Religion

If you would like to see the background on these action items (and we recommend that you do), please see the book The American Ideas: 13 American Originals to Know, Love, and Defend available in hardcover and eBook.

CHAPTER 9: Religion

• Boycott religion-mockers.  Americans honor spirituality, respect religion, and remember that there is a God.  No matter how smart, no matter how funny, no matter how right about the fact that there are religious lunatics, we should do our best to marginalize – in a free and open way – those who treat religion itself as a disease to be eliminated.

• Deeply appreciate the powerful and positive role that religion in American has had.  President Grover Cleveland said in 1885,

And let us not trust to human effort alone, but humbly acknowledging the power and goodness of Almighty God, who presides over the destiny of nations, and who has at all times been revealed in our country’s history, let us invoke His aid and His blessings upon our labors.[i]

President Franklin Pierce said,

It must be felt that there is no national security but in the nation’s humble, acknowledged dependence upon God and His overruling providence.[ii]

• Refuse to allow the government and judges to curtail religious freedom.  The government, most often in its judicial or Supreme Court guise, spends much time saying what religion and religious people can’t do.  But given the American Idea and the Constitution, shouldn’t they be attacking restrictions on religion rather than creating them?

If we can only talk about and live out our religion in our homes and churches, it’s a dim shadow of religious freedom, if, in fact, it’s religious freedom at all.  How could America become a place where unelected judges – lawyers all – can tell us where and when we can talk about God?

• Allow the people, not the unelected, to decide where the line should be between church and state.  The people, not unelected judges and undemocratic courts, should decide where the line should be drawn between actions that are trying to establish a state religion (or a religion on a dictatorial foundation) on the one hand, and actions that are trying to establish a state on a principled foundation on the other.

Let the people decide whether Dogmatic Atheism should be allowed to control a nation full of Christians.  Have a vote on whether Islamic fundamentalism should be permitted to destroy democracy, make its law the law of the land, and demand everyone to submit (the meaning of the word “Islam”).  If some group believes that others were born by divine fiat into a lower caste, or that women have little value, or that freedom is bad, let them try to get that on the ballot.

This is a question of the survival of America as America.  It’s a huge question, one that needs vigorous democratic debate, not backroom musings and dictatorial pronouncements by a few grandees in robes.

• Remember that the main reason to separate church and state is to protect the church.  The American concept of separation of church and state is designed to protect both parties, the church and the state.

But the main advantage isn’t because a connection will corrupt the state, although that corruption is a deadly certainty.  The main advantage is because the connection will corrupt the church.  Church – religion, faith – is always at its best when it’s outside government, maintains an independent voice, and through its words holds the government accountable.  Alexis de Tocqueville observed the problem with church/state combinations in Europe:

European Christianity has allowed itself to be intimately united with the powers of this world.  Now that these powers are falling, it is as if it were buried under their ruins.  A living being has been tied to the dead; cut the bonds holding it and it will arise.[iii]

Good government is only possible where there is good religion to mentor and monitor it.  Government without a religious chaperone is destined to get into trouble.  But when government sleeps with the chaperone…

• Encourage religious influence on government while avoiding religious control of government.  Government without positive religious influence and values is ugly.  Government with religious controls is ugly.  The only shot at not-ugly is dependent, independent government – dependent on religion for wisdom and guidance, independent of religious mandates and deals.

• Welcome religious expression in the public square.  The government should stop pretending that religion is the problem, and start acknowledging that its draconian attempt to exclude religion is the problem.  In its drive to impose atheistic beliefs on every aspect of life under the banner of religious neutrality, it has created a sterile, vacuous environment where the best we can do is talk about being nice and considerate.

Famed Harvard sociologist Robert Putnam published American Grace, which in summary said that social capital is still

alive and well and can be found in churches, synagogues and other places of worship.  Religious people, he discovered, make better neighbors and citizens.  They are more likely to give to charity, volunteer, assist a homeless person, donate blood, spend time with someone feeling depressed, offer a seat to a stranger, help someone find a job and take part in local civic life.  Affiliation to a religious community is the best predictor of altruism and empathy:  better than education, age, income, gender or race…. [Society] needs religion:  not as doctrine, but as a shaper of behavior, a tutor in morality, an ongoing seminar in self-restraint and pursuit of the common good.[iv]

• Insist that God and religion be talked about freely in public schools and universities.  Most Americans believe in God, and, in fact, are Christians at least in mindset.  Not allowing this core belief system and driver of human action to be discussed in the places where minds and philosophies are established is the very antithesis of the cherished (but not always practiced) principles of academic freedom and inquiry.

How can we encourage free discussion while keeping government out of the establishing religion business?  By ensuring that all voices – except violent, destructive voices – be heard.  People will believe what they choose to believe.  But how can that choice be an informed one if they don’t know the options?

• Refuse to allow science to be presented as opposed to religion, or to be offered as a substitute for religion.  Is science wonderful?  Yes and no.  When used for good and kept within its sphere, it’s wonderful.  When used for harm and allowed to speak on every area of life – not so good.

The proponents of this “science is opposed, science is better” school (forgetting things like the fact that it was science, not religion, that gave us nuclear weapons) like to use the science vs. faith argument.  A leading evolutionist of the dogmatic, fundamentalist Atheist persuasion says that “science and faith are fundamentally incompatible, and for precisely the same reason that irrationality and rationality are incompatible”[v]  – leaving out the concepts that religion might be rational, that religion could also be placed in the third category of non-rational, and that science has had plenty of its own irrational moments (like bleeding patients to “cure” them and claiming the earth to be the center of the universe).

The writer says that some scientists being religious doesn’t prove compatibility – but then goes on to say, irrationally, that the majority of scientists being Atheists or Agnostics proves incompatibility.  He wants it both ways, because he is a fervent believer in his science-god.

We know this from the title of his book, Why Evolution is True.  This contradicts what he says, which is “no finding is deemed true…unless it’s repeated and verified by others”[vi]  – impossible with the Theory of Evolution as a whole.  He acknowledges this himself by saying “I can think of dozens of potential observations…that would convince me that evolution didn’t happen.”   We know it, too, when he says things like “As Stephen Hawking proclaimed, science wins because it works.”[vii]

Proclaimed?  Sounds religious – and it is.  In their book The Grand Design, the authors suggest that there is not a single universe…but a huge number of universes…our known universe itself is just one among uncounted billions of universes…of all the possible universes, some must have laws that allow the appearance of life…just by chance.”[viii]   Heady stuff.  But science?  Can anyone ever prove this?  It takes at least as much faith to believe in uncounted billions of universes as it doesto believe in one God.

But their faith doesn’t stop there.  They have details.  “In some universes electrons have the weight of golf balls and the force of gravity is stronger than that of magnetism [but] in ours the standard model, with all its parameters (rules) applies.”  Really?  They know this?  The co-author, Leonard Mlodinow assures us, though, that “the views in the book are scientific ones.”[ix] Of course they are.

It is only a short hop from “science is the opposite of religion” to “science is better than religion,” and then from there to “science is religion.”  Americans don’t buy any of this – which is part of the reason that “most U.S. high school biology teachers ‘fail to forthrightly explain evolutionary biology.’”[x]

Science is a wonderful thing.  But it isn’t everything.

• Eliminate the speak-out-and-lose-your-exemption threat.  Unlike in an earlier America, religious leaders and churches are no longer allowed to speak out on political matters or politicians unless they’re willing to forgo their tax-exempt status, put themselves in financial straits, and create a competitive disadvantage with other religions or churches.

The government’s notion is that they are giving the churches something so they can demand silence.  But in the first place, the government isn’t giving them anything – they’re merely not taking something from them.  And in the second place, why should a tax break allow the government to violate anyone’s freedom of religion?

Isn’t this the government establishing religion – an apolitical religion – through the threat of the crushing tax?  Why should government get to decide what can be said or not be said in a church?  Why shouldn’t a pastor or priest or rabbi or mullah get to say, “This politician is in opposition to everything we believe?”

If any churches are exempt from taxes, all churches should be exempt from taxes – regardless of what they say or believe, regardless of their passions, regardless of their desire to influence government.

In fact, the notion of any government taxing religion is at core a violation of the separation of church and state.  Religion can’t use government, but somehow government can use religion – by either taxing it or giving it tax exemptions?  The IRS should have no interface with religion whatsoever.

• Avoid giving preferential treatment to religions like Dogmatic Atheism that pretend not to be religions.  There are facts, and there are beliefs.  Facts can be analyzed, evaluated, proven, disproven.  Beliefs can be understood, accepted, lived, promoted.

As we discuss at length in this chapter in the book, fundamentalist, Dogmatic Atheism is a religion.  It’s a belief system no less than Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, etc.  Its adherents can no more prove factually that there is not a God than other religions can prove that there is.  It has core beliefs (there is no God, God is not good, religious people have a God delusion), doctrines (theism is fantasy, religion is always oppressive, mindless evolution is a complete explanation of origins), and ideas that are considered blasphemous (a scientist can also be religious, evolution as a total explanation has gaps or weak points).

To give Dogmatic Atheism sway in areas like the media and public education is unfair and unjust.  It can convert a good field of study – like biological development theory – into a doctrine about origins.  Biology is a very good science, but a very bad god.

Dogmatic Atheists are evangelical.  They have stated that their goal is “to free ourselves – and others – from established religion.”  They offer “Recovery from Religion” workshops.  They promote “studying philosophy [which] helps us become better atheists.”[xi]

Another religion – new in some ways, but also very old – has moved into the religion that pretends not to be religion.  This one has a god – Mother Earth or Gaia, a deity to be worshipped, make demands, and receive sacrifices.  If people want to believe in this mystical earth-god, fine – but they shouldn’t try to foist their beliefs on children and other Americans under banners of conservation or care for the environment (which are legitimate areas of concern for all Americans).

These mystical-earthers also have beliefs (the earth has a spirit, what we see is our god, conservation is a holy act), doctrines (environmentalism is a way to godliness, development is sin, climate change is Armageddon) and ideas that are considered blasphemous (development can benefit the earth, businesses aren’t evil, pesticides like DDT can save lives without damaging the environment).

To give it sway is also unfair and unjust.  It can convert an area of great concern – like conservation – into a doctrine about origins. All Americans need to care for the environment, but very few need a planet-god.  Physicist Jonathan Katz notes that, “It is not possible to challenge with logic or scientific evidence the quasi-religious revealed truth of environmentalism.”[xii]   Any doubts about this?  In The Atlantic, Kenneth Brower, the son of the first executive director of the Sierra Club and the founder of Friends of the earth, wrote “Environmentalism does indeed make a very satisfactory kind of religion.  It is the faith in which I myself was brought up.  In my family, we had no other.  My father…could confer no higher praise than ‘He has the religion’…Environmentalism worships the wisdom of Nature.”[xiii]

For these two belief systems and others, the American Idea of Religion makes room.  They can believe and preach what they will.  But what the Idea doesn’t make room for is pretending not to be a religion – so they can then use the government to advance their faith, get undue influence, and push competing religions off the stage.

• Rejoice in the Christian roots that have elevated America, even if you aren’t a Christian.  No other country in history has been as blessed as America.  Is this coincidence?  Happenstance?  It may certainly be that God has blessed America because of those roots, but it’s also true that those roots have themselves led to a great many blessings.

Just as one example, the Christian principle of hospitality – translated as kindness to strangers – has led to massive immigration and assimilation and a multi-cultural society without precedent.  Has it been perfect?  Of course not.  Has it been possible?  Yes.  But only because of those Christian roots.  President William Henry Harrison said in 1841, that

I deem the present occasion sufficiently important and solemn to justify me in expressing to my fellow-citizens a profound reverence for the Christian religion and a thorough conviction that sound morals, religious liberty, and a just sense of religious responsibility are essentially connected with all true and lasting happiness; and to that good Being who has blessed us by the gifts of civil and religious freedom, who watched over and prospered the labors of our fathers and has hitherto preserved to us institutions far exceeding in excellence those of any other people, let us unite in fervently commending every interest of our beloved country in all future time.

Many who aren’t Christians – including millions of Jews – have greatly benefitted from America’s Christian origins.

• Remember well the alternatives to religion and Christianity.  Without religion, we’re left with an unfounded hope that people will be better than they are now (in spite of the fact that so many have come to accept the widespread teaching about natural selection and survival of the fittest, and that much of natural selection in the human world is just plain evil).

Where Islam is dominant, there’s little or no freedom and much control.  Where Hinduism is dominant, there’s little or no mobility and much rigidity.  Where eastern religions are dominant, there is little or no individualism and much wishful thinking about collective humanity.  Where atheistic religions are dominant, there is no opportunity and much potential to be used by the state.  Do we really believe that America would be what it is today if any of these systems had dominated from the beginning?

French philosopher Jean-François Revel has written that Islam and freedom may be fundamentally and ultimately incompatible.  Is this true?  Perhaps not.  But there’s no historical example in the last thousand years to disprove him.  Even Turkey, the supposedly secularized Muslim state, spent its formative years after World War I slaughtering two million Armenian Christians – in part because they were Armenian, and in part because they were Christian.

But even Islam recognizes the importance of Jesus.  In the Qur’an it says

Remember when the angels said: ‘O Mary, God gives you good tidings of a Word from Him.  His name is the Christ Jesus son of Mary, greatly honoured in this world and the next, and among those drawn nearest to God.  He shall speak to mankind from the cradle, and in maturity, and shall be among the righteous.’…Remember when God said: ‘O Jesus, I shall cause you to die and make you ascend to Me.  I shall purify you from those who blasphemed until the Day of Resurrection.’…This is Jesus, son of Mary: a statement of truth,…Remember also she who preserved her virginity, and We breathed into her of Our Spirit, and made her and her son to be a wonder for mankind.[xiv]

Look at the disregard for the individual, and the mind-boggling hopelessness, where Hinduism rules.  Brahmins at the top and untouchables at the bottom – not a formula for freedom, dignity, and opportunity.  An America dominated by Hinduism would look more like Calcutta than New York, more like the unimaginable poverty of rural India than the overflowing abundance of the American Midwest.

A member of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences was

Tasked with finding out what gave the West its dominance.  He said: At first we thought it was your guns.  Then we thought if was your political system, democracy.  Then we said it was your economic system, capitalism.  But for the last 20 years, we have known that it was your religion.  It was the Judeo-Christian heritage that gave the West its restless pursuit of a tomorrow that would be better than today.[xv]

Without Christianity, we’re left with either secularism and materialism (a hope that what we see and own will be sufficient to keep us free and happy), or with religions that have kept societies in the dark ages – or if we’re really unlucky, with Dogmatic Atheism.