pj-

Great post. It seems so obvious while regularly denied that without God all that reamins is human reason along with all of the schemes and experiments of which it is fully capable of imposing on humanity. The individual becomes nothing but a material part of a mysterious whole whose purpose is always determined by an elite group of social scientists, philosophers and engineers who see no problem in tinkering with such human material. The extent of such social engineering is always assumed to be limited by the good intentions of others which, of course, has always been the wrong assumption.

History is not science. It is the record of human nature in action. What makes materialism, and all of the social experiments which are the direct result of materialism, so dangerous is its need to deny or ignore that very human nature which Tocqueville sees as simply and amazingly obvious.

Except as an historical curiosity, why is Christian morality important? There are plenty of other kinds of religious morality, and it is not obvious that not one of them would serve as well; and it is even less obvious that picking and choosing among the best features of each would not result in a superior morality to Christianity.

Freedom under Christianity took a long time coming for most believers, too.

Maybe another morality would have worked, maybe not. But the thing is, we have one that we know *does* work, so what's the advantage of discarding it and hoping we can create ("picking and choosing") a different one?

My first car was a 3-cylinder, 2-cycle Saab 96, and it worked, too, but it could have been improved. So that's one reason.

Another is that Christian morality cannot really be said to have worked all that well for a large fraction of people it was imposed on.

Morality, religion and liberty remain bound together.

That's odd. For most of history, religion couldn't be found within shouting distance of liberty.

Jeff - We Christians did the best we could with all the non-believers in our midst.

Harry - Christian morality is the worst, except for all the others that have been tried.

What non-believers in your midst, pj? For most of its time, Christianity was the only game in its town.

Unbelief has always been the most prevalent state, even among those who say "Lord, Lord."

pj
So good Christians are Christians, and bad Christians are athiests. Is that how it works?

Harry & Jeff and Robert-

You're kidding, right? I posed a number of fairly specific questions. Don't be angry, just answer any you can. Ie. maybe you gota problem with de Toqueville and Washington, rather than with me.

Sorry, I didn't recognize any questions. On rereading your post, all I see are dogmatic statements.

Robert -

Belief is the wrong word here, faith is the right one. Bad Christians are faithless Christians. Faithful Christians are known by their works, as St. James said, or their fruits, as Jesus said.

There's a symmetry here, in that just as professing Christians can be faithless, so too professed nonbelievers can be faithful. God has inscribed His law on every heart, and an atheist who is responsive to the law written on his heart is faithful to God, whether he knows it or not.

That said, conscious belief has always been thought to promote faith, and unbelief to threaten it. And empirically that seems to be true. Judeo-Christian belief, historically, is correlated with better behavior and better civilizations.

While well-argued, I can't help thinking that the original post displays a rather short-sighted view of history...ie. it seems to think that liberal and indeed Christian history began with the Declaration of Independence.

There have been few civilisations more dogmatically Christian than Britain in the Dark Ages...and, unfortunately, few less 'free' for the individual.

Of course, it might be that the first people to interpret the Bible 'correctly' were the founding fathers...?

Yet the British civilization still stands while its offspring are among the few outposts of western civilization remaining. Maybe their "dogamtic Christianity" had something to do with the legacy of British liberty which so affected the early Americans.

pj
Thanks for the clarification. I especially like when you say "There's a symmetry here, in that just as professing Christians can be faithless, so too professed nonbelievers can be faithful. God has inscribed His law on every heart, and an atheist who is responsive to the law written on his heart is faithful to God, whether he knows it or not."

If every believer held this view, I would be exstatic. Unfortunately, most do not.

More to say later, gotta get back to work.

Brit - 'Dark Ages' history is not my strong point, but I did read Richard Pipes's fine book Property and Freedom, and he argued that all of the Germanic tribes including the Angles and Saxons had strong libertarian traditions, cited King Alfred (9th cent.) as an example, and that these traditions enabled British civil society to stand up against the Norman kings and win the Magna Carta and, ultimately, establish Parliament and gradually acquire all the King's powers.

And King Alfred and his predecessors were almost continuously at war against pagan tribes and armies, so Christianity had hardly triumphed.

So I question both your assertion of lack of freedom and Christian dominance in Dark Ages Britain.

oops, meant middle ages, ie. circa fifth century to enlightenment

PJ seems to be saying results count more than piety.

Sounds awfully rational to me.

Durant's Age of Faith made it seem Christianity was completely dominant throughout Western Europe during the "Middle" Ages.

There were really only two freedoms then: the freedom to agree, or the freedom to get fried.