So many atheists are leftists, it’s upsetting. It’s like their skepticism and reasoning only took them ’so far’ – but they stopped their questioning when it came to their economic assumptions. Fortunately a scion of the atheist world is coming out to change that.
Michael Shermer is the Editor of Skeptic Magazine and a regular contributor to Scientific American. He’s an atheist of the old school.
Shermer has new book out on neuroeconomics called “The Mind of the Market“. He talks about it in the latest edition of the atheist podcast: Point of Inquiry ( a podcast I had given up on because of its obnoxious liberal slant). The point of the books is that markets are natural, rational, and moral:
Shermer considers the morality of markets in a discussion of what he calls virtue economics. Although we are selfish and altruistic, cooperative and competitive, peaceful and bellicose, in the main the balance is heavily on the side of good over evil. For every random act of violence that makes the evening news, there are 10,000 nonrandom acts of kindness that go unrecorded every day. Markets are moral and modern economies are founded on our virtuous nature. The Enron model of business is the exception and the Google motto of “Don’t Be Evil” is the rule.
Shermer also has a good blog post on capitalism and the public bias against it; read it and you’ll get an idea of the direction the book leans:
Capitalism may not need apologists and propagandists, but it does need a vigorous scientific and rational defense as evidenced by the fact that so many people still distrust free markets. Market solutions to social problems are generally received with skepticism. Businessmen are distrusted, corporations looked at askance, and there is a well-known resentment against those who have most benefited from markets…
People also have a remarkably low tolerance for economic ambiguity. Free markets are chaotic and uncertain, uncontrollable and unpredictable. Most of us have little tolerance for such environments, and we have learned to expect that social institutions such as the government will bring a level of certainty to society. People who cannot afford (or who choose not to purchase) insurance against acts of God typically expect acts of government to save them…
As well, there is well-documented liberal bias in the academy and the media against free markets. A 2005 study by the George Mason University economist Daniel Klein, for example, found that at two of America’s leading institutes of higher learning Democrats outnumbered Republicans among the faculty by a staggering ratio of 10 to 1 at the University of California, Berkeley and by 7.6 to 1 at Stanford University. Measuring political attitudes through voter registrations among faculty in twenty different departments, in the humanities and social sciences the ratio was 16 to 1 at both campuses (30 to 1 among assistant and associate professors), and in some departments, such as anthropology and journalism, there wasn’t a single Republican to be found…
In a manner and potency matching academia, the bias in the media is against free market economics. A comprehensive 2005 study conducted by UCLA political scientist Tim Groseclose and University of Missouri economist Jeffrey Milyo, published in the Quarterly Journal of Economics, measured media bias by counting the times that a particular media outlet cited various think tanks and policy groups, and then compared this with the number of times that members of Congress cited the same groups. “Our results show a strong liberal bias: all of the news outlets we examine, except Fox News’ Special Report and the Washington Times, received scores to the left of the average member of Congress.” Not surprisingly, the authors discovered that CBS Evening News and the New York Times “received scores far to the left of center” and that “the most centrist media outlets were PBS NewsHour, CNN’s Newsnight, and ABC’s Good Morning America.” Interestingly, USA Today — that ne plus ultra of pop print media — was closest to political center of all newspapers.
I wish that more atheists would read the book, listen to the podcast, and think as critically about their politics and economics as they do about Jesus and spaghetti monsters.
Filed under: Uncategorized , Atheism, Capitalism, Politics
The capitalistic thinking IS the norm for most people. Having socialist leanings is usually the exception to the rule.
Myself, I an leaning more and more to the left, after having been raised a capitalist, as have most atheists that were born in “western” countries. This means that through critical thinking I have judged the free market to be inferior to a more socialistic society.
Frankly, your statement that people who have left leanings have not thought things through is offending.
Remember also that what Americans call “leftist” or “socialist” would be called “right-wing” in Europe. There is no “left” in America; there is only the right and the extreme right.
Shermer goes off the rails in his first sentence:
Capitalism is not about free markets. The truly free market is an anarchist notion. Capitalism is about vesting the power to restrict and control markets in those who own capital.
“I wish that more atheists would read the book, listen to the podcast, and think as critically about their politics and economics as they do about Jesus and spaghetti monsters.”
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Who says they think about Jesus and the spaghetti monsters? Anyone who triumphantly declares himself an atheist is declaring that he knows the unknowable. That, plus most of them are merely rejecting a literal interpretation of the sacred texts of one or two religions. It never occurs to them that if there is a God, he/she/it isn’t necessarily the mythical creature described in the Bible or in any other religious tradition. Humans do have only a feeble capacity to understand and interpret such abstract concepts. That’s why we have so many versions of the gods in operation across the planet. Our inability to clearly conceptualize it doesn’t mean that it doesn’t exist.
I subscribed to Skeptic Magazine for a year. I let it lapse because each issue was just a monotonous, repetitive screed against Judeo-Christian scriptures and practice. He seems to be stuck at that lower level of understanding that is more typical of teenagers or 20-somethings. It was really boring.
I don’t think the basis for the difference in atheists’ views toward capitalism is a failure to think as rationally about it as they do toward religion. Rather, I think the difference reflects a general diversity of values, and honest disagreement over how to best achieve the ones we share.
For example, some may highly regard equality. In fact, it may be their utmost value, under which all other values, including freedom, fall. They see inequality as the source of injustice in the world and think that the free market contributes to it, while socialist-type policies lessen it.
One’s values are derived from a vast mix of factors, not all of them strictly rational. Upbringing, social status, education, parental influences, etc. all contribute.
This is not to say that the superiority of one system over another cannot be objectively demonstrated, just that the rational evaluation of the evidence is going to be colored by one’s values, as well as biases.
I will get that book. Thank you.
As for the comments above: WOW!!! I think all you need to do is type Q.E.D.!
Another book I am on the lookout for (only in the US for now): ‘The Liberal Mind: The Psychological Causes of Political Madness’ by Lyle H. Rossiter, Jr., MD.
He is a ‘board certified practicing’ psychiatrist, and a ‘forensic psychiatrist’… In this book, he examines the roots for ‘liberal’ thinking and why people who propose them seem unable to see THAT these just don’t seem to work. He suggests that there is a pathology to it.
Aside: never has a word been more misused and misunderstood than ‘atheist’ – and that includes by people who are ’self described atheists’. The term was INVENTED to mean DISBELIEF. Not belief in NON-existence. It is simply not holding a belief. Because of its misuse (often confused with anti-theist), I prefer the term ‘ignostic’ – someone who says the concept of ‘god’ cannot be satisfactorily defined….so how could one hold a belief on the topic?
I’m 49. Atheist since age 7, capitalist since a teenager. Engineer by trade. I always thought it was natural to combine free minds with free markets. Other than hobnobbing with Objectivists, i’ve always felt like the odd man out. I could not relate to anti-capitalist atheists at all during all these years. Of course capitalists in politics who follow religion gave me the creeps. I’ve been shunned by people, thinking I must be in the opposite camp or pigeon-holing me as a socialist atheist or a capitalist Bible thumper.