It will only get worse before it gets better. I am not sure why people wish it be either/or, but complicated interactions between nature and nurture seem to be more likely to me than a predominance of either. As to Mr. Pinker, did not the Jesuits say, "Give us the child until he is seven and he is ours forever"? Surely their experience counts for something. See also the (unfortunate) experience of former football wunderkind Todd Marinovich and the more fortunate experience of the Polgar sisters....

I'm with Bruce.



There may be a few forms of behavior that

can reasonably be attributed to genetics.

Religion, for example, the feelings of

immanance that we have all experienced

probably are the result of the way our

brains evolved.



However, obviously monotheism is cultural

and not genetic.



The state of knowledge is undoubtedly

unsatisfactory, but that does not justify

pushing on beyond what we do know, which

extremists on both ends want to do for

political reasons.

The American experiment is founded upon three great, intertwined ideas: the primacy of the individual in society, free will and monotheism. It is on these ideas that all of our great accomplishments depend, but each of these ideas is under attack. We have just beaten back a brutal assault on the primacy of the individual, science is currently engaged in undercutting free will and I live in fear that our's is the generation that loses monotheism.



This, then, is the great conservative project, to protect and conserve these ideas as the bedrock that supports everything else. This is why, for an American and only in America, conservative politics are the only moral choice. We are not simply automatons acting out the programming found in our DNA or unable to overcome our upbringing. But if we were, it would still be true that the only successful society would ignore this truth, protect the individual's dignity and integrity until he proved himself unworthy, and then punish him for his failure while recogizing that he, too, is a child of God. Any other scheme would, for America, be suicidal.

Amen, brother.

Monotheism? What about Article VI?



And if monotheism is so great, why are you

guys dissing the Mohammedans, who are

far more monotheistic than most Christians?

Harry --



Monotheism? What about Article VI?




OK, I'll bite, what about Article VI. I have no problem with Article VI, I love Article VI. Get a pagan elected to office and I'll defend to the death her right to serve. (Well, maybe not to the death, but to the pretty darn sick.) I'm not suggesting that all Americans or all politicians or all civil servants have to be monotheists, or theists at all. I'm saying that you can't have America without monotheism.



Without monotheism, you can't have a strong moral culture or a national sense of purpose or science. You can't even have atheism, as it's practiced in the US, because the God that American atheists don't believe in is a specifically monotheistic, omniscient, omnipotent God. Atheists don't take pride in not believing in Zeus, they take pride in not believing in God as played by Charlton Heston, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, Jesus and Mohammed.



And if monotheism is so great, why are you guys dissing the Mohammedans, who are far more monotheistic than most Christians?




There's a great Cecil Adams response to a guy who wrote that the Chinese had invented a way of clapping with one hand and wanted to know what it sounded like. Cecil said that based on the question, it was equally likely that the writer was extremely clever or dumb as a brick.



I find myself in somewhat the same situation, although I know, Harry, that you are not dumb. For those who don't know, I note that Muslims object to being called "Mohammedans" because, by suggesting that they worship Mohammed, it undercuts their monotheism. So, if you meant to slyly diss Muslims by calling their monotheism into doubt while accusing me of dissing them despite their monotheism, then, well, that's pretty funny. If you didn't, then never mind.



In any event, I've never dissed Islam, I like quite a bit about Islam, particularly its strong monotheism and, in case any Muslim reading this cares, I fully accept them as fellow people of the book. But I'm easy. I even accept Catholocism as monotheistic.

I am glad you got my point about

Mohammedans. Like maryolatry, the Koran

Belt version of monotheism makes

distinctions without defining a difference.

Nevertheless, they claim to be monotheists

and therefore, presumably, enjoy the benefits

of it, even if a bit shaky on the finer points

of doctrine.



So, where's their monotheistically-moderated

science, respect for the individual and

all like that there?



The peculiar circumstances

that led to an actual state occupied

almost entirely by Christians

who yet advocated toleration,

both in law and in fact, a mere 200 years

after the heyday of Bellarmine was

completely unpredictable and difficult to

explain retrospectively.



My personal view is that among the many,

many factors was a reaction against

religious tyranny in America

-- and tyranny, thy mother is monotheism.

If there had not

been the tyranny to react against, presumably

Jefferson would not have felt any need to

draft a Statute of Religious Liberty.



I say Franklin did it. The Congregationalists

tortured his mother. It is never smart to

torture a mother, her son might grow up to

be the greatest publicist who ever lived, and

he might hold a grudge.



I am baffled by your idea that American

atheists are atheistical only toward the old

guy with the beard. That's news to me and

not an idea you're likely to find in back

issues of Free Inquiry.



And I can imagine a morality that does not

depend on either a one god or even on many

of them. Despite what I said earlier about

religion arising out of brain chemical reactions

that create feelings of immanance that are

(I feel sure) unrelated to anything outside

the brain, there is the example of the Baining,

perfect Libertarians and the only known

social group without gods, priests, religion,

kings or aristocracy. Apparently, they do not

believe in an afterlife, or, to be more precise,

it never occurred to them so they don't

worry about it.



A curious and challenging people, the Baining,

and from what I have read, just as moral as

their neighbors, who have the advantages, if

any, of a whole slew of religious beliefs,

including Methodism, Roman Catholicism

and Anglicanism.

Yep, Maryolotry, good catch.



I'm sure you're well aware of Islamic contributions to science, particularly mathematics. But my point was not that monotheism is sufficient to maintain the American experiment, but that it depends upon three seperate but reinforcing ideas. No one of them is sufficient, all three are necessary.



As to how the US ended up with religious freedom, it isn't all that obscure. The various states had various established churches or no established church. They were not willing to take the chance that the federal government would force its own establishment on them. From this grew both Article VI and the First Amendment. But we have to remember that the states voluntarily gave up their established churches and that there was no federal guarantee of individual freedom of religion until, at the earliest, the passage of the civil war amendments. The states have their problems, but a tendency to religious tyranny is not one of them.



As I think you understand, I am not suggesting that atheists believe in Zeus, I'm suggesting that they only seek credit for rejecting the Judeo-Christian God. If you read the back issues of Free Inquiry, you're not going to find many articles explaining why Zeus doesn't actually toss thunderbolts from Mount Olympus, you're going to find articles explaining why creationism is not science, why the world is older than 5000 odd years and about the holes in Thomas Aquinas' proof of God's existence.



I suppose I can in theory imagine a moral code that does not depend on God. I can't imagine it working in practice. The Baining are interesting, although I think their mythology is somewhat more complex than you give them credit for. (I am particularly interested by their definition of humans as those who work, in the sense of changing what is natural into what is socially useful. This is somewhat similar to the Jewish definition of work for purposes of shabot.) But I would note that their moral code allows for revenge rape, in which the rape of one of "your" women is punished by your rape of one of the rapist's women. This is a strange conception of Libertarianism. So I still feel free to predict that, until the Baining develop respect for the individual, a theory of free will and monotheism, they won't be able to invent the United States.

The Baining keep slaves, too, like their Methodist neighbors and like early American Methodists. Their moral performance seems just as good to me as anybody else's and better than the Germans.



I'm still not following why monotheism is necessary. Buddhists get along with it, and while not famous for democratic self-government, they seem capable of it when taught.



I can easily construct an atheist morality, in 3 steps.

1. Nobody higher out there. 2. Gotta take care of yourself. 3. No difference among us.



From that, I can derive anything that Aquinas can.

You forgot the zeroth law, the good of the many outweighs the good of the one (or is that Spock? I always get my sf pseudophilosophy mixed up).



In any event, I'm making a much less universal point than you indicate. I'm saying that the US is a thought experiment that depends upon three implicit assumptions that have been buried deep within American culture for at least that last 250 years. Preserving those three assumptions as part of the culture is the conservative project and, so far, we've succeeded.



Now, let me make a universal point and disclose the secret of life. I can only do this because, let's face it, no one else is reading this thread, but if you tell anyone else, you'll be hit by lightning.



To be human is to believe wholly the following two contradictory ideas: if someone truly understood the irreducible me, he would love me; if someone truly knew all of my actions and motivations, he would despise me. The tension between these two ideas is the well-spring of art, religion and most politics. Life is the search for the "someone" who will understand and love, know but forgive. If we're extraordinarily lucky, we can find some of this in our loved ones, but even there we hide secrets and worry about what secrets they are hiding. Psychiatry tries to convince us that we can love and forgive ourselves. Nationalism tries to satisfy this need with the nation, socialism with the state. Libertarians say, "Love and forgiveness, I don't need no stinkin' love and forgiveness" but nobody believes them.



The only answer that comes close is the monotheistic God, who knows and understands, loves and forgives. It is to please and placate him that we build our culture -- until such time as the culture has so entirely subsumed His teachings that individual members (maybe even a majority, although I'ld hate to test it) don't need to be believers so long as they're acculturated.



And that's the meaning of life.

And that's why I'm not an ideologue of any persuasion.



I ain't looking for the key to life, I don't care who proposes an idea and how neatly it fits into somebody's overarching explanation of the universe. I'm an instrumentalist; that's why I am so fascinated by the theory of evolution via natural selection. What works, works.



Nothing works perfectly, but the perfect is the enemy of the good.



Or as an editorial writer I used to work with, Don Allgood, once said, "If the end doesn't justify the means, what could?"



I'll agree that something in the cultural makeup of the American colonists led them to a workable, federalist, flexible, tolerant system. I think their experience of self-government at the local level, their vast experience of writing constitutions and suchlike affected them. I'll grant that their Christian, mostly Protestant, background influenced them, but I see it less as religion greasing the ways as provided a fulcrum to press against.



Not only did the Constitution accept many principles that were intimately bound up in a Christian European civilization, it also had to reject many, of which intolerance was the most deeply entrenched.



It worked sort of like a market, which ought to appeal to Libertarians.