Since Aaron wasn’t even able to grasp the fact that I’ve already responded to his “main argument: that he [Vox] expressed moral ideas that were in direct conflict with libertarianism” and that I am “anti-libertarian”, apparently I’ll have to spell it out.
1. Libertarianism is not a morality or a religion. It is a political philosophy, and as such there are no libertarian morals any more than there are Democratic or Republican morals.
2. OXFORD ENGLISH DICTIONARY: • noun an extreme laissez-faire political philosophy advocating only minimal state intervention in the lives of citizens.
3. Christianity operates outside the state. It is not, in its proper form and place, an ideology or political philosophy. When Christianity is entwined with the state and becomes ideological, it withers and dies, like everything else the state touches. See the Anglican Church or the state churches in Europe for examples.
4. The postulated Christian God, despite possessing ultimate might, refuses to dictate men’s actions. (There are certainly advocates of omniderigence out there, the concept of the Divine Puppet Master, but I am not one of them. Let it be for now, that’s another discussion for another time.) No one is forced to become a Christian, every individual is free to reject Jesus Christ. Thus, the Christian doctrine of the gift of free will and individual responsibility is very much in sync with libertarian ideology.
5. I have repeatedly and consistently advocated minimal state intervention in the lives of the citizenry. If I am not a libertarian, then it is clear that such strange beasts don’t exist. Like conservatives who wish to ban sin, Aaron makes the mistake of confusing morality with legality, conflating religion with ideology, and winds up by clinging to his errant QED in the face of easily observable facts.
As for the embarrasing attempt to define Christian morality as one wherein “might makes right”, Francis manages to get Christian theology backwards as well as omitting the obvious evidence with regards to atheist/agnostic philosophy. Christianity postulates “right makes might”; it is the explicitly anti-Christian philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche that is built upon a foundation of the good being arbitrarily defined by the strong.
It is not as if the question “from whence comes right and wrong?” is a new one. Socrates dealt with it in the Euthypro. As he correctly ascertained, a god-given morality is entirely arbitrary. The only question, then, is if a god has the right to arbitrarily define a universal morality; if one accepts the idea that the Christian God is the Universal Creator, there can be no doubt of his just and lawful right to do so, independent of his ability to enforce it. He that maketh the game altho maketh the ruleth.
Indeed, the argument made by Francis upon which Aaron relies so heavily involves a pernicious and illogical double-think, as he denies God’s existence while simultaneously attempting to claim that Christian morality depends upon this non-existent might. But if God does not exist, then there is no might with which to make right and Christian morality does not exist and the Christian is in the same amoral boat as the atheist. But if God does exist as postulated, then having made man, he would have held a legitimate original claim on the ownership of the created individual, whereas neither Francis nor Aaron has even begun to make a case for why the individual, not having created himself, should enjoy self-ownership in the absence of it being granted to him by his creators.
Again, the Christian libertarian can present a coherent and rational case, the atheist libertarian – however much we may appreciate him – is forced to rely on a naked assertion of something being self-evident which is demonstrably not evident at all.
Methinks the boys are in over their heads here.