First up from The God Machine this week is an analysis from Time’s Amy Sullivan of a new poll about voters, politics, and matters of faith. Apparently, the Bush years have had quite an effect on public attitudes, but not in a way the president and his allies probably intended.
[T]he poll found that Americans have strong views about religion and politics in the era of George W. Bush. In May 2004, half (49%) of American voters said President Bush’s faith made him a strong leader while only 36% said it made him too closed-minded. Today, voters have reversed their opinion about the role of Bush’s faith: 50% now say it makes him too closed-minded and 34% say it makes him a strong leader. Similarly, while in 2004, only 27% said that Bush’s use of faith did more to divide the country rather than unite it, today, 43% feel that way.
There is evidence of that division in the poll. By a two-to-one margin (62% to 29%), Republicans say a president should use his or her faith to guide presidential decisions. By contrast, Democrats reject this idea by a similar two-to-one margin (58% to 32%). In the same way, while three-quarters of Democrats say the president should not use his or her own interpretation of the Bible to make public decisions, Republicans are about evenly split (46% to 43%) on this. And while the overwhelming majority of Republican voters (71%) agree that religious values should serve as a guide to what political leaders do in office, 56% of Democrats disagree with this.
It remains to be seen whether Democratic voters would feel differently about any of these issues if one of their candidates took back the White House in 2008. It could be that respondents find it difficult to separate their general views on the questions from their opinions about Bush and religion. But it’s also possible that the last seven have indeed fundamentally shifted the way many Americans think about religion and politics. The answer to that key question is something the Democratic frontrunners will be working to figure out.
Perhaps, but it’s a landscape that certainly favors Democratic attitudes, isn’t it? The conventional wisdom has suggested for years — indeed, it continues to suggest now — that Dems are in deep trouble politically unless they can make strides with religious voters who perceive the party as overly secular. Sullivan seems reluctant to admit it, but Time’s poll suggests Americans are anxious to challenge this dynamic for the first time in years.
As Digby put it, “[Sullivan] insists that the Democrats are going to have trouble winning unless they can appeal to religious voters when the poll she’s citing actually says that people are dramatically turning away from these explicitly religious appeals.”
It should keep things interesting.
And The God Machine was flooded with emails yesterday from readers, believers and non, who were struck by the latest piece from Michael Gerson, a Washington Post columnist and George W. Bush’s former top speechwriter.
Gerson, who is unfailingly devout, dabbled this week in Philosophy of Religion 101 in order to argue that atheists struggle to appreciate the differences between right and wrong. Gerson seems particularly troubled by best-selling books about disbelief from Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris, and Richard Dawkins.
How do we choose between good and bad instincts? Theism, for several millennia, has given one answer: We should cultivate the better angels of our nature because the God we love and respect requires it. While many of us fall tragically short, the ideal remains.
Atheism provides no answer to this dilemma. It cannot reply: “Obey your evolutionary instincts” because those instincts are conflicted. “Respect your brain chemistry” or “follow your mental wiring” don’t seem very compelling either. It would be perfectly rational for someone to respond: “To hell with my wiring and your socialization, I’m going to do whatever I please.” C.S. Lewis put the argument this way: “When all that says ‘it is good’ has been debunked, what says ‘I want’ remains.” […]
Atheists can be good people; they just have no objective way to judge the conduct of those who are not.
Gerson went on to point to the Founding Fathers, who he believed “were not indifferent to the existence of religious faith.” (Thomas Jefferson might disagree. It was he, after all, who said, “It does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods, or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.” Sounds pretty indifferent.)
There were many, many excellent responses to Gerson’s piece, and I see no need to reinvent the wheel. I’d encourage readers to consider posts from Hilzoy and Mark Kleiman, both of whom offer sharp, poignant critiques of Gerson’s misguided reasoning.
But I’d also encourage folks to review Christopher Hitchens, who the Post allowed to respond in print.
Here is my challenge. Let Gerson name one ethical statement made, or one ethical action performed, by a believer that could not have been uttered or done by a nonbeliever. And here is my second challenge. Can any reader of this column think of a wicked statement made, or an evil action performed, precisely because of religious faith? The second question is easy to answer, is it not? The first — I have been asking it for some time — awaits a convincing reply. By what right, then, do the faithful assume this irritating mantle of righteousness? They have as much to apologize for as to explain.
Essentially conceding that philosophy and secularism do not condemn their adherents to lives of unbridled selfishness, and that (say) the Jewish people did not get all the way to Mount Sinai under the impression that murder and theft and perjury were okay, and also that we could not have evolved unless human solidarity was in some way innate, Gerson ends weakly by posing what is a rather moving problem.
“In a world without God,” he writes, “this desire for love and purpose is a cruel joke of nature — imprinted by evolution but designed for disappointment.” Again, he substitutes the wish for the thought. We very probably are, as he admits, not the designed objects of the Big Bang or of the process of natural selection. But this sober conclusion, objective as it is, is surely preferable to the delusion that we have been created diseased, by a capricious despot, and then abruptly commanded to be whole and well, on pain of terror and torture. That sick joke is one that we can cease to find impressive, that belongs in the infancy of our species, and gives a false picture of reality that we would do well to outgrow.
And so the debate continues….