-- "Is God on the right? Is God on the left?" --

Have you seen this site? http://www.therightchristians.org/
Their answer to these questions, and others, is different from what most people would expect.

You just wrote an extremely interesting essay -- once again. Many spectrumological implications. "Dieu: droit ou gauche?"

"Dieu: droite ou gauche?"

Government, and anybody else's God, stops at the door of my bedroom.

speaking of texts, orthodoxies, etc., here is an article that might be of interest: http://www.newcriterion.com/archive/22/june04/minogue.htm

Interesting religious viewpoints -- and their differences illustrate the dangers inherent in any claim to speak for God. The latter tends to define all who disagree with the speaker as "against God," and while the temptation to do this is obvious, it's more likely to inflame than persuade.

I don't see the problem as being with fundamentalism, but I notice a trend (by both the hard left and many religious conservatives) towards defining Christianity as fundamentalist -- which isn't fair. In any case, "under God" was not meant to mean "under religious texts." The problem is that the use of the word "God" can trigger less than laudable machinations, because once the word "God" is used, people want to define it. Religious texts then follow, then religious leaders, religious edicts, and so on....

Steven, we need not even get to the bedroom door. We all have the right to absolute religious freedom, but that doesn't create a right to compel another person to do anything based on religion or prevent another person from doing anything, unless his action harms others. Your choice of religion may compel or direct your tastes, but it cannot compel or direct my tastes, any more than it can compel my religious views or lack thereof. To say otherwise would be violative of free exercise of religion.

To put it politely, I can't make you eat a ham sandwich, but neither can you stop me from eating one. (Eating, of course, is generally more of a public affair than sex.....)

My problem with "under God" in the pledge is that my children attend a public school where the pledge is recited daily. Of course children aren't required to stand with their fellows and recite the pledge, but how many of them know that? Even if they knew, what elementary school student would put the crosshairs on himself through such public nonconformity? My daughters are practically compelled by their very natures to stand each day and acknowledge a deity they have no belief in. They would sooner die than become "the show and gaze" of the first and third grades.

>> As Fornieri points out, "The ideologies of Communism and fascism both sought to murder the Judeo-Christian God and to replace Him with a human power that was beyond good and evil and freed from any higher moral obligation."

That bit of rubbish, though subtly, recycles the tired notion that Nietzsche was a proto-Nazi. Beyond Good and Evil is of course the title of Nietzche's most enduring work. And while it's true that he strongly opposed Judeo-Christian moral teaching and thought the god on the cross a grotesque image, he had no intention of replacing it with any power, human or otherwise.

By saying "Gott ist tot," Nietzsche meant that belief in god was dead, and that by necessity all values had lost their value.

He predicted the collapse and subsequent vacuum in Europe that would accept socialism in its many forms, and foresaw in some sense the reaction to WWI, which got this ball of relativism rolling and left us with numbingly senseless arts and an increasing reliance on mechanization and the soft sciences.

Nietzsche's fear was that the church, which had been a source of values for Europe for centuries, no longer had meaning for the masses and that the empty gestures would soon give way to nihilism, and he was right.

The mistake here is the same as declaring Adam Smith the father of capitalism when he was simply the man who saw how it worked. Nietzsche simply understood the danger of an empty value system.

Now none of this is to say that Nietzsche's indictment of religion was necessarily valid or universally applicable, but that's ultimately a question independent of the danger of an empty value system. Sincere religious individuals who have confidence in their values are immune from Nietzsche's critique, but Europe in the 19th and 20th centuries was not.

So what was Nietzsche's solution? A revluation of all values. The idea is that people today can no longer be directed by external morailty, but also that people are capable of self-directed ethical behavior. And ultimately you must define values for yourself.

Any criticism of a self-directed ethics is predicated upon the notion that humans tend toward wickedness, that without the guiding hand of a religious code we will always degenerate to vice. And this is a natural response for those who believe in original sin. This is also at the root of Nietzsche's real objection to Judeo-Christian morality: that it accepts evil as a natural consequence of birth.

To move beyond good and evil then is a multifarious task. It requires one at once to take personal responsibilty for one's life while rejecting the inherited notion of shame and wickedness as a birthright.

Necessarily many Christians will see that as a threat and completely incompatible with the nature of the world as they know it.

But to that I say kick the dust from your heels and walk away (Matthew 10.13-15; Mark 6. 10-12; Luke 9.4-6).

Varius Contrarius:

Excellent analysis of Nietzsche. You are absolutely right. He was NOT a Nazi. He despised racism and anti-Semitism, statism and collectivism, every form of herd-conformity. He was an individualist.

I have long held Friedrich Nietzsche to be my favorite of all philosophers. On a test which I posted on my blog some months ago, I was closer to his way of thinking than to any other. Strong, powerful, and passionate. Nietzsche inspired three of my other favorites: Oswald Spengler, Ayn Rand, and Camille Paglia. I also admire his adversary, G. K. Chesterton. The _styles_ of each of these individualists.

Again, I must say that this a most interesting post and thread. So many, many fascinating spectrumological implications. Thomas Sowell's spectrum of the "constrained" (empiricist, pessimistic) vs. the "unconstrained" (rationalist, optimistic) visions. Silvan Tomkins' spectrum of the "normative" Right vs. the "humanistic" Left. Jean A. Laponce's spectrum of the Right as "vertical" (religious, hierarchical) vs. the Left as "horizontal" (secular, egalitarian). Absolutes vs. relativity. Theism vs. atheism, polytheism vs. monotheism, transcendent vs. immanent God, etc.. All the spectrums of my characters. Many, many tie-ins. Spectrums, spectrums, spectrums, spectrums....

Eric:

Yes. Freedom for each and all. In my MasturBedroom, in my kitchen, in my living room (wherein I sit now, typing away on my computer), in my library, in my bathroom. Freedom to worship or not, any God or Goddess, Gods or Goddesses, as each of us sees fit. Freedom! To be defended above all.

"Is Man the measure, an end in himself, an active, creative, thinking, loving, desiring force in nature?

"Or must Man realize himself, attain his full stature, only through struggle toward, participation in, conformity to, a norm, a measure, an ideal essence, basically independent of Man?"

Hmmm....

As I think about a spectrum, I increasingly think in terms of two axes or dimensions:

The Materialists, who believe that what is most important is the economic and/or the political, vs. the Spiritualists, who believe that what is most important are ideas, ideals, and values, the metaphysical, the theological, the sexual.

The Collectivists, who believe that what is most important must be controlled, censored, regulated, by state or "society", vs. the Individualists, who believe that what is most important must be kept free and in the hands of the individual.

Count me as one of those few on the side of Spirituality and of Individuality.

Reminds me also of the dualism that Whittaker Chambers drew in "Witness": Man, Mind, and Communism vs. God, Soul, and Freedom.

The endless spectrumological ramifications of all this.... What a great post and thread! Thank you!