And that’s the point of articles like this, I think. If you really care about individual liberty, and want to persuade others to care about it, too, it does no good to say “You’re just a stupid stupidhead who believes in fairy tales.” Whoever you are talking to will, at best, just ignore whatever you have to say. But when you meet people where they are; when you get to know enough Scripture to argue persuasively to religious people that Liberty is what the God they believe in has ordained, then you have a chance to gain allies in the struggle for Liberty.

Wow, it appears you are changing your tune, David. You earlier said, “All the commandments, including the concept of a moral ‘commandment’ is diametrically opposed to the conception of man as an self-owning, self-reliant, man of independent judgment.” So I guess you believe in moral commandments after all.

Acutally Agressive Atheism is conductive to anarchism TWLP SAM

Karl Marx equated freedom of religion with private property and called for eradication of both at the hands of the state. “Of course, in periods when the political state as such is born violently out of civil society, when political liberation is the form in which men strive to achieve their liberation, the state can and must go as far as the abolition of religion, the destruction of religion. But it can do so only in the same way that it proceeds to the abolition of private property, to the maximum, to confiscation, to progressive taxation, just as it goes as far as the abolition of life, the guillotine.” Karl Marx, The Jewish Question

blah blah blah.

Please just give it a rest. I haven’t heard tripe that shop-worn since freshman year in the dorm lounge.

Besides, how do you know I don’t believe in Zeus? Zeus kicks ass.

Plus, my comments are not a straw-man argument. They are a statement of my impression of the disproportionately large percentage of atheists I have encountered over the years who exhibit an abrasive and sophomoric smugness.

I think it was your reference to the “casting off of shackles of tradition” that reminded me of that particular tendency.

Atheism is not a claim to anything – it’s the denial of a claim. To be an atheist only says what one is not – it does not indicate anything about one’s beliefs. Does the fact that you do not believe in Zeus or Thor say anything about you? Neither does does my disbelief in your particular gods, whatever they are.

>”That everyone else, not only everyone in the world but everyone all of human history, is a stone-cold idiot. That only the Aggressive Atheist really gets it, man.”

That kind of straw-man attack is common to anyone who has no rational reasons to give.

Which proves what? That he wasn’t totally ignorant of a moral convention common to every single culture? Even at that, the Christian concept of love is corrupt and immoral – it demands that we “love” everyone regardless of whether they deserve, destroying the very idea of love and justice.

Fortunately, the Dutch Republic didn’t succomb to Calvinism with regard to the project of estbablishing the Kingdom of God on earth. Most Dutch were Erasmian protestants who focused on personal piety, not societal piety. Somehow we must convince Calvinists, and many Catholics, that the state has a very specific, limited purpose and the church should not use the state to do its work. That seems to be a difficult taks, though, even among Baptists.

It’s also conducive of anything else. As either Sartre or Camus used to say, it makes no difference whether you help the old lady across the street or throw her under the bus, as long as you act.

This is what irks me about the Aggressive Atheist. The arrogance. The tiresome implication (sometimes made as an explicit claim) that only the Aggressive Atheist has figured it all out. That everyone else, not only everyone in the world but everyone all of human history, is a stone-cold idiot. That only the Aggressive Atheist really gets it, man.

I, on the other hand, recognize the same rights in others that I ascribe to myself …

As though no one has ever thought of that before.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethic_of_reciprocity

>”These “modern,” “Western” legal systems you refer to also allude to the Deity. “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal and are endowed by their Creator certain inalienable rights….”"

John Adams:
“The government of the United States is not in any sense founded on the Christian religion.”

“…Thirteen governments [of the original states] thus founded on the natural authority of the people alone, without a pretence of miracle or mystery, and which are destined to spread over the northern part of that whole quarter of the globe, are a great point gained in favor of the rights of mankind.”

>”Was the Declaration also the by-product of an “ancient, inferior mind”?”

No, it was the creation of a mind which had rejected the shackles of mysticism and tradition.

Thomas Jefferson:
“Our civil rights have no dependence on our religious opinions, more than on our opinions in physics and geometry….The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods, or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.”

“…that our civil rights have no dependence on religious opinions, any more than our opinions in physics and geometry.”

>”Well I’m going to go ponder whether I should rob a bank. I’m a self-owning man of independent judgment, and I don’t have to follow any kind of law if I don’t agree with it. Bye!”

If you believe that you must obey laws because they are written on a pieces paper (holy or otherwise), you’re indeed a perfect candidate of the Total State. I, on the other hand, recognize the same rights in others that I ascribe to myself, regardless of what the law might say they are.

Sorry, I’m not Catholic, so don’t know much about the Pope’s positions. You might find something over on the Acton web site.

It’s good to see Catholics warming to capitalism, though. Although the Dutch protestants took their thinking on free markets from Catholic scholars, the Church the capitalism that resulted from the implementation of those ideas as purely protestant and reacted against them as such. The Church remained anti-capitalistic until fairly recently, as Novac has pointed out in his books.

i hoped benedict xvi would continue to steer the church away from the social justice quicksands, but have the impression that things have remained fairly static.

your thoughts?

Hmm, that seems to coincide with the first generation of graduates following Bismarck’s rather disastrous Kulturkampf initiative.

Combine that with an entrenched Prussian compulsory school system, and you can, as Fichte said, fashion the citizen-subject “in such a way that he simply cannot will otherwise than what you wish him to will.”

Yes, it is. Most Christians today are socialists, but that wasn’t always the case. As I have written many times before, modern liberalism began with the Dutch Republic of the 17th century and was based on the Biblical principles espoused by the Catholic scholars at the school of Salamanca. The Acton Institute’s Journal of Markets and Morality for this month (subscription required) has a good section on the priest who introduced scholastic ideas on economics (heavily free market) to the Dutch, Lessius. Without mentioning its religious foundation, the new book, “God and Gold: Britain, America, and the Making of the Modern World” by Walter Russell Mead also traces liberalism back to the Dutch Republic.

Most Christians were freedom and free market oriented until the late 1800′s when beginning in Germany, they abandoned the content of Christianity but kept the shell. At that time, the unbelieving “Christians” all became devout socialists and the trend has continued.

the avowed sense of compassion for the less fortunate that proponents of the welfare state and the myriad other interventions, not least price regulation, that it leads to, rides on a wave of bogus morality.

Very few people, believers and atheists alike, recognise that there can be no virtue in compelled charity.

Precisely the same principle applies to legal sanctions based on moral opprobrium against private consensual behaviour, which sort of legislation invaribaly finds enthusiastic favour among the devout of many faiths. Since this fals outside the scope of this thread, perhaps Mr Vance would like to address the morality of prohibition in a future article.

These “modern,” “Western” legal systems you refer to also allude to the Deity. “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal and are endowed by their Creator certain inalienable rights….”

Was the Declaration also the by-product of an “ancient, inferior mind”?

All the commandments, including the concept of a moral “commandment” is diametrically opposed to the conception of man as an self-owning, self-reliant, man of independent judgment.

Uhhh, sure! Whatever.

Well I’m going to go ponder whether I should rob a bank. I’m a self-owning man of independent judgment, and I don’t have to follow any kind of law if I don’t agree with it. Bye!