libertarian philosophy, I cannot but remember that the state's power is derived from God, from moral purpose, whether the state realizes it or not. It seems to me that we are called to organize ourselves around that purpose, participating in the system to the extent that we can do so with conscience but always remembering that it is derivative.

The Pevensies were kings and queens of Narnia, but only because Aslan had placed them on their thrones. And when Narnia came under wicked rule, those who knew the name of the true king went underground and lived as best they could. This is the history of our world as well. I suspect it will be so, fluctuating between good and evil rulers, until the eschaton approaches. In our post-everything society, we are heading for a dark winter. Let's not lose the warmth of the fire in our hearts.

One thing about the state and religion as seen by the founding fathers is that it is not dependent on any religion per so, but it is dependent on theism, or at least deinsm. God is the source of humanity and of human rights. We are endowed by our creator with inalienable rights and these rights can not be taken away. If they are...well that is the justification for violent revolution, which is not simply a right but an obligation and a duty. Ultimately it is the fact of a God that gaurantees freedom.

I neither dispute nor reject that POV, Will. I would, with respect, adjust it to the following:

Ultimately it is the fact of a God that guarantees freedom when those who believe in a God are so motivated to take responsibility for that guarantee.

The implication of your original statement is that those who do not believe in a God are incapable of being motivated in like fashion. I stand before you as proof of the opposite. Whether the founders explicitly intended to make room for such as me or not, it remains a fact that the common ground they created calls me to step forward. That a believer distrusts my motivation, or expects me to fail in fulfilling the responsibility, is bluntly his problem and not mine.

Is there actually such a thing as a philosophy that is true, i.e. contains all the truth? It seems rather like being able to pour all the oceans into a cup. A small cup.

Franlin Evans, I agree that the genius of the founders of America to make coexistence not dependent upon everyone believing the same thing about religion, or even to a lesser extent about politics. It remains to be seen if their effort was in the long run a noble failure or a success.

This is connected to Will Harrington's post, about deism or theism being necessary; or if not necessary, then a huge help, a powerful social glue. Deism could encompass Unitarianism on over to Catholicism and the Amish and Mennonites. It acknowledges at least a tentative "beyond the subjective" order to the universe. This could at least fit with mathematical rules of the rising scientific order, in which God was a watchmaker whose creation embodied divine order and rules.

When there's instead a sense that all order comes from us, all power comes only from us, then it's not clear that the American system works that well. It is precisely with the death of social consensus (which may well have felt stifling; were the mid century years a kind of living death?) that we start running into basic problems.

Even conservatives vary in motivation and focus.Some conservatives hearken back to the deistic model (rights and power ultimately based upon a beyond human order); others have a "negative conservatism" like libertarianism; others a form of economic conservatism, seeing market capitalism as utterly central to American identities and goals. (This list is by no means exhaustive.) These differences result in lots of the disagreement we've seen in the past few weeks about paleocons, theocons, and neocons, C. Buckley, Frum, etc.

But then consider the other end of the political spectrum: liberalism, which can range from people a lot like neocons who espouse larger government, to those who believe that humans invent themselves in whatever way they want to, and that law and the political order have to develop to include these new developments. Without deism or something like it (and I'd tentatively suggest that the externals of a certain kind of conformity up through the fifties were the exoskeleton, the corpse of such a unifying principle), how do we find common ground? Especially between, say, theocons and not just non-essentialist but profoundly anti-essentialist liberals?

Franklin, this is where I ask, how do you solve this? The understanding of these two disparate groups is so opposed, can they be fit into a united whole?

Apologies for the length, PDGM

"...how do we find common ground? Especially between, say, theocons and not just non-essentialist but profoundly anti-essentialist liberals?"

How about science? Now, before you freak out - I'm an atheist, but I don't think science can explain everything, especially deeply complex things like psychology. However, the scientific *method* is supremely useful and is itself a conservative idea: you can't just say something is true some of the time - you have to be able to *predict* things based on objective theories. And you have to accept that someday something might come along to upend your theory - even the "law" of gravity breaks down in certain contexts.

Politics could use a good deal less certainty on both side of the aisle.

Once upon a time theists ascribe all manner of phenomena to God - thunder & lightning, comets appearing in the sky, disease and famine - but over time most of those things have moved from the God bucket to the science bucket. Tellingly, not even once has something moved in the other direction.

And in fits & starts scientists are discovering things like an evolutionary logic behind altruism, as well as better understandings of what neurological activities constitute "happiness."

Rod: "If God didn't exist, I don't think I'd be much of a conservative."

Rod, in what ways would you move away from being a conservative if God didn't exist?

I'd like to expand on the "common ground" theme, using Derek Scruggs' post as a comparison point (well put, Derek, btw).

Derek points out that from his atheist POV that there does not need to be conflict between faith and secular, because history shows that the border is porous and permits access from both directions. His point that there has been movement from faith to science but not in the other direction is not a complete picture, because two-way movement is an invalid measurement.

That's an awkward way to put it. I'm not sure there is a better way, though I'd like to see others' attempts. My point is that my agreement with Derek comes from the other side of the border: I am a spiritual believer (albeit outside the mainstream) who acknowledges the need for the scientific method. We find common ground in that shared perspective, even while holding oppositional views on matters of faith. I acknowledge the movement from belief to science, but I also have a personal, experiential view that when science fails, faith is sufficient to continue with until such time (if it comes) that data, technology and theory advance enough to provide the scientific explanations it lacks now. It bears repeating, as well: unless that explanation fulfills the strictures of the scientific method, it cannot replace faith as it did with thunder & lightning, comets appearing in the sky, disease and famine.

Anyway, the two-way street metaphor is flawed, IMO, and I'd prefer to use the balance-point approach. We use hindsight to scoff at the superstitions of the past, but it is the present in which we live, and the future is an open road with many branches.

Franklin,
Thank you for your thoughtful reply. I appreciate it and appreciate the suggestion that it was not too long. I'm personally and in practice floating somewhere between the Catholic and Orthodox church, but I grew up in a household filled with perennialist ideas of all major religions being vehicles of divine truth, with which I to some extent agree. That said, I'm not sure I believe in there being such a thing as "paganism" because the term's usually used as an insult by early Christians or people whose outlook is narrower, rightly or wrongly, than mine.

Derek Scruggs, science is not looking in the right places for such phenomena as consciousness, thought, intellection, or so I firmly believe. I'm not a materialist; and as long as science ultimately believes in matter and motion as the only true causes, I do think that such searches are in vain. If we're a continuum of mind and body (Google Anthony Bloom's "Body and Matter in Spiritual Life" and read it if interested--I think it's one of the best foundational statements I've read for a healthy Christianity), it means that feelings and even thoughts (you can't completely separate them from feelings, I'd guess) so on do involve changes in the body; Aristotle knew this from glorified common sense 2,500 years ago but not in a precise way (see On the Soul, or De Anima.) But if you are only looking for material causes, that's all you'll find. A paradigm that allows for nothing else can't find the "else."

Perhaps Franklin's idea is the best one possible. And perhaps the best we can hope for is a degree of thoughtfulness and civility in public life that might mitigate the profound philosophical differences, allowing for civility and fellow feeling even while not papering over the gulf of ideas and values.

Regards,
PDGM (I'm a he, by the way.)

"science is not looking in the right places for such phenomena as consciousness, thought, intellection, or so I firmly believe."

You may well be right. The Greeks came awfully close to positing that earth was not the center of the universe, but just missed it. It was over a thousand years later that Galileo finally figured it out.

And it may be that we are incapable of understanding it. We didn't evolve to understand the meaning of the universe, we evolved to survive. Consciousness may be as impossible for humans to understand as for a dog to understand algebra. In the dog's case, that doesn't mean algebra is divine.

The difference between me and many believers is that I'm okay with that, whereas others feel the need to ascribe it to a deity. I'm okay with that too, but don't need anyone's pity or, worse (and as is so common) judgment that I really must have no moral center.