Misfortune?

According to Christopher Hitchens, Karl Rove says "I'm not fortunate enough to be a person of faith." Jon Chait comments:

. If you don't believe in God, then why would you think believers are "fortunate" for putting their faith in a nonexistent higher being? You wouldn't. Yet Rove, for political reasons, must genuflect to the notion that religious people are morally superior to atheists. The line perfectly encapsulates the condescending and way Republican elites have manipulated religion.

Ross Douthat replies:

I don't think calling religious believers "fortunate" is the same thing as calling them "morally superior." I've heard plenty of atheists remark that they envy religious people their faith in God, an afterlife, the beneficence of the universe, or what-have-you. This sentiment isn't universal, obviously (see Hitchens himself for a counter-example), but I think it's perfectly reasonable for someone who's convinced that life is a meaningless round of pleasure, pain, and Machiavellian campaigning that ends when you die to feel a little envious of people who believe something slightly more optimistic.

I see Ross's point, but at the end of the day I think Chait's right and it's pretty condescending. By contrast, I think it's not at all condenscending to say something like "I wish it were the case that my destiny were in the ends of a benevolent higher power." I could use the help! But what Rove is different, and condescending, Rove is saying he wishes he thought the world were like that, but, sadly, he knows better. Ross is right that this is a fairly commonly expressed view, but it also seems like a clearly condescending one, designed to position the un-believer as the one willing to tell invoncenient truths while believers go about their merry way.

Comments

Each person's interpretation of Rove's remark probably reflects something about the interpreter's relationship to faith. Douthat seems to me to have a convincing argument. But I'm willing to concede that the Chait/Yglesias interpretation should be treated as more likely, on the grounds that Rove's weight is beggared by his self-regard, and any interpretation that assumes condescension is more likely to be correct. But I'm not sure the text helps one way or the other.

Posted by SomeCallMeTim | May 5, 2007 1:17 PM

Meh. I'm with Ezra's take on this.

Posted by Petey | May 5, 2007 1:20 PM

Agree with SCMT. The text is completely ambiguous; what you think Rove meant is based solely on what you think about Rove.

Posted by Al | May 5, 2007 1:21 PM

And it's worth noting that even God's assassin Nietzsche had mixed feelings about the consequences.

Posted by Petey | May 5, 2007 1:22 PM

designed to position the un-believer as the one willing to tell invoncenient truths while believers go about their merry way.

Not tell, hide inconvenient truths. Rove suffers with the truth so that the rest of us don't have to worry our pretty heads with it. SCMT's right thought that the fact that it's Rove who said it colors our interpretation--if someone whom I didn't associate with either politics or strategic public deception said it, many would interpret it differently.

Posted by Consumatopia | May 5, 2007 1:22 PM

BTW, this seems quite similar to the Romney thing - you are reading WAAAAAAAAAY too much into an offhand remark.

Posted by Al | May 5, 2007 1:24 PM

"The text is completely ambiguous; what you think Rove meant is based solely on what you think about Rove."

I don't think this is what SCMT is saying, and I don't think it's correct.

How you feel about this has to do with how you feel about god, not how you feel about Rove.

Posted by Petey | May 5, 2007 1:24 PM

Rereading SCMT's remarks, Petey, that's what he says in his first sentence. In the third sentence, though, he seems to be saying that he is interpreting Rove's remark based on wht he thinks of Rove. Maybe I'm misunderstanding the comment. In any event, regardless, I disagree with you. I am pretty agnostic, and, unlike Ezra, don't in particular envy people that have faith. Nonetheless, I think Douthat's got the better argument here.

Posted by Al | May 5, 2007 1:33 PM

"More crap you believe in, the more better off you are." - Henry Chinaski

Posted by godoggo | May 5, 2007 1:34 PM

"The text is completely ambiguous; what you think Rove meant is based solely on what you think about Rove."
I think this is exactly right, and it makes the always sad Douthat look all the sadder -- "thank you, Mr. Rove, can I have another [scornful Straussian kick in my sheep-like, gentleman-believer ass]."

Posted by Professor Booty | May 5, 2007 1:35 PM

"I am pretty agnostic, and, unlike Ezra, don't in particular envy people that have faith."

I do. I frankly think it's a drag to be living in an era where the god of abraham is dead and the new god hasn't been born yet.

I fill the void with sex, drugs, and pro basketball. But it's still not quite the same.

Bukowski's got this one right.

Posted by Petey | May 5, 2007 1:43 PM

Well, I personally wish that I was "fortunate enough to be a person of faith", insofar as it would make me happier and more productive in life. That's a utlity-claim and not a truth-claim. But this is not to endorse Karl Rove's view of anything.

Posted by Korha | May 5, 2007 1:43 PM

And again the ridiculous canard that atheists have to believe that life is meaningless and conversely that meaning is only to be found in religion. Didn't this guy go to Harvard or something?

Posted by novakant | May 5, 2007 1:44 PM

what you think Rove meant is based solely on what you think about Rove.

I don't think it has anything to do with what you believe about Rove. It does have everything to do with the fact that theism is the privileged position in an overwhelmingly theistic culture, though, and is accordingly associated with a host of positive attributes that have no necessary connection with religion or religious belief (e.g. moral superiority, greater purpose or design, etc.). Even Douthat casually asserts that a godless universe is necessarily "meaningless," without feeling the need to make any kind of argument backing this up (compare this to the common creation assertion that evolution is just too gross to believe in because of how icky it would be if humans had descended from base, disgusting animals).

If I were to accept Douthat's weirdly barren view of atheism, where the universe loses all meaning once a deity is removed from the picture, I might adopt the self-hating atheist posture taken by Rove and Ezra Klein, but I really don't see any reason to think of life in those terms. In fact, I tend to think of religious belief as painting the universe in pretty starkly denuded terms, in which the natural wonder and beauty of existence is stripped away to emphasize the paramount, overriding importance of the existence of - and submission to - the divine. I don't envy that at all.

Posted by Christmas | May 5, 2007 1:49 PM

And again the ridiculous canard that atheists have to believe that life is meaningless and conversely that meaning is only to be found in religion. Didn't this guy go to Harvard or something?

As I recall, he wrote a whole book on how his Harvard education was a waste.

Posted by Christmas | May 5, 2007 1:51 PM

"And again the ridiculous canard that atheists have to believe that life is meaningless and conversely that meaning is only to be found in religion."

Just because your philandering royal family destroyed the one true church in your country leaving your limey souls bereft of salvation doesn't mean you have to ruin it for everyone else, novakant.

Posted by Petey | May 5, 2007 1:54 PM

yeah, douthat is pretty reliably unimpressive, and a far less prestigious education would still have been wasted on him.

Nevertheless, I think he was not making the usual theistic smear against atheists, that *all* of them are immoral libertines.

I think his line about "someone who's convinced that life is a meaningless round of pleasure, pain, and Machiavellian campaigning" is designed precisely to describe Rove.

And as a description of Rove, it's pretty accurate.

As a description of your typical atheist, of course, it's pretty ridiculous.

Posted by humming | May 5, 2007 2:00 PM

I meant both. What Person X means by "I'm not fortunate enough to be a person of faith" is going to be dependent on what conditions Person X believes must be met for a belief to be respectable. So now we're making guesses about Person X. And so our estimation of Rove enters into it.

Posted by Marshall McLuhan | May 5, 2007 2:04 PM

Marshall McLuhan is standing right next to me, SCMT, and he says you know nothing of his work.

Posted by Petey | May 5, 2007 2:10 PM

Petey, don't you think this is a bit juvenile?

Posted by novakant | May 5, 2007 2:14 PM

I think he's playing off of my joke, novakant.

Posted by SomeCallMeTim | May 5, 2007 2:21 PM

"Petey, don't you think this is a bit juvenile?"

God told me to hate the English, novakant. You wouldn't understand.

Posted by Petey | May 5, 2007 2:24 PM

I don't know what Rove had in his heart or mind when he said that, and I don't trust the honesty of anything he says, but I'm putting my attitude towards god over my attitude towards Rove here, and taking the sympathetic viewpoint.

I don't think, at ALL, that atheism necessarily implies that you think life is pointless, have no moral grounding, or any of the other stupid canards people deploy against atheists. Nor do I believe that all atheists have or must have a condescending attitude towards people with faith - I certainly don't. Neither theism not atheism is going to make you an asshole, but if you happen to be an asshole, they give you one more thing to be an asshole about.

However, my *personal* experience, wherein I belived quite fervently up until I was ten or eleven or so, and most of the time don't believe at all these days, is one where I quite sincerely wish I had faith. Not because it would mean my life were in the hands of a higher power - that's not really the kind of faith that could or would appeal to me now. Not because I think people who believe in god have it easier or simpler or whatever and I envy their childish naivete, the poor dears. But because for *me*, personally, the experience of not believing in some sort of spiritual force is a very lonely one. I can't personally get away from the sensation that the universe is a big dark cold empty place, and for *me*, that's a problematic feeling. Lots of atheists don't feel that way, and I guess I envy them as well, but I know that if I had faith that there was something else out there, the universe would feel smaller, brighter, warmer and fuller. Just because all atheists aren't existentially anxious doesn't mean some of us aren't.

Posted by Quarterican | May 5, 2007 2:29 PM

well, the funny thing is that I'm not even english, I only happen to live here, so unless you for some reason want to insult the english whenever I comment here, you're wasting your energy

Posted by novakant | May 5, 2007 2:44 PM

Most major Christian theologians, at least in the West, have acknowledged that faith itself is a gift from God. Though this isn't necessarily borne out in every religious person's experience or in all preaching, the idea is that faith isn't just a matter of summoning up enough will power to believe (dumb) stuff, but rather God's revelation brings with it the ability to believe it, as a gift. Augustine's teaching on predestination stems in large part from his experience of gratitude at receiving this gift, which he doesn't think he deserves at all (see his Confessions), and then his reflection that others do not seem to have received this same gift.

Given that Rove is in continual contact with people who are, at the very least, sincere Christians (though I, as a Christian, think they believe and promote a lot of terrible things), it seems plausible that his statements reflect this understanding -- doubtless his Christian friends have told him many times that they hope some day God will give him the grace of belief, etc.

It also seems plausible that it's just a cynical manipulation -- but given that he's talking to Christopher Hitchens, I don't see exactly what points he was trying to earn by phrasing it in that way.

(Note that I'm not saying that one's religious faith or attitude toward others' religious fate correlates directly with one's evilness or goodness.)

Posted by Adam Kotsko | May 5, 2007 2:45 PM

Wittgenstein said, "For a truly religious man nothing is tragic." And he's said to have expressed envy of the believer, regret at his own skepticism. Rove could have meant something similar, nothing wrong with that.

But Douthat should consider that if he's mistaken in his belief, he could better enjoy his coffee and oranges in a sunny chair than pray to a non-existent god. It scarcely devalues this life to think that it's over when we die, nor does it render our loves meaningless to think they're all we have.

Posted by Socinius | May 5, 2007 2:47 PM

"heard plenty of atheists remark that they envy religious people their faith in God..."
When I've heard that, which has not been terribly often, it's usually followed by some reference to life being less complicated if you just drink the Koolaid.

Posted by Donna | May 5, 2007 2:49 PM

"I'm not even english"

God tells me that your are indeed English. So I believe that settles that.

Posted by Petey | May 5, 2007 3:04 PM

Sure, BushCo has used religion to sqeeze votes out of people they otherwise (and behind closed doors) despise and mock. But whose fault it that, really? If voters are such cheap dates that they can be bought off by this kind of bs they have only themselves to blames.

Posted by kafka | May 5, 2007 3:15 PM

My guess is that it was a tactful statement. Whatever Rove's true feelings, he is surely aware that some atheists are obnoxiously contemptuous of believers and simply didn't want to give the impression that he was one of them (even if he is). This was actually a rather gracious way of putting it.

Posted by Swift Loris | May 5, 2007 3:26 PM

Oh,enough. Rove is a jerk and this is obviously a line he's worked up for when the religious people he works with say, "hey, Karl, how come you never go to church."

And my God, I am sick and tired of hearing people say that people who don't believe in God don't believe life has any meaning. Has it not occurred to them that this is an incredibly insulting thing to say? So my response is, no, you don't have to believe in a great big sky bully to think your life has meaning. Ya jerk.

Posted by anonymous | May 5, 2007 3:33 PM

"I am sick and tired of hearing people say that people who don't believe in God don't believe life has any meaning."

That's exactly what someone whose life doesn't have any meaning would say...

Posted by Petey | May 5, 2007 3:40 PM

I think this whole "overarching metanarrative" thing is over-hyped as regards meaning. People -- including religious people -- primarily find meaning in their family life, their friends, their work. This should be obvious to anyone. Plus you'll find the more reasonable religious people -- like Barack Obama -- making this very same point. There are tons more where Obama comes from! Maybe someone should do more research into this mythical tribe of non-fundamentalist Christians -- and if any are found, maybe they could be put on TV sometimes instead of just the nutjobs!

Posted by Adam Kotsko | May 5, 2007 3:52 PM

Rove could have meant what Wittgenstein meant. Rove could be a giant 'edge'og made of cheeese, too.

Posted by Jeffrey Davis | May 5, 2007 3:58 PM

Too bad we atheist liberals can't figure out that we really have more in common with a lot of sincere Christians who vote Republican than they do with Rove. A lot of Christians share Rove's Hobbesian view of the world, but I suspect at least as many want 80% of what we want in the way of what used to be called social justice. The Republicans have had great success making the things nonbelieving liberals and Christians disagree on the key issues of the day. Let's see if we can do something a little more constructive before the next election except express our contempt for anyone who attends church.

Posted by The Next to Last Pope | May 5, 2007 4:10 PM

So Karl Rove doesn't think God can save America from the consequences of the Bush administration?

Posted by Don Williams | May 5, 2007 4:36 PM

I'm essentially an atheist myself, and while I've known people whose lives are (I believe) stunted by some flavor of religious orthodoxy, I've known others who have plainly been enriched by their religious beliefs -- however flawed I might consider them. Folks in this latter group have often had long and admirable track records of providing genuine aid and comfort to people around them, and their communities. They also strike me as being quite well-adjusted and rich in friends.

To my mind, this is enviable. That Chait is so completely oblivious to this is one more reason why he's arguably the most over-rated "progressive" gasbag in the pundit world. I like Ezra Klein's site a lot, but he's got this admiration for Chait that I just can't comprehend. It seems like once a month he has to devote some post to pulling the idiot's bacon from the fire after he's made an ass out of himself.

Posted by sglover | May 5, 2007 5:45 PM

"That Chait is so completely oblivious to this is one more reason why he's arguably the most over-rated "progressive" gasbag in the pundit world."

Chait's got the best batting average in the punditry world. That's why folks like him.

Posted by Petey | May 5, 2007 5:48 PM

anonymous hits on the most salient point in this piece - people like Douthout who suggest that this life is meaningless if their particular prescriptive religious dogmas don't happen to be true, or if there's no "afterlife" or Big Daddy "God" out there watching over them and waiting with a totebag full of goodies if they follow the rules and are sufficiently deferential are pathetic and I wouldn't trust them farther than I could throw them. Truly the ones we should all feel sorry for.

I'm not dissing all believers - just all believers who think that - without a defined religious belief being ultimately "true" - life is meaningless. That's a sick proposition - a bizarre combination of arrogant and empty.

Posted by brucds | May 5, 2007 5:50 PM

Chait's got the best batting average in the punditry world.

Well, second only to Goldberg; he still has the LAT column, doesn't he?

Posted by SomeCallMeTim | May 5, 2007 5:52 PM

"people like Douthout who suggest that this life is meaningless if their particular prescriptive religious dogmas don't happen to be true, or if there's no "afterlife" or Big Daddy "God" out there watching over them and waiting with a totebag full of goodies if they follow the rules and are sufficiently deferential are pathetic and I wouldn't trust them farther than I could throw them. Truly the ones we should all feel sorry for."

As an atheist, I gotta say that folks who think like this are far more deluded than folks like Douthat.

Folks who deny the basic religious impulse in humanity simply don't understand humanity particularly well.

Posted by Petey | May 5, 2007 6:08 PM

Chait's got the best batting average in the punditry world. That's why folks like him.

No, no; that's wrong. Pundit admiration is at the confluence of reliability and aesthetics. The thing about Chait is that when he writes something that has a conclusion you agree with, you find yourself wishing that you had written that exact thing.

Posted by Matthew Yglesias | May 5, 2007 6:22 PM

"Folks who deny the basic religious impulse in humanity simply don't understand humanity particularly well."

I ain't brucds, but...

his characterization of "people like Douthat" did not involve any attempt to "deny the basic religious impulse in humanity." It just gave an unflattering diagnosis of the origins of that impulse.

Does brucds "understand humanity" very well? Eh, his explanation of the roots of the religious impulse is not the one I would give.

But he is, at least, *giving* one, i.e. attempting to *understand* the phenomenon. Not denying its existence.

Posted by passerby | May 5, 2007 6:23 PM

I'm not an atheist nor do I deny the religious impulse. What I deny is that anyone who isn't a sorry little shit would suggest that this life is meaningless if their traditional "God-centered" religious beliefs and the notion of Heaven, etc. etc. as a reward for having lived a "good life" on earth turn out to be a crock. Douthat is a conventional Catholic so far as I know - and I personally find his comment on the necessity of traditional theology as a meta-system to make the world meaningful repugnant and somewhat pin-headed.

Posted by brucds | May 5, 2007 6:27 PM

"Pundit admiration is at the confluence of reliability and aesthetics."

uh, boy. MY, that's the most worrisome thing I have ever heard you say.

The reason *I* admire pundits--and you among them--is because you bring facts and analysis to the picture; you change my mind by giving me well-reasoned arguments; you make me think about perspectives I had not noticed before.

Kid, you got to where you are on substance, not style. You've made a splash because you always do your homework, you read the whole report, appendix and footnotes included, and you've got the damned statistics at your fingertips to smack down bullshit when others sling it.

You know, some people have been saying this move to the big leagues might lead you to sell out, and I was on another blog defending your basic integrity and wonkishness.

But if you start admiring aesthetics, you're going to sink lower than Richard Cohen.

Posted by coach | May 5, 2007 6:29 PM

"Pundit admiration is at the confluence of reliability and aesthetics."

I'll buy that for a communion wafer.

-----

"Kid, you got to where you are on substance, not style."

Ugh. Up is not down. Matthew's got a horrible batting average. But he's fun to read even when he's wrong.

Posted by Petey | May 5, 2007 6:50 PM

"BTW, this seems quite similar to the Romney thing - you are reading WAAAAAAAAAY too much into an offhand remark.

Posted by Al | May 5, 2007 1:24 PM"

What a convenient way to make sure nobody pops your bubble.

Posted by Reality Man | May 5, 2007 7:02 PM

The philosopher C.D. Broad once ventured the opinion that he was "religiously tone-deaf". As I recall the account, Broad seemed to consider it a serious epistemic possibility, based presumably on discussions with and reading of some religious individuals whom he found credible and trustworthy, that at least some religious people experience certain states of mind which provide evidence for something godlike, divine or transcendant. Broad seemed to consider it a real possibility that the absence of such experiences in him was a genuine cognitive deficiency or impairment of some sort, like tonedeafness. William James, of course, had similar beliefs about testimony about religious expereiences, but was much less cautious about the value of this testimony.

Posted by Dan Kervick | May 5, 2007 7:04 PM

I can't say Yglesias is a great writer, but he certainly has a style that's distinctive, easily mocked even; which is what counts.

Good writing is the heart of good argument, and don't tell yourself otherwise.

"You know, some people have been saying this move to the big leagues might lead you to sell out"

LOL, who is saying this?

Posted by Korha | May 5, 2007 7:04 PM

One additional note. There's a difference between tautologically defining meta-meaning for yourself via profession of some theological construct and actually finding true and substantive meaning in living your life, which all kinds of people with all kinds of "meta-theories" manage do to with success, with elan and with dignity. This is pretty basic stuff, once you've passed the sophomore exams and can understand the distinction between - to take what might be an extreme example - the existential narrative exemplified in the life of an extraordinarily admirable man like Albert Camus and the imagined, classically "absurdist" narrative of his literary creation, Merseault. I'd argue that Camus embraced meaning in life much more profoundly than many conventional religious types who tend to retreat into pre-fabricated rhetorical strategies to sustain a sense of themselves and of "meaning".

Posted by brucds | May 5, 2007 7:12 PM

How one could look at a vengeful, genocidal god who created humans only to send the overwhelming majority of them to an eternity of suffering, and wish he were real is far beyond me. Not a day passes I don't thank God I'm an atheist, and don't have to show fealty to such a monster.

Posted by Hundred-dollar Bill | May 5, 2007 7:31 PM

There do seem to be two camps of atheists and agnostics with regard to this question. One camp are those who were "true believers," often coming from the most churchy of families. The other camp grew up in rather secular households or communities. Belonging to the second camp (parents are a father who is a lapsed Catholic and a mother who is prety much an atheist), I've never really felt any strong need to have a religious connection to some idea of a god. People in the first camp, in my experience, do seem to lament losing some feeling of belief and having a relationship with some god.

Posted by Reality Man | May 5, 2007 9:02 PM

I went through a period of extreme born-againedness when I was 15-18 or so. Those were certainly among the happiest days of my life. Part of it, of course, may be ascribed to being 15-18 years old, but really I wasn't necessarily so happy during other times of my youth and I don't think that's really the bulk of the explanation.

I certainly don't ascribe to the notion that meaning can be found only in religion, but it is a very nice thing to think that you know there is meaning to existence, and that your life reflects that meaning in each waking moment. Even though I believe now that I was energized at that time by psychological and hormonal forces, and not by the Holy Spirit, I was damn sure energized by something, and I certainly envy those who have that kind of centered certainty about life.

Not that I would ascribe any such feelings to most so-called Christians, who I think are mostly motivated by either fear or hypocrisy, or a combination of the two, as opposed to being positively driven by the spiritual.

Posted by Trickster | May 5, 2007 10:33 PM

actually, it's worse than condescending -- it's bullshit. the rove formulation was originally thought up (as far as i know) by conservatives (mainly neocons) like irving kristol who needed some kind of formulation to reach out to god-fearing, red-state americans without whom the right could never win elections. on the one hand, people like kristol (and i am sure rove) think that religion is a good thing ... for other people. it keeps the rubes in line and helps to manipulate them (see, e.g. republican party, modern history of). on the other hand, the formulation is useful way to brush aside questions of how to square one's own personal philosophy with the fact that it is significantly to variance with that of your political base without copping to the worst kind of political cynicism that republican operatives who misuse religion to win votes have been guilty of for decades.

Posted by logicat | May 6, 2007 6:16 AM

"I fill the void with sex, drugs, and pro basketball. But it's still not quite the same."

It's better.

Posted by bouncepass | May 6, 2007 7:08 AM

Or at least it's better during the playoffs. In September life seems meaningless.

Posted by bouncepass | May 6, 2007 7:28 AM

Isn't this another example of It's OK If A Republican Does It? What would happen to any Democratic candidate with mational aspirations (or even statewide aspirations in all but the bluest states) who said such a thing, however he meant it?

Posted by CJColucci | May 6, 2007 9:29 AM

Hmmm. This comment thread seems to have swerved away from the original topic (not too surprising).

It seems most likely to me that Mr. Rove simply pulled out his carefully honed talking point he had previously dreamed up if anyone questioned his faith, or his curious lack of church attendance (or prayer meetings in the Oval Office). He takes an accusation, doesn't necessarily deny it, and then turns it around to make the accuser feel morally superior (probably wasted on Mr. Hitchens, but Mr. Rove uses the tools he has available to him).

Unless, of course, anyone here thinks that Mr. Rove was actually being sincere?

As an atheist myself, I have often felt jealous of those who have had a "peak" or "religious" or "transcendent" experience, such as through meditation, speaking in tongues, pyschotropic drugs, temporal-lobe epilepsy, magnetic brain resonation, or whatever (I've tried two out of five of these... I'd love to try out a magnetic brain resonator too!). Alas, it seems that some people, and I would posit most atheists, appear to "lack" a certain ability to easily break down the internal barrier between self and other that recent neurological research has centered in the temporal lobe. Tibetan monks and Catholic nuns, for instance, have an inordinate ability to tap into the "god-spot" (the pop-science term) whenever they wish, while when Dr. Richard Dawkins had his brain tickled by neurological scientists he only reported a "headache." Perhaps this is what Mr. Rove was referring to? The fact that peyote doesn't work on him? Doubt it.

Posted by S.G.E.W. | May 6, 2007 10:47 AM

2 thoughts:
1) I can understand why Atheists might "envy" religious people. I think they're conceiving of religion as defined by the most vocal and right-wing religious individuals. Trust me, for many of us who believe in God, it is not an entirely comforting and relieving belief. We face the question of evil, sin, and meaning head on - a belief in God does not answer all those questions easily (in fact, it complicates some of them a lot). Also, even though I believe God is eternally forgiving, it's hideous to continually fail to meet the moral demands of one's faith.

2) I think it is remarkable for an atheist to so readily feed off the religious right and their sensibilities. It's not surprising, but I wonder at any atheist who has no concerns about forcing children to pray, building reproductive policy on the Bible, etc. I understand that politics makes for strange bedfellows. If you do not believe in these rules being mandated by religion, why do you think they should run everyone's life? Is it just a love of power, of tradition, or authority?

Posted by MDtoMN | May 6, 2007 1:20 PM

Believing in the existence of a god is different from having faith in that god. Re-read your kierkigard - esp. Fear and Trembling.

To be a person of faith requires more than a knowledge of the existence of something to believe in. It requires that you do things - often against reason or whatever you usually use to discern good from bad - because you believe god told you to do them. It requires that you rest all your eggs in his basket, if you will...

If you know an all powerful judeo-christian-islamic god exists but still make decisions based on criteria other than what you think that god told you to do, then you lack faith. If, further, you buy the protestant christian line that it is your faith that brings you into god's good graces, you'd look up to people with faith.

Rove could (in theory) beleive that the judeo-christian-islamist god exists and believe that the only way to avoid the hell he heard about in sunday school is to do whatever that god tells him to do, but still choose what to do based on his machivellian, power-consolidating calculations instead of what his god tells him to do, and so from his point of view he lacks faith and wants it. Since he knows he should act from faith and doesn't, he considers people who do act on faith to be his superiors. That's not condescending, That's tragic and sad.

That's not to say I like him or actually believe him. But there is a more-common-than-anyone-would-like point of view from which Rove could actually mean what he said.

Posted by The Black Monk | May 6, 2007 7:04 PM

I suppose this may be a rather niave question, but as a practicing Catholic who has drunk gallons of the cool aid and is really quite giddy over it (mystical experience of things is quite a trip) I really cannot understand what you guys are talking about when you assert life has meaning apart from God..

I mean, what exactly is your being and personhood predicated on, in your minds & experience? What absolutely distinguishes you from a tapeworm, morally or in any other sense? Is it really merely a matter of degree, a quantitative (mere evolutionary) distinction, rather than an absolute (ontological) one? I mean, in a utilitarian calculus, do we really have no more moral value than a piglet, as Peter Singer says?

Is your personhood an illusion to you? Are we in any sense eternal or transcendent? Do love and altruism exist, or are they mere evolved, conditioned responses, as I think Dawkins asserts?

I get really confused, and wonder if you guys are being honest with me, or yourselves. Because, you really don't "have to believe in a great big sky bully to think your life has meaning." I mean, wow, everytime I hear an "atheist" say something such as that, my head swims. We are in different universes, you and I.. To me God is no bully. What you cast negatively, I see as blessing upon blessing. Sin is about freedom. Suffering and death prove our love. Christ's crucifixition is a demonstration how to love, etc. Everything is miraculous. Especially kindness, cooperation, symbiosis & science, which merely confirms my faith, and never contradicts it (Pere Georges LeMaitre, Eveque Nicolas Steno, Pere Guillaume d'Ockham, Pere Nicolaus Copernicus, et Blaise Pascal, parmi toutes les autres, priez pour nous..)*

Anyway, your skepticism and sneering wearies and befuddles me.. and worries me. We grow progressively more alienated from the source, and I'm pretty sure the ultimate consequence will not be pleasant.

But that's me just being credulous, small minded and gloomy, right? Just like Hitler was a model Catholic, and Stalin wasn't a rank materialist.

Well I got y'alls back on one thing: I agree- and have always agreed - with you guys on Rove & the pendejos Repubes. I'm all Al Smith Democrat. But there are certain things that I will never accept (war, porn, untrammeled capitalism, any other denial of the radical inherent dignity of the human person) and so I am politically alienated. It's too bad you all are apparently for the most part such crap head relativists & nihilists, that we can't get along. Tant pis.

My questions are honest ones though. I really do not get you.

*by the by, the entire intelligent design/creationism debate is nonsense, born of stunted rationalism & nominalism. Which is a heresy that came to us from Islam (Ibn Rushd & Ibn Sina's scholasticism) - prot fixation on the Bible apes the Islamic attitude toward the Quran. But for the Christian the Word became Flesh, not Book. The entire debate is bulls*t, in other words. And intelligent design is an absolute theological reality, not science. Science is mere contingent knowledge, always open to revision. Your personhood, on theother hand is an objective theological (and so philosophical) reality, one which - like God - is known intutively, by faith. Which is far higher order of knowledge and truth.

Just so you know.

Posted by Charles Curtis | May 7, 2007 1:02 AM

If someone speaks for God, they are either a crook or an egomaniac. God is not a commodity.

Posted by John Hanks | May 7, 2007 1:03 PM

I remember in high school I had a very Christian literature teacher. One of my friends, an atheist, was talking openly about his religious beliefs. I think he was proffering himself as a counter-example: "Well, what about me? I don't believe in God."

Her response was, "That's your problem." Try as we might to point out that this was offensive ("It's not a 'problem' if I don't believe in God.") she just couldn't understand.

Posted by Jesse | May 7, 2007 1:38 PM

it's obviously his attempt at assuaging his right wing supporters, who "love the sinner (Rove) but hate the sin (atheism)"

if he weren't so "good" at what he does, they'd have nothing to do with him...

Posted by Pete Bogs | May 7, 2007 1:41 PM

" I really cannot understand what you guys are talking about when you assert life has meaning apart from God.."

Bizarre, scary stuff. Exactly what I was talking about when I suggested that Douhat was an empty pinhead for suggesting same and that people who can't comprehend meaning in life if their theological constructs happen to be horseshit strike me as lacking in either moral or philosophical imagination.

Posted by brucds | May 7, 2007 3:27 PM

Fundamentalist religion is a dodge for shirking social responsibility. Listen to those people talk: "Oh terrible, it must be God's will! There's nothing we can do about it so just let it be; it's a sign of the end times."

I was brought up in a Christianity that taught us to make the world a better place by positive action, but the organization still wasn't liberal enough for me. I'm a pagan now, and the world makes more sense.

Rove's comments are fitting to his previous behavior. He's a user, he'll use everybody he can and then fuck them over when he's done.

Posted by Jimmy Johnson | May 7, 2007 3:46 PM

Let's consider a completely different reading of Rove's offhand remark than has been advanced so far in this thread.

The notion of being "born again" and "having a personal relationship with Jesus" - i.e., of having had some sort of epiphany or conversion experience is, apparently, quite widespread amongst members of certain Christian denominations. These tend to be those that practise adult baptism and follow dispensationalist theology - Southern Baptists, Pentecostals, and other branches of evangelical Protestantism that are predominant within the so-called religious Right.

I know nothing of Rove's family background or the religious tradition within which he was brought up - if any - but no doubt he has never had the "born again" experience. He could simply be one of those many mainline Protestants or Roman Catholics for whom religious observance is viewed in terms of duty rather than of enthusiasm. These denominations view that sort of dutifulness as sufficient.

It is particularly to be noted that the "born again" claim the word "Christian" exclusively for themselves, and deny it to the sort of person who was baptised as an infant and, though occasionally observant of Christian rituals, feels no reason to undergo the ceremony again as an adult or to "testify" of his beliefs with every breath.

Rove is probably saying that he's an outsider in a crowd of folks who have personal relationships with Jesus. That doesn't mean that he is an "atheist" with all the connotations of aggressive scoffing that term seems to carry. He's probably just an ordinary indifferent or lapsed member of a mainline church, or a deist or agnostic, who sees no reason to deny the value of religion as a source - perhaps the only source - of moral guidance for the bulk of humanity.

Posted by Mike | May 7, 2007 5:10 PM

Charles--

I can't answer all of your metaphysical questions regarding how atheists view life, how they view themselves compared to tapeworms and so on, especially since I'm not an atheist, more of a disinterested non-theist, and I'm not much for philosophy. I'd venture to say though that many non-theists simply are not interested on predicating their personhood to anything other than evolution, or attributing morality to anything other than free will. But I'm not a philosopher and I don't want to debate or anything with you about that (I'd probably not argue very coherently).

Anyway, I can address your question about how a non-theist finds meaning in life apart from a Supreme Being... simply put I find meaning in life in doing fulfilling things that I enjoy, for example in pursuing professional ambitions, meeting interesting people, exploring a foreign country, reading a great book or listening to great music, wow it's a really long list of things that enrich the part of me that is, I guess, spiritual, and none of those things involve God. Also, while it never really bothered me that I am nothing more than a grain of sand on the beach of the universe, or however that old Carl Sagan quote goes, I am frequently in total awe at the magnificence of nature and outer space in general. I had the privilege of visiting a remote mountain area of Central Asia a few years ago where the stars filled up the night sky so much I could barely see outer space. That was amazing and inspiring, and yes the whole experience tickled the spiritual part of my brain, even if I didn't interpret it to be the voice of a Supreme Being. I can hardly claim to speak for all or any atheists but maybe this shines some light on what keeps us non-theists going!

Posted by Song-Kol | May 7, 2007 9:15 PM