fromtheright

I'm just curious if any of you atheists have been intellectually courageous enough to read Guenter Lewy's Why America Needs Religion and honestly respond?

Toto

<a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0802841627/internetinfidelsA" target="_blank">Why America Needs Religion: Secular Modernity and Its Discontents</a>

Is there something novel about this book that would make it worth reading? It appears to just be the tired argment that people need religion to be moral.

The book doesn't seem to have made a splash. There was one positive review on Amazon by conservative radio talk-show host Dennis Prager.

pug846

I'm curious if you have been intellectually courageous enough to read, The Gay Science by Freidrich Nietzsche, Critique of Practical Reason by Immanuel Kant, Critique of Philosophy and Religion by Walter Kaufman, etc. See how silly this can become? Why should we read this book? I've never even heard of this book nor its auuthor. I didn't even realize America was in a "moral decline." Perhaps you could enlighten is as to what this is so. I'm sure many minorities in this country wouldn't have realized such a thing...

fromtheright

pug,
I am interested to check out Kaufman's book, Kant is probably well above my head, and I'm simply not interested in Neitzsche. No, I don't think there's anything silly about it. The intellectual incestuousness of this discussion board became quite apparent, though, in your response that, essentially, no, you're not interested in confronting Lewy's arguments.

tronvillain

I have yet to seen anything that would justify me reading the book (let alone purchasing it), but bring the arguments here and we'll examine them.

fromtheright

All I could do in the space of a reply here would be a very brief summary of his argument, that attachment to religion brings moral discipline to society and that as that attachment weakens so does society in such measures as single motherhood and crime.
In his preface he writes:

The previous pooh-poohing of "moral decline" prompts me simply to ask "pug" if he either asserts that the oft-cited measures are not true, or if he is not troubled by them.

Vorkosigan

If there were something new in that book, we'd be happy to read and respond to it. But it's the same tired "moral decline" crap we've been seeing for 200 years. By most measurements the US is not in any decline, much less a "moral" one. Women and minorities now have more rights than ever before. More people than ever before are involved in community service. More people than ever before have taken part in a political protest. More behavioral choices are available than ever before. Open bigotry against gays has all but disappeared, and soon they will be equal before the law when gay marriage laws and gay adoption finally become widespread. Abortion and contraception are legal. No books are censored by government authorities, although Christians continue to push for censorship of ideas in local communities. Property crime has sunk to astoundingly low levels. There is more democracy than ever before. People have embraced environmentalism in record numbers. More and more people are going to college. Workplaces and consumer products are much safer than they used to be. The police are much less corrupt than they were even in the 1960s. The government is more closely watched, although the way the media has rolled over and wagged its tail for the Bush administration recently is scary.

All in all, the US, while sometimes taking backward steps, is making progress on many fronts.

I think we're going to have to wait until religion is eliminated to see murder, bigotry and racism finally disappear, but I am optimistic, since it appears even the religious can learn at least the appearance of tolerance.

Michael

Writer@Large

I think what pug was saying (and if he isn't, I am), is that "moral decline" is an issue only if a) you hold to the Judeo-Xian perspective and b) you see modern shifts in the focus of morality and ethics as a "decline." Declaring that "religion brings moral discipline to society" is only true if you view that system of morality as the right one. And while there are aspects of J-X morality I certainly see as valuable to a thriving society, there are also parts that I find damaging to the extreme.

fromtheright

Writer,
As to whether there is in fact decline, what of the oft-cited measures of teenage illegitimacy, crime, divorce, and others? Are these not evidences of decline? What aspects of Judaeo-Christianity do you find extremely damaging?

fromtheright

turtonm,
Have you ever thought that maybe there is more community service because of the need for it? "More people than ever before have taken part in a political protest"? You cite that as evidence that there is no moral decline? Most of your responses are couched in rights-language, not responsibility-language on which morality is based, unless you argue that we have no moral obligations to each other.

If you people really believe that then you really are a bunch of utopians with no attachment to reality. And it's hard to debate such extremism. I am curious too, how would you "eliminate" religion?

[ February 04, 2002: Message edited by: fromtheright ]

[ February 04, 2002: Message edited by: fromtheright ]</p>