The passage in Matt. 19:26 where Jesus states, “With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible,”
renders the autonomous (i.e. : possessing of free will), human
individual powerless. It is much like the Alcoholics Anonymous mantra,
“...accept the things I cannot change....” i.e.: powerless against
alcoholism, only through Higher Power can the “disease” be conquered.
This “disease” ideology comes direct from a Judeo-Christian paradigm,
especially the puritanical Protestant ethic on which Plymouth Rock was
founded. “Sin” is supposedly moral corruption. Anton Lavey would have
us believe that sin is what makes life worth living. Let us get one
thing straight, sin is a product of ideology, nothing more. It has
nothing to do with morality. Karl Marx said that religion serves the
interests of the ruling class. This is clear when we examine the “Ham's
curse” argument for racist slavery. Economic imperatives are the
driving force behind religious ideology. The concept of sin, therefore
(a product of ideology), was invented for one purpose; to keep the
peasants from revolting. That is not a new concept, and perhaps not
even a surprising one.
Sin's, the evil twin, has a “good” counterpart: virtue and a promise of a heavenly (or restored paradise Earth as in the Jehovah's Witness case) reward. Matt. 6:20 says to “store treasures in heaven.” This is directly opposed to the dialectical materialist notion of “heaven on Earth, now!” Joe Hill wrote in the song the Preacher and the Slave, “You will eat, bye and bye,
In that glorious land above the sky; Work and pray, live on hay, You'll get pie in the sky when you die” followed by the dialectical response, “THAT'S A LIE!” Joe Hill then makes a plea for individuals/communities to take responsibility for their own lot in life in the final chorus, “You will eat, bye and bye, When you've learned how to cook and how to fry; Chop some wood, 'twill do you good Then you'll eat in the sweet bye and bye”
By declaring oneself an individual with moral autonomy one takes responsibility for one's actions; as opposed to the “all in God's plan/God works in mysterious ways” cliché of the religious Christians. That is not to say that the individual is the central unit by which society must be structured. Or more specifically that one can really do anything by oneself (the old cliché “no man is an island”). On the contrary, the greatest achievements of mankind have only been through cooperation with one another. Even the animals have learned this according to Kropotkin. In Billy Bragg's version of There is Power in a Union, “...it all amounts to nothing if together we don't stand....”
The moral atheist is an anomaly to the devout because they assume that without a concept of God there are no morals. Vladimir Bartol was right in pronouncing that if “nothing is true everything is permitted.” However, atheists do not dismiss truth. The question the dialectical materialist would ask is “who's truth?” To many atheists the truth is that God inhibits moral praxis. Slavoj Zizek writes that when the apostle Paul stated in Gal. 3:28, “There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus,” he was not being inclusive. On the contrary, he was expressing exclusive universalism. A comment should also be made here regarding the “many Gods objection” to Pascal's Wager. Again, the question arises, “who's truth?”
Back to praxis, Gramsci wrote in the Prison Diaries that those who engage in religious praxis, that is work such as the Catholic Workers do, are far removed from transformative, productive, revolutionary praxis. He writes that most Christians who engage in work with the poor believe that there should remain at least one or two poor people in the world at all times so as not to prove Jesus wrong when he stated that there will always be rich and poor. Again, this is exclusivism.
Finally, I would like to make a note about anthropology. Franz Boas' concept of ethnocentrism is perhaps the best contribution the study of anthropology offered to the 20th century. This is relevant because religion is steeped in ethnocentrism. Atheism is not innocent in this either. Nor is Marxism. Any IDEOLOGY that seeks the moral high ground is guilty of ethnocentrism. However, cultural relativism only goes so far. One cannot simply accept exploitation and violations of human rights on the grounds of cultural relativism. This argument is not new, nor is it surprising. The relevance of this argument to the above discussion is this: once again - “who's truth?” Each person has a lens through which we see the world. 1 Corinthians 13:12 says we see “through a glass darkly.” Nobody is absolutely right because nobody has all the answers. However, that does not mean that one cannot proceed as though one is right. Confidence wins friends and isolates the enemies. There is also nothing wrong with having enemies. However, one must remember that we are none of us free of hypocrisy or the occasional lapse in moral judgment.
Sin's, the evil twin, has a “good” counterpart: virtue and a promise of a heavenly (or restored paradise Earth as in the Jehovah's Witness case) reward. Matt. 6:20 says to “store treasures in heaven.” This is directly opposed to the dialectical materialist notion of “heaven on Earth, now!” Joe Hill wrote in the song the Preacher and the Slave, “You will eat, bye and bye,
In that glorious land above the sky; Work and pray, live on hay, You'll get pie in the sky when you die” followed by the dialectical response, “THAT'S A LIE!” Joe Hill then makes a plea for individuals/communities to take responsibility for their own lot in life in the final chorus, “You will eat, bye and bye, When you've learned how to cook and how to fry; Chop some wood, 'twill do you good Then you'll eat in the sweet bye and bye”
By declaring oneself an individual with moral autonomy one takes responsibility for one's actions; as opposed to the “all in God's plan/God works in mysterious ways” cliché of the religious Christians. That is not to say that the individual is the central unit by which society must be structured. Or more specifically that one can really do anything by oneself (the old cliché “no man is an island”). On the contrary, the greatest achievements of mankind have only been through cooperation with one another. Even the animals have learned this according to Kropotkin. In Billy Bragg's version of There is Power in a Union, “...it all amounts to nothing if together we don't stand....”
The moral atheist is an anomaly to the devout because they assume that without a concept of God there are no morals. Vladimir Bartol was right in pronouncing that if “nothing is true everything is permitted.” However, atheists do not dismiss truth. The question the dialectical materialist would ask is “who's truth?” To many atheists the truth is that God inhibits moral praxis. Slavoj Zizek writes that when the apostle Paul stated in Gal. 3:28, “There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus,” he was not being inclusive. On the contrary, he was expressing exclusive universalism. A comment should also be made here regarding the “many Gods objection” to Pascal's Wager. Again, the question arises, “who's truth?”
Back to praxis, Gramsci wrote in the Prison Diaries that those who engage in religious praxis, that is work such as the Catholic Workers do, are far removed from transformative, productive, revolutionary praxis. He writes that most Christians who engage in work with the poor believe that there should remain at least one or two poor people in the world at all times so as not to prove Jesus wrong when he stated that there will always be rich and poor. Again, this is exclusivism.
Finally, I would like to make a note about anthropology. Franz Boas' concept of ethnocentrism is perhaps the best contribution the study of anthropology offered to the 20th century. This is relevant because religion is steeped in ethnocentrism. Atheism is not innocent in this either. Nor is Marxism. Any IDEOLOGY that seeks the moral high ground is guilty of ethnocentrism. However, cultural relativism only goes so far. One cannot simply accept exploitation and violations of human rights on the grounds of cultural relativism. This argument is not new, nor is it surprising. The relevance of this argument to the above discussion is this: once again - “who's truth?” Each person has a lens through which we see the world. 1 Corinthians 13:12 says we see “through a glass darkly.” Nobody is absolutely right because nobody has all the answers. However, that does not mean that one cannot proceed as though one is right. Confidence wins friends and isolates the enemies. There is also nothing wrong with having enemies. However, one must remember that we are none of us free of hypocrisy or the occasional lapse in moral judgment.
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