Posted by
Andrews on Monday, November 03, 2008 11:08:52 AM
I was trying to track down any attribution for
yet another mystery quote, when I ran across
this silly article trying to argue that atheism makes you happy.
Now the article starts off well enough. He starts off presenting a rather poorly worded argument trying to assert that militant atheism makes nations unhappy. Now, I will grant that the initial argument he is refuting is a bad one, I do not think the presence or absence of atheists in a society, or even a government, has any real relation to happiness. As I see religion a a private matter, provided the government stays out of matters of religion, the absence or presence of atheists in a non-issue.
Of course, I think the comment he is trying to refute is actually arguing that militant atheists are trying to deny people religion and thus are making everyone less happy, which is a valid argument. However he did not word it well, and the author of the larger article refused to try to figure out what he meant by "militant atheism". If my interpretation is correct, than I agree with the quoted writing, as I think enforced atheism is going to make people less happy.
However, none of that matters, as the author then goes completely off the beam. After arguing against the idea that atheism will make us unhappy, he makes the equally bizarre assertion that atheism will make us happy. Using Norway as an example (accompanied by a snide little shot at our president), he argues that Norway is proof positive that atheism makes you just peachy.
The problem here? Well, first that Norway is not militantly atheist int he sense the first writer suggested. Norway does not prohibit religion. However, even if it did, it is not the atheism of Norwegians that is responsible for their prosperity. Norway is the beneficiary of huge tracts of North Sea oil, and, thanks to a relatively small population, that massive quantity of oil has allowed them to live a relatively prosperous existence. It is not atheism, but geographic accident that is responsible for most of the good that the author cites.
Of course that means Norway is just a larger, colder Kuwait. Just as Norway benefits from lots of oil with a small population, so does Kuwait. But, that being the case, is the author willing to concede that Kuwait is proof that Islam makes you happy? Somehow I doubt it.
POSTSCRIPT
It is amazing how many bad idea North Sea oil has managed to prop up. Not just this silly argument for the benefits of atheism, but decades of arguments for socialism as well. Recall int eh 80's and early 90's when the left kept telling us about how successful Sweden was? And how that proved socialism was better than capitalism? What they neglected to mention was that Sweden's expansive socialism was largely supported by oil revenues.
Of course, once the oil revenues dropped and the real costs of socialism became clear, Sweden dropped their more extreme socialists and suddenly we stopped hearing about Sweden. But for a time, North Sea oil bolstered tales of a Scandinavian socialist paradise.