Trying to harvest fruit without a tree
Can we salvage Biblical ethics while jettisoning Biblical metaphysics?
Ezra Klein [a secular Jew]: … Even though I’m not myself religious, I’m a little bit idealistic about religion. And I feel this about my own religion, which I think should create very profound sympathy for refugees, and that has not been something I’ve seen in the past couple of years. And I think this of Christianity, where it feels to me like it should create a kind of buffer against greed and cruelty that I often see broken when it would be politically viable to break it.
Ross Douthat [a devout Catholic]: Right. Two things. One is that, yes, you are describing the story of both Judaism and Christianity’s engagement with history and fallen human nature. This is something that is in fact advertised in both the Old Testament and the New Testament and all of history since.
The story of the Jewish people in the Old Testament is not a story of people who were chosen by God and given a bunch of commandments and then obeyed them all. It’s a story of people who remained the chosen people, despite failing in every possible way, including — to fit our conversation — repeated flirtations with heathenism and paganism and idolatry.
And then you can obviously tell a similar story of the New Testament. Christians don’t have political power, but the apostles are always screwing up and messing up. And then, of course, the history of Christianity’s entanglement with political power is filled with sins and failings that — again, like this era’s set — are not atypical.
But then the second point that I want to push you on is: What kind of argument is this that you think you’re going to win with religious believers who disagree with you? You’re like: I don’t believe in your religion, but I really wish that you would follow your religion so that your politics were more aligned with mine.
That’s just not much of an argument at all. And I think, to the extent that all of liberalism, the ideology that you subscribe to, trades on inherited ideas from Christianity about morality and equality and so on, while you’ve jettisoned the portrait of the universe, the metaphysical structure that gives them meaning, I think it’s really hard from that point of view for you to get anywhere in arguments with people who still believe in that structure. Because you’re essentially saying: I’ve stripped away the conceptual framework that makes your moral ideas make sense. But now I’m going to complain that you’re not living up to your moral ideas.
I just think that’s a really weak argument.
Klein: But I’m not arguing it.
Douthat: Well, you’re saying it to me.
Klein: I’m asking you.
Douthat: I’m a Christian. I’m right here. You’re expressing sorrowful disappointment that Christians are not living up to a worldview that you think is false.
Douthat is right.
We can’t expect to keep harvesting the ethical fruits of the Biblical Story — “sympathy for refugees… a buffer against greed and cruelty” — if we kill the narrative fruit tree.
I guess proof texting and cherry picking from a religious tradition what suits one’s argument is alive and well.
You write, "We can’t expect to keep harvesting the ethical fruits of the Biblical Story — “sympathy for refugees… a buffer against greed and cruelty” — if we kill the narrative fruit tree."
Can't the narrative be a rational one, that establishing a buffer against greed and cruelty is in the best interests of both the individual and society at large? Can't atheists be good people too? Can't the meaning be that doing good feels good? Enlightened self interest?
Douthat says, "I think it’s really hard from that point of view for you to get anywhere in arguments with people who still believe in that structure."
It's really hard to get anywhere with any arguments in any circumstance. Logic is a very weak medium.