Because The Law, The Prophets and The Gospel Are Radical I Am Radical

Years ago, before the rise of the new atheism, back when it was still just atheism, back before its online archive lists, I remember reading an article in one of the lefty magazines I subscribed to* which criticized religious leftists because the author said they needed a crutch to support their radicalism but that atheists didn't need that.  Which, at the time, I was willing to accept out of that habit of fairness to different points of view and the faith that because we all claimed to have the same goals that our differences didn't matter.  What I've come to see was never based in a rigorous consideration of the situation and the liklihood of which attitudes and actions were likely to lead to those goals being made real in politics and in life.

In part that passive acceptance was  due to not having the resources to really investigate the claims made in that article.  It's something that, after looking far more deeply at what atheists say and do since going online, I think is evidence free bilge.  For example, the article included praise for the most prominent atheist in the United States, Madalyn Murray O'Hair who, I have since learned, had as many flaws as any sleazy TV based hallelujah peddler or corrupt cardinal and a record of the most vulgar materialism, theft and fraud behind the thinnest of false fronts.  She was presented by the article as some kind of radical activist by virtue of her war against religion.  For a lot of people reputedly on the left, that is the defining issue for them, atheism and hatred of religion.  It is why you encounter people allegedly of the left who still hold a torch for Christopher Hitchens and who mistake Sam Harris as a lefty.  To continue with the general theme from yesterday.

Such folk cannot conceive of a Christian as being a political radical, far more radical, in just about every case I've confronted, than the callow atheist who accuses you of holding regressive positions you don't, even those who idolize Hitchens, who actually did hold them.   It is a never ending thing, having people on the supposed left doubt your credentials as a leftist because you, as the vast majority of people on the left, are not atheists.  And, I would say, that I have known more atheists formerly of the left turn conservative than I have religious leftists who have turned.  My experience is that it is not unknown for religious people to become more liberal as they age.  I have become far, far more radical as I abandoned the self-imposed blinders of agnosticism and have seen that a real program of the left is founded in religious values that atheism corrodes.  Atheism which, like almost all of it, is based in materialism, at least.

I am radical because The Law and the prophets and The Gospels, Acts and the epistles are all radical.  I was a radical while I was an agnostic and hostile to religion because of the tradition I inherited from Christians.  I think that's what accounts for whatever liberalism the largest majority of non-religious people in the United States holds, it's a habit of that tradition in their habits of thought. It can endure for a generation or two but will, I've observed, deteriorate the farther from its roots it gets.

American style liberalism, as opposed to the libertarian, laissez-faire,  British-European "liberalism" is a product of that tradition and that it cannot be sustained without the metaphysical foundation that it is based in and of which it is an expression.   I believe that because that is what history has shown and my own experience has been.   I believe that the liberalism I believe in, far more radical than any materialist substitute, is the only practical chance of saving us, our environment and our democracy.  Equality, rights,  justice and the moral obligation to respect those are only durable in so far as they are believed to be an absolute gift and equal endowment given by and a requirement made by God. Any other attempt to give them a foundation is liable to the same corrosion mentioned above.  I am as certain of anything in politics as I can be that that is true.  Materialism is to liberalism as fluoric acid is to human tissue.

The assumption that liberalism was "substrate neutral"  was always baseless.  As are many of the other assumptions of secular liberalism.   It is not even compatible with materialism and a denial of the reality of moral obligations, liberalism will be corroded by those, without any doubt.  Another foundation that had the same properties would work but I doubt it would work as well without the radical and audacious holding of the Hebrew tradition in regard to human beings and their relationship with the very creator of the universe and humans to teach other.

The author of that article mistook that foundation for a crutch instead of what it really is, the prerequisite for those things to work or even exist.  When I look at the position of atheists in history and in culture, I see every reason to conclude that is the case.

* I can't find the article online.  Though I'm certain of the magazine and the author of the article, as well as the person quoted, I will leave it at this until I find the definite citation.  As I say, it's a line I've heard from atheists many times.