On July 13, 1787, the United States Congress passed a law called the Northwest Ordinance, one of the most significant pieces of legislation in the early republic. The law created the Northwest Territory, which includes the current states of Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin and some of Minnesota. It was groundbreaking for several reasons, not the least of which was that it set up a policy for new states to be admitted to the union, and it outlawed slavery whenever those states came to be.
But for the purposes of this post it is Article 3 that to us might appear radical, but to the Founding generation was simply common sense:
Religion, morality, and knowledge, being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged.
Keeping aside separation of church and state as currently understood, I thought of this when I read a piece about atheists demanding that a university chancellor apologize for saying that religion is essential if a democracy is to thrive. The gist of the chancellor’s argument was that:
Democracy works in America not because of government enforcement or because people believe they’re accountable to society, but because they know they’re “accountable to God.”
This offended some atheists, one who claimed that religion isn’t necessary to “keep people from being criminals.” This gentleman called for an apology to all those who were “disparaged” by such comments.
Now we all know perfectly fine atheists, many of whom are likely more upstanding than some of the religious people we know. Nobody of any credibility would argue that atheists cannot be upstanding, moral citizens, and I’m sure the chancellor would agree with that. But the discussion wasn’t about isolated individuals, but society. The Founders of America regardless of their own religious convictions, strongly believed that virtue was a necessary foundation for liberty, and that a self-governing people could only prosper where religion was taken seriously.
If we paraphrase the beginning of Article 3, it says that religion and morality are necessary for good government, the former provides the foundation for the latter. Why would they say such a thing? Mainly because they knew human nature, and they knew that a godless universe would never give human beings broadly considered a good enough rationale to be moral, and without a moral or virtuous citizenry you cannot have good government.
The atheists’ offense at such assertions is difficult to take seriously because a society full of atheists has never existed nor can it; even officially atheists societies such as the old Soviet Union, or China and others could never stamp out religion completely. And the leaders of those societies used atheism to provide the amoral framework for their totalitarianism; if the state is not accountable to any higher moral authority, then it can do anything it wants. Another problem with such offense is that a society full of atheists even if it could exist would have a moral framework that is to one degree or another based on the Judeo-Christian religions.
Atheists have argued for centuries that human beings can build a morality without God, but if the atheist is logically consistent he cannot get morals from matter alone; he gets them from the residue of religion. But as Nietzsche understood, as does Woody Allen in our day, you cannot get meaning from a universe that is ultimately, objectively meaningless. So the Chancellor need not apologize, even if how he said what he said was inartful. Atheists should not feel disparaged or offended by such comments because they are simply the logical conclusion of their worldview.
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