There are very few things conservatives, liberals and leftists agree on. But if they are irreligious, they all agree that religious Americans are more irrational than irreligious Americans.
It is a secular axiom that secularism and secular people are rooted in reason, whereas religion and the religious are rooted in irrationality.
This is what almost every college professor believes and what almost every student in America is taught. Among the intelligentsia, it is an unquestioned fact. It helps explain why, after their first or second year at college, many children return to their religious homes alienated from, and frequently contemptuous of, the religion of their parents — and often of the parents themselves.
At the time in their lives when most people are the most easily indoctrinated — approximately ages 18 to 22 — young Americans hear only one message: If you want to be a rational person, you must abandon religion and embrace secularism. Most young Americans are never exposed to a countervailing view at any time in their college life. (That’s why you should expose your college-aged child, grandchild, niece or nephew to this column.)
Yet, this alleged axiom is not only completely false, it’s backwards. The truth is that today the secular have a virtual monopoly on irrational beliefs.
One proof is that colleges have become the most irrational institutions in the country. Not coincidentally, they are also the most secular institutions in our society. In fact, the former is a result of the latter.
One could provide examples in every area of life. Here are but a few.
Only secular people believe “men give birth.”
Only secular people believe that males — providing, of course, that they say they are females — should be allowed to compete in women’s sports.
Only secular people believe that a young girl who says she is a boy or a young boy who says he is a girl should be given puberty-blocking hormones.
Only secular people believe that girls who say they are boys should have their healthy breasts surgically cut off.
Only secular people believe it is good to have men in drag dance (often provocatively) in front of 5-year-olds.
Only secular people agree with Disney dropping use of the words “boys and girls” at Disneyland and Disneyworld.
Only secular people believe that “to be colorblind is to be racist.” That is what is taught at nearly all secular (and religious-in-name-only) colleges in America today.
Only secular people believe fewer police, fewer prosecutions and lower prison sentences (or no prison time at all) lead to less crime.
Far more secular Americans than religious Americans believed that the Cleveland Indians and Washington Redskins needed to change their names because “Indians” and “Redskins” were racist — despite the fact that most Native Americans didn’t even think so.
Who was more likely to support keeping children out of schools for two years; forcibly masking 2-year olds on airplanes; and firing unvaccinated police officers, airplane pilots and members of the military — secular or religious Americans?
How many Western supporters of Josef Stalin — the tyrant who murdered about 30 million people — were irreligious, and how many were religious?
Stanford University, a thoroughly secular institution, just released an “Elimination of Harmful Language Initiative.” It informs all Stanford faculty and students of “harmful” words they should avoid and the words that should replace them.
Some examples:
Stanford asks its students and faculty not to call themselves “American.” Rather, they should call themselves a “U.S. citizen.” Why? Because citizens of other countries in North America and South America might be offended.
Is that rational?
Stanford asks its faculty and students not to use the term “blind study.” Why? Because it “unintentionally perpetuates that disability is somehow abnormal or negative, furthering an ableist culture.” Instead, Stanford faculty and students should say, “masked study.”
Two questions: Is Stanford’s claim that being blind is not a disability rational or irrational? And what percentage of those who make this claim are secular?
The list of irrational (and immoral) things secular people believe — and religious people do not believe — is very long. As a quote attributed to G.K. Chesterton puts it: “When people stop believing in God, they don’t believe in nothing; they believe in anything.”
Yet, many people believe that the religious, not the secular, are the irrational people in our time. That, ironically, is just another irrational belief held by the secular. And, of course, it is self-serving — just as is the belief that more people have been killed by religious people (meaning, essentially, Christians) than by secular people. Yet, that, too, is irrational — and false. In the last century alone, 100 million people were murdered by secular — and anti-religious — regimes.
Yes, religious people have some irrational, or at least non-rational, beliefs.
But two points need to be made in this regard:
One is that the religious beliefs that most people call “irrational” are not irrational; they are unprovable. For example, the beliefs that there is a transcendent Creator and that this Creator is the source of our rights are not irrational; they are unprovable. Atheism — the belief that everything came from nothing — is considerably more irrational than theism.
The other point is that human beings are programmed to believe in the non-rational. Love is often non-rational — love of our children, romantic love, love of music and art, love of a pet; our willingness to engage in self-sacrifice for another is often non-rational — from the sacrifices children make for parents and parents for children to the sacrifices made by non-Jewish rescuers of Jews during the Holocaust.
What good religion does is provide its adherents with a moral, emotionally, intellectually and spiritually deep way to express the non-rational. Therefore, they can remain rational everywhere outside of religion. The secular, having no religion within which to innocuously express the non-rational, often end up doing so elsewhere in life.
So only the religious believe “In the beginning God created the Heavens and the Earth,” but they do not believe men give birth. Meanwhile the irreligious don’t believe “In the beginning God created the Heavens and the Earth,” but only they believe men give birth.
Non-rational love is not love, you can call non-rational attachment many things but not love.
“To love is to value. Only a rationally selfish man, a man of self-esteem, is capable of love—because he is the only man capable of holding firm, consistent, uncompromising, unbetrayed values. The man who does not value himself, cannot value anything or anyone….
Love, friendship, respect, admiration are the emotional response of one man to the virtues of another, the spiritual payment given in exchange for the personal, selfish pleasure which one man derives from the virtues of another man’s character. Only a brute or an altruist would claim that the appreciation of another person’s virtues is an act of selflessness, that as far as one’s own selfish interest and pleasure are concerned, it makes no difference whether one deals with a genius or a fool, whether one meets a hero or a thug, whether one marries an ideal woman or a slut.” – Ayn Rand
“[Selfless love] would have to mean that you derive no personal pleasure or happiness from the company and the existence of the person you love, and that you are motivated only by self-sacrificial pity for that person’s need of you. I don’t have to point out to you that no one would be flattered by, nor would accept, a concept of that kind. Love is not self-sacrifice, but the most profound assertion of your own needs and values. It is for your own happiness that you need the person you love, and that is the greatest compliment, the greatest tribute you can pay to that person….
One gains a profoundly personal, selfish joy from the mere existence of the person one loves. It is one’s own personal, selfish happiness that one seeks, earns and derives from love.
A “selfless,” “disinterested” love is a contradiction in terms: it means that one is indifferent to that which one values.
Concern for the welfare of those one loves is a rational part of one’s selfish interests. If a man who is passionately in love with his wife spends a fortune to cure her of a dangerous illness, it would be absurd to claim that he does it as a “sacrifice” for her sake, not his own, and that it makes no difference to him, personally and selfishly, whether she lives or dies.” – Ayn Rand
“ For example, the beliefs that there is a transcendent Creator and that this Creator is the source of our rights are not irrational; they are unprovable. Atheism — the belief that everything came from nothing — is considerably more irrational than theism.”
Can you argue against that?
Atheism is not the belief that something came from nothing. Atheism qua atheism, atheism as such, does not contain any positive claim. Atheism as such is only not believing in an Almighty Creator.
Now having said that, Objectivism is atheistic, but it does not claim that existence was created by nothing. If nothing existed then there would always be nothing. Objectivism simply says, “There is a starting point, a fundamental starting point, that point is EXISTENCE — existence exists — that’s all that can be said about existence — existence exists. Existence exists by the grace of existence itself, not by the grace of consciousness. Existence is ETERNAL — it has no cause. Existence has no beginning and no end. Existence is an irreducible primary. No consciousness, natural or supernatural creates existence. On the contrary consciousness is a natural attribute, an emergent property, of some biological and mortal entities, who’s brains are complex enough to have this emergent property. Consciousness developed not to create existence bu to observe existence. Conscious, biological, organisms are mortal and not eternal, but their matter and energy components are eternal.
Existing as a human is what you appear to be describing, I, and Prager, asked about the universe existing.
Matter and energy EXIST of their own accord. Why is there some-thing instead of no-thing? Because matter and energy exist, because it is what it is, existence is self-contained it was not created, it simply is.
If the primacy of existence is unfathomable and unacceptable to your mind there is nothing more than can be argued by me to you to convince you that existence is a primary fundamental. All we can do is part ways.
“Is God the designer of the universe? Not if A is A. The alternative to “design” is not “chance”. It is causality….
The religious view of the world, though it has been abandoned by most philosophers, is still entrenched in the public mind. Witness the popular question “Who created the universe?” — which presupposes that the universe is not eternal, but has a source beyond itself, in some cosmic personality or will. It is useless to object that this question involves an infinite regress (if a creator is required to explain existence, then a second creator is required to explain the first, and so on). Typically, the believer will reply: One can’t ask for an explanation of God. He is an inherently necessary being. After all, one must start somewhere.” Such a person does not contest the need of an irreducible starting point, as long as its a form of consciousness; what he finds unsatisfactory is the idea of existence as the starting point. Driven by the primacy of consciousness, a person of this mentality refuses to begin with the world, which we *know* to exist; he insists on jumping beyond the world to the unknowable, even though such a procedure explains nothing. The root of this mentality is not rational argument, but the influence of Christianity. In many respects, the West has not recovered from the Middle Ages.” – Leonard Peikoff
If I don’t believe this, we must part ways?
Sounds very much like a religious zealot to me.
No, a religious zealot would cut your head off, burn you ate the stake, tear you apart on the rack, throw you in prison, force you to recant your heresy and blasphemy.
An Objectivist realizes that mind and force are opposites, a mind can not be forced, all I can do is walk away and leave you in peace.
“Force is the antonym and negation of thought. Understanding is not produced by a punch in the face; intellectual clarity does not flow from the muzzle of a gun; the weighing of evidence is not mediated by spasms of terror. The mind is a cognitive faculty; it cannot achieve knowledge or conviction apart from or against its perception of reality; it cannot be forced.” – Leonard Peikoff
I remember reading this but can not remember in what venue. Can you elucidate?
It’s from Ayn Rand’s book “The Virtue Of Selfishness”. You can also find some quotes on love in “The Ayn Rand Lexicon”.
“The Ayn Rand Lexicon”
http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/love.html
“The Virtue Of Selfishness”
https://books.feedvu.com/nonscrolablepdf/the-virtue-of-selfishness-pdf-ayn-rand-2.html
Rand was a unalloyed sociopath – and so to, it appears, are numbers of her followers.
Really? Please back up your ad hominem attack with facts. Or shut up.
I have yet to see any facts from you. Just your warped opinions you pass off as facts. Perhaps you should shut up, tough guy.
She had a hero in her novel who was a rapist and terrorist who blew up buildings because someone changed his drawings.
Rational?
You are the most irrational unreasonable person I know of. You couldn’t find love with two hands and a flashlight.
“ When people stop believing in God, they don’t believe in nothing; they believe in anything.”
Rand believes selfishness is a virtue and altruism is self-sacrifice unlike us plebs who think differently.
If you truly believe Ayn Rand and Objectivism are evil and not for you why do you keep asking me questions about it?
I didn’t say she was evil, I repeated your reply about her irrational use of the words and you called us plebs idiots for wrongful use of same words.
I ask questions because I’m trying to understand why you think Christianity is evil.
Central and core ideas of mysticism and religion lead to evil.
He loves to see you fall on your face when you try to answer…….because you have no answers other than cribbing the work of others….like Peekaboo.
Judaism prepared the way for Christianity and both prepared the way for Islam and modern totalitarianism. Judeo-Christianity prepared the way for Marxism and Nazism. What Marx essentially did was to pseudo-secularize Judeo-Christianity. He stripped Judeo-Christianity of its overt and explicit supernatural elements like the idea of an Almighty God and replaced him with Almighty Society. Marx put a window-dressing of pseudo-scientific gibberish on Marxism to hide and cover the religious, mystical, elements of Marxism. Marxism is a crypto-religion directly derived from Judeo-Christianity.
The most crucial element destroying America is the mystical, supernatural, irrational, religious moral code of altruism. Altruism is the moral basis from which every form of tyranny and collectivism is derived. Unless Americans reject it and embrace Ayn Rand’s moral code of rational selfishness, America does not stand a chance….
This is not an attack on individual Jews or Christians but it is to say that the central moral code of monotheistic religion is altruism and self-sacrifice for others, the same central moral code of Marxism. What is the policy of open borders but a manifestation of altruism and sacrifice for others? “You are your brother’s keeper”. Altruism demands and commands sacrifice, the sacrifice of the good to the evil, the sacrifice of the rich to the poor, the sacrifice of the successful to the failures, the sacrifice of the winners to the losers — the meek shall inherit the earth, it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.
It is simply your usual attack on Judaism and Christianity. You are a bigot. You have always been a bigot. You will always be a bigot hiding behind the skirts of a deceased woman. You are a coward.
As for your hatred of Prager….he is a success because he actually does the things to make him a success, A long running radio show, lots of successful books and a lecturer to actual people sitting in the audience.
What have you ever done besides tell Christians how stupid we are from your Lotus flower.
I knew he would comment and thus answer the question: Who’s More Irrational – The Religious or the Irreligious? 🙂
Blah Blah. You have been repeating that canard for at least a year now. Did it come to you in a fever dream or are you just ripping off Peekaboo and hos ominous parallels.
In twenty years no one will remember the old bat. They barely remember her now. Sorry pal, ain’t happening
Some people just hate religion irrationally
Correction:
They hate Christianity irrationally. It’s far from brave, as proven by the nauseating suck-up to all things islam.
Example:
Atheist/leftists “bravely” stick a cross in a jar of urine while collecting a taxpayer check from the National Endowment for the Arts.
When they start doing the same to a Quran or Cresent Moon, then I’ll be impressed with their self proclaimed courage. (But we all know secular leftists are too cowardly to try.)
Some people love to reason unless it contradicts their faith, then they hate reason irrationally. So long as reason remains the mere handmaiden of their mystical inventions they’re happy to hijack, rape, and abuse reason.
“We have not the strength to follow our reason all the way” – La Rochefoucauld
You do not have a rational understanding of biblical Christianity or Judaism. If you want to believe that the universe is an accidental event and man is just an animal with the ability to reason, that is up to you. However, it is certainly more rational to believe man’s personal consciousness and reasoning ability did not come about by accident, and non reason, but by a personal, omniscient, transcendent Mind. It is also reasonable that such a God would desire to communicate with His creature. This He has done by way of the history recorded in the Bible. In the end the creation itself is adequate testimony to man of God’s existence and power. As the bible states, men will be without excuse in the judgement of God. Romans 1:18-32
The same atheism and hatred of Christ was found in Marx and Rand. The differences between the two are more superficial than most would believe. “The fool has said in his heart, there is no God”.
To play the devil’s advocate it is not as if the nonreligious never come across as holding very irrational worldviews in which the phenomena that this world presents are brushed off as illusory.
In the context of 2000 years of Christianity, those who ignore logic and reason and keen observation of the truths of this world are more the side show, Orthodox Christianity has always been an imminently rational faith.
The irrationality of the non religious stems from the myopic vision that comes with the world view that faith itself is irrational. In an infinite world , science reduces observation to a limited set of variables. The model is limited, but the world is not.
Suffice it to say that, in the course of all of recorded history, there has never been a time when the world has been so secular, and where so many people do not even know how to tell the difference between a boy and a girl.
Science couldn’t explain or prove the Big Bang theory so it invented parallel universe theories.
Now let’s give the devil his due. His logic is impeccable- if the objective is extinguishment of life itself! It is the logic of nihilism and the hatred of life and all of its suffering that has people celebrating socialism and Stalin even now.
Life is suffering.. The message of the Buddha strikes us like nails in our cross. The logic of the devil is impeccable. To reject suffering is ultimately to reject life itself.
Life without God is experienced as vacuous, meaningless, goalless for vast swaths of humanity. Such an existence engenders its own final solutions. Suffering truly is infinitely intolerable. Life truly involves suffering. Extinguish life, suffering is no more.
. Nihilism is the long shadow cast by the Enlightenment. There is so much more to light than reason, because there is so much more to life that what is knowable.
The practices and dogmas of religion have been built with the objective of human flourishing. The inner logic of all religion derives from that heuristic impulse.
All true Dennis, except the part where you say that the existence of the Creator God cannot be proven rationally Ubiverse and its inhabitants are extremely complex and magnificent, There is no way that they just randomly assembled themselves. The laws of mathematics and chemistry and electronics and gravity and orbits and the order in the Universe and all of creation cannot possibly be random coincidence or undirected evolution, The notion that everything just happened and evolved or created itself is one of the most ridiculous secular beliefs. The existence of the order in the Universe is proof or the existence of God.