Does the West Need Religion?

& other questions from the ARC conference and Free Press debate

You’d be 100% forgiven if, in all of the cataclysmic things happening on the daily, you missed a couple of recent cultural events.

But both shed some light on our current trajectory and are worth tracking.

The first was the ARC Conference (Association for Responsible Citizenship) in London–AKA Revenge of the Tories.

It was a chummy little conference of about four thousand souls, founded by Baroness Philippa Stroud and one Jordan Peterson.

Who has now officially entered his full Old Testament eyes-closed rambling Prophet era.

It featured David Brooks from the NYT speaking truth to MAGA power and pointing out that their fearless leader wasn’t much of a conservative and was kind of an asshat (to audible boos, mostly from the American delegation).

But good on ya, DB, for getting out of your New England echo-chamber and into an Olde England one with slightly different acoustics!

Whoever said that Suburban Dads can’t step into The Arena?

Douglas Murray, the erudite Brit who now fills that Hitchens-shaped-hole in everyone’s heart, laid out a staunch defense of Western Civ.

He threw some shade on the Wokies claiming that they could take apart the bicycle of civilization but didn’t know how to put it back together again.

#sickburn

#mykingdomforatireiron

His talk promptly went viral online.

And Lady Philippa herself, who delivered opening remarks about WE and US fighting The Good Fight, and taking back what was OURS. And setting sail on an ARC to save civilization (see what she did there).

It all sounded appropriately chummy, in an RP Leni Riefenstahl kinda way. I mean, her speech wasn’t art, but it was good. It’s just you could see it getting repurposed to darker ends, oh-so easily.

And then that fella Konstantin Kisin of the trollish podcast Triggernometry fame gave a closing talk that apparently lots of people loved. He made some jokes about trolling libs. About how dumb they are. About how great the West is. Some more about how dumb they are…

And to be fair, as a Russian immigrant, he’s got a perspective that native born Brits and Yanks do not. But at this point, the whole thing felt too self-congratulatory, too tribal.

And nowhere near self reflective, let alone critical.

This was a victory lap gloat tour. Not a “with great power comes great responsibility” confab.

All errors in human nature and politics were assigned to the defeated dumbasses on the other side of the aisle.

And an almost sophomoric bluster that markets are always right, climate change is a marxist hoax, and girls should By God Almighty be free to play sports without dicks!

I mean, sure.

But now what?

Western Civilization has some kickass elements (democracy, civil rights, humanitarianism, scientific method, freedom of religion).

But it’s also hosted some colossal fuckups (genocide, slavery, economic depressions, ecological overshoot).

And teasing apart the former from the latter seems like Job #1 for those at the newly reclaimed helm of the Western ARC.

Uniting and leading are infinitely harder than trolling and gloating.

What felt conspicuously absent in these defenses of Western Civilization, was any wrestling with Western ethics—namely, those quaint notions of Greek demos (consent of the governed) and Christian mercy (love thy neighbor/enemy).

You know, the Better Angels of Our Nature.

We’ll see where ARC goes in future iterations, but if it remains stuck in this zone, it will be less “The Conservative Davos” and more “MAGA for Toffs.”

***

The second gathering was a Free Press debate on “Does the West Need a Religious Revival” hosted by Bari Weiss in Austin.

And this one zeroed right in on the ethics and morality at stake.

I was excited to see if it might rebalance the Vitamin C (Compassion) deficiency of its sister gathering across the pond.

It featured Ayaan Hirsi Ali, NYT’s Ross Douthat, Skeptic Magazine’s Michael Shermer and atheist podcaster Adam Carolla.

Sold out show at the historic Paramount theater. Very buzzy for such a seemingly stodgy topic.

Nellie Bowles (the comedic half of the power journo couple with wife Bari) did opening announcements that were zany and self aware about the theological terrain we were dipping into.

Off to a fun start.

Then Bari came on, offered some opening remarks on the zeitgeist and kicked off a full blown Roberton’s Rules of Parliamentary Order debate—replete with timed opening remarks, and bells.

And votes.

It was like a gameshow for dorks. So much more civil and structured than “the discourse” on Twitter.

The audience had to state upfront whether they believed For or Against the proposition that yes, the West does need a religious revival.

75% were For

25% were Against.

Which, in Texas, wasn’t too surprising.

But in “Keep It Weird” Austin, was a little more lopsided than I would’ve guessed.

#vibeshift

Coming soon to a liberal bastion near you!

The woman sitting next to me, let’s call her “JeezusKaren,” had clear opinions on the matter at hand.

Every time the Nays had something to say she’d tut and cluck as if “how could anyone be so stupid or venal to dare imagine humans might have their own moral compass!”

Anytime the Yays made a point underscoring our need to submit to an unknowable but all powerful God, she’d nod vigorously.

While at first I felt warm and chatty to JeezusKaren, by the end of the night my G&T enabled Christian Charity was running on fumes. I wanted to fucking throttle her.

#forgivemefather

“I don't judge Homer or Marge. That's for vengeful God to do.”

~ Maude Flanders

Winning the debate wasn’t based on who had the most believers in the crowd. It hinged on who swayed the most minds and hearts to change position.

That gave the Skeptics a fighting chance.

Ross Douthat, the token religious conservative writer at the NYT has just come out with a book called Believe.

Aimed at his daily paper’s audience of secular humanists, his book (and his argument that night) was almost Jesuit in its case-making logic.

“The ultimate goal of the sincere religious quest is a relationship or an experience of grace that can’t be obtained through reasoning alone.

But for the open-minded person who hasn’t received divine direction, a religious quest can still be a rational undertaking — not a leap into pure mystery but a serious endeavor with a real hope of making progress toward the truth”

He argued that if you contemplate the vast wonders of this world, the incredible unlikeliness of life or the mathematical precision of physics and mathematics, then you’d be obliged to chalk it up to a Supreme Being.

Douthat’s thesis is an expanded version of the Anthropic Principle—namely, in a Goldilocks Galaxy where so much that makes life possible is almost impossible, what are the odds that it’s all an accident?

And in that fuzzy math, comes the sense that this whole spread was laid out just for us. By a Supreme and Benevolent Father.

Which, as much as I really enjoyed Ross’s rapid fire presentation and quick wit (he genuinely seems like a smart, nice guy), felt like the whole thing fell flat at the finish line.

Arguments for some version of Intelligent Design have been around (and thoroughly challenged by evolutionary biologists) for decades.

The idea that the universe is amazing, improbable and uncannily ordered is what it is…amazing!

But in and of itself, doesn’t presuppose a Divine agent.

If it wasn’t this way, we wouldn’t be around to ponder it. We’re all suffering from Survivor Bias.

I know plenty of diligent scientists who are super geeked on the nature of Nature–in fact, it’s the prime driver of their entire careers!

But they don’t feel the slightest requirement to abandon Materialism for Belief to house their wonder.

Ross’ efforts to build a bridge across the Screaming Abyss of unbelief, to make it safe, and even reasonable to cross to the other side seems misguided.

They don’t call it a “leap of faith” for nothing.

Sometimes, you just gotta send it.

***

Up next, Ayaan.

If you don’t know her backstory it’s a doozy.

She was born and raised under the Muslim Brotherhood rule in Somalia. Fled to the Netherlands.

Joined Dutch parliament and became friends with filmmaker Theo Van Gogh. He made a documentary on Muslim misogyny and then gets killed by Islamists.

She flees the country and goes into hiding.

Becomes a famous anti-Islamist New Atheist with Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris and the gang.

Then ends up at Stanford and married to British economist Niall Ferguson. And just a couple years ago, converts to Christianity on Twitter.

Or more appropriately, X. (cuz of the whole cross thing)

So now she’s a triple-threat darling of the heterodox right.

Anti-Islamist, repentant atheist turned Christian, and half of a legit power couple with hubby Niall at the Hoover Institute.

But her speech in Austin was the weakest of the lot.

Not because she isn’t fierce and intelligent.

But because there is no fervor like the newly converted.

Amoral society is bad.

Fundamentalist Islam is even worse.

Western Civilization is awesome.

Christianity is the moral code at the heart of Western Civilization

Ergo

Christianity is awesome.

And moral.

QED. (quod erat demonstratum) Which is nerdspeak for “mic drop”

In the same way that MMA fighters quip that you’re always fighting your first martial art, no matter how many others you learn later–you could make a case that you’re always believing your first theology.

And for Ali, that’s a militant belief in her righteous God.

It’s a hop and a skip from Allah to Jehovah.

But the fevered fervor remained.

Kinda scared the shit out of me, honestly.

***

Then we flipped over to the Nays on stage, with Michael Shermer, founder of Skeptic Magazine on deck first.

Since he is the Debunker in Chief who doesn’t believe in much of anything—and takes all the fun out of Grassy Knolls, UAPs, and Epstein Island–I was expecting him to be a bit of a killjoy.

But he wasn’t.

He was funny and sincere. Less joyless atheist, than compassionate secular humanist.

And while he never said it out loud, the bulk of his argument seemed to be a direct refutation of someone who wasn’t even on stage that night.

British historian Tom Holland, and his blockbuster book Dominion.

Dominion has become the modern day bible justifying Western Chauvinism.

In it, Holland (not even a devout believer himself) argues that much of what we consider Western civil society actually owes a tremendous debt to Christianity itself.

He argues that we take for granted so many secular values, like universal human rights, questioning of worldly power, notions of Progress and elevating the downtrodden–but actually they all spring from Christianity itself.

So even the Wokies battling Fundamentalists are actually using Christian values to make their case!

Love me some irony.

Almost as good as that meme a decade ago about Prius’ being worse for the environment than Hummers.

So Shermer’s case during the debate was simple, statistical and damning.

He basically steel-manned Holland’s Dominion argument that Christian ethics and values underpin Western Civilization

But then he cited a host of core metrics: violent crime, rapes, illegitimate births, addiction, incarceration, childhood welfare–you know, all the kinds of things you’d imagine Good Christians would be good at, and godless atheists would be awful at.

And he found that time and again, highly religious societies (and US states) actually had an inverse correlation with almost all of those stats!

The more your people believed, the worse off they were. Across the board. On universally accepted metrics of social health.

Plus, throughout history, Christian authorities stood against workers rights, civil rights, gay rights, religious tolerance, and environmental protections. They were lagging indicators of Christian charity, mercy and stewardship. Not leading indicators.

And they often used contorted readings of the Bible to justify their revanchism.

For every conscientious Quaker stumping for Abolition, there were dozens of hellfire and brimstone Southern preachers justifying slavery on religious grounds.

So according to Shermer, we have to look elsewhere for why we’ve been getting better and kinder over time.

***

Bringing it home was podcast host and comic Adam Carolla. Thought he was gonna be the weak link in the group, but he ended up slaying.

Where everyone before him had been frantically speed reading their notes to get in under the bell (and going long anyways) Adam just got up to the podium and riffed.

He told a few off the wall stories, made some points about how humans-can-be-good just-because-we’re-good arguments.

And ended with an extended analogy comparing those women who fake their therapy dog papers (Christians?) with his own ethical commitment not to let his 120 lb Labrador take a shit at the airport (Atheists?).

Honestly, don’t exactly remember his theological point there, but fuckit. He was a hoot.

If there’s not a little humor in your humanity, you’re probably missing the point.

And if I had to choose between spending the rest of eternity with JeezusKaren in Heaven, or kicking it in atheist Hell with Adam, it wouldn’t even be close.

***

And, as it turned out, it wasn’t close in the debate either.

Despite playing to a decidedly devout crowd, the Nays managed a double digit victory. The Core Believers remained unswayed, but 12% broke ranks and moved across the aisle.

As did I.

I’d started the night more or less in that Tom Holland Dominion camp.

Reckoning that the vengeful, tribal Old Testament chauvinism that seemed so on display at that ARC conference needed a counterpoint.

And that counterpoint was best expressed in Jesus and his Sermon on the Mount. Charity. Humility. Forgiveness.

Things that we will all likely need more of in the coming years.

But after listening to the arguments of the believers onstage, and comparing them to the evidence and humanity of the skeptics, I actually gained a little faith.

Not in an all powerful, all seeing God in the sky.

But in humanity.

And our capacity to do the right thing.

And figure this out together.