These gomers make it so hard to celebrate Independence Day
It’s Independence Day, which means most Americans are thinking about hot dogs and fireworks, neither of which interest me, and the Christian Nationalists are all reading that one line in the Declaration of Independence that represents the totality of their perspective: “endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights.” Forget the Constitution and forget that the bulk of the Declaration was an enumeration of the offenses of the British king, which the current American president is trying to repeat. The Discovery Institute is going all out on that line, with John West writing a whole book, Endowed by Our Creator: The Bible, Science, and the Battle for America’s Soul on their obsession. Wait…the Bible? I thought the Discovery Institute was scientific and secular!
Anyway Charles Thaxton and Stephen Meyer have written an op-ed plugging that theme. It’s terrible, muddled and sloppy, exactly what I expect for the DI.
It’s trying to argue that there are two perspectives, one God-centered that enables human dignity, and the other is scientific, which…they avoid specifying. It’s just not giving God credit, and therefore it’s implied that respect for human dignity will be somehow diminished. It’s an argument based on potential consequences which they don’t support with evidence.
Yet we in the U.S. and other Western countries, with our own familiar materialist scientific view of man, have created a curious situation. The orthodoxies of Judaism and Christianity contend that man has dignity because he has been created in the image and glory of God. If the orthodox view is false, as is widely assumed in the academic and legal professions, then one must wonder how long it will be until we in the West reason correctly from a strictly scientific perception of human nature.
The religious perspective has done a poor job of supporting the value of human lives — Christian orthodoxies are all about an afterlife, and has been used to justify slavery. That half of their argument is unsupported, and they don’t bother to support it — just assume that religious beliefs are good. The other half, that science is going to diminish us, is even weaker: they don’t have evidence, we are expected to wonder how long it will be until a strictly scientific perception of human nature
leads to some inevitable outcome, which we should assume will be dire.
I’m amazed at how frothy and vague their argument is. It’s the Discovery Institute, though, so they think handwaving at Darwin and Marx is sufficient to prove their thesis.
We might well remember that neither the edifice of Western technical sophistication nor the “science” of Marx, or of Darwin, can provide any firm ground for asserting these rights. Instead, productive proclamations of human rights depend upon a shared conviction that man’s dignity is inherent — safe from any political expedient — as our Western religious heritage once asserted, and as the Declaration of Independence still does
The Declaration of Independence is a 250 year old document that tried, successfully, to justify a separation from a colonial power. I don’t care if it “asserts” an 18th century view on the relationship between humanity and an imaginary god. I have a belief in man’s dignity
based on an evolving humanism, not the words of a slave-holder.
Public, and especially political, references to this heritage doubtless offend the sensibilities of a secular age. Nevertheless, if the traditional understanding of man is correct, if it is not only doctrinal but factual, then governments can derive human rights from a dignity that actually exists. But if the traditional view is false and the modern scientific view prevails, then there is no dignity and human rights are a delusion, around the world and in the West as well.
Weird. So if you derive human rights from your fantasies about an invisible superman, then that actually exists. But if don’t believe in this god (and don’t forget, it has to be their specific Christian god), then human rights are a delusion. You know, humanists aren’t the ones arguing for the violation of human rights, that seems to be the domain of sectarian and racist ideologies. Thaxton and Meyer can try to wrap themselves in the thin thread of a single line in an old document, but it still leaves them naked.
Happy 250th Good Riddance,
dear Americans…
The DoI doesn’t say “our creator” it says ‘their creator’. Meaning each individual can choose their own.
Love how eager the Christers are to tell on themselves: We’d be blood-drinking barbarians. except for our fear of the bearded sky bully.
As I commented on the infinite thread: This is a quote from DW in 2016, not Upton Sinclair:
‘Fascism will conquer america wrapped in the flag, carrying the bible and threatening all opponents with a gun’
What are we celebrating? I have answers, some very dark, that flag waving pseudo-patriots won’t like and they are not as the magat-in-chief said ‘communist’. I’m not going to put them here for it should be the responsibility of each individual to find something of caring, honest value to celebrate. Our Hopi associates feel extreme cognitive dissonance when pondering this holiday.
@2
The other possibly religious reference in the Declaration of Independence mentions the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God, which certainly doesn’t sound Christian.
I’m celebrating that I haven’t been arrested yet and sent to an ICE concentration camp because I oppose the current regime.
Also, going to listen to outdoor live rock music tonight at our local 4th of July party.
Independence Day hasn’t sunk that low just yet. Christmas qualifies, IMHO, which is one reason among many why I refuse to celebrate it.
Marcus Ranum mentioned somewhere that the most widely celebrated holiday in the world, though observed on multiple days, is “Independence from England Day”.
Just think, if we hadn’t listened to those demagogues Patrick Henry and Samuel Adams (and their copycats), we’d’ve abolished slavery 28 years sooner, and with >700K fewer casualties!
Oops, 32 years sooner…
My dad’s a photographer and usually takes photos of the local fireworks show. He’s skipping this year. Just doesn’t feel safe.
Its amazing how the dignity of man proclaimed by their version of God is used to justify the genocide of Palestinians and the oppression of many others including their fellow countrymen, (and particularly women) because he requires them to be exterminated to bring back the third temple* so Jesus can return and God can wipe out everyone except a select few who do his dirty work.
*Its the third temple not the second. That one was built as a vanity project by a local despot, (no relation to Trump) and later destroyed by the Romans, but who cares about history when you can invent it to suit yourself.
How awkward for them that all the worst people pushing for human rights violations are proudly thumping their chests and their bibles
And these are generally the same people who think some random sociopath pushing us to attack our innocent neighbors is okay because he says “Praise Jesus” often enough. But they can figure out what’s wrong with that terrorist mindset when the sociopath is saying “Allahu Akbar” instead. So I’m sure we can expect a clear and consistent evaluation of this, too.
garydargan, this is riffing off you, not dissing, but…
https://www.biblexika.com/ancient-context/second-temple:
↓
Herod’s expansion and the Temple Mount platform
Herod’s Expansion: In 19 BCE, Herod the Great announced plans to rebuild the Temple on a scale that would surpass Solomon’s. His motives were mixed: genuine piety, desire for lasting fame, and the political calculation that a magnificent Temple would win Jewish loyalty for his client-king regime. Josephus’s accounts in Jewish War 5.184-237 and Antiquities 15.380-425 are our primary literary sources and describe the project in remarkable detail.
(Trumpish redolence right there, no?)
The fourth always reminds me of the time I committed a federal misdemeanor.
I drove across a border to buy fireworks where they were legal and I brought them back to a state where they were not.
The federal part is my border crossing.
It’s jaywalking on a federal level.
It’s like crossing a border without documentation.
This, “problem,” is paperwork, not prisons.
Pierce R. Butler @8
I’m not sure it’s that simple. If the 13 North American colonies that broke away had remained part of the British empire, and there had still been a boom in cotton growing to feed the earliest stages of the Industrial Revolution, pro-slavery forces might have had more power within the British empire and delayed the abolition of slavery for a number of years. Alternately, abolition of slavery might have itself triggered a war for independence from those colonies that still had slavery.
[meta]
springa73, you missed the point.
Ref is to all former colonies of the British Empire, not just to British America (its name at independence).
Like, you know, India and Canada and Australia etc.
(Lots of other people)
“Discovery Institute” is an oxymoron.
[Misnomer, not oxymoron. They are not mutually contradictory lexical terms]
No they are not, but I don’t think this is an institute at all interested in “discovery”.
@springa I’m with you on that. History is complicated and changing one thing is going to have unexpected ripple effects. Don’t step on any butterflies.
springa73 @ # 15 – To rearrange your 1st line, I’m sure it’s not that simple.
The mighta-beens multiply endlessly – if the British had allowed a few dozen colonials to enter Parliament and thus diverted/delayed the Revolution, there probably would have been no (successful) French Revolution (as that was largely triggered by Louis XVI subsidizing the American insurgency), hence no Louisiana Purchase, no (or much smaller) Latin American revolutions, better opportunities for Native American nations to have endured…
Point being, springa73 posted two clauses.
Whether or not they are supposedly linked, they both evince a sense of USAnian exceptionalism.
They were not the only slavers, nor the only source of anti-slavery sentiments.
As a naturalized US citizen, I should join in the celebration of the thirteen colonies throwing off the yoke off British imperialist oppression. And keep shtum about how this was a stage in the continuing theft of an entire continent from its original inhabitants, the Native Americans.
Wearing my British wig, I should have been pleased we had somewhere a long way away where we could dump our religious and political malcontents but bemoan their treasonous ingratitude for all we had done for them.
Both sides indulged in slavery and made a lot of money from it. Both sides generated abolitionist movements. The Rrits were the first to ban slavery but neither side had clean hands.
And we still owe the Indians their land back.
seversky, as a naturalized US citizen, you are still doing the exceptional thing.
Here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beds_Are_Burning
Sorry, did not mean to imply USA exceptionalism, but if the colonies that became the USA had remained part of the British Empire, I think it’s probable that they would have had a growing influence within that empire given their fast-growing populations and economies. This is especially true if growing cotton had become as big a thing in the southern colonies as it did in the southern states in our world, since cotton textile manufacturing was a big part of the first Industrial Revolution in Britain. Whether that influence would have significantly delayed the abolition of slavery in the British Empire or not can only be speculated upon.
Fair enough, but counterfactuals are at best speculative.
I was making a point; look: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1150477/number-slaves-taken-by-national-carriers/ — puts things in perspective, no?
July 1776 is when the Founders had a… great big sex party resulting in the conception of the United States. The birthday isn’t until June 1788 (ratification of the Constitution). Even elephant and whale pregnancies are shorter than that! In between, I suppose there’s a possible gender reveal party for the Articles of Confederation, and that would justify the fireworks. Hopefully nowhere near Yucaipa.
Not to mention that the King didn’t actually receive the insulting list of his errors until October — the first one sent by ship never made it.
Its a pity that the USoA got so close to its 250th anniversary but didn’t quite make it.
Vale United States of America, 1776 – circa 2025.
Replaced by a Chirstianist extremist White Supremacist Fascist dictatorship imposed by Trump, Musk, Thiel, Bezos, Putin and other billionaires.
Sorely missed and deeply mourned by her friends and allies.
Death celeberated by the reichwing that she helped defeat back in World War Two.
@shermanj #4, that is a misquote of Sinclair Lewis, not of Upton Sinclair. Sinclair Lewis wrote “It Can’t Happen Here,” a whole novel about fascism coming to America, and the misquote, while indeed not an actual quote of his, does more or less reflect his message in the novel.
Given how much theyare ignoring the inalienable Human rights part I reckon they’re really just reading two words. Two words way outta historical and authorial intent context.
The Constituition is a religious text in the same way that the Bible is a scientific one i.e. NOT at fucking all.