{"id":3613,"date":"2012-06-01T10:24:57","date_gmt":"2012-06-01T15:24:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/?p=3613"},"modified":"2012-06-01T12:21:55","modified_gmt":"2012-06-01T17:21:55","slug":"nothing-to-fear-theyre-nihilists","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/?p=3613","title":{"rendered":"Nothing to fear, they’re nihilists"},"content":{"rendered":"

"Say what you will about the tenets of National Socialism<\/a>, Dude, at least it was an ethos."  That was Walter Sobchek of the Big Lebowski.  One finds a similar thought in a recent discussion:*<\/p>\n

\n

Say what you will about the prosperity gospel and the cult of the God Within and the other theologies I criticize in Bad Religion<\/em>, but at least they have a metaphysically coherent picture of the universe to justify their claims. Whereas much of today’s liberalism expects me to respect its moral fervor even as it denies the revelation that once justified that fervor in the first place.<\/strong> It insists that it is a purely secular and scientific <\/strong>enterprise even as it grounds its politics in metaphysical<\/strong> claims.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

That's Ross Douthat, New York Times' pious columnist.  For a discussion of the Euthyphro Problem-denying angles to this, see John Holbo at Crooked Timber<\/a> (my source for the passage above). <\/p>\n

My quibble would be that "secular" and "scientific" enterprises cannot have "methaphysical" claims.  Seems that insofar as they make claims about what sorts of things are real, or not, they do.<\/p>\n

*edited this sentence to make it clear I'm not going Godwin on Douthat.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

"Say what you will about the tenets of National Socialism, Dude, at least it was an ethos."  That was Walter Sobchek of the Big Lebowski.  One finds a similar thought in a recent discussion:* Say what you will about the prosperity gospel and the cult of the God Within and the other theologies I criticize … Continue reading Nothing to fear, they’re nihilists<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[581],"tags":[1207,1402,657,1401,353,1403,1404],"class_list":["post-3613","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ross-douthat-op-ed-writers-sources","tag-euthyphro-problem","tag-god-within","tag-john-holbo","tag-metaphysics","tag-ross-douthat","tag-the-big-lebowski","tag-the-dude"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3613","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3613"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3613\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3615,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3613\/revisions\/3615"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3613"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3613"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3613"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}