- Rothbard, no?
- Block, no?
- Tucker, yes
- Murphy, yes
- Woods, yes
- Hoppe, no?
- Mises?
- Salerno?
- Hulsmann?
- Thornton?
- DiLorenzo?
- Gordon?
- French?
- Klein?
- Rockwell, yes
- Long?
- Kinsella, yes
I don’t know, but I think Mises is a no
This site claims that Rothbard was not religious, but I am not sure if it is verifiable? http://www.ihr.org/jhr/v15/v15n3p33_Weber.html
Another database says he was an atheist, but for all I know he might have been agnostic like me? http://www.nndb.com/people/313/000030223/
I would like to know too, if only for the trivia.
Wasn’t Rothbard’s family Jewish (which doesn’t mean he was religious)?
Rothbard’s ancestry is Russian-Jewish, and as far as I know his family was practicing, but I don’t think they were orthodox.
Rothbard’s father was a strong believer in rationalism and science - hence Murray NEWTON Rothbard.
“The intellectual stance projected here - a love of liberty, a hatred of collectivism, and a refusal to be absorbed by the “religious fanaticism” of the Old World Jews - was to remain constant throughout his life.[11]” - An Enemy of the State, Justin Raimondo - referring to Rothbard’s unpublished autobiography.
“my frequent first hand observations of their [parents] adherence to religious traditions does not cause me to t change my nonreligious views. Consequently, in my religious beliefs, I am a mixture of an agnostic and a reform Jew.” - Rothbard, Autobiography.
Raimondo then goes to note; Rothbard was willing to ally with anyone who agreed on the essential justice of a system based on the sanctity of private property. Whether the source of that sanctity is God, or Natural law, or some other concept or deity, he thought this ought to be a matter of friendly debate, and that is was possible to disagree about such matters without provoking a split in the coalition. This was always his policy, as part of a conscious strategy to gain as wide an audience for libertarian ideas as possible."
His autobiography is suggested to be written around 1942.
However, in a Letter to Justin Raimondo - 1990: “On the religious question, we paleolibertarians are not theocrats”. “Obviously, I could not be myself, both as a libertarian and as an atheist.” However, he continued, the left-libertarian hostility to religious, based as it is on ignorance and the bitterness of “aging adolescent rebels against bourgeois America” is “monstrous”.
*I’m the same. Ps, seriously $)#% this forum format.
Mises - no.
"The praxeological categories and concepts are devised for the comprehension of human action. They become self-contradictory and nonsensical if one tries to apply them in dealing with conditions different from those of human life. The naive anthropomorphism of primitive religions is unpalatable to the philosophic mind. However, the endeavors of philosophers to define neatly the attributes of an absolute being, free from all the limitations and frailties of human existence, by the use of praxeological concepts, are no less questionable.
Scholastic philosophers and theologians and likewise Theists and Deists of the Age of Reason conceived an absolute and perfect being, unchangeable, omnipotent, and omniscient, and yet planning and acting, aiming at ends and employing means for the attainment of these ends. But action can only be imputed to a discontented being, and repeated action only to a being who lacks the power to remove his uneasiness once and for all at one stroke. An acting being is discontented and therefore not almighty. If he were contented, he would not act, and if he were almighty, he would have long since radically removed his discontent. For an all-powerful being there is no pressure to choose between various states of uneasiness; he is not under the necessity of acquiescing in the lesser evil.
Omnipotence would mean the power to achieve everything and to enjoy full satisfaction without being restrained by any limitations. But this is incompatible with the very concept of action. For an almighty being the categories of ends and means do not exist. He is above all human comprehension, concepts, and understanding. For the almighty being every “means” renders unlimited services, he can apply every “means” for the attainment of any ends, he can achieve every end without the employment of any means. It is beyond the faculties of the human mind to think the concept of almightiness consistently to its ultimate logical consequences. The paradoxes are insoluble. Has the almighty being the power to achieve something which is immune to his later interference? If he has this power, then there are limits to his might and he is no longer almighty; if he lacks this power, he is by virtue of this fact alone not almighty.
Are omnipotence and omniscience compatible? Omniscience presupposes that all future happenings are already unalterably determined. If there is omniscience, omnipotence is inconceivable. Impotence to change anything in the predetermined course of events would restrict the power of any agent.
Action is a display of potency and control that are limited. It is a manifestation of man who is restrained by the circumscribed powers of his mind, the physiological nature of his body, the vicissitudes of his environment, and the scarcity of the external factors on which his welfare depends. It is vain to refer to the imperfections and weaknesses of human life if one aims at depicting something absolutely perfect. The very idea of absolute perfection is in every way selfcontradictory. The state of absolute perfection must be conceived as complete, final, and not exposed to any change.
Change could only impair its perfection and transform it into a less perfect state; the mere possibility that a change can occur is incompatible with the concept of absolute perfection. But the absence of change-ix., perfect immutability, rigidity and immobility-is tantamount to the absence of life. Life and perfection are incompatible, but so are death and perfection.
The living is not perfect because it is liable to change; the dead is not perfect because it does not live.
The language of living and acting men can form comparatives and superlatives in comparing degrees. But absoluteness is not a degree; it is a limiting notion. The absolute is indeterminable, unthinkable and ineffable. It is a chimerical conception. There are no such things as perfect happiness, perfect men, eternal bliss. Every attempt to describe the conditions of a land of Cockaigne, or the life of the Angels, results in paradoxes. Where there are conditions, there are limitations and not perfection; there are endeavors to conquer obstacles, there are frustration and discontent.
After the philosophers had abandoned the search for the absolute, the utopians took it up. They weave dreams about the perfect state. They do not realize that the state, the social apparatus of compulsion and coercion, is an institution to cope with human imperfection and that its essential function is to inflict punishment upon minorities in order to protect majorities against the detrimental consequences of certain actions. With “perfect” men there would not he any need for compulsion and coercion.
But utopians do not pay heed to human nature and the inalterable conditions of human life. Godwin thought that man might become immortal after the abolition of private property." Charles Fourier babbled about the ocean containing lemonade instead of salt water.20 Marx’s economic system blithely ignored the fact of the scarcity of material factors of production. Trotsky revealed that in the proletarian paradise “the average human type will rise to the heights of an Aristotle, a Goethe, or a Marx. And above this ridge new peaks will rise.” 27 Nowadays the most popular chimeras are stabilization and security. We will test these catchwords later."
Human Action, page 69.
It’s part of the Chapter II - Epistemological Problems of the Science of Human Action, in particular “The Limitations on Praxeological Concepts”
The last few paragraphs then tie into the next Chapter Economics a Revolt Against Reason.
i am assuming the Hulsmann leans toward yes. On his website, he has a section of links for ‘religion and liberty’ .
According to a Mises Daily post*, Mises was agnostic
I am no longer religious though I am not atheist. I share Rothbard’s distaste for anti-religionism… there’s nothing inherently coercive about religion and I find the obsession with religion by the likes of Dawkins and Dennett to be misplaced energy that would be much better spent critiquing those who wield the power of coercion, that is, politicians, judges and the Power Elite generally. While there are clearly connections between religion and the Power Elite, religion is not what is wrong with the world. Superstition in itself never hurt anybody. Peaceful religious ritual and worship never hurt anybody. JDAMs, on the other hand, have killed plenty of innocents.
Clayton -
Are you sure Hoppe isn’t religious? Throughout his lectures and works I have never heard him say definitively that he is, or is not religious, but I find him consistently sympathetic to Christianity, especially Roman Catholicism.
Long is an atheist although is somewhat sympathetic to religious belief.
Hulsmann I think is a Catholic especially because of his Ethics of Money Production.
Hoppe I think likes the Western tradtion which is asociated with Christianity.
Kinsella is definitely an atheist. He made a post on here on a now graveyarded thread, I think it’s the Praxeology Disproves the Bible, saying he was Catholic but now is not. If you head to his website you’ll see this clear.
Mises is clearly an athiest if Human Action is anything to go by.
Aside: My own experience with the religious subject is not dissimilar to Ricky James Moore II’s. While my own religious views are leagues apart from his, I’m completely on board with him when it comes to the “skeptic”/RationalWiki/most folks who inhabit message boards dedicated to atheism and/or agnosticism. They seem less atheists (like Rand, Rothbard or Jon Jay Ray) and more nontheistic people with left-wing Pietist beliefs who loathe all forms of Christianity. It’s rare to find a (vocal) atheist, for instance, who will speak out against the censorship practiced against critics of Islam or against Christians in places like Canada (Ezra Levant, for instance) and Sweden (Ake Green). They have replaced God with a progressive interventionist social democratic managerial therapeutic welfare state (now there’s a mouthful, but it matches its costs to the economy and society pretty well) and an adoration of state-sponsored multiculturalism, counterculturalism and hedonism. Very few folks, in my view, are truly atheists. We all have our own little gods, be they power, money or the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and our demonstrated preferences show us to be as fanatically adherent to them as any flagellant or zealot.
As for the list:
Salerno: I’m going to hazard a guess and say yes, largely due to his Italian ancestry.
Thornton: Difficult to say, given that he’s written a fair bit about drugs (the bugbear of the Reasonoids) but also about the Civil War (the very opposite). Teaching in Auburn might weight it a little further to the religious side of things. Then again, Block teaches at an (admittedly Marx-infiltrated) Jesuit New Orleans university.
DiLorenzo: Almost certainly yes. He strikes me as a Traditionalist Catholic in the Long: Probably not, given his prominence as the “token lefty” here.
These are all the ones I can give somewhat of an opinion on. I could be wrong on Long though, so feel free to correct.
my only distaste for relidion is when they try to use governmen to enforce their moral beliefs.
My only distaste for alcohol is when they try to use it to write to the Internet forums.
whoa, man. chill. two spelling errors and you’re making all kinds of assumptions.
It bugs me when people blind other judgmental evalutaions based on preconcieved religions notions. In my fiction class today i was grouped up with this religious girl who insisted that there was no way that Adam and Eve could be compared to “other ancient myths” ask we were instructed. Even with all of the comparisons that i was able to draw…She was blinded by her religious experience. And that is why superstition can hurt people.
I actually (begrudgingly) agree with Ayn Rand on this one. I have no ill-sentiment towards the ideas propagated by religion, but when people take the tales (explanations for children) too literally it destroys their ability to reason. And for some people their wholes lives…
You… hic… You think you’re better than me?
I’m very suspicious of religion, but it’s not the biggest ulcer in my mouth like it is for some people. I also don’t really get the ‘new atheists’ visceral hatred of everything superficially sacred while they ignore or even cheer on the excesses of the secular state, which have been far worse than any theistic one. They discriminate against certain types of superstitions without seeing the wood for the trees. The state is and always has been the one true religion, and of course the ruling elites have always had their mystery cults at the top which reveal “truths” unsuitable for the ruled’s ears. Marx wasn’t right about much, but he was right about mainstream religion… The elites don’t worship to the same God as the slaves. Christianity is just as it has always been - a slave’s faith.
I am of the view that the more profound truths in life are not to be discerned entirely from allegories, metaphors, symbols or groups of people chanting mindlessly in a room for hours. Come to think of it, this is also why I never got into politics.
Philosophically speaking, the God hypothesis doesn’t really solve anything for me. I still don’t know whether I’m obeying God because I am inherently predisposed to agree with Him since I’m made in His image (deontology) or because He’ll do terrible things to me if I don’t (consequentialism), which to my mind is the problem that gives rise to the law-giver God hypothesis in the first place. He seems to be a personification of an impossible human ideal proposed to solve an as-yet unsolved human problem. I am not impossibly insecure in my ignorance, so I’ll call myself an atheist for now
With regards to the New Atheists, I still like most of them. They each bring something different to the table. Dawkins is knowledgeable about biology, Dennett about consciousness and philosophy, Harris about neuroscience, and Hitchens about political affairs. However, beyond these categories, I don’t really read too deeply into them. Once you become an atheist, it seems fun to bash religious fundamentalism for a little while, but it gets tiresome and then you eventually realize how immature you were being.
Generally, this is a topic that people over-think about. I really like to consider atheism a godless religion, because it acts almost exactly like one, especially when you get those atheists that that a person is stupid because they hold onto a religion. Just live life, damn.
Rothbard/Block self describe as agnostic/atheist.
There is plenty worth fighting for. When everyone’s mind is filled with hatred and contempt for others for a million and one different “sins” and such there can be little contentment and cooperation. Psychological warfare. When we can function socially instead of being villified and segregated by belief get back to me and I will lay down my “weapons”. All we need is more “religious” diversity and we’ll all have our own personal concrete walled compound to hide in.
I’d like to. I’m too busy trying to break down barriers. I became a “militant atheist” after two women shut me out for discussing using microbiology to time fertility cycle for contraception.
“Atheism is not a structured system with defined rules. It is simply the lack of a belief in the existence of a god, gods or the supernatural. It has no uniform beliefs and is not a means of understanding our existence. Atheism is not philosophy of life. My unbelief in Santa Claus is not a philosophy of life, and thus my unbelief in god isn’t, either.” - STEFANELLI
DiLorenzo: yes