If you hadn't picked up in it yet, we have a literary bent around here, and one of the great men f letters of recent years was the inimitable Clive Staples Lewis. C.S. Lewis was known for many works, but of his most important writings were his Christian apologetics. Among these was one of my personal favorites, the Screwtape Letters, in which an older, experienced demon counsels his young nephew on the best way to corrupt and draw away from Christianity a young Englishman. The letters, and the young demon's setbacks show the strengths and triumphs of Christianity over the demonically inspired philosophy of man, until the man's conversion to Christianity is sealed, as is the fate of the young failure of a demon.
Imagine my surprise when I was reading NRO today, and found the modern day equivalent, in which a young convert to atheism sets out to demonstrate in a series of letters to atheism's old guard the weaknesses in the philosophy that must be overcome if it is ever to become the dominant mindset. I think you should read the whole thing in its entirety, but I did want to call these excerpts out for further examination:
The bottom line is, after everything that’s happened since the sexual revolution, I’m telling you that we atheists really need to knock off all the happy talk about how fantabulously liberating sex is. Privacy, privacy, privacy, Everybody mantras — as if that word settles anything at all! It’s messed up, isn’t it, when you think of how otherwise puritanical our own times are, that the church’s notion of sexual discipline should seem so funny to so many people? After all, it’s the only kind of discipline that’s out of bounds! We all know that people who eat too much are pigs, people who drink too much are drunks, people who don’t exercise are slobs and parasites on the body politic what with all their health costs, and people who smoke are just as disgusting as it’s possible to be, like an old person crossed with a fat one wearing a fur coat and eating venison and cake at the same time or something — and the rest of us are all really put out at every one single of those kinds of people for being such slobs and so hard on our own eyes and wallets. You know?
Yet sex behind closed doors, just as the Dulls point out, has more serious consequences for the world than any of these other kinds of piggishness. It’s those “private acts” outside of marriage that have sent the illegitimacy soaring and put so many kids in the rough hands of mom’s rotating boyfriends. It’s consenting adults who have turned AIDS and STDs into global health problems. All this is to say nothing of the consequences that are harder to measure of all those mature adults doing as they please “in private.” And kids know all about those kinds of consequences, as You can see if You ever look at their music and movies and Facebook pages. There’s a backlash out there that none of You seem to know about — one you might call Ozzie and Harriet, come back — All is forgiven! I would go even farther, based on what I saw as a Dull, and say that this notion of sexual discipline and its importance is not only serious rather than unserious; it is also what pulls many of the Dulls into practicing or even turning to religion the first place, because they feel somehow better about life when it's lived inside of those rules.
Please understand that I’m not criticizing here! Cheering for pornography and omnivorous sex and by extension, broken homes and abused and screwed up kids and all the rest of the revolution’s fallout may not be everyone’s thing; but most of You new atheist Guys have definitely made it Yours. I respect all that! I’m just saying for now that we shouldn’t fool ourselves into thinking that the believers’ sexual codes are an unmitigated bad on them and a plus for Us, when most evidence suggests it’s quite the other way around.
When I read this, I thought of several blog discussions I have witnessed recently, and tried to reason out why I didn't see the same things advocated bearing themselves out in practice. I 'm sure that some people have no desire to discuss these things a rational fashion. If there is one thing that is missing in today's marketplace of ideas, it is the ability to carry on a civilized debate without engaging in ad hominems or simply shouting the other side down. Maybe I'm a fool to believe that Lenore's loyal readership could have such a discussion, but that's what I'm asking you all for regardless. So what do you think? Has the gospel of "Doing whatever you want" improved the lives of its followers, or are they missing something lacking in the lives of those who subscribe to the tenants of Judeo-Christian beliefs?
2 comments:
The Screwtape Letters is my favorite Lewis book, by far. Don't really see how this navel-gazing atheist punk's drivel compares to them.
Actually, I enjoyed it. Thanks for the post and the link. I thought I was the only one who had problems with the "Consenting Adults" myth.
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