From absurd assertions

From an American Atheists mailing:

On Monday, Trump’s Religious Liberty Commission held its final hearing. Chairman and Texas Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick promptly summarized their findings: “There is no such thing as ‘separation of church and state’ in the Constitution. For too long, the anti-God Left has used this phrase to suppress people of religion in our country.” 

That result was never in doubt. Patrick’s been saying it since at least 2013. So, it’s hardly surprising that a cherry-picked group, led by a guy who believes God wrote the Constitution, held a series of meetings at a Bible museum, excluded alternative viewpoints, and arrived exactly where they started.

Last year, American Atheists warned the Commission its deliberate exclusion of minority and nonreligious perspectives would “fatally undermine” any semblance of objectivity. We were right.  

The final hearing was filled with attacks on nonreligious Americans, with commissioners calling church-state separation “the biggest lie that’s been told in America since our founding” and warning against the rise of religious Nones because “the secular movement attacks all of us” and “secularists” are to blame for undermining the “fact” that “at the heart of American liberty and religious liberty is faith in the God of the Bible.” 

That’s how the project advances from absurd assertions to institutional authority. 

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas took it even further, arguing in a speech this week that the founding principle of the United States is that “all rights come from God, not government.” Because “Progressivism” does not agree, he said its proponents (whom he compared to Stalin, Hitler, Mussolini, and Mao) represent an existential threat that is “incompatible with a constitution premised on the transcendent origin of our rights” and “cannot coexist.” 

All very well but how does he know which God? Who is this “God” and how does Clarence Thomas or anyone else know it’s the right one and not an imposter? If all rights come from God, how do they get to us?

They get to us via people who say they come from God. But how do we know they’re telling the truth? How do we know they know? How do they know they know? How does anyone know any of this?

The answer of course is they don’t. No one does. There is no unbroken chain of communication back to the writing of The Bible such that we can check the credentials of the people who wrote it, or, if you like, copied it from God’s dictation.

All there is is a long line of human assertion. Somebody somewhere said it, therefore it’s true. Not very convincing, is it.

It’s circular reasoning, is what it is.

It’s in the Bible therefore it’s true.

But how do you know?

Because it’s in the Bible.

So?

It’s in the Bible therefore it’s true.