{"id":24467,"date":"2014-02-27T08:33:39","date_gmt":"2014-02-27T13:33:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=24467"},"modified":"2014-02-27T08:33:39","modified_gmt":"2014-02-27T13:33:39","slug":"can-conservatives-be-atheists","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2014\/02\/27\/can-conservatives-be-atheists\/","title":{"rendered":"Can conservatives be atheists?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>According to at least one prominent Republican, the answer is <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nationalreview.com\/article\/372060\/yes-atheism-and-conservatism-are-compatible-charles-c-w-cooke\" target=\"_blank\">very definitely not<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Yesterday, in response to one of the many brouhahas that CPAC seems always to invite, Brent Bozell issued the following statement:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<p><em>The invitation extended by the ACU, Al Cardenas and CPAC to American Atheists to have a booth is more than an attack on conservative principles. It is an attack on God Himself. American Atheists is an organization devoted to the hatred of God. How on earth could CPAC, or the ACU and its board of directors, and Al Cardenas condone such an atrocity?<\/em><\/p>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The particular merits of the American Atheists group to one side, this is a rather astounding thing for Bozell to have said. In just 63 words, he confuses disbelief in God for \u201chatred\u201d for God \u2014 a mistake that not only begs the question but is inherently absurd (one cannot very well hate what one does not believe is there); he condemns an entire conference on the basis of one participant \u2014 not a good look for a struggling movement, I\u2019m afraid; and, most alarmingly perhaps, he insinuates that one cannot simultaneously be a conservative and an atheist. I reject this idea \u2014 and with force.<\/p>\n<p>If atheism and conservatism are incompatible, then I am not a conservative. And nor, I am given to understand, are George Will, Charles Krauthammer, Anthony Daniels, Walter Olson, Heather Mac Donald, James Taranto, Allahpundit, or S. E. Cupp. There is no getting around this \u2014 no splitting the difference: I don\u2019t believe there is a God. It\u2019s not that I\u2019m \u201cnot sure\u201d or that I haven\u2019t ever bothered to think about it; it\u2019s that I actively think there isn\u2019t a God \u2014 much as I think there are no fairies or unicorns or elves. The degree to which I\u2019m confident in this view works on a scale, certainly: I\u2019m much surer, for example, that the claims of particular religions are untrue and that there is no power intervening in the affairs of man than I am that there was no prime mover of any sort. But, when it comes down to it, I don\u2019t believe in any of those propositions. Am I to be excommunicated from the Right?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>According to at least one prominent Republican, the answer is very definitely not: Yesterday, in response to one of the many brouhahas that CPAC seems always to invite, Brent Bozell issued the following statement: The invitation extended by the ACU, Al Cardenas and CPAC to American Atheists to have a booth is more than an [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,53,11,13],"tags":[447,431,517],"class_list":["post-24467","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-liberty","category-politics","category-religion","category-usa","tag-atheism","tag-conservatism","tag-republican"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-6mD","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24467","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24467"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24467\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24468,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24467\/revisions\/24468"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24467"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24467"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24467"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}