Protestantism and Atheism
It has been noted many times how much Protestants and Catholics have in common. That is true. There is a lot. But lately I have been noticing how much protestants and atheists have in common. One key way I have seen is the tendency to decide moral questions by moral feelings rather than moral principles. For example, when it comes to divorce. They ask whether they feel God wants them to stay in the marriage. The principle of “what God has put together let man not separate” has been put into theological dispute so they are left to make that decision with just their feelings. That is precisely the place that the atheist is.
Now atheists often misunderstand why we think their way of making moral choices is inferior to the Christian way of doing it. They complain that we think they have no morals at all. Some Christians think that but most know a few atheists and know they can be moral people. The problem is that a morality based on feelings is inherently inferior to a morality based on sound, immutable principles. Feelings are just too easy to manipulate. We get our emotions or our desires involved and we think we are the exception to the rule. Unless we trust our moral principles more than we trust our feelings we will make that exception.
The trouble atheists have is they cannot trust any moral principles more than their feelings. That is because such a trust can only be placed in a supernatural source. Any human source will only be able to generalize from limited human experience. There is always the chance they missed an exception. There is always a chance that principles that have long proven valid might need to be amended for modern times. Unless you have an infallible source for the principle you can’t know. By saying there is no God an atheist eliminates an infallible source for moral principles.
But the protestant is not much better off. He does not believe in infallibility either. He believes the scriptures are inerrant and that is good. But, as in the case of divorce, it is possible for principles taught in scripture to be questioned. So you end up back in the feeling world. You have a principle but you don’t know if it is immutable.
The overall world and life view of a protestant is much closer to the Catholic that that of an atheist. Both tend to borrow a lot from Catholicism without knowing it. Protestants leave more in place but they both tend to arbitrarily pick and choose which Catholic principles to accept. It is like the atheist has played the same game but taken it a lot further.
So I can understand Newman’s idea that to be deep in history is to cease to be protestant. He didn’t say it would make you Catholic. He said it would either make you Catholic or atheist. It is like Protestantism is a continuum between the two. Many conservative protestants are very Catholic in their thinking. They stick to the traditional faith from 50 years ago but they don’t want to accept the faith of 500 years ago. Then there are those drifting closer and closer to atheism. Their acceptance of scripture and of Jesus is something that means less and less as they reject historical Christianity more and more. There is no firm line between them. Once you have left the rock it is just a matter of how far you have drifted.
There are atheists and Protestants who reason using moral principles. Rule utilitarians for starters.
And when rules conflict? They ALWAYS do.
All Christians “pick and choose”. Unlike Islam, Hinduism or Judaism, it is impossible for an entire society to follow the Bible. For starters, you have a web page- which means you haven’t given away your possessions yet. The list goes on… in fact, it tastes just like communism!
Catholicism is also heavily based on feeling. If it was based on immutable principles, you wouldn’t need the pope.
May 27th, 2008 at 12:49 pmNobody wants to get rid of feelings altogether. It would be very sad to have all our morality come from rules. There should be rules that define some things and leave some thinks to prudence. The trouble with atheism is that the most basic morality is still a matter of human judgment. That is where protestantism ends up as well. They have better lights to do the judgment by but they can still justify exceptions to pretty much any rule.
Humans have an amazing ability to call what they want to do good. Hitler thought he was doing good. We do need not only solid rules but we need a living magisterium to point out where we have called evil good. The trouble is that even church leaders can come off the rails so you need something supernaturally guarenteed. It sounds like a lot but the human heart wants what it wants. It will go to great lengths to justify bad behaviour.
May 27th, 2008 at 1:38 pmFeelings are short cuts. They guide us to goals and save us the horribly conveluted plamming.
Our morality does come from rules. They must happen to be unconcious. Obviously “case by case basis is what you are talking about”. And you are right- no rule system could cover everything AND be comprehensible.
The problem is people believe things and refuse to question it. If Hitler was willing to consider he was wrong, he might not have gone on the killing spree.
Self-Justification. The way to deal with that is something that is objective (and hence can’t be twisted). For personal behavior, video footage. For beliefs, science and evidence. Other wise people use faith… and make their opinions into their facts.
May 28th, 2008 at 10:49 pm[...] have written on the parallels between protestants and atheists before. Arguing the existence of God with an atheist is quite similar to arguing the existence of a [...]
November 15th, 2008 at 7:06 pmVery interesting point, that for Protestants the moral principle of not divorcing is replaced by moral feelings. And this in spite of Jesus’ clear command in the Bible.
Have you read Louis Bouyer’s book, “The Word, Church, and Sacraments in Protestantism and Catholicism”? In his section on the Word, he shows how Protestants overturned Church authority ostensibly to establish Biblical authority, but by ditching the Church they lost the Bible too. They got rid of the only thing that could keep the Bible in its high position of authority.
November 20th, 2008 at 12:37 am