Tuesday, July 24, 2007

CHAVEZ AND THE FALLACY OF ATHEISTIC GOVERNMENT

I am not at all surprised at how a dictator like Hugo Chavez would hold Catholic bishops, cardinals and priests in utter contempt.

Stories like this, where we find out that,

President Hugo Chavez called a cardinal from Honduras an "imperialist clown" after the Roman Catholic prelate warned of increasing authoritarianism under the Venezuelan leader.

and

"Catholic leaders in this South American country have warned of alleged threats to individual freedoms under Chavez's administration and criticized his plans for a sweeping constitutional reform to transform Venezuela into a socialist state."

Of course Cardinal Rodriguez Maradiaga is considered a moderate in the Catholic Church but the contempt with which Chavez holds him is not surprising. In the past few months we have witnessed increasing personal freedoms being curtailed by Chavez. Whether it is the

shutting down of TV stations critical of him;

lying about political opponents;

putting up a Che Guevara monument in a formerly Catholic hospital;

economic reforms that hurt prosperity of the individual;

or saying he will kick out foreigners who question him, Chavez is a true monster in the making.

I write this post to again show the philosophical link between atheism and a Marxist dictatorship. At this point in history, atheism is very fashionable. Books by Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens and many others are on the best seller lists and atheism is even becoming a trendy beleif among many conservatives, even here on the Blogging Tories.

Am I saying atheists are bad people? Of course not.

What I am saying is that philosophically, communism is the economic system of atheism. Equality is something that most human beings desire. But we all have different philosophies and define it differently. Once one eliminates the existance of God as the measure against which equality is determined, all one has is the rules and law of man.

But the rules and laws of man are not constant. They always change. What is considered a right by one culture is a heresy in another. What is a right for one generation is considered illegal and immoral by the next. If all one has is the rule of man there is no 'truth'. That is when tyranny can enter the door.

It is no coincidence that the most democratic nation on the face of the earth is arguably the one most influenced by the existence of God.

That is not to say all higher power influenced states are good or desirable. Obviously, parts of the middle east are a testament to that.

But, atheists need to be reminded that the philosophy of atheistic inspired communism has led to more death, horror, and genocide on the planet earth in the past 100 years than Christianity, Catholicism, Islam, capitalism and America combined in 2000. That's not a track record to be particulary proud of and that is why the Hitchens and Dawkins arguments are sophistry at best and child-like at worst.

Again, does that mean atheists are bad people. No. But we should never allow atheists to allow their vision of equality to superceed that of one based on the existence of God. That is where we are perilously close to in the West.

But what of the libertarian, socially liberal but fiscally conservative atheist?

Your system is inadequate. Libertarianism is worthy in small select doses (ie. free speech) but as a complete philosophy, it is equally as flawed as socialism and ususally opens the door to it. It assumes all people's belief systems are the same and everyone has everyone else's best interests at heart. That is the only way it works. Which is to say it does not work at all and is little better than socialism. The atheist libertarian fails to consider that one persons 'right to do something' will inevitably interfere with someone else's 'right from' doing something.

Libertarian atheists rarely address issues of culture, persuasion and cause and effect. Indeed, one could very well argue that it was the lack of faith in a higher power and belief in the rule of man's ever changing philosophy of secular equality that allowed Canada and the Conservative Party to drift so far left in the past two decades.

Libertarians will argue that they are all about responsibility. Really? I can find many libertarian atheists who will argue for complete freedom in terms of market and sexuality. I rarely if ever find one who will defend freedom of religion on a cases per case basis or the right of someone not to be exploited by a corporation.

And please, spare me the 'we are people of science' routine. A person who is employed as a scientist is a person of science. Other than that, you are following fashion, ideology and trend. In order for an atheist to say for certain there is no God, they would have to read every argument in favour of God that has ever existed. Beyond that, they are equally motivated by faith and guilty of lazy thinking.

If you know any atheists that have read as much, please let me know. I'd love to meet them.

2 Comments:

At 3:52 PM, Blogger Raphael Alexander said...

It's an interesting argument. I'm a secularist atheist "conservative", although I'd say I'm rather more a centrist who votes conservative in order to preserve Canada from eroding values of other parties.

I don't believe secularism or atheism is inherently "leftist". Furthermore, Jesus taught principles which are fundamentally socialist in principle:

It is easier for a camel to travel through the eye of a pin than for a rich man to go to heaven.

Sayeth Jesus Christ.

Libertarianism is also based on the principles of freedom from the state, whether secular or religious. People have few real freedoms in Islamic states because there is no separation of church and state. The fundamental concept of secularism is not atheism. Quite the opposite.

Secularism ensures all peoples are treated equally and non-denominationally under the law and by the government. So a Jew who visits the government will not be affronted by symbols representative of a specific faith. Canada is representative of a mosaic of faiths, inclusive being atheism, under the umbrella of Canadian law.

Now you have a point that communists are traditionally Godless. Marx said that religion is the opiate of the masses. Communism is based on the concept of worship of the doctrine, not the deity.

Your reasoning is that atheism is a belief system based on unbelief, which would be kind of like saying that someone lives to be adversarial to religion. I simply don't think about religion most of the time. I'm convinced there is no deity, and the majority of my time is spent focusing on what is important to me and my family. I have no atheistic agenda based on infringing the rights of those who choose to believe in God, except where it chooses to interfere with my own rights.

You believe in the rule of God, not of man. The problem with this is that it's based on the religious state, something which has proven to be far closer to dangerous and authoritarian than atheism.

 
At 7:52 PM, Blogger Patrick Ross said...

I believe that in many regards, a new form of atheism is emerging in the world today: fundamentalist atheism.

This is the kind of atheism exhibited by those who abhor any form of religion in public affairs at all, from symbollic listings of the ten commandments in courthouses to those who go into conniptions whenever Stephen Harper so much as says "god bless Canada".

These are people who are manufacturing a conflict between religion and "ration" (which they narrowly define within their atheist dogma), often by way of inventing evolution debates where they didn't previously exist.

Consider that there is an increasinly militant brand of atheism, exemplified by Michel Onfray, that is actually enouraging religious conflict between religion and atheism, by way of a "final battle" in which atheism will destroy religion.

This is fundamentalist atheism, which I would describe, ironically, as atheism conceptualized as a religion, and I regard it as every bit as dangerous as any other fundamentalist religion.

 

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