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Supplement to Steinruckens Secularlisms Ongoing Debt to Christianity

By Tyler Vela

In his recent post in the online journalAmerican Thinkercalled Secularism Ongoing Debt to

Christianity, Secular Atheist and author John D. Steinrucken made quite a surprising admission. One

only need to read the title of the article to see that what followed was a drastic departure from the

normal anti-religious rhetoric coming from more prominent Atheists and Secularists. And what a change

indeed. Rather than claiming that religion poisons everything, Steinrucken actually asserts that

religion, more specifically the Judeo-Christian conviction, actually is the efficient cause for the wide-

spread liberty and freedom that secularism has enjoyed in the West since its inception. Not only does he

assert that Secularism was fostered in what could loosely be called Christendom, but actually that the

fate of Western Secularism is intertwined with the survival of the Judeo-Christian worldview in the West

as well. As goes the latter, so goes the former as it were.

What is most striking about his article is the forthright admission of the inability of Secularism to ground

any kind of moral standard. This has been a topic of interest on RL for quite some time now, and on this,

Steinrucken seems to be on the side of the faithful. Score one for the home team. Now, before all my

fellow theists get too elated, Steinrucken is not making the case that such morals are REAL, only that theBELIEF in objective morals, such as can only be grounded by religious convictions about the justice of

God, objective truth, and the real and universal value of human persons, is pivotal to the survival of a

free Western society.

To that end he says, Those who doubt the effect of religion on morality should seriously ask the

question: Just what are the immutable moral laws of secularism? Be prepared to answer, if you are

honest, that such laws simply do not exist! The best answer we can ever hear from secularists to this

question is a hodgepodge of strained relativist talk of situational ethics. They can cite no overriding

authority other than that of fashion. For the great majority in the West, it is the Judeo-Christian tradition

which offers a template assuring a life of inner peace toward the world at large -- a peace which

translates to a workable liberal society.

Well put. Later he even goes so far as to say, Secularism has never offered the people a practical

substitute for religion. He briefly alludes to the failed attempt at Secular utopias that ended up causing

some of the worst crimes against humanity ever perpetrated in the history of mankind. Those secular

attempts for utopia, when actually put to the test, have not merely come to naught. Attempts during

those two centuries to put into practice utopian visions have caused huge sufferings. Sadly, we have

no want of examples that affirm his statementStalins Russia, Maos China, Hitlers Germany, Hoxhas

Albania, Castros Cuba, Pol Pots Cambodia, and on and on. It is no small thing that the most secular

century has been, hands down, the bloodiest century in human historya fulfillment of Nietzsches dark

prediction that the death of belief God would mark the beginning of the most violent era in human

history. People would replace their faith in God with faith in the statebarbaric nationalistic

brotherhoods as he called them.

We get a sense that Steinrucken has read Nietzsche and has imagined the same fate. What most people

dont know is that Nietzsche did not only make a prediction about the 20th

century, but also the 21st

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and it doesnt get any better. Nietzsche saw that the 20th

century would at the very least have some

residual moral sentiment left over from the 19th

century and such a sentiment would curb the

barbarism. The 21st

century however would have no such sentiment. He predicted a total eclipse of

values. If it was so easy for the Secular Utopias to marginalize, then criminalize, then euthanize vast

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swaths of their citizens even with residual values, how much more easy will it be to do so when values

are entirely pass? However, where Nietzsche saw the inevitable, Steinrucken desires to avoid such a

societal collapse.

Here again I must remind my fellow theists not to get too excited. Steinrucken is not advocating for

some widespread conversion to faith. His point is that it is in the secularists best interest to see to it

that the moral grounding found in the Judeo-Christian tradition is preserved. This is because should

secularism do away with that foundation, and then one day find itself in disfavor and itself under the

thumb of some radical ideologue hell-bent on purging society of the godless and the infidel, the

secularist will have no one to defend them because no one will be left to decry the real injustice of it all.

I will end where he ends, It is not critical that they themselves believe, only that they should publicly

hold in high esteem the institutions of Christianity and Judaism, and to respect those who do believe

and to encourage and to give leeway to those who, in truth, will be foremost in the trenches defending

us against those who would have us all bow down to a different and unaccommodating faith.

Article found at: http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/03/secularisms_ongoing_debt_to_ch.html