Can An Atheist Believe in the Natural Moral Law?

Friday, 08-08-2014

In one sense, the atheist might believe in natural moral law; in another sense, he already believes in it; in yet a third sense, he cannot believe in it.

He might believe in it in the sense that nothing prevents him from responding “Yes, that’s true” when presented with the proposition “There is a natural moral law.”

He already believes in it in the sense that he possesses the "natural habit" of the knowledge of the first principles of practical reason.  It isn’t because of our theories that we know the moral basics; they come with being human.  Our theories come afterward and try to explain them.

But he cannot believe in it in the sense of holding premises consistent with it.  True law presupposes a lawgiver superior to the one to whom the law is given, and the atheist denies that there is such a being.  If he supposes that morality is something else, such as instinct, he misunderstands what law is.

The Politics of Poverty

Thursday, 08-07-2014

One party, with a few exceptions, really doesn’t care much about the poor.  The other party wants to convert the poor into a permanent constituency of hopelessly dependent and utterly demoralized nonproductive consumers who vote for the hand that feeds them.  Both parties want to feel good about it.

The former party, with a few exceptions, touts an ideology which holds, in effect, that not caring much about the poor is the meaning of encouraging their moral character.  The latter party touts an equally damnable ideology which holds, in effect, that destroying their moral character is the meaning of compassion.  The latter party wins.

Statists Do Not Always Know That They Are Statists

Wednesday, 08-06-2014

Many statists do not know that they are statists.  A good many people who call themselves libertarians, for example, voted for Mr. Obama.

The most common reason for this is that when they say they are libertarians, they mean that they are libertarian in sexual morality.  But they have to be statists, so that when the dreadful social consequences of libertarian sexual morality come rolling around, someone else is forced to pick up the tab.

Consider for example the popularity of the HHS mandate among certain groups.

“I believe in liberty.  How dare you tell me how to run my personal life!  What do you mean, you aren’t telling me how to run my personal life?  You refuse to pay for my abortions and contraceptives, don’t you?  In the name of being able to do as I please, I demand that you do as I please.”

Generational Opinion Change

Tuesday, 08-05-2014

Some errors are terribly hard to discover and correct during one’s own lifetime, just because one is so invested in them.  Change cannot come until the next generation.  The natural consequences of these errors are the feedback loop.

However, correction of errors doesn’t always happen even in the next generation, because if their natural consequences are delayed – and delaying them is what modern culture is about – then the next generation may be even more deeply dug into them than the last.  Until, like a shattering hammer, the return sweep of the pendulum finally hits.

Gods, Action Heroes, and Transhumanism

Monday, 08-04-2014

This just in.  Hindu comic books (did you know there were Hindu comic books?) are changing traditional Hindu iconography.  The new trend is to make gods look like Western action heroes.

In the meantime, Western comic books, as well as movies and certain science fiction genres, are accelerating their trend of making action heroes into gods.  Think Lucy.  Think Captain America.

One effect of all this is to further the paganizing of the culture by inspiring worship of the creature (bulging muscles or breasts, superpowers, and all that) instead of the Creator.

Another is to further the ideology of transhumanism:  An even more radical worship of the creature, in which man seeks to be the Creator.  We will recreate ourselves, you see.

Don’t laugh.  A lot of scientists are on the “human enhancement” bandwagon.  Eugenics, which took a black eye from the Nazis, is back again.  If any of the fantasies of recreation come to pass, the result won’t look like Utopia, but like the Hindu caste system, this time with “gene rich” and “gene poor” humans.  We can’t truly recreate ourselves, but we can ruin ourselves.

It won’t take godless corporations or the State to make it happen (although they are already in the act).  All it will require is competition among parents for designer babies.

The Test of Humor

Sunday, 08-03-2014

“‘In a little square garden of yellow roses, beside the sea,’ said Auberon Quin, "there was a Nonconformist minister who had never been to Wimbledon.  His family did not understand his sorrow or the strange look in his eyes.  But one day they repented their neglect, for they heard that a body had been found on the shore, battered, but wearing patent leather boots.  As it happened, it turned out not to be the minister at all.  But in the dead man's pocket there was a return ticket to Maidstone.’

“There was a short pause as Quin and his friends Barker and Lambert went swinging on through the slushy grass of Kensington Gardens.  Then Auberon resumed.  ‘That story,’ he said reverently, ‘is the test of humor.’”

-- G.K. Chesterton, The Napoleon of Notting Hill

On Kicking the Ball Down the Road

Saturday, 08-02-2014

Checks and balances delay the advent of certain political wrongs, but eventually the ball can't be kicked down the road any further.

The Founder, James Madison, mocked rules written down with pen and ink, of the form "Executives may only execute the law, not make it," as "parchment barriers" because bad men would ignore them.  He thought checks and balances more realistic because ambitious men in each branch would be kept from doing the things the other branches were supposed to do by equally ambitious men in those other branches, who were in competition with them.

The problem with this argument is that checks and balances are not self-enforcing; rules of the form "executives may exercise only certain checks, not others" are still parchment barriers.

I think Madison realized this, otherwise he would not have emphasized in his remarks at the Virginia ratifying convention that no republic can get along without virtue.  Apparently, then, he mocked the former kind of rule not because the willingness to follow it required virtue, but because (at least in his judgment) the willingness to follow it to required less virtue than the willingness to follow the latter kind of rule.  To put it another way, he did not judge the latter kind of rule to be self-enforcing.  He only judged it to be more nearly self-enforcing than the former kind.

Unfortunately, he didn’t explain under what circumstances this judgment might be true.  I say “unfortunately,” because the willingness to follow the former kind of rule is disappearing.  The members of the branches exercise checks they shouldn’t; for example the president circumvents legislation he doesn’t like by that form of sheer decree called the executive order.  They also fail to exercise checks they should; for example the legislature routinely allows the judicial branch to legislate from the bench, especially in matters it considers too hot to handle.

I certainly don’t disparage political activism on behalf of constitutional integrity.  Trying to keep the operating system of the republic working properly is a good work.  But in the long run, the effort is futile unless the culture itself can be renovated, because ultimately its proper operation depends on some residuum of virtue.

What makes renovation of the culture so difficult is that the law itself now does so much to habituate citizens to venality – which is a story for another day.  But with God anything is possible.
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