In an age of reason in which the need for a personal god is deemed unnecessary and the probability of his/hers/its existence is incredibly small, it is not without irony that many atheists support statism, namely strong central government. A majority of atheists favor socialist statism, likely because of the atheism of leftist cult heroes such as Karl Marx, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, and Che Guevara. It has just so happened that anti-statist and anrachist thinkers have had little prominence on the left, with the exception of perhaps Noam Chomsky. When anti-statist philosophy and atheism are mentioned in the same breath, unfortunately Ayn Rand is the first one mentioned. Paleoconservatism and anarcho-capitialism, while strongly rooted in cold logic, are unfortunately liable to turn the secular humanist's (and by extension, atheist's) stomach. This is unfortunate, and by extension, contradictory.
Atheists argue, rightly so, that morality and civility is not decreed by a supernatural creator. As Richard Dawkins rightly stated in his book The God Delusion: "There is something infantile in the presumption that somebody else (parents in the case of children, God in the case of adults) has a responsibility to give your life meaning and point". (pg. 360). Oddly enough, atheisits time and time again demand a centralized government whch does precisely the same thing that they criticize the church for doing: top down legislation dictating morality and behavior. It's as if atheists cannot completely deprogram themselves from years of religious indoctrination, and wish to substitute the state and an exponentially growing list of oppressive laws for an all-knowing, all-seeing, and all-powerful god. This idea is further inculcated by demands for legislated equality among citizens. No reasonable or intelligent person can defend chauvinism, homophobia, racism, or Atticism, however few seem to be willing to take the thought a step further and acknowledge the culpability of the individual rather than depend on the bureaucracy and autocracy of the state to enforce altruism and parity.
In foregoing the oppression of religion, atheists are alarmingly willing to welcome the oppression of the state in its place. In what seems to be a Twilight Zone-esque plot twist, the religious right in America embrace anti-statist philosophy with open arms, while the secular and atheist left endorse increasingly oppressive state regimes that control everything from commerce to personal behavior. One needs not to look too deeply into the politics of these curious aberrations in rhetoric to expose their underlying modus operandi. The pious right wing wants government out of the way so that their ultimate authority - "god" - can take control. There is no need for government, nay even a constitution, with the "holy bible". So why then do so many atheists desire a complex code of laws ensuring that the citizenry is physically, verbally, and ideologically disarmed? It makes no sense that an ideology like atheism which touts the implicit presence of logic and reason among sane human beings would stifle, if even inadvertently, that rationale inherit within all of us.
People can organize amongst themselves, and do so constantly. Consider a pick up game of basketball. No bureaucracy is required to organize 2 teams of 5 people; the players just simply agree upon who the team captains are and then the captains subsequently draft their players from the remaining range of participants. Humans have been civilized long enough to have a strong sense of order and fairness, and there is no need to legislate these concepts in a top-down fashion. It is imperative for atheists to remember the meaning of the word "atheist", not just in a dictionary sense, but in the *ahem* spirit of the word itself. It is nothing less than contradictory and hypocritical to replace god with the dogma of the state.
No comments:
Post a Comment