religion — VOICES for REASON

That’s the intriguing start to an essay by Onkar Ghate, senior fellow at the Ayn Rand Institute (and Voices for Reason blogger), in the latest issue of U.S. News & World Report. The magazine invited him to address the “con” side of this debate: “Have the Holidays Become Too Secular?”

His answer, in essence, is that the true meaning of Christmas is secular, not religious. “Christmas in America is not a Christian holiday,” Dr. Ghate writes, explaining the paradox this way:

Christmas’s relation to goodwill leads many to believe the holiday inseparable from Christianity, allegedly the religion of goodwill. But the connection is tenuous. A doctrine that tells you that you’re a sinner—that you must seek redemption but cannot earn it yourself—and that Jesus, sinless, has endured an excruciating death to redeem you, who doesn’t deserve his sacrifice but who should accept it anyway—can hardly be characterized as expressing a benevolent view of man.

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The Wall Street Journal recently commissioned Karen Armstrong, author of numerous books on religion, and Richard Dawkins, author of numerous books on evolution and atheism, to answer the question: “Where does evolution leave God?”

What I found most interesting about the exchange was an issue that neither discussed explicitly, but which lurked just beneath the surface of their answers: the fact that religion has co-opted the entire realm of the spiritual.

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The fact that Dr. George Tiller was gunned down in church tragically highlights a central fact in the ongoing abortion controversy—that laws against abortion are products of religious faith.

There is no secular, rational basis on which the law could declare a first-trimester fetus to be a human being. It doesn’t take a degree in medicine to understand that such a fetus is a biological part of the pregnant woman’s body. Though a fetus has the potential to be born as a human being, the realization of that potential depends upon the woman’s continued willingness to nurture the growing fetus in her body up to the moment of birth.

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President Obama is getting well-deserved flak from some of his staunchest Democratic supporters for continuing the Bush Administration’s funding for so-called faith-based programs.

This slickly produced White House video conveys Obama’s perspective on the programs. He identifies himself with the “people of faith” and says that his faith-based program is part of a national “mission of love and service” that will allow us to “fulfill our highest purpose as beloved children of God.”

Of all Bush’s benighted, faith-based policies–remember his ban on funding stem cell research, and his frantic attempts to elevate a brain-dead woman named Terri Schiavo to martyr status?–his creation of a White House office to fund religious organizations was one of the most disgraceful. As my colleague Alex Epstein wrote in 2004:

Bush’s justification for Faith-Based Initiatives reveals their actual purpose: “Welfare policy,” he explains, “will not solve the deepest problems of the spirit. . . . No government policy can put hope in people’s hearts or a sense of purpose in people’s lives. That is done when someone, some good soul, puts an arm around a neighbor and says, ‘God loves you, and I love you, and you can count on us both.’” In other words, the government is bankrolling religious organizations because they “help the needy” not only materially but also spiritually–by exposing them to religion.

But exposing people to religion is something the government should absolutely not be doing. Funding of faith-based initiatives is part of a larger faith-based attack on rational government and violates the First Amendment.

Obama should do two things immediately: (1) Announce a halt to all federal funding of religious organizations, and (2) affirm that the United States government is a purely secular agency.

I wrapped up my speaking tour of the South last Thursday by giving my Darwin talk at UNC, Charlotte. It was a very nice way to celebrate Darwin’s 200th birthday, although nobody brought any cake, unfortunately. I even managed to attract a few student supporters of “intelligent design,” which made for a lively Q&A session after the talk.

One audience member asked an interesting question, which I thought was worth blogging about. He asked, in essence, why can’t creationism coexist with evolution? Aren’t they just two different perspectives on the same question, each with its own merits?

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