Glenn Beck has been getting a great deal of attention lately. I don't watch him, but I read about his "9-12 Project," so I thought I would take a look at his website. At the top he has a symbol of a segmented rattlesnake, representing "12 Values" and "9 Principles." The 12 values are pretty basic, but the 9 principles demonstrate why I'm not a political activist. I'm just way too cynical. My comments on each:
1. America is good. That's awfully vague. Pure good? Good as opposed to bad? I'd have put something like "America is a force for good" instead.
2. I Believe in God and He is the Center of my Life. Obviously I don't, and he isn't. What is the point of putting this in there? Why would you want to exclude large numbers of otherwise like-minded people from your political movement? And I'm not just talking about atheists. There are many people who believe in God, but wouldn't say he's the center of their lives.
3. I must always try to be a more honest person than I was yesterday. I'm sorry, that just sounds ridiculous to me. If some speaker actually said that I'd be rolling my eyes and laughing under my breath.
4. The family is sacred. My spouse and I are the ultimate authority, not the government. Yeah right. Try exercising your authority not to pay your taxes, or your authority to drive 100 mph down the highway. Saying that you and your spouse are the "ultimate authority" is just silly. Nice wishful thinking. And I'm not sure exactly what he means by the family being sacred.
5. If you break the law you pay the penalty. Justice is blind and no one is above it. Again, more wishful thinking. Justice is different for those with greater status, power or resources. It always has been, and probably always will be.
6. I have a right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, but there is no guarantee of equal results. Ok, finally one I have no problem with (although I'm guessing Beck believes in natural rights, and I do have a problem with that).
7. I work hard for what I have and I will share it with who I want to. Government cannot force me to be charitable. Nonsense. It can and does force you to be charitable, and to contribute to many things which you might actually oppose. It's called taxation.
8. It is not un-American for me to disagree with authority or share my personal opinion. What if your personal opinion is that the U.S. would be better off as an Islamic theocracy? Is that un-American?
9. The government works for me. I do not answer to them, they answer to me. We should elect people who actually believe that.
Just one note... Although I'm not a Glenn Beck fan, I have nothing against him either. If his 9/12 project helps galvanize opposition toward Obama's policies, I'm all for it. But I find his 9 principles hard to take too seriously.
The thing about grassroots movements is that, in order to rouse the masses, they have to appeal to the lowest common denominator. That's people like a former coworker of mine who attributed every good thing in her life to God, and whose screen saver annoyingly started to play "God Bless America" every time she was away from her desk for 2 minutes. A grassroots movement that deferred to people like you and me would never get off the ground because of its narrow appeal. It was this sad reality that led me to regretfully bow out of the Tea Party movement. It started to creep me out. I still think it's great and wish them all the best, but I can't bring myself to participate.
ReplyDeleteYeah, you are probably right. I can't think of anything that would inspire me to join some sort of mass public protest -- short of them handing out free money. But I don't have a problem with being a cynical elitist :).
ReplyDeleteI think you are missing the point of these principals. Your taking them as facts, instead of ideals.
ReplyDeleteI'm actually an atheist as well, but this country was founded on religious principals, and I have a hard time believing that our nation would be where it was if it weren't based on God.
IMO, it works because we the country needs a leader, and if people are free to look towards their Gods, than they can be lead by that force instead of another human.
I think it would be hard to argue that a country would run better without a common belief in God.
What religious principals? Belief in a deity, perhaps, but not necessarily religion.
ReplyDeleteElliott, the nine principals are stated as facts, not ideals. But either way, they come across as narrow-minded and jingoistic. Also, I believe you're mistaken about the country's being founded religious principles. The founders recognized the pitfalls inherent in a religion-based government and specifically sought to keep their new republic out of that territory.
ReplyDeleteWhen I was a "young" atheist (as I suspect you are), I, too, thought religion had its purposes and should be preserved. But I don't believe that anymore. While I think militant tactics (Dawkins & Hitchens, et al.) are the wrong approach and only serve to make religious people appear noble in their resistance, I also don't think religion serves any purpose in a modern, civilized society. Its arbitrary, artificial morality is too convenient a substitute for real thought and is too easily deployed in the services of hatred and oppression.
Elliot,
ReplyDeleteI freely admit to not knowing much about the 9-12 project. I was just going by what I saw. But even as principles to strive for, my comments still apply.
I have no problem with ceremonial deism. I don't want to erase the traditions of the country. But saying God is "the Center of My Life," goes way beyond that.
"IMO, it works because we the country needs a leader, and if people are free to look towards their Gods, than they can be lead by that force instead of another human."
I'm not sure exactly what you mean by that, because we are in fact led by other humans.
"I think it would be hard to argue that a country would run better without a common belief in God."
That's hard to say. But religion can be either a unifying or a dividing force. Do you think the country would run better if it were 40% Islamic, 40% Christian, and 20% other?
As the number of both unreligious people and religious minorities grows, the divise nature of religion in society increases.
"I think it would be hard to argue that a country would run better without a common belief in God."
ReplyDeleteSo, you think Iran is doing better as an Islamic theocracy than it would as a secular nation?
PersonalFailure: No, of course not. That rule only applies to Christianity. Didn't you know?
ReplyDeleteYour guys wrote a lot, so forgive me if I miss a bit.
ReplyDeleteOur founders intended for this country to be strongly religious, and yes, they even intended for religious principles to be taught in schools. But, with no favoring of a particular religion. They intended for the common unifying principles of all major religions to be taught.
George Washington: "Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports... and let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion..Reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail to the exclusion of religious principle.
It is substantially true that virtue or morality is a necessary spring of popular government."
URR: I guess I was kind of muddy when I said a "leader." What I meant was "ruler." Instead of inflating someone to rule themselves, the people look at themselves as equals under god. In socialist and communist movements of the past, the goal was to supplant religion by deifying the government.
Kelly and Personal Failure: (condescending tones ahem ahem):P
Societies that have been religious or are religious in the past or present have been bad -- The USA is religious----Therefore, the USA is bad?
Elliot - Sorry, but you're factually incorrect. Please provide evidence that the country was founded with the intention of teaching religion in schools? (Since we had nothing like public schools at the time, and kids were educated or cared for at home by their mothers or slave mammies, this seems especially unlikely.)
ReplyDeleteHere's a WIKI on early Church-State separation. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Separation_of_church_and_state#United_States And this is from Iron Chariots (run by Atheist Community of Austin) http://wiki.ironchariots.org/index.php?title=Separation_of_church_and_state
If, like me, you were raised to believe this was a Christian nation, or that religion does immeasurable good and the harms are the exception not the rule, then arguments like, "america needs god" can sound persuasive. But if you look deeper at the actual history, the complete lack of the word "Jesus" in ANY government documents, and "God" in relatively few, at the writings of the founding fathers, and at the fact that many of them weren't Christian themselves, and the argument looks much less credible.
Best of luck learning things.
The USA is religious AND capatlist, democratic, founded on ideals of equality, of freedoms and liberties, and of power coming from the people and being bestowed on the government (the opposite of "god's" relationship with man). So, the USA has good and bad qualities. (It's nice to know the world isn't actually good/evil black/white. There are subtleties and complexities.)
Do you have an actual answer to PF and K's question? *IS* religion a beneficial influence on the Islamic Republic of Iran? I don't think that question has to be condescending at all. I study Middle East politics, and think the role of religion - not just Islam but all the religions interacting - is extremely detrimental, especially to the rights of women.
Sadly, people don't tend to view themselves as "equal under god". Sure, they'll SAY we all sin, but they do think they're better than atheists, or other Christians, or people of other faiths. As soon as you choose not to play their game, if they're gaming the system (government), you're screwed and you're going to lose. Besides, if theists truly believed they were equal, why have popes and pastors and reverends? Christians don't follow God - they follow charlatans, shysters, and televangelists. Oh, and let's not forget the pedophile priests.
http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/ampage?collId=bdsdcc&fileName=22501//bdsdcc22501.db&recNum=1&itemLink=r?ammem/bdsbib:@field%28NUMBER+@od1%28bdsdcc+22501%29%29&linkText=0
ReplyDeleteSee Article 3 of the Northwest Ordnance, passed in 1786.
All of this information is contained in The 5000 Year Leap by Klaus Skousen of the National Center for Constitutional Studies.
Again, references to Christianity and now, Jesus. I'm not making an argument that we are were all supposed to worship Jesus. That would be nonsensical, seeing that many people came here to escape religious persecution... The idea is that the society was to be built upon the belief in a creator, therefore the people could govern themselves with the morality instilled by religion.
"Today, we stand as a united country and are much closer to the ideals set forth in our Constitution that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." Our Constitution
"Creator" being the operative word, not "Jesus."
Is there any evidence of a secular society that has run better than the states?
If men endow us with unalienable rights, what makes them unalienable?
With the limited knowledge I have of the middle east and it's wars, I would ask: are these problems BECAUSE of religion? Or, are they because of men seeking power, and using religion as a means?
"If men endow us with unalienable rights, what makes them unalienable?"
ReplyDeleteThey aren't. Without a political system that recognizes and supports them, rights are meaningless, and nothing more than philosophical concepts with no practical value. Pretending that they somehow come from a divine being doesn't make them inalienable either, since interpretations of the wishes & views of divine beings vary wildly, not only between religions, but even within religions themselves.
"With the limited knowledge I have of the middle east and it's wars, I would ask: are these problems BECAUSE of religion? Or, are they because of men seeking power, and using religion as a means?"
That's a false dichotomy. All religion is man-made. You can't separate religion out as if it is something entirely different from other human motivations. And almost every war has multiple reasons/causes.
"Is there any evidence of a secular society that has run better than the states?"
If by secular society, you mean a state where there is no existence of religious belief, there has never been such an entity. So that's kind of a pointless comparison.
Also, just because some 18th Century thinkers felt that morality required religion, doesn't mean we need to accept that canard today, any more than we accept their toleration of slavery, their racial views, or their view of a woman's place in society. The U.S. of 2009 is a very different place than that of 1786. We are no longer a relatively homogeneous small population where almost everyone identifies as Christian. Even simple belief in a creator means different things depending on what particular religious beliefs a person holds. Again, what was a unifying element then, is much more of a divisive factor today.
“Without a political system that recognizes and supports them, rights are meaningless, and nothing more than philosophical concepts with no practical value.”
ReplyDelete-I hope that this is true, I would love to live in a society that is completely based of rationality. But who’s rationality, who’s morals? If you’ve ever seen The Watchmen, the story is based upon a Villain, who bombs and kills thousands of people, to unite the world against a common enemy, thus creating peace. If we look to socialism, and communism, do they not make sense?
“Pretending that they somehow come from a divine being”
-For someone who is an atheist, you have a lot of faith in there not being a god.
“That's a false dichotomy. All religion is man-made. You can't separate religion out as if it is something entirely different from other human motivations. And almost every war has multiple reasons/causes.”
-Pointing out fallacies isn’t going to get us anywhere. Besides that, how do you know all religion is man-made? Why is this about religion and not about god? If we can’t separate religion out from other human motivations, and war has multiple causes and reasons, why is it okay to state that wars are caused by religion?
“If by secular society, you mean a state where there is no existence of religious belief, there has never been such an entity. So that's kind of a pointless comparison.”
-I believe that this is an essential comparison. I see the Dems having the same problem with health-care; there is ample evidence to support that this wouldn’t work, and no evidence to support that it would.
“any more than we accept their toleration of slavery, their racial views, or their view of a woman's place in society.”
-All of these issues are much more complicated than they often get boiled down to, I think these are something to be talked about in another time.
“We are no longer a relatively homogeneous small population where almost everyone identifies as Christian. Even simple belief in a creator means different things depending on what particular religious beliefs a person holds. Again, what was a unifying element then, is much more of a divisive factor today.”
-Again, the idea was not to form everyone under Christianity, it was to teach the positive ideals that occur in all major religions. We were supposed to be a melting pot, not a seven-course dinner. And how is that element a divisive factor?