Saturday 1 September 2012

Can we have common sense without God? (No we can't. Another reason why the secular Right fails)

*

In a nutshell, the secular Right is an attempt to have common sense without God.

*

The motivation of the secular Right is to discard the insanity of Leftist modernity, while retaining - indeed increasing - prosperity, comfort, diversions and especially the sexual revolution.

But can we have common sense without God?

In the abstract - yes. In an abstract scheme we can construct a model of reality that can have all the 'good' stuff (i.e. stuff we like) and none of the 'bad' stuff (stuff we don't like): and this is precisely what the secular Right spends its time doing: constructing abstract schemes of governance which give them what they want and not what they don't.

In the abstract we can have common sense without God. 

*

But in practice, in real life, we cannot have common sense without God: not now.

We used to be able to do it: that was pretty much what the world was like in pagan times and places.

But now, this side of the triumph of anti-Christianity (i.e. the Left) in the West we can only get back common sense by getting back God.

*

We cannot have common sense without God because without God common sense is arbitrary (not a reflection of real reality) and not binding.

Common sense does not bind us because in the first place it is merely a matter of opinion, and opinions vary; and in the second place (and decisively) even if common sense is regarded as reflecting reality, then there is no reason why we ought to be guided by it.

When the dictates of common sense conflict with expediency (conflict with pleasure, diversion, prosperity, comfort, status, career... whatever), then there is no reason not to ignore common sense: and every reason to ignore common sense.

*

So the idealistic and consistent secular Right are always corrupted in practice; because their bottom line, their motivation, is to be guided by their own likes and dislikes to optimize gratification; and their preferences will fall into line with whatever conforms to their motivating desire for pleasure and to avoid suffering.

*

So the secular Right will favour common sense in the abstract; and in practice they will do whatever gratifies them, because there is no reason not to.

So we cannot have common sense without God.

**


(The God needed to restore common sense need not necessarily be the real Christian God - although obviously it would be infinitely preferable on other grounds than common sense if it were the Christian God.)

*


9 comments:

Anonymous said...

The trouble is the trouble we have comes into us in the guise of Christianity- universalism and antinomianism. Are these the wolves in sheep's clothing? Between Sister Helen Prejean and atheism, I'm taking atheism.

Bruce Charlton said...

@dl - Ive refuted this several times in the past, including in Thought Prison - have you read and rejected my arguments, or not read them?

The Crow said...

God is never going to regain importance and relevance in peoples' lives as long as the Christian rendering of God remains what it always was.
An old, angry man sitting on a cloud, spying on our every move, needing us to fight his battles really isn't anything worth worshipping.
Whereas God, itself, certainly is.
And what is God, then?
Anything, and everything, that is greater than the individual 'I'.

Bruce Charlton said...

@Crow - "...what is God, then? Anything, and everything, that is greater than the individual 'I'. "

But that would include - for example - the angelic beings, and 'angels' would include Satan.

There are 'greater' creatures than Man - but they are not God; who is not a creature, but maker of all creatures.

The Crow said...

Glad we sorted that out :)
But since we're sorting things out: all things being created by God, angels, devil, left-wingers et-al, must also be part-of God, since He created them.
Given free-will, these things may or may not be aligned with God's purpose. Being non-aligned breaks the circuit, but even so...

Golly, these bloody authentication 'words' are ruining my poor eyes.

Bruce Charlton said...

@Crow - I thnk the difference is that we in earth are in time, and we are fallen creatures. In eternity, no doubt things are all 'good' - but that is not our situation.

Pascal utterly convinces me that we cannot know God except via Christ - and if we think we do, then we are consumed by pride.

The Crow said...

Bear with me...
What if we are not consumed by pride?
What if, in knowing God, pride becomes extinct, in the one who has come to know God? Don't you think perhaps something as profound as that, might extinguish pride?
I do.
I often get labeled egotistical, which is amusing, really, because I am no longer any such thing. But I can appear to be so, because I no longer try to appear not to be egotistical. So it is with pride. When it goes, the insistence of others that is hasn't gone, remains.
One may move mountains, oneself, yet the mountains remain, for others.
No way around that.

Thrasymachus said...

In "Thought Prison" you say PC is not a Christian heresy; specifically not "in the sense that PC is the fault of Christianity, perhaps an inevitable outcome of Christianity".

I think that's an excessively narrow definition of heresy. Something that claims to be Christian, but isn't, is a heresy. More to the point most Christians are PC and PC Christians say PC is Christian. The frame of Christianity, worldwide for 2000 years is too broad; what is most relevant is Christianity in the English-speaking world in the last 500. PC Christians use broad platitudes to support their beliefs, and those have to be refuted Biblically.

Bruce Charlton said...

@Thratymachus - "The frame of Christianity, worldwide for 2000 years is too broad; what is most relevant is Christianity in the English-speaking world in the last 500. "

So you are a Leftist.

But I am not.