On Atheist Criticisms of Libertarian Christianity

322 days ago / Ian Huyett

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------I believe that a Christian worldview is not only congruent with, but
necessitates, libertarian policy positions. Im at regular odds, then, with
people who charge that Christianity is incongruous or incompatible with
political liberty.
Conservative Christians, who I find to be widely and increasingly amenable to
my arguments, are less and less among this group. Rather, it now seems to
be made up largely of Christian socialists and libertarian anti-Christians. Ill
here discuss the arguments I most regularly hear from the latter.

Involving Religion in Politics

When writing about the relationship between libertarianism and Christianity,
I sometimes encounter a vague demand that I just keep religion out of
politics. Yet this objection is incoherent.
My religious views include an account of the human condition that, if true,
should be the foundation of my policy positions. On the other hand, if keep
religion out of politics is really only an insistence that my religious views are
not true, then it should be presented as such.
Of couse, what most people mean by keep religion out of politics is simply
dont force your religious values on me. Yet this cannot be the meaning of
a libertarian atheist who knowingly makes the demand of a libertarian
Christian. In this case, the demand either asserts merely that Christianity is
false, or it is senseless gibberish.

A better strategy for the libertarian atheist would be to concern oneself, first
and foremost, with whether a religious persons beliefs will expand or reduce
the scope of government. My Christian belief in humanitys fallenness and
propensity to sin, for instance, disinclines me to entrust government agents
with all-seeing omniscience. I would therefore be more amenable to
sweeping data collection without Christian principles than with them. If ones

goal is to limit government power, then it should be at least a relative good if

I consult my religious text when picking up a legal pen.
In fact, this is true even if you dont agree that Christianity predisposes its
adherents to libertarianism. Even someone who thinks little of Christians
should recognize that we will act with some measure of rational self-interest
in the political arena. Note, then, that government power over social issues is
increasingly being used against Christian values rather than for them. It will
therefore be more and more in the interests of believers to limit government
power, even putting other factors aside.
Suppose libertarian atheists could choose to live in only one of two societies:
the first entirely secular but cripplingly authoritarian, and the second
politically free but religiously mixed. Which would libertarian atheists prefer?
If the latter, then working with libertarian Christians in order to promote
liberty should be an easy choice.

The Doctrine of Hell

A common complaint of libertarian anti-Christians is that it is authoritarian to
teach the Christian doctrine of hell. When Christians warn others about hell,
after all, they are telling people that they will suffer unless they take a
specific action. This warning, the argument goes, amounts to a kind of
coercive threat.
If this is the case, however, it must likewise be authoritarian to warn
someone that hes about to be hit by a truck. If you call out to a man who is
standing in front of a truck, then you are no less coercive than the Christian
who warns others about hell. You are warning him that a horrible fate awaits
him unless he take a specific action. We all understand, however, that Look
out! is not coercive; the shouter is giving vital information to the person
about to be hit.

Some libertarian anti-Christians retort that, if there existed a God who

allowed nonbelievers to go to hell, they would have a moral duty to oppose
Him. Yet what is the source of this moral duty? If the morally good decision is
the one which maximizes our happiness, as I believe it is, then some sort of
divine command theory is true as God has structured our reality and
arbitrated the conditions that will lead to our happiness and unhappiness. If

the atheist asserts that an invisible platonic form is the source of his moral
duties, then it is actually this form that is demanding his suffering all the
while offering no reward in return.
An atheist might contend that my truck metaphor is invalid because it does
not depict me as wishing the man to be hit by the truck. Yet neither do
Christians want others to go to hell. If believers did not wish others to be
saved, then they would keep quiet about eternity and anti-Christians would
have no alleged threat to point to in the first place. This is a fact recognized
by libertarian atheist Penn Jillette.
Granted, while I do not endorse your standing in front of the truck, I certainly
do endorse the free will that allows you to do so. I also endorse the things
that allow the truck to hit you, like the human ability to innovate and the
physical possibility of speed. I endorse the existence of cliffs, of tools, and of
many other things you might freely use to harm yourself. I would certainly
not end free will or make the whole universe a padded cell in order to abolish
the reality of conditional consequence and I thank God for not having done
so.
Free will, said C.S. Lewis, though it makes evil possible, is also the only
thing that makes possible any love or goodness or joy worth having.

Lack of Free Will

In an effort to exclude theists entirely, some more determined libertarian
atheists will attempt to redefine libertarianism as an essentially
metaphysical, rather than political, concept. Libertarianism means that
nothing not just the government, but nothing holds power over me, the
assertion goes. Therefore theism is opposed to libertarianism. I dont
accept this definition of libertarianism, but let us do so for the sake of
argument.
If naturalism is true as atheists typically hold then everything you do and
think is predetermined by an inevitable chain of material cause and effect.
Your body is a machine and your consciousness, to borrow a metaphor from
Thomas Huxley, is a wisp of vapor. You are an effect but never a cause a
ghostly observer that has power over nothing and is wholly under the power
of everything.

In contrast, I perceive that I freely choose as surely as I perceive that the

external world exist. If I affirm that the external world exists, I ought to affirm
that I freely choose. This seems to me to be a good argument though there
are others for the transcendence and causal power of the human mind. If
one agrees with this argument, then naturalism is false and theism is at
least more probably true.
If we accept the definition of libertarianism that some libertarian atheists
propose, we come to find that theists can be libertarians while naturalist
atheists cannot. Moreover, while there are some atheists who are not
naturalists, they are few and far between and hardly respected by their
fellow atheists.

A History of Oppression
Its difficult to deny that Christians have historically made a
disproportionately large contribution to the sciences. Descartes, Pascal,
Newton, Linnaeus, Mendel, Pasteur, Marconi, Lematre and Collins come to
mind. Point this out to most atheists, however, and their reaction is a
predictable one: Christendom doesnt deserve any particular credit for its
scientists because it is old.
Ask militant atheists about the history of war, however, and this reasoning is
suddenly inverted. It seems that the old age of Christianity is no reason not
to credit it with the injustices perpetrated by some professing Christians. Its
a striking paradox that Christianity and religion in general is given no
credit for its great minds but full credit for its bad ones.
Yet religion and especially Christianity has not been the disproportionately
oppressive force depicted in online atheist caricatures. As Matt Rodgers has
pointed out, about 7% of the wars in recorded history have involved a
religious cause. These wars account for about 2% of all people killed by
warfare.

Conversely, the twentieth century was the bloodiest hundred years in human
history whether measured in sheer killings or in killings as a share of the
worlds population. From 1900 to 1987, nearly two thirds of those killed by
governments died at the hands of Marxists.

The thousands of murders committed at Verden, and later by the Inquisition,

are without a doubt terrible blots on Christianitys history. Yet it took
Christendom centuries of power to muster up each atrocity. In contrast,
practically the moment that the atheist Cult of Reason prevailed in France,
thousands of Christians were sadistically drowned as part of Jacobin deChristianization. In G.K. Chestertons words, Once abolish the God and the
government becomes the God.
The actions of atheist governments, of course, do not mean that no atheist
can be a libertarian. I hope that Ive here helped to equip Christians and to
sway atheists precisely because I wish for libertarians on both sides to work
together. Collaboration is the best way to ensure that neither one of us is
ever again oppressed by the other.