Imagine the scene at Harvard in the spring of 1978 when Alexander Solzhenitsyn gave his now-famous address. Solzhenitsyn had already won the Nobel Prize for The Gulag Archipelago and other great works exposing the murderous nature of atheist Communism. But at Harvard Solzhenitsyn touched on a topic much closer to home.
Even though he was second to none in his denunciation of totalitarian socialism, Solzhenitsyn said, "should someone ask me whether I would indicate the West such as it is today as a model to my country, frankly I would have to answer negatively." The whole address is worth reading, but here are some highlights.
On the lack of courage in facing a totalitarian enemy: "The Western world has lost its civil courage, both as a whole and separately, in each country...and of course in the United Nations....Such a decline is especially notable among ruling groups and the intellectual elite....They get tongue-tied and paralyzed when they deal with powerful governments and threatening forces, with aggressors and international terrorists."
On how materialism makes a nation soft: "Every citizen has been granted the desired freedom and material goods in such quantity and of such quality as to guarantee in theory the pursuit of happiness...So why and for what should one risk one's precious life in defense of common values and particularly in such nebulous cases when the security of one's nation must be defended in a distant country?"
On what has happened to the rule of law: "People in the West has acquired considerable skill in using, interpreting and manipulating law....If one is right from a legal point of view, nothing more is required, nobody might mention that one could still not be entirely right and urge a willingness to show restraint or sacrifice. Everybody operates at the extreme limits of those legal frames....A society without any objective legal scale is a terrible one indeed, but a society with no other scale but the legal one is not quite worthy of man either."
On the rights of criminals: "Legal frames especially in the United States are broad enough to encourage not only individual freedom but also certain individual crimes. The culprit can go unpunished or obtain undeserved leniency with the support of legions of public defenders. When a government starts an earnest fight against terrorism, public opinion immediately accuses it of violating the terrorists' civil rights. There are many such cases."
On the abuses of freedom: "Destructive and irresponsible freedom has been granted boundless space. Soceity appears to have litle defense against the abyss of human decadence, such as misuse of liberty for moral violence against young people, motion pictures full of pornography, crime and horror...Such a tilt of freedom in the directionof evil has come about gradually but it was evidently born out of a humanistic concept according to which there is no evil inherent to human nature."
On freedom of the press: "The press, too, enjoys the widest freedom. But what use does it make of this freedom? The press has become the greatest power within the Western countries, more powerful than the legislature, the executive and the judiciary. One would then like to ask: by what law has it been elected and to whom is it responsible? How many hasty, immature, superficial and misleading judgments are expressed every day, confusing readers, and without any verification? Thus we see terrorists made into heroes, or secret matters pertaining to the national defense publicly revealed, or shameful intrusion into the privacy of people under the false slogan: everyone has the right to know everything."
On the atrophy of the spiritual life: "Mere freedom does not in the least solve all the problems of human life and it even adds some new ones....We have placed too much hope in political and social reforms, only to find out that we were being deprived of our most precious possession: our spiritual life."
Thirty years ago, the very chattering classes mentioned in Solzhenitsyn's address ridiculed the man as a reactionary and a crank. The literary critic Susan Sontag describes Manhattan cocktail parties at which the cultural left would laugh at Solzhenitsyn. No one--certainly not liberals and libertarians--wanted to hear what the New York Times called Solzhenitsyn's "hectoring jeremiads."
But today when you go to Asia you hear everywhere the slogan, "Modernization, yes; Westernization, no." Throughout the Muslim world there is a reaction--exploited of course by the Islamic radicals--against what is perceived as the shamelessness and decadence of Western values and culture. Even in the West there is deep ambivalence about what has happened to cherished notions of liberty, the rule of law, freedom of the press, and the pursuit of happiness.
We don't have to agree with Solzhenitsyn on everything to say that, far from being a reactionary, here was a man who was ahead of his time in diagnosing some of the serious ailments of the modern era. Not only was he right about the Gulag; in many respects this forlorn Russian hermit was also right about us.
Reader Comments ( Page 19 of 19)
271. 270. "With the design theory you have the numbers to back you up. With the infinte universe theory you have nothing to back it up. It's either 'it happened this way, or God created the our universe' to allow life."
And the biggest hurdle that the God crew has to jump is 'where did God come from' then. >>>
My arugment is the existence of God. If we are now reduced to where he came from, my arugment is made. I don't care where God came from ... I'm just glad he gave us a universe where seintent life came to be.
I do agree, that my arugment for God is every bit as dependant on faith as the arugment for finite universes. We will never get passed God created this universe to allow life, or there are so many universes one would expect to find every possible universe including one that allows life. When it comes right down to it ... it's what do you choose to believe?
Thomas J Gassett at 6:28PM on Aug 9th 2008
272. "My arugment is the existence of God. If we are now reduced to where he came from, my arugment is made. I don't care where God came from ... I'm just glad he gave us a universe where seintent life came to be.
I do agree, that my arugment for God is every bit as dependant on faith as the arugment for finite universes. We will never get passed God created this universe to allow life, or there are so many universes one would expect to find every possible universe including one that allows life. When it comes right down to it ... it's what do you choose to believe?"
You can't make claims that cover future events, and expect to have any credibility. 1,000 years ago, we didn't know why things fell to the ground when we threw them up in the air, but we do now. I already said that the universe is so complex (even if it is finite), that even a complex explanation would likely not do it any justice. That doesn't mean that there isn't an explanation out there that bars supernatural influence.
At this stage in our evolution, humans still don't understand nearly as much as some of us like to think. We don't even understand some of the processes that effect our own bodies, much less cosmic explanations that effect the entire universe.
Theories about the universe, and the origin of it, are all just that, theories, no matter what perspective you are viewing it from. For the entire existence of our race, it may very well still be so, but, once again, that doesn't mean that the answers aren't somewhere out there.
I consider myself an Agnostic Atheist for that very reason. I cannot disprove the existence of a divine supernatural being, but no clear evidence has ever been presented (that would satisfy me), as to the existence of one. Like I said, I don't deal in magical explanations. That's the way I am, and many people are like that.
I can appreciate that you're just glad to be here, glad that we have life, and an existence. I don't think it cheapens life to think that it still might have very well been random chance. In fact, if anything, it should make it seem all the more valuable. That's my perspective on it at least.
You're right that it all comes down to what you choose to believe, every person needs to make that choice for themselves. I just choose to believe that I don't have the answers, and therefore, am not qualified to make any absolute claims.
Zatheus at 8:59AM on Aug 10th 2008
273. Ron V = "
Thomas J > "I mean, if life only happened once, and only happened here ... wouldn't that be rather elegant proof that we are divine creation?"
> It could be the proof that believers need, although we would need many years to definitively rule out life within this solar system. Now, about the reverse. IF we find either current life or past life on another world, would you accept that we are NOT special creations?
> This is a perfect example of an atheist theory. The atheist can't allow for God to create life, so he claims an alien created it. Of course it dosen't say where this supposed alien life came from. It's just easier to stay atheist if you believe in aliens instead of God.
Note: This is Dawkins pet theory and it's as insane as he is.
> Both sides to this arugment understand that you simply can't come up with this universe on one throw of the dice ...I.E a single BB.
Ron V at 5:56PM on Aug 10th 2008
274. wow, that didn't come out right.
Ron V at 6:00PM on Aug 10th 2008
275. OK, let's try that again -
Ron V = "
Thomas J > "I mean, if life only happened once, and only happened here ... wouldn't that be rather elegant proof that we are divine creation?"
> It could be the proof that believers need, although we would need many years to definitively rule out life within this solar system. Now, about the reverse. IF we find either current life or past life on another world, would you accept that we are NOT special creations?
> This is a perfect example of an atheist theory. The atheist can't allow for God to create life, so he claims an alien created it. Of course it dosen't say where this supposed alien life came from. It's just easier to stay atheist if you believe in aliens instead of God.
Note: This is Dawkins pet theory and it's as insane as he is.
> Both sides to this arugment understand that you simply can't come up with this universe on one throw of the dice ...I.E a single BB.
Ron V at 6:02PM on Aug 10th 2008
276. Maybe my formatting is messing it up...one more time:
Ron V = "We have no evidence as yet so it's not called a theory.
Thomas J = "First you postilate a theory ... then you test it."
Actually, first you postulate a hypothesis. You design an experiment to test it. Your hypothesis and data can then be used to formulate a theory.
This is a very important distinction. In common language, and TV cop shows, a theory is taken to mean an educated guess - "It's only a theory, but...". This is NOT the case for a scientific theory. Theories, such as evolution, general relativity, and germ theory of disease, are reasonably complete descriptions of natural processes that explain observations with suporting data. The experiments that generated the data must be repeatable and usually make predictions about how it can be falsified and/or how it can be extended based on how it predicts future knowledge.
I'll repeat this section, you didn't address this question -
Thomas J = "I mean, if life only happened once, and only happened here ... wouldn't that be rather elegant proof that we are divine creation?"
Ron V = "It could be the proof that believers need, although we would need many years to definitively rule out life within this solar system. Now, about the reverse. IF we find either current life or past life on another world, would you accept that we are NOT special creations?"
An answer from you to this question could be very interesting. It would be a very long time before we could prove definitively that life did NOT exist anywhere else. Technically, we would have to visit and explore every planet around every star in every galaxy in this universe to make this statement with certainty. On the other hand, proof of life existing (or existed) could possibly occur within our lifetimes.
Thomas J. = "This is a perfect example of an atheist theory. The atheist can't allow for God to create life, so he claims an alien created it. Of course it dosen't say where this supposed alien life came from. It's just easier to stay atheist if you believe in aliens instead of God.
Note: This is Dawkins pet theory and it's as insane as he is."
I did not claim an alien made life on earth. I said there was a hypothesis that the first life on earth was from "out there". I should have been more specific. During an earlier time in its development, the solar system was a more chaotic place than it is now. The evidence for this is the cratered face of the Moon, Mercury, and various other moons and planets. Asteroids and comets are the primary suspects in this bombardment. Comets contains a lot of water and other molecules - some organic, some not. Simple organisms have recently been discovered to survive in previously considered lethal habitats. This gives rise to the hypothesis that simple organisms could have hitched a ride to earth on a comet, survived impact, and then evolved. Hey - it's a theory!! :-)
I have not read Dawkins, so I didn't know he was a proponent of this hypothesis. It may be a stretch, but it's not insane. It has some non-zero chance of having occurred.
Thomas J. = "Both sides to this arugment understand that you simply can't come up with this universe on one throw of the dice ...I.E a single BB."
Why not? Why could this have not been the "one" chance? This could certainly be the only universe and have the right conditions for life. The weak point of this arguement is that the "conditions necessary for life" are continually expanding.
One of the current great unsolved mysteries is the origination of life. How did we go from non-living building blocks to self-replicating life? Science does not have the answer to that - yet. Organic molecules apparently are pervasive throughout our galaxy. How many times did life originate? Only once? Many times? While it still may not be the definitive answer on God's existence, we will have some answers on life on nearby worlds within 100 years.
Unless we destroy ourselves before we reach that level.
I realize this may not be read by anybody as the blog has rolled on but thought I'd post it anyway.
Ron V at 6:09PM on Aug 10th 2008
277. Even if the galaxy is teeming with life, it could reasonably be millennium or even millions of years before we found any evidence of it. It's a big place.
Ryan Anderson at 10:36AM on Aug 11th 2008
278. How is John Edwards' Affair Any Different than John McCain's?
Posted Aug 8th 2008 4:57PM by Cenk Uygur
Filed under: Scandal, Young Turks, John McCain, John Edwards
John McCain had a well-documented series of affairs on his first wife after he came back from the war. She had been severely injured in a car accident and after cheating on her several times with several different women, John McCain eventually left her for a much younger, much richer woman.
Now, it seems like I am condemning John McCain for his actions, but actually I'm not. I wasn't in his situation and no one really knows what happens inside someone else's marriage. I think the personal lives of politicians are absolutely irrelevant, especially their sex lives.
So, I say this not to rub this in John McCain's face, but to defend John Edwards. Now that Edwards has admitted to an extramarital affair, everyone will now condemn him and say he has no political career left. I want to ask all of those people, how is Edwards' affair any different John McCain's? If Edwards is disqualified from running for office because of this, isn't McCain as well?
iynaroc02 at 4:40PM on Aug 11th 2008
279. My arugment is the existence of God. If we are now reduced to where he came from, my arugment is made. I don't care where God came from ... I'm just glad he gave us a universe where seintent life came to be.
I do agree, that my arugment for God is every bit as dependant on faith as the arugment for finite universes. We will never get passed God created this universe to allow life, or there are so many universes one would expect to find every possible universe including one that allows life. When it comes right down to it ... it's what do you choose to believe?
Thomas J Gassett
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The beginning of the end, mr gassett is being nice in this post. Stupid, but nice, sniff.
"I don't care were god came from"
Wow that really tells it all doesn't it?
I really don't care if there is a god. I just wish he'd taze me already.
TJ at 11:39AM on Aug 20th 2008