Imagine no Religion?

The Occupy Wall Street (OWS) crowd that President Obama is supporting without reservation is a diverse and scary group of malcontents. We’ve learned that Nazi and Communist groups have embraced the movement, but for different reasons. “The Nazis equate capitalism, which the demonstrators are opposed to, to their hallucinations of a Jewish conspiracy. This may be reflected in some of the anti-Semitic rhetoric. . . . The communists see the current demonstrations as a beginning of an American Bolshevik Revolution and the establishment of a Soviet-style government in the United States.” The enemy of my enemy is my friend until the smoke clears and there are just Nazis and Communists. Then you’ll see a real war.

Without an incentive to make a profit, there is no capital. There are no iPods, iPads, cell phones, smart phones, social networks, electric cars, or tax money to redistribute. What will they replace the current system with? You can’t beat something with nothing. What’s the something? We’re never told.

Atheists are like the OWStreeters. What will replace our present moral system? Why is something going to right or wrong in a worldview without a transcendent law giver, without God? Right now, atheists borrow from the Christian worldview to construct a moral base for their atheistic world because there’s no such thing as ethics based on atheism. German philosopher Jürgen Habermas, who is an atheist, has acknowledged as much:

Universalistic egalitarianism, from which sprang the ideals of freedom and a collective life in solidarity, the autonomous conduct of life and emancipation, the individual morality of conscience, human rights and democracy, is the direct legacy of the Judaic ethic of justice and the Christian ethic of love. This legacy, substantially unchanged, has been the object of continual critical appropriation and reinterpretation. To this day, there is no alternative to it. And in light of the current challenges of a postnational constellation, we continue to draw on the substance of this heritage. Everything else is just idle postmodern talk.” (Jürgen Habermas, Time of Transitions (Polity Press, 2006), 150–151.))

Former theist and now self-avowed atheist Dan Barker, who is co-president of the Freedom of Religion Foundation, is promoting a “Beware of Dogma” campaign using billboards that also include the line “Imagine No Religion.” The line is taken from John Lennon’s atheist national anthem Imagine.

Of course, we don’t have to imagine what our world would be like without religion. Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) gives us a window into such a world:

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