Wednesday, May 17, 2006

Voodo Atheists & Tocqueville   [Jonah Goldberg]

Jonah,

Interesting discussion in The Corner today on Voodoo atheists. Of course, as with everything else in American life, Tocqueville predicted this would happen. Oh, he didn't use the phrase "voodoo atheism" but I think his understanding of pantheism is remarkably similar to the phenomena you describe.

Basically, democratic man encloses "God and the universe in a single whole." We lose our understanding of God as transcendent, beyond the world, and in effect make Him a part of the world. In other words, God can then be found in just about everything! We keep a vague sense of the spiritual while discarding the traditional categories of Judaeo-Christian religion.

Of course, this is because in the democratic age we are fixated on equality and stop  thinking in terms of individual persons but generic masses. As Tocqueville put it, the "idea of unity obsesses the mind." Democratic man is pulled towards abstract categories that encompass a variety of diverse objects. The two broadest categories are "Creator" and "created." But even that differentiation is bothersome for the democratic soul! So we collapse even those categories and God and the world, Creator and created, merge into one. We find God in everything — the Spirit pervades all. See Volume 2, Part 1, Ch. 8 of Democracy in America.

I think this has something to do with what you were discussing today. Again, the concepts of panethism and your "voodoo atheism" aren't identical, but close. At the least, I think such things are related.

Cheers,

05/17 05:51 PMShare