The left finds God — and welcome to Him

Fun post over at Neo-Neocon: Thoughts about what the left is really looking for in their admiration of terrorists. She sees it in terms of psychology, and it looks sensible to me, though my opinion isn't worth squat in that field. I have my own thoughts, besides.

A lot of people believe in God, and find value in their faith, because of the moral-order issue: God punishes the wicked and rewards the just, and He never gets it wrong because He's infinitely wise.

The left assigns that just-punishment-of-the-wicked job to Osama bin Laden. In terms of this one aspect of faith (there are others), they worship that dingbat.

Some versions of Christianity have reinvented God as a non-judgemental, non-punishing, non-rewarding nonentity. Aren't those the ones who drift hard to the left and start apologizing for terrorists? By and large, yes.

Religion — hard-ass, "thou-shalt-and-thou-shalt-not"-style religion — hasn't been invented and perpetuated in so many human societies just by chance; it fills a need, one that some evangelicals both fancifully and irritatingly call "a God-shaped hole in your heart". It's an annoying phrase, but it nails the idea.

Nature abhors a vacuum, I guess, as much as it abhors a metaphor left unabused: Some of us are sufficiently miserable, misanthropic, and depressing that we can leave that hole empty or else fill it with dry, nerdy crap like "market forces", but most people aren't. They empty it out, and something else fills it, often something worse. It's the same argument I have against anarchism: Something will fill that "government-shaped hole in your society"; are you real sure your friendly neighborhood robber baron will suck less than what you've got?

And this is why I'm not a libertarian. Remember the brass screw joke, where the guy unscrews the brass screw in his bellybutton and his ass falls off? It happens every day.

UPDATE 8/9/2005: If ObL's their God of Wrath, who's in charge of mercy? That'd be the UN, I guess, and the NGO swarm.