An Atheist Runs For Office - An End Run Around God Has Many Takers, The Path To The White House Clear

Herbert Fitch grew up in a devoutly Catholic home, so his rejection of God and religion in later life was surprising to all but him.  As a young child, when taught to adore Christ, he couldn't look at the gory, bloody body hanging by nails on a floor-to-ceiling cross on the altar.  He heard the priest's homilies about how Jesus suffered to save the world from sin, but the story of the Crucifixion was more than he could take - whippings, stabbings, blood dripping down on his face and the near breathless, dying man in front of him.  

 

'Do we have to?', the young Herbert pleaded every Sunday morning, but his father was adamant. 'It's a mortal sin if we don't go', the father said, explaining that mortal sin meant eternal hellfire, the crackling, burning fire that tortured you forever. 

The boy, as young as he was, wondered at this.  For just missing Mass? The equivalent of murder, even mass murder? And so it was that the seeds of disbelief were sown. 

It should be remembered that the injunctions of the Church were taken quite seriously, and that adults like his mother and father never once wavered from doctrine.  Even when Father Brophy got on his high horse and lit into the congregation for their sinful ways. ' Adulterers, fornicators, liars, cheats, and ne'er-do-wells', he shouted, mopping his brow in the stifling summer heat of the church.  'Apostates, unbelievers, reprobates', he yelled, pointing at individuals in the congregation. 

The old priest was not supposed to reveal the secrets of the confessional, but he saw no danger in calling out the worst of the lot and watching them squirm. 

Sex was his thing, and every Sunday he sailed into this, the most offensive sin of all.  'Vile magazines', he smirked, 'the defilement of the Holy Mother of God, objects of prurience and Satanic lust...Infidelity, cheapening the sacrament of marriage for a few moments of bestial gratification...salacious, invidious thoughts every day, all day...', on and on the priest went until exhausted from the effort, spent, and empty, he made the sign of the cross and proceeded to the altar. 

Herbert like most boys his age could only think of sex, girls, and doing 'it', whatever 'it' was, and he was told again and again that he risked hellfire with these damnable thoughts.  Once again, niggling doubts crept into his head.  Imagining love with Mary Beth Kravitz would damn him to eternal hellfire?

And then as he grew older and began to think about the foundational premises of the Church - the Virgin Birth, the Resurrection and the Holy Trinity - he wondered if his parents had gotten off on the wrong foot.  Did they really believe all this? And worse, was there really a God who looked down upon his creation and saw horrendous acts of sadistic violence, horrific abuse of children, and barbarism from one end of the earth to the other without intervening?  

And he still had the malicious irony to offer phantoms to the faithful to deflect their doubts.  Thousands flocked Fatima and Lourdes waiting for a vision of Mary, smiling, arms outstretched in love and harmony to assure them of a celestial paradise. 

By the time he was in college, he had not only ceased to wonder, he ditched the whole kit-and-kaboodle. There was no Jesus, no Mary, and no God.  

Christopher Hitchens said it best

One must state it plainly. Religion comes from the period of human prehistory where nobody—not even the mighty Democritus who concluded that all matter was made from atoms—had the smallest idea what was going on. It comes from the bawling and fearful infancy of our species, and is a babyish attempt to meet our inescapable demand for knowledge (as well as for comfort, reassurance and other infantile needs).

Today the least educated of my children knows much more about the natural order than any of the founders of religion, and one would like to think—though the connection is not a fully demonstrable one—that this is why they seem so uninterested in sending fellow humans to hell.

 

'Once a Catholic, always a Catholic' had been the accepted wisdom of the day.  Catholic indoctrination, more canny, universal, psychologically astute, and profoundly penitential than the harshest Communist gulag was such that no one once trained could ever leave the Church.  Guilt, doubt, remorse, and fear would follow the apostate forever. 

Yet the few atheists on this crowded piazza of true believers are ones of a kind - they have with demanding logic, fearlessness, and unconcern with social mores, had said, 'Nonsense', and moved on. Even in the heady political environment of the university, the most radical of his classmates could never truly jettison the ideas of divinity so ingrained, so permanently fixed from an early age were they.  

Progressivism was based on secularism and the conviction that man, not God is responsible for the good and evil in the world.  It was easy to embark on the secular journey, not so easy to set aside the notion that God was watching, and many were uneasy with Herbert's uncompromising atheism. 

When pressed about his beliefs, Herbert did not hold back, and was at his most excoriating, dismissive, and ironic. His challenges, his blunt, uncompromising look at what he found so laughable and impossibly ignorant in the Bible made even the most anti-clerical of his progressive friends wince.  He had touched a chord.  He had posited the impossible.  He had spoken out as loudly and passionately as any Southern Baptist preacher, but in reverse. 

He had no truck with liberalism.  It was as canonical as the Catholic Church, complete with liturgy, doctrine, and doxology. Its faithful had more irrational, unfounded belief as religious fanatics.  They actually believed despite millennia of history that the world could be reformed and become a compassionate, considerate, tolerant, and loving place. A belief system even more fantastical and unbelievable than Christianity. 

Conservatives were far closer to atheism.  Their belief in the hardwired permanence of human nature, propelling Man to ever more expressions of aggression, territorialism, self-interest, and brutal defensiveness forced a nihilism that was close to a Godless universe.  

Of course most conservatives preached faith and prayed to a Christian God, but in private after leaving all the pomp, cant, and circumstance at the door, they were as atheistic as any. 

All of which encouraged Herbert to become a political conservative.  Why not make hay from one's convictions.  His message of atheism aligned seamlessly with Darwinian nihilism would be perfect for a religiously restive audience. 

Now, Herbert was not only smart, but savvy.  He knew that he would be swimming upstream.  Religion was big business in America and apostates were still burned at the stake.  But he was a gifted orator who could spin gold out of dross, make the most seditious arguments sound as innocent and acceptable as motherlove, and draw the most skeptical to his side. 

There is nothing threatening, new, or divisive about the Origin of Species, Darwin's masterpiece of scientific insight and logic.  We know that there is competition for the best place at the table, the best husband or wife, the most profitable and satisfying life; and we know that for millennia empires have vied for territory, resources, and influence.  We do not shirk from this essential, inescapable, but central principle of life. 

There is nothing in history but competition, the survival of the fittest, a process leading to the rise of the best and the brightest. We have never needed anything but our own, undivided, human nature to lead us.  No myths, no supernatural ethos, no divine inspiration.  We are architects of our own future.  

'A new voice on the conservative stage', wrote The Federalist, an opinion echoed by The National Review and social media gurus. Here was exactly what the conservative movement needed to moderate the MAGA excesses which were dividing the constituency - a sane voice of intelligent moderation, but one which never diverged from conservativism's central principles, in fact one which added to and consolidated them. 

Herbert never brought up God directly.  That wasn't necessary in his carefully embroidered speeches about competition, free enterprise, and the ordained individuality of Man.  Godlessness - atheism - was implicit, understood, but unspoken.  In time, he would be less circumspect, but for the time being he was content to weave his Darwinian nihilism into easily assimilable political ideas. 

'Now I understand', said one Iowan voter who explained that he had always wanted more of a foundation for his support of the Republican Party, and was getting concerned about Donald Trump's vaudevillian show.  'This Herbert Fitch makes sense'. 

And little by little, his message, at first thought too intellectual if not abstruse for the average voter, took hold. He never once had to explain himself, his atheism, his 'godlessness' because he was so deft and able in weaving it into every conservative speech he gave. 

We are an ordained people - not in any traditional, discredited way - but in a positive individualistic way.  The inspiration of the Founding Fathers breathes again.  We are masters of our own destiny, taking our naturally endowed talents, energies, and ambitions, testing them in the marketplace, and applying them with force and commitment. 

'Naturally endowed', Herbert was careful to say, not 'God-given', a nicely crafted interpretation of Jefferson's words which resonated with his audience.  There was no divine presence guiding or determining human actions, only the irrefutable laws of natural selection.  The conservative wing of the Party was the purest example of political naturalism ever seen and as such gained currency.  Even the Walmart greeter understood this simple message of existential competition. 

Journalists wanted to know more about Herbert Fitch, where he came from, who were his heroes, what made him who he was; but none of them suspected his atheism.  This well-dressed, well-groomed, substantially handsome man with a winning, gregarious way was 'one of us' certainly; and so it was that his ascent to national office was virtually assured. 

Christopher Hitchens made a big deal of his atheism and made a lot of money from his public lectures, media appearances, and books; but Herbert Fitch was content to fly under the radar and accomplish far more than Hitchens ever could.  An atheist in the Oval Office? Why not?