Is There Something in the Nothing?

Top Stories of the Year: #5

More Americans are doing this than ever before.

It is time for me to count down the top stories of this year, particularly as covered in The Tracinski Letter.

At #5 is something that is definitely not a breaking news story, but I spent a lot of time on it, and I think it explains some of the big breaking news stories. It is the long-term decline of religious belief—and the cultural confusion and anxiety over what fills that cultural vacuum.

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“The Paradox of Heterodox Orthodoxy”

The big new development this year is the rise of “Cultural Christianity” or the “Culture War Christian”—the intellectual who doesn’t necessarily believe in God, but who thinks that Christianity is still somehow necessary for the cultural defense of Western Civilization.

This was heralded late last year by the defection of Muslim apostate and celebrity atheist Ayaan Hirsi Ali. But it was a curious kind of conversion. As I noted at the time:

What you may notice about this case for Christianity is how hollow and instrumental it is, making no mention of the actual religious doctrines of Christianity or even that somewhat important figure in the religion, Jesus….

Hirsi Ali initially quotes Bertrand Russell, whose essay “Why I Am Not a Christian” was part of her conversion from Islam, as saying, “Fear is the basis of the whole thing—fear of the mysterious, fear of defeat, fear of death.” And then the only reason she can give us for becoming a Christian is fear of China, fear of Islam, fear of wokeness.

Elon Musk, who was never much of an independent thinker, has also gone over, making vague noises about Christian values.

Early this year, I linked to a good article in Persuasion by Matt Johnson describing how these Culture War Christians are bringing religious dogma back to the “heterodox community.” Then Cathy Young leapfrogged us all with the magnificent phrase, “the paradox of heterodox orthodoxy.” Basically, this is what happens when “anti-woke” intellectuals rebel against the dogmas of the far left—but don’t have the independence of mind to come up with an alternative worldview based on their own observation.

I added to Johnson’s critique of this phenomenon.

Johnson focuses too much on grounding Western liberalism in “Enlightenment rationalism and skepticism.” That’s true (depending on the meaning of “skepticism”), but there’s a deeper and more convincing answer.

Conservatives try to ground Western Civilization on the “Judeo-Christian tradition”—you know, the one that crashed Western Civilization the first time it became widely accepted. But they write out of history the true source of unique Western culture: the Greco-Roman tradition. The distinctive culture of the West was created—and even the idea of “the West” as culturally distinct from “the East,” originated by Herodotus in response to Persian invasions—by Greek scientists and philosophers centuries before the birth of Christ, and at about the same time the books of the Old Testament were first being written down.

I can’t emphasize this enough. “Western Civilization” cannot be based on Christianity, because it predates the birth of Christ by at least five centuries. I have an article coming out soon that is very specifically about the pre-Judeo-Christian origins of our civilization, though it probably won’t be published until January.

But I’ve spent much of this year attempting to convince people of the viable cultural and intellectual alternatives to Christianity—alternatives that are not merely theoretical, but already here.

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Is There Something in the Nothing?

I announced this objective early on, while giving more information about a relatively new poll quantifying the decline in belief. Here are the important figures from the poll.

“Today, about 28% of US adults are religiously unaffiliated, describing themselves as atheists, agnostics or ‘nothing in particular’ when asked about their religion.” Note that this is significantly more than the number of evangelicals (24%) or Catholics (23%). It is the largest religious category in America—not a majority (yet), but a large plurality—and it has grown rapidly, up from only 16% in 2007.

But what does “nothing in particular” actually mean. Is there something in the nothing?

“In our latest data, 17% of ‘nones’ identify as atheist, 20% say they are agnostic, and 63% choose ‘nothing in particular.’”

Does believing in “nothing in particular” actually mean believing in nothing?

[H]ere’s the most interesting result. Pew asked the “nones” how they make moral decisions. “When asked how they decide between right and wrong, 83% of ‘nones’ say the desire to avoid hurting other people is a key factor. And 82% of ‘nones’ say logic and reason are extremely or very important when they decide between right and wrong.”

That’s actually not a bad start. This line from Pew consultant Ryan Cragun, quoted in a Washington Post report, is better:

Cragun said he subscribes to a theory of Swiss sociologist Jörg Stolz that a key driving force behind religion’s decline is “the culmination of growing autonomy in society. People don’t like being told what they should do or what they should not do, especially when the teller isn’t especially qualified. Increasingly, people are saying, ‘Why do I need a pastor to tell me what to do? What makes them any more insightful than this academic journal?’ The rise of the nones is the manifestation of a move toward greater autonomy of individuals.”

Reason and autonomy are a good basis for a civilization. But I am not entirely optimistic.

Then again, people who really do believe in “nothing in particular” could potentially be harnessed for just about everything. One of the more compelling analyses of the Trump phenomenon is that his supporters are nominally religious people who have lost the substance of their faith. I would describe it this way: It’s what happens when you still have the epistemology of religion, but without its metaphysics.

Put differently, I would say that nationalist conservatism presents itself as an attempt to revive Christianity but is actually proof of its collapse. But that’s another article for the new year.

For this year, I defined the task I have set for myself on this issue.

This will be a difficult and potentially dangerous transitional period. The “nones” could clearly benefit from discovering a more explicit foundation for a life without god: art, literature, and philosophy that defines and defends reason and individual autonomy.It is a vast opportunity to put more something into the nothing.

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Man at the Center of a Godless World

I followed this with an exploration in The UnPopulist of how atheism provides a foundation for political liberalism. I introduced it to this list by citing a few crucial excerpts.

My goal was to reconnect atheism back to the older tradition of Enlightenment ideas. The two key philosophical ideas I focused on are reason and individualism.As for reason:

There is a direct connection between the naturalist worldview of atheism, its reliance on observation and reasoning, and political freedom. To value reason is to value the process of reasoning. In a universe without supernatural revelation, no one arrives at the truth instantaneously—or infallibly. All knowledge requires a process of inquiry, deliberation, rigorous questioning and debate, and above all a free flow of information. To value reason requires that you value the freedom to engage in this process.

As for individualism:

All authoritarian systems are built on the idea that there is some higher purpose that takes precedence over your own life and goals, justifying the supervening coercion of church and state. But in a godless worldview, this makes no sense. Our individual lives and our enjoyment of them are the highest purpose, by virtue of being the only purposes.

But most of all, I wanted to convey that an atheist worldview can be more than just a set of philosophical arguments. It can also be its own secular form of spirituality.

To grasp the power and grandeur of the human mind does not require any leap of faith or specialized theology. We only need to look out at the world and observe. There is abundant evidence of the human capacity to think, to understand, to create, to build, and to express itself. There is also abundant evidence that this capacity is a necessity of our survival and the source of mankind’s greatest accomplishments: the scientific and technological achievements of the modern world; the debates that led to crucial political reforms; the highest expressions in art and music.

If you look at everything that humans have accomplished, you realize that the individual human at the center of a godless world is not a small or pathetic figure. We are giants.

Astute readers may notice that this formulation of “man at the center of a godless world” is a subtle reference to National Review’s infamous review of Atlas Shrugged, which dismissed that possibility.

I also expanded on what I see as my overall goal.

The “New Atheists” of a few decades ago were engaged in a pitched battle to make the case for atheism and pry people away from their residual loyalty to the old creeds. That battle is over, and we’re going to need a new wave of atheist advocacy to help give philosophical and spiritual substance to a new era of unbelief that is already upon us.

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The Inner Light

Given my interest specifically in the spiritual aspects of a secular worldview, I have also written about secular art and how popular culture fandom is already replacing the Biblical Cinematic Universe.

Specifically, I look at the role of “shared spirituality,” that is, “a set of common experiences and references that help us talk about these issues and find a sense of community and fellowship.”

The answer to that need is already here, and chances are you are already a fan. Secular art and literature deal with the same spiritual issues as religion, and this includes mass popular culture with its franchises and fandoms, to which we are already transferring some of the sense of loyalty and personal identity that used to be the hallmarks of religion.

Back in the 1950s and ’60s, Hollywood produced a series of grand-scale Biblical epics that you might think of as the Biblical Cinematic Universe. These days, we are replacing that with the Marvel Cinematic Universe and its various rivals and copycats.

A lot of this is based on an article I wrote eight years ago about the proliferation of fictional “universes,” which holds up really well. For the present purpose, I zero in on one aspect of this phenomenon.

Each of these sci-fi and fantasy series is not just a franchise but a literary universe, not only in the sense of a shared setting with distinctive terminology, but also in a more esthetic and even spiritual sense. All works of art create their own “universe” in the sense of a distinctive view of the universe, of human beings and what we ought to expect from the world….

So in addition to matching the scope of religious mythology, these fictional universes also serve the same spiritual function as religion.

And while “I would personally prefer if people were spending more time reading long, highbrow philosophical novels”—there is not, as yet, an Ayn Rand Cinematic Universe—I point out that a widely shared cultural touchstone needs to draw from popular culture, which is less intellectually demanding….

And the biggest advantage of these literary alternatives to religion is that this time around, we know it’s all fiction….

The result: “Our participation in these fictional universes satisfies our spiritual need for a coherent view of the world and a way to express our values, and it helps us share our enthusiasm with like-minded people. But it does so in a way that leaves each of us, individually, as the arbiter of what we think is true and right.”

More recently, so recently that I won’t repeat much of it, I followed up on how secular fiction can capture “the inner light” of human existence. I conclude: “Christianity is not the only source of answers to the big questions and needs of life—nor was it the first.” Like I said, I’ll be addressing that in more depth soon, so stay tuned.

This is at #5 in this year’s countdown because it is not a matter of urgent, breaking news, though it is at least one of the factors behind the rise of Christian nationalism on the right and its search for a political savior. But it is definitely a big, long-term trend of our era, and I don’t think people are paying enough attention to it.

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