To the Editor:
What I dislike about the American Christian Right is what I dislike about Jeff Minick’s book review in last week’s edition of The Smoky Mountain News, which is less a book review as it is a chance for Mr. Minick to display his own religious views using the passages he quotes from the book as support.
Believers have always tended to take religious ideas and expand those perspectives across the broad swath of human concerns, venturing into no end of nooks and crannies of the human experience, and by doing so, providing various types of analyses, untethered from reality but consistent with theology.
And so we find Andrew Klaven, the author of the book Jeff reviews and endorses, offering the tired and false view that without Christian morality, humankind will devolve into a few crazy guys in positions of political power who decide that they can just do as they like, unrestrained by a willful ignorance of the dictates of an all-powerful and perfectly moral Christian god. This nefarious process, or so the view goes, leads inevitably to the enslavement of the many, for the personal and pervading narcissistic pleasures of the elitist few, as dictated by whims.
The detailing of this process, according to Klaven, is provided by a 19th century philosopher named Friedrich Nietzsche, and you will be forgiven if you never heard of him or why anyone should take him seriously. That Klaven and Minick do is perhaps because they are aware that Christianity in America is on the cusp of losing its majority grip on the minds of the citizens and are very concerned that we are only a few decades away from the minds of the citizenry catching up to our Constitution, which established a secular nation even though most were religious at the time. It is indisputable and quite telling that a deity is not mentioned once in our governing document.
In addition, an objective view of nations worldwide shows that the highest quality of life belongs to countries that are populated by overwhelmingly secular citizens (U.S. News & World Report). The United States would do well to look to such countries as Denmark, Sweden, Switzerland, England, and many others, if what is wanted is a high standard of living, job opportunity, excellent health care, affordable housing, etc. The inescapable fact is that nations that govern with the secular values related to human flourishing, which means providing the people with the greatest opportunity to live and prosper, have better records historically than do those nations peopled with religious adherents insisting that behavior be aligned with the dictates of a favored god. (Of which there are many in the world, all backed by their own different sacred writings, of course.)
And then there are those pesky real facts about the world: overall, progress continues to be made in every arena of human concern. From poverty to genocide, from health concerns to the standard of living, from disease to freedom, humans are on a roll from bad to good, from less to more. If you want to know what’s going on in the world in exacting terms, I would suggest Harvard scientist Steven Pinker’s excellent and comprehensive book, Enlightenment Now, The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism and Progress, (Penguin, 2018). Give that book a read, and I promise that you will gain an educated appreciation for how far humankind has come, and how it is likely to continue to make progress.
Much of what Klaven, Minick and I have written sounds ponderous and intellectual. You don’t have to go there at all to know where morality has its origin. Just notice yourself. Humans have evolved within the last 300,000 years or so to be social animals who possess individually and collectively a moral sense. I have been an atheist for 60 some years, and I can be trusted to feed your animals when you are away, without making off with your stereo or your tractor. You see, I know better, and all human moral character is of that sort. And that is why we are able to have societies that are functional and thriving all over the world. A moral sense can be damaged or beaten out of you if you are young enough and unfortunate enough to have that kind of upbringing, but it is there from the jump because of your very nature and has nothing to do with God or Nietzsche.
Rick Wirth
Bryson City