Rocco Buttiglione, who resigned as Italian candidate for EU commissioner last week, now believes he can turn his political defeat into victory and form new religious movement in Europe (see related afoe post here). According to the Guardian –
At a debate entitled “The trial of the Catholic witch” in Milan’s Teatro Nuovo on Saturday, Mr Buttiglione said what happened to him in the EU was “a gift from God”, which he hoped would force debate over the religious discrimination in “politically correct Europe”.
He said he had received thousands of letters of support from sympathisers across Europe and from Muslim and Jewish leaders in Italy. “You can’t have a political community without a conscience and without values,” he said, inspired by the role of the Christian vote in the US election.
Very true. Let me repeat that: You can’t have a political community without a conscience and without values. It’s just that both terms are simply labels whose meanings are as individual as it gets.
And we shall keep it that way.
Buttiglione is as entitled as anyone else to seek election and see how much public support he has.
Buttiglione is as entitled as anyone else to seek election and see how much public support he has.
The European Parliament had a mandate to veto him, because they are the democratically elected representatives of the people. If he and his party put up candidate and win future elections, they will be able to claim a democratic mandate for their ideas. Conversely, if the voters don’t like their ideas, then they will have no democratic mandate.
But will there ever be a common view? You are describing a parliamentary system of government, yet there are no common parties.
There is no need for common parties, in fact, I think that’s one of the great beauties of the EP. It means that the MEPS tend to work out coalitions on every single issue, sometimes across geographical boundaries on ideological lines, sometimes the other way ’round, which makes for a lively and interesting parliamentarianism [Is that a word?].
I still think I would have preferred Mr B inside the tent pissing out.
“You can?t have a political community without a conscience and without values,?
So if you don’t believe in god you don’t have values?
Everyone has values. Aethism is just another religion.
“Everyone has values. Aethism is just another religion.”
Well, no. The absence of religion may be many things, but it is not its own religion. Nor does it have its own (shared) set of values. Not all atheists have common standards– how could they? The whole point is to derive your moral values from something *besides* religion. And, by the way, not all religious types (I am one) believe that private values have a place in public policy.
I hear this sentiment *frequently* used to defend the erosion of the separation between church and state– “We don?t have a separation– we?re just ruled by the athiest church.” The logic is silly.
OK, who will speak for the minority?
If this is taken to be a precedent that regional views are subordinate to the parliamentary majority, how is the commission supposed to represent the members?
Why would removing a sitting comission that has screwed up be harder than blocking a new comission? That makes no sense.
c gilbert,
I disagree. I take you’re point that different aethists do not
necessarily have the same values. On the other hand neither do
different people belonging to a formal religion. Perhaps it
might be said that aethists don’t join an organization and therefore
they have less in common than those that do.
That sounds good in theory but in practice I’m not sure it’s
true. In practice it sure seems like many aethists (not all)
share many ideas with other aethists. Now why would that be?
It could be that some ideas just logically go together or it
could be your common aethist does not independently invent his
thinking but instead is part of a larger community and to be
honest joined that community. I don’t see how this is significantly
different from someone joining a church.
Someone once told me, and I don’t know whether it’s true (or
in what language it was true), that in the middle ages the
word “religion” meant simply “a community of like-minded individuals.”
If that’s correct, I don’t see how that meaning is much different than
what it means now. It seems an apt description of what the word really
amounts to in the U.S.
It’s also not at all clear to me why the person who does not
believe in a god or gods should be privileged over the one who
does, and yet that seems to be the constant assumption of many
I encounter on the internet. Another meme encountered over and
over seems to be the idea that religion is the source of the world’s
ills. And I say assumption because rarely is it explained just
why this idea makes sense or if it is explained the ‘explanation’
I’ve encountered seems to be risibly full of holes, such as listing
atrocities committed by people belonging to various religions
throughout history.
c gilbert, you said, “I hear this sentiment *frequently* used to
defend the erosion of the separation between church and state…”
Actually in the U.S. “separation between church and state” did not
mean the state was anti-religious or even that the state shouldn’t
promote religion, far from it. Instead it meant that the federal
government should not promote one organized religion over another.
It is more or less possible to do that. On the other hand if the
idea were that we were not to promote one unorganized religion
over another, that would be difficult or impossible to do, because
clearly at all times some values are being advanced over others.
That idea of promoting churches in general but not one promoting
one church over another worked out reasonably well. It resulted in
a diversity of different beliefs, without one ever being strong
enough to eliminate the others. The idea that the state should be
anti-Christian, which is the usual form this takes in schools in the
U.S., is quite a different story.
When you have a powerful state, employing among other things a
significant percentage of the population, taking a position against
a religion or group of religions it has a big impact. Even though
there is no usual church behind it, the state itself becomes a kind
of church and a singularly unbalencedly powerful one at that.
It’s my understanding that many european countries have never formally
had “separation between church and state” because many places, nominally,
there is a national religion. It seems to me that if we take out
the nominals things haven’t changed that much because the new state
religion clearly is aethism. And to see the core beliefs and values
of your common aethist gathered together in one place I think we need
look no further than the proposed EU constitution.
Atheism.
Atheism.
Atheism.
Atheist.
Atheist.
Atheist.
Atheism is the opposite of theism. Theism is the belief that there is a god, and atheism is the belief that there is no god. A theist believes there is a god, an atheist doesn’t.
Unlike religions which have creed, catechisms, holy books and central tenets which the believer must accept to be e member, the only feature atheists have in common is that they don’t believe in a god. You can have atheist fascists, communists, libertarians, flat-earthers, scientists, bigamists, celibates, Big-Endians, or Little-Endians. They are all atheists, as long as none of them believe in a god.
Although atheism is strictly a disbelief in God, it is often also used to mean one who doesn’t accept the foundation of the theistic religions. Now, if people who don’t accept religion do themselves constitute a religion, that makes them all hypocrites. And, as such name calling if off the menu at afoe, the original premise must be wrong.
Therefore, atheism can not be a religion. QED.
Ray,
You have a point and I’m sure what I’m trying to say could be
improved on and be stated more rigorously, but doesn’t the answer
to your question lie in the words you use?
Take communism. Yes a good communist is also atheist, but
communism implies a lot more than that. A true-believing
communist believes a whole host of things. And if we were to
speak of the religion of the communist wouldn’t the appropriate
name for that religion be “communism” instead of “atheism?”
Doesn’t “communism” cover more territory, give a better fit, and
describe the “community of like minds” this person belongs to
better?
Take fascism. Yes some fascists were atheists, a lot weren’t.
The two communities are orthogonal; one does not imply the other.
If a person strongly identifies with both, then that would be
two religions instead of one, wouldn’t it? And that is possible
with people, I think.
The same is true for “libertarians, flat-earthers, scientists,
bigamists, celibates.” None of these things imply atheism. Your
are more merely pointing out that it is possible for people to
belong to more than one community at the same time.
“Big-Endians” versus “Little-Endians,” this is a reference to
how numbers are encoded on a computer and I doubt either alternative
has attracted a religious following.
So you’ve pointed out one schism within the church of atheism,
communist versus non-communist atheists. Is this a surprise?
Since when have religious schisms been news? Of course there
can be more than one atheist community.
After a schism there are two were there was ones one. Don’t really think you can call it a schism in the Church of atheisme.
As they were never one
Mark,
your contention that atheism is a religion, or at least a sort-of-religion, doesn’t work. Not in English, anyway.
I used to be an atheist. This meant that I necessarily had in common with other atheists precisely nothing, beyond lack of belief in a deity. (I also had a very strong anti-clerical streak, which many but by no means all atheists share; but so what? I am a theist now, and still have this streak; if anything, it has grown stronger.)
Even if you want to make the meaning of ‘religion’ extremely broad, to include things that have nothing to do with a putative deity, it’s hard to squeeze atheism into the definition. Some people have used orthodox communism as an example of a non-religious ‘religion’. I’d dispute even that, but at least an orthodox communist would have had an overarching system of beliefs about why the world is the way it is and how one ought to behave. Atheists have no such unifying set of beliefs. (They aren’t even necessarily against religion. Most atheists recognise that religion can motivate people to do good. Some atheists of a ‘Straussian’ bent think it contemptible to believe in a god, but very useful that the canaille should do so.)
Germans think of religion as a large subset of what they call Weltanschauungen, ways of viewing the world. (The word has been adopted into English, but its meaning in that language is much broader and fuzzier.) The German language expressly recognises the existence of ‘religiousoid’ systems that do not fit within the generally accepted definition of ‘religion’. (And Weltanschauung-communities qualify for some of the same benefits and official recognition available to religions proper.) But for all that, it does not call these belief systems ‘religions’. I can certainly imagine people establishing an explicitly atheist Weltanschauung in Germany, even opening schools for their children etc. (Maybe the Ethical Culture Society would be a good US analogue.) But it would not be regarded as a religion; and by no means would it include all atheists.
Of course, ‘religion’, like ‘pornography’, is one of those words that’s hard to define with precision; but, like Justice Stewart, one knows it when one sees it. Christians sometimes say, ‘Buddhism isn’t really a religion. After all, it has no god.’ I once read a Jewish participant in an interfaith dialogue satirising this view in a remark to a Buddhist participant: ‘Christianity isn’t really a religion. After all, it has no dietary restrictions.’ But joking aside, I think we would all agree: Christianity and Judaism and Buddhism are religions. Atheism really isn’t.
Mrs. Tilton,
Likely there is something wrong with my assertion
that atheism is a religion. Possibly in asserting
that while I may have managed to capture a partial truth
it has nonetheless gone awry in other directions.
So I’ll try to reframe it and approach it from a new
direction.
What is the point of having a church-state separation,
of barring by the highest law in the land, the state
from favoring one religion over another?
Is it that there is something uniquely wicked about
religion? I think not. However popular that point
of view may be now, I don’t think it’s a legitimate
one.
The idea is instead to institutionalize a certain
degree of tolerance. It’s predictable that people
will disagree but in a democracy you want to channel
that disagreement into more fleeting issues of the
day and as much as possible not make it about ethnicity
or religion or enduring differences where the victory
of one side means an long-lasting suppression of
the other.
Whether atheism is a religion or not, once the state
favors it over other beliefs, once it’s taught in the
schools and the schools and government preach that
religions are wrong, then “atheism” has begun to acquire
the same sort of destructive, intolerant, divisive
and conformist properties that a religion would have
if it were serving in the same place.
Further however many varieties of atheism there may
be once a government has begun to propagate it, it
will inevitably acquire one particular meaning insofar
as that government is concerned.
Mark, you are wrong on two counts.
First, it makes no sense to claim that fascists and communists are equally churches within atheism, and that the core beliefs and values of atheism are gathered in the EU constitution. How can the core beliefs of fascism an communism _both_ be in the EU contitution?
Secondly, the state does not favour atheism over other beliefs. States that ban the display of the ten commandments do not permit the display of signs saying “There is no God”. They don’t prevent teachers from leading prayers in class, but permit them to lead chants of “There is no God”. Atheism is _not_ taught in schools, nor does the government preach that religion is wrong. If you seriously believe any of these things, you are very, very wrong.
Atheism is not a religion, end of story.
Ray,
On your second point I disagree, on your first I simply did not say
that.
Mark, you said that the core beliefs of atheism were in the EU constitution, and that communist and non-communist atheists are a schism in the church of atheism. Which side of this schism is in the constitution?
On the second point, show me a state that teaches atheism in schools.
Mark,
you ask, what is the point of church/state separation? There isn’t any, really, unless the state professes to be non-confessional. The United States does.
When you wrote above that the 1st amendment to the US constitution means only that the federal government may not promote one religion over another, you are correct, as long as you are writing prior to 1868. Constitutional scholars can (and do) debate the extent to which the post-Civil War amendments extended application of the Bill of Rights to the several states, but few would seriously argue that the 1st does not so apply (and if they do, they have a tough job of persuasion ahead of them given the history of Supreme Court jurisprudence).
You could point out that the US is much firmer on church/state separation than most European countries, and you’d be right. This is one of the areas where I think the US is far ahead of (most of) Europe. Lots of European countries still have an established church. In some that don’t, a church (or, in the case of Germany, two churches) are de facto, if not de jure, establishments. True, the commitment of these countries to theri established religion is quite notional. Nobody’s religious freedom is impaired in the UK, for example, by the establishment of the Church of England. (To be pedantic, I should note that this statement isn’t quite true. Your religious freedom is impaired if you are the monarch or an heir to the throne, unless you abdicate or renounce your right of succession. And there is no established UK church; two of the UK’s constituent countries have no established church, and the two that do have different ones.)
Even so, Europe’s purely notional establishments would be a constitutional impossibility in the US, at both federal and state level. And that’s how it should be. I would very much like to see European countries following America’s lead here. Even Ireland, which rejects the establishment of a state church and has long since removed the constitutional ‘special position’ of the RC church (and where the de facto social influence and prestige of that church has evaporated dramatically over the past decade), still maintains a level of church/state interconnectivity (primarily in education) that would be unthinkable in the US. (It would be simple-minded, BTW, to say that the current Irish system shows that ‘the catholic church still runs things’; among the strongest supporters of this system are the protestant minorities, who view church administration of schools as key to maintaining their cultural identities.)
Lots of people in the US seem to think that insisting on church/state separation is somehow an attack on religion. It’s a pity they are so deeply uninformed. Separation is part of the foundation of the American republic. It’s true that Thomas Jefferson was all for it, and he was an atheist. (Well; not really an atheist, but about as close to one as you’d have found in those days.) But consider Roger Williams, the founder of the (famously tolerant) Rhode Island colony. Jefferson feared the church would corrupt the state. There’s something to that fear. Williams, a devout Christian, feared the state would corrupt the church; and from a Christian standpoint there’s even more reason to fear that. James Madison, architect of America’s separation of church and state, understood and synthesised both views.
I think the point about church/state separation is that religion should be viewed as part of the inviolable private sphere of the individual. It’s too important to let the state have a say in the matter. The state should take no position on religion, for or against; that’s not its realm of competence. Religion should, if you will, be invisible to the state. The state should not establish any church (or churches), nor should it forbid any. It should not require any religious practice or affirmation of belief, nor should it seek to restrain these. It should impose no religious test (nor demand rejection of religion) in setting the rules for eligibility to public office. Its laws should neither favour nor discriminate against the believers of any religion (or no religion). It should provide no financial support to churches, whether directly or by collecting taxes from members on behalf of a church.
I suspect atheists and anti-clericals would be happy with that set-up. Believers should be even happier. Adherence (even purely nominal adherence) to a church is in steep decline in much of Europe, and perhaps more so in countries with a notional establishment than in others. America, by contrast, is famously religious. Astute enemies of religion have always known that, if you want to emsaculate faith, you don’t persecute preachers; you put them on the payroll.
Mrs. Tilton, quote,
“Lots of people in the US seem to think that
insisting on church/state separation is somehow
an attack on religion.”
No. Or to put it another way I’ve never encountered
a person in the U.S., even on the internet, advocating
a state religion. I think most people, including
the overwhelming majority of religious people,
would be horrified by that idea.
You demonstrate a good knowledge of U.S. history
and some of the ideas behind the constitution though
there’s a detail you’ve missed. The church/state
separation was only a restriction on the power of
the federal government and individual states were
allowed to mandate state religions which in fact
many of them did. It’s interesting that in a matter
of decades all the states with state religions (they
were different religions) gave them up, even though
in each case a majority of their residents would
have been belonged to them at the time their state
preference was given up.
Speculating I would imagine it would have to do with
different states competing for immigrants and growth
and seeing these mandated religions as being a
handicap. It may also be that many american
intellectuals would have understood and agreed with
your statement that “Astute enemies of religion have
always known that, if you want to emsaculate faith,
you don’t persecute preachers; you put them on the
payroll.” Since they weren’t by and large opposed
to religion they acted accordingly.
But that’s kind of digression, interesting though it
may be.
When I asked the question, “What is the point of
having a church-state separation…?”
I gave an answer:
“The idea is instead to institutionalize a certain
degree of tolerance. It’s predictable that people
will disagree but in a democracy you want to channel
that disagreement into more fleeting issues of the
day and as much as possible not make it about ethnicity
or religion or enduring differences where the victory
of one side means an long-lasting suppression of
the other.”
In all of this I’m not just talking about the U.S., I’m
talking more about Europe. It’s in europe that the
anti-religious ideas seem strongest and are most
deeply rooted in the state.
You can be for church-state separation as I am,
and at the same time be against an institutionalized
anti-religious advocacy, as I am. Whether or not
a community of like-minded atheists is strictly-speaking
a religion it creates some of the same problems that
a religion would when it becomes the state’s and in
particular the schools’ mindset.
Mark,
you’re right about the US constitution prohibiting only the fed. gov’t from establishing a church. Or rather, as I said, you were right, prior to 1868. The post-Civil War amendments extended many constitutional prohibitions, including this one, to the states.
The school founded by the putative atheist group that I described would be a private school, not a state school. By US standards, Germany has very few private schools. Some of the private schools are religious (convent schools and the like), some are run by Weltanschauung-communities, some are neither. I don’t know of any expressly atheist schools, though I daresay there might be some. One sets of schools run by a Weltanschauung are the Waldorfschulen, associated with the followers of Rudolf Steiner, a quirky but hardly atheistic philosopher of education. (I believe there are also Waldorf Schools in the US, though of course the American state does not recognise the Steiner movement as a quasi-religious Weltanschauung.) There’s little enough danger that the state schools will embody atheism: religious instruction (RC or Lutheran, take your pick) is on the curriculum and mandatory for those who don’t expressly opt out (at the parents’ wishes up to age 14; kids that age and older can decide for themselves). I don’t find this very acceptable. Surely it is not the business of the state to tell children about religion; and seriously religious parents are unlikely to find the instruction very satisfying (catholic or protestant, it tends to be of a very bland Jesus Was Nice sort).
One other thing, re: Americans not seeing church/state separation as an ‘attack on religion’: tell that to the Alabama judge who kept that 10 Commandments monument in his courtroom in deliberate violation of a federal court order, insisting that God’s law (to which the judge is no doubt specially privy) took precedence over the US constitution. Yes, I know: he was removed from office (and the very religious William Pryor helped ensure this), and the business with the monument was probably just a cynical ploy on the judge’s part anyway. But the many Alabamans supporting him seemed sincere enough. And they certainly seemed to think the federal court order and the judge’s impeachment, both obvious imperatives of the US constitution’s separation of church and state, to be an attack on their religion.
A question. In Britain, religious education classes were often used for discussion of current affairs. Although I would prefer to see them called current affairs discussion classes, I think this was generally a sensible thing. Does this also happen in other European countries?
Missing from this dscussion is the fact that there are atheistic religions.
Michael,
ah, if we had not removed the search button, you would be able to search for a comment thread in which we already discussed that topic…
As for Germany, or more precisely, the tiny subset of secondary ecucation in Germany I can speak of with a certain authority (private catholic denominational Gymnasium), I can tell you that religious education was used for discussion about issues with a topical relevance, say, abortion, sexual education policies, genocide, new age etc.
All this depends to an enormous extent on the teacher and the pupils.
In the German state of Brandenburg voluntary religious education has been replaced by the compulsory subject “LER” which stands for something like “life-concerning issues, ethics, religion”. Denominational religious education is still possible but only on top of LER, if I am informed correctly.
Search never worked here, or on most blogs, but it does work on some blogs seemingly using only standard MT 2.X. Odd that.