Has America succeeded by becoming outright atheist in both theory and practice ?

Question

The West gave up on spirituality and morality long ago. In fact, the West is the first culture in human history that has become agnostic or outright atheist in both theory and practice. We have completely severed our ties to our spiritual heritage. While still profiting from its Christian legacy, the West is no longer Christian in any sense of the word. Our business and government practices are atheistic. We do not operate from ethical or moral concerns. We are motivated by economic and political opportunity.


Any thoughts ?


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Answer 1

I'm a religious person, but I disagree with you.
It was when we had MORE separation of church and state that we were in our glory days. The fact that we're mixing religion and politics is why we're in such turmoil.
I'm all for believing and practicing faith, but that's a VERY personal choice. If we look at religious governments, we see that it's not prudent to mix people's personal spiritual beliefs with politics.
If anything our country has lost it's morals by having too much religious (of course not true religious, but zealot hypocrites) interference with secular societal issues.
You said: "Our business and government practices are atheistic. We do not operate from ethical or moral concerns." Unfortunatley it's the evangelical leaders and the "religious" congressmen who're sleeping with the male underaged children. Beating the bible in front of cameras, does not equate to morality in regard to politicians. Look at the admitted lies coming out which sent many many innocent young boys and girls to war. What happened to the glory of being pro-life? Or is life only important before birth?

Answer 2

Dude, what country are you living in, surely it's not the US if you'd ask such a question. If anything the US government is overrun by power hungry fundie Christians trying to legislated their morality onto the rest of us, trying to turn the US government into a theocracy.

Atheist just means lack of belief in gods. It's rather insulting that you'd equate that with lack of ethics and morals. If anything I'd say atheists tend to have better morals than Christians do on average because they have to actually *think* about them, Christians just get their morals from some outdated book written by sheep herders in the Middle East during the Bronze age.

And you seem to be over looking the fact, Christianity was not and did not originate in the West....it's Middle Eastern. It has the same roots as Islam. Christianity is not "the West's" "Spiritual heritage" at all, if you're talking religions that would be the native indigenous Pagan religions that pre-existed Christianity.

Answer 3

While in theory true, this is not true in practice. Since the advent of the nation, and more accurately 200 years before the Founding, this nation has been defined as a secular state constantly battling with religoius pressures. Some times the secular state is in the acendency, like when the Constituation an Bill of Rights were written, some times secularism is in the decline like when the First and Second Protestant Reawakenings took hold of the people and governments. Up and down it goes, but I would argue we are in a time of Religion's accendency today. No Republican candidate, for example, can be elected president without the say so of the Religious Right. This country has not been a history of an expulsion of Religion, but a constant battle for the progress of Enlightenment ideas against a burgeoning religious movement to Theorcratize (to make up a word) the Government.

Answer 4

To speak of The West suggests that this ideology is tied to a specific geography. In fact, perhaps it's more accurate to speak of late-capitalist values ... So, what's at fault is a particular value system that privileges profit over need, and greed over real brotherhood or fraternity. It's not the West per se that's at fault, rather the economic system we have come to associate with it.

It would be a misnomer to refer to Christianity as the spiritual heritage of the West ... Taking a more far-reaching perspective of history, one sees ancient influences of Judaism and Islam as well ... The notion of Christianity as central to the West's spiritual heritage stems from a more short-term view of history (of say the past 500 years or so). The West's moral / philosophical legacy is indelibly bound to ancient Greece which in turn references the lore of ancient Egypt, Africa, the Middle East and Asia. In terms of paleontology, the earliest signs of human life on earth are to be found in Southern Africa.

Answer 5

I'd have to disagree. There are many laws that are not atheistic in nature. Freedom of Religion is based first on religious beliefs... not atheism. Laws are still being made over religion... the recent Hate Crime law is a good example. America isn't Christian... never was (I don't know how someone can say it started as a Christian nation with the Puritans killing "witches" and the rest owning slaves, while the "army" took away Native American lands for themselves)... but I wouldn't say it's Atheist either. I'd prefer it if it were just Secular... instead of arguing over religion or lack thereof, leave the religion at home and work together to try to bring peace. Instead we have all of these peple claiming the only way to have peace is if we all just do what "they" say, or believe like them. Forced peace isn't peace... it's considered tyranny.

Answer 6

I Believe the west is still thoroughly christian. The first Amendment gave us the establishment clause (seperation of church and state) but also the practice clause (freedom to practice any religion). In america christianity has historically always been a part of political daily life.

Even now the Family Values movement and the Christian right have huge power in government. Roughly 90% of all people in America claim to be christtains. The president swears into office ON THE BIBLE. Senators and congressmen regularly reference biblical stories when arguing for or against any issue. The major issues in our governemt (gay marriage, stem cell research, environmentalism) are divided almost solely upon religious grounds. In theory America may have be secular due to the first amendment. In practice however it has a strong christain bent which still rules it today.

The senators all know they must play to the religoius right to win votes. President holds openly christian views and votes in a christian 'moral' manner. I do not believe we have severed our ties to christian heritage. If we had then religion would play the HUGE role it does in modern politics. Christians are the majority in america. The elect (for the most part) christain senators and congressmen. They attempt to inflict their morals upon us by banning practices they deem Un-christain (gay marriage, stem cells, global warming policy, evolution). And the president has thus far sided with them on many of these issues....
The Christain right just likes to paint america as an secular humanist culture because it stirs them up when they fele oppressed. In reality, the Family Value and Moral movements are the most powerful forces in government that we currently have.

Answer 7

Are you joking? The pressing issue on the table across liberal circles and Europe has increasingly become whether the US is becoming a theocracy. True, it is really more of a political tactic of the powerful economic and special interest forces to align with religious groups who can influence the unthinking "faith" community to vote, but there is a benefit in both directions. Just watch the Republican debates. For more on this topic, I would suggest Ray Suarez' The Holy Vote.
As for business, you're correct--there is no room for spirituality (or even much morality) there. Of course, there is also the non-profit sector which is often tied to religious or otherwise humanitarian values.
Now, as for the primary argument, that the West is the first agnostic/athiest culture in human history, it's hard to know where to begin. Speaking of "the West" in general as "a culture" is somewhat problematic. However, I would have to disagree that this is where athiesm started. The Buddhists were athiests far before the Christians arrived, and the impact of the former philosophy/religion on civilization has been far less destructive and demoralizing than the latter. Of course, this is in my mind less true of the athiesm of modern China, which is communism. Agnosticism was popular in St. Augustine's day, though it was a broader philosophy than what most "on the fencers" mean by it today.
And finally, I think that to really speak to the heart of your question, we have to look at the Western Enlightenment. There was a purging of mythic dogma from science due to the limitation of these inflexible and primitive ways of looking at the world. Ken Wilber deals with this in his new book Integral Spirituality beginning on page 185 (The dignity and disaster of modernity). He argues that:
"When the 3 value spheres [art, science, and morality] did not just seperate but flew apart, this allowed the hyper-growth of technical-scientific rationality at the expense of the other life spheres, and this resulted in the colonization of the lifeworld by this technical rationality...Once spirituality in toto was thrown overboard, the dominant mode of discourse not only outlawed pre-rational or mythic-spirituality, it outlawed rational and post-rational spirituality as well. And precisely because the spiritual line answers the question 'What is it that is of ultimate concern?,' then this line--and the specific type of intelligence meant to address that question put to us by life--was crippled in the modern West...[Spirituality] was frozen at the mythic level, and then that mythic level of spirituality was confused with spirituality together."
Though it can be a blind and mentally-enslaving force, I would argue that prerational spirituality is very alive and active in US society today. Our president does not believe in evolution, key officials believe that overwhelming destruction and chaos in the Middle East will bring about a revisitation of their savior and personal "salvation" for their not-so-tiny group of vulgar believers, and religiously isolating messages are increasingly prominent in the public sphere. Naturally it is politically motivated, but in a sense, religion has once again found it's place in the modern world--to control. As a spiritually-oriented man, I wish your assertions were correct, but the dominance of Western religion is not dead, it has merely been decapitated.

Answer 8

Well.... I doubt it. Consider the fact that 82% of the US population polled claimed to be "religious" and 75 percent of those claiming to be "regligous" also claimed to be "Christian".

Regardless... spirituality and morality are not equals and neither of them define religion so your question while interesting is really not well thought out.

The culture.... by definition can not be agnostic which is an individual belief. Agnosticism, again can not be "practiced".

Answer 9

"While still profiting from its Christian legacy, the West is no longer Christian in any sense of the word. Our business and government practices are atheistic. We do not operate from ethical or moral concerns. We are motivated by economic and political opportunity".

I could not disagree more. First of all, the United States, at least, is deeply influenced by Christianity - far too deeply, in my opinion. The ban on funding of stem cell research is one obvious example, as is the ban on cloning.

I do not agree that "we do not operate from ethical or moral concerns", and I also think you need to be reminded that theism is not by any means the sole source of ethics or morals (in fact most theistic morality hardly seems worthy of the name "morality", as it seems to be based in fear of getting caught).

Just as morals are not the exclusive domain of theism, being "motivated by economic and political opportunity" does not signal a lack of theism or a presence of atheism. Surely you've noticed that hundreds of years of obviously theistic Catholicism co-existed nicely with economic and political motivations. Similarly, would Jerry Falwell's death be national news if he'd been simply exceptionally devout or faithful? We know who Jerry Falwell is because his economic and political motivations led him to successfully promote himself.

Answer 10

Speak for yourself. I'm not athiest. I actually don't meet very many of them even though I am married to one. And what's wrong with agnostic? They believe in a god, they just don't care about the details? How does ANY of that effect our morality? Our deteriorated morality has to do with parents not telling thier kids to shape up.