| |
Scott posted comments on my blog here.
His comments are on the left-hand side. My response is in this
column. |
| Well,
you asked for comments so here are mine: |
I appreciate incisive and
passionate opposition more than fawning, and certainly more than
being ignored. Thanks for commenting. |
| "Atheist
theocracy" is a contradiction in terms, according to your
definition of theocracy as "God Rules."
Atheists don't believe we are god, we
don't believe we created the universe, we don't condemn ourselves to
eternal suffering in the afterlife for not believing in ourselves.
|
In Genesis
3:5, the Tempter said man should be his own god, determining
good and evil for himself. Every atheist decides for himself what
constitutes good and evil, and writers like Erich
Fromm
have boasted of taking the Tempter seriously. When the U.S. Supreme
Court declared Secular Humanism (atheism) to
be a religion, and Secular Humanists to be entitled to
conscientious objector status (previously limited only to those in
the Christian/pacifist tradition), there were many humanist/atheist
parties who testified that for them, Man is God.
In a Christian Theocracy, the Bible is the legal blueprint. In an
atheist theocracy, man writes his own blueprint. |
| Yes,
certainly virtually all the Founders were Christians. They were also
all white men. Does this mean therefore America is a country only
for white men? |
The word "for" is the
critical word. Even if we assume that the Founders were radical
white supremacists, because their legal blueprints came from the
Bible, their nation was one in which blacks and women were better
off than in atheistic nations. I'd rather be black in America than a
caucasian in Stalin's "worker's paradise."
Yes, the Founders were white, but they
didn't say "This is a white nation." They did
say "This is a Christian nation."
|
| You
are presenting an entirely false dichotomy, that one must either be
a Christian or support expanded state power. John Huckabee is a
devout Christian who also supports expanded state power, and he has
a lot of supporters. |
I'm presenting a logical
dichotomy. If one is logically consistent with Christ's teaching, he
will not support expanded state power. Huckabee may be
"devout" in a subjective sense, but he is not following
Christ when he levies taxes and acts like an "archist." |
| Many
of Ron Paul's supporters, on the other hand, are atheists,
secularists, and pagans who support smaller government. |
An individualist atheist will be
crushed by an atheistic State. The more Christ-like the State tries
to be, the less endangered the individualist atheist. |
| Finally,
your declaration that "theocracy" means "God
rules," while perhaps etymologically correct, is misleading.
God doesn't sit in the Oval Office, or in congress, or on the
Supreme Court. Nor in political positions of any other nation deemed
a "theocracy" good or bad. |
I'm not trying to be misleading.
I'm trying to lead us away from "Oval
Offices," Congresses, and Supreme Courts. I'm trying to
diminish the number of "archists,"
whether they think of themselves as Christians (Huckabee) or pagans. |
| Men
rule these countries. A theocracy is ruled by men who believe, or
pretend to believe, they know God's mind better than do their
fellows. In olden days, they even claimed to be descended from God
or whatever deities were worshiped by their people. But they were
still men (and sometimes women). |
The key word here is
"ruled." A truly Christian Theocracy is not
"ruled" by men. Christians don't "rule" others. Self-government
is the operative concept rather than compulsion imposed on others. |
| Christian
theocracies in the past have waged bloody war on one another, and
brutally suppressed and murdered religious minorities living among
them. The Christian Bible, in the Old Testament, commands believers
to kill atheists and pagans in their lands. |
The "Christian Bible" --
that is, the entire Bible, not just the Old Testament taken out of
context -- does not command killing pagans in their lands. Start
here to understand the theology of "capital
punishment." |
| The
fact that most of Christendom practices tolerance has less to do
with Biblical law than with the fact that European Christians nearly
destroyed their own civilization in the 14th Century in religious
wars, and tolerance was seen as the only way they could survive.
Even then it took another 400 years before intra-Christian
oppression and killing finally ended in the New World. In the Old
World, it only ended less than 20 years ago when "The
Troubles" in Northern Ireland finally died down. |
This paragraph is an enthymeme.
It's not a false premise, but I think it's trying to lead us to a
false conclusion. Christianity has been emerging from its
Greco-Roman slavery for centuries. Even Christ's apostles didn't
always "get it." History shows that the more consistently
we follow Christ, the better off we are, whereas the more
consistently we try to be our own gods, the worse off we are. |
| In
the 2000 years since Jesus lived and died, only the last 250, or
about 12.5 percent, have seen Christianity linked to limited
government and respect for the rights of men. This coincided with
the Age of Reason |
The libertarian historian Thomas
Woods shows How
the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization .
I'm not a Catholic. Neither is Rodney Stark, who wrote The
Victory of Reason: How Christianity Led to Freedom, Capitalism, and
Western Success .
Christianity teaches that man is created in the Image of a
reasonable God (Logos).
Atheism leads to the collapse of reason. See more here. |
| There
is no logical reason one cannot have a pluralistic, secular society
that respects individual liberty and private property. |
But there is no logical reason why
one must if one believes he is his own god. If you
believe the Bible, you are commanded to respect liberty
and property. In history, Christianity
moves humanity toward liberty, and atheism moves humanity toward
Stalinism. |
| I
see by some of your other posts that you are allied with Ron Paul's
Campaign For Liberty, and your comments likely ended up in my e-mail
box because I'm on their mailing list. If you are seeking to drive
atheists, secularists, and tolerant-minded Christians out of the
movement, you have made a great start. |
You'll have to draw the
connections a little more boldly for me. Huckabee probably recoils
in horror if he hears me talk about "theocracy," because
he wants to be a "tolerant-minded Christian." But because
he isn't a Christocrat like me and Benjamin Rush, he "supports
expanded state power" as you noted. 90% of Americans
claim to be Christian. If they will embrace anarcho-theocracy,
we'll have the numbers to defend ourselves from Huckabee and the
pluralists. |
| |
I appreciate Scott taking the time
to share his comments. |