God, Guns and Guts? Maybe.

In Hindrocket's "Happy Thanksgiving" post he gives us the following thoughts, which I'm linking because at the second-or-so mention of God I think my eyes glazed over, due to a perception that it was going to be one of those passages from my political allies who are somewhat to my right in the culture wars. It was much more insightful than I expected:

There have been a number of stories in the news this year about schools that have banned any reference to God in connection with Thanksgiving. Which raises, obviously, the question: to whom are we giving thanks, if not to God? I think the real answer, although always unspoken, is that instead of being thankful to God for our blessings, some would have us be thankful to the government.

In the end--and the end may be quite far off, for, as Adam Smith said, there is a lot of ruin in a country--there are only two alternatives for any nation: religious faith and tyranny. Because if each individual is not, as the Declaration says, endowed by his Creator with certain inalienable rights, then those rights are only the creation of governments. And what governments give, they can, and surely will, take away.

In the end, it is only the religious belief that each person, by virtue of being created in the image of God, is of transcendant value that stands between all of us and the boot heel of tyranny. Absent such belief, people are but cattle and, sooner or later, will be treated as such.

That dramatic broad statement—that it's religious faith or tyranny for a country or a society—is actually worth pondering. I know that some of my favorite bloggers who are slightly right-of-center are athiests, and if anything that strengthens those of us who do have a belief in God; it certainly keeps us honest in any number of debates. But our nation's founding documents posit that rights come from God, not man. And for that reason no one is in a position to take them away. It gives us moral authority to defend rights that already exist, rather than demanding ones that are the state's to withhold or dispense at its whim.

Not a preachy bit of fluff, after all. Some of my favorite thinkers are still athiests, but it's nice to be reminded that they don't always win the intellectual arm-wrestling. Not by a long shot.