Nathan Newman on Romney

A vote for a candidate who believes in God is a vote to perpetuate a mass delusion.

Oh good. A place I can ask a question about religion and politics.

Here is what I want to know. 40 years ago when Martin Luther King marched on Washington, was imprisoned, etc... he reached people through the pulpit. He had an influence for good because of his religion, and because he had a forum for the emotional and political argument that people are all fundamentally the same. Religion was a force for positive change in this instance.

(Of course, I do not forget that there were hundreds of churches and many more people who used the Bible to justify keeping things the way they were.)

In a situation like this, how does one categorize the power and influence that a religion CAN have for good? Could an athiest ever have this kind of a built in audience?

It seems that we are often only capable of responding to a situation after it becomes emotionally resonant. We need to read about things, hear about them, see them on television and have issues touch us personally before we can act on them. But we also need the power of the group. Since non believers are not meeting in big groups, how can this happen? Are there issues of importance that merit a co-ordinated and passionate response, that are of concern to athiests, right now? ( Human issues like global warming, stem cell research, war and a myriad of others come to mind of course.) How could a group of mostly invisible, marginalized and fiercely individual people make an impact on politics and human events today with an absence of a "group" to work as a base from?

PZ: Take heart. You can still hope for a hypocrite: An atheist who, because of the socio political pressures, claims to be a christian or something.

He had an influence for good because of his religion

False premise. He had an influence for good because he fought for what was right, a goal that was not at all dependent on religious beliefs. The people who worked for civil rights in America were liberals, many (but not all, of course) of whom were godless, and they fought against conservatives, the overwhelming majority of whom were religious.This is one of the things I most despise religion for, that it appropriates the good that people do and credits it to a nonexistent phantasm.

anon, although atheists cannot rally behind a deity, perhaps it is possible to still rally behind a philosophy? Atheists can still believe in many of the principles supported by a religion, and in my opinion the most important ones (peace, goodwill, etc.)

The atheists just need to organize.

The atheists just need to organize.

The god-intoxicated need to un-organize. They are the ones who need to change. Not us.

Well, perhaps that would be ideal, but what are the odds of that happening?

We ought to elect a Mormon polygamist to be President and have boatloads of first ladies. Or would they be called first lady, second lady, third lady, etc.?

"In the news... the President's Sixth Lady is off to Buffalo today to open a Library..."

How important you are determines who you get. If No. 1 shows up, you are in favor. No. 10, you must be a progressive Democrat.

Greg, there are lots of hypocritical politicians already. In the present climate, braying about being more religious than the other guy is practically required. Some trim their sails to the prevailing breeze (cough, Mitt, cough) in order to pander to voters. I'm sure there are lots who proclaim their faith but in their personal lives don't really take it terribly seriously.

anon:

Many atheists already do belong to organized groups. ACLU, NOW, Greenpeace, etc. We just don't have ONE central group that covers all of our beliefs. That would be impossible, because we don't all share the same beliefs on every subject. Not all Christians (or people of other faiths), agree with every belief or tenet of their respective denominations--example, most Catholics I know are pro-birth control--but the members of those religions don't seem to mind being part of a group whose "official" beliefs are in conflict with some of their own. As long as they agree on most issues, that's good enough for them.

While that might work for some people, it just doesn't fly with most atheists I know. An atheist who is strongly opposed to animal research wouldn't want to belong to an atheist organization that promoted animal testing. An atheist meat-eater wouldn't want to be represented by a vegan atheist group. We can't agree on all beliefs, so a central, organized group just doesn't work--at least not for me.

MLK's good works were not due to religion. The pulpit was simply the vehicle to get his message across. Unfortunately, had he been an atheist, his message never would have garnered any respect. That still holds true today. I think that's one of the biggest dangers of all the religious brainwashing going on--atheists have some pretty damn good ideas for changing the world for the better, but the majority of the religious people automatically reject the atheist's opinions. So nothing gets accomplished, until one day some forward-thinking preacher brings those ideas to the masses. Then a positive change is made, and religion gets all the credit.

Maddening.

we can't expect Christian voters to want anything other than what they are familiar with.

Why not? What is it about Christian voters that makes them want to vote only for Christians unless they are specially appeased?

We ought to elect a Mormon polygamist to be President and have boatloads of first ladies. Or would they be called first lady, second lady, third lady, etc.?

Oh, goody goody. Warren Jeffs for president.

abeja writes:

MLK's good works were not due to religion.

This seems inconsistent with MLK's speeches and writings. He drew heavily upon the writings of the prophets when choosing his words. If you read or hear his speeches and then take a look at Amos, it is impossible not to see how his ideas and rhetoric were shaped by his religious education.

Had he been an atheist, he might not have chosen this particular fight. He almost certainly would have used different rhetoric.

but do vote for Candidate Y because she is a rationalist who holds sensible secular values.

Ellen Johnson of American Atheists blew it on the Paula Zahn show when she was asked where her (atheist) morals come from. She tried to deflect the question by saying something like "It's not about morals". She ought to have said "I use reason".

has PZ ever come out and say which candidate he is currently planning on voting for?

It is strange that all of these Christians seem never to have heard of the parable of the Good Samaritan.

If you think Ellen Johnson blew it on Zahn's show, then you've already bought into the whole "serious topics can be rationally discussed in three minutes" fashion of today's "news" shows. Anna Nicole Smith gets days of coverage, religion versus secular humanism a few minutes, global warming a 10 second headline.

Again, I think making this a religion vs atheism conflict is wrong. It should be religion vs secular humanism. To most people atheism just means no belief in God -- doesn't even get generalized to no belief in the supernatural let alone a positive belief in anything. Secular humanism pulls in the more socially relevant part: belief in a positive set of values.

Whether or not King would have been as effective a hero if he had not had a position of religious authority is a question best left to the historians or, better still, to the writers of parallel-universe fiction. Among the facts we do have and can discuss is that King had to deal with opposition from other religious leaders (Letter from a Birmingham Jail). Furthermore, one might raise a question which I do not have the data to answer: where do more children learn of King, in the churches or in the public schools?

Jeff Alexander:

Many atheists choose to fight for civil rights. There's no reason to say that MLK wouldn't have chose the civil rights cause if he had been an atheist. We can't ever know that. I believe that his message wouldn't have been well-received by the general public if he had been an atheist, but there's no reason to believe atheism would have prevented him from "picking this particular fight".

Many religious people credit their religious beliefs for their good works. That doesn't mean that they wouldn't have done good deeds without their religious beliefs. I credit my husband for buying the house I live in--that doesn't mean I wouldn't have this house if I had never met him. I could have bought it on my own.

MLK may have been inspired by his religious beliefs to affect change. Atheists are also inspired to affect change--we just get there from a different place. But religion isn't at the root of the desire to make this world a better place--human decency and compassion are where the roots lie.

This seems inconsistent with MLK's speeches and writings. He drew heavily upon the writings of the prophets when choosing his words. If you read or hear his speeches and then take a look at Amos, it is impossible not to see how his ideas and rhetoric were shaped by his religious education.

Had he been an atheist, he might not have chosen this particular fight. He almost certainly would have used different rhetoric.

Let us also remember, however, that the Civil Rights Movement was not Dr. King. If we look at something like the Montgomery Bus Boycott, Dr. King's debut, what was most responsible for the success of the boycott was organization. The Churches' role was probably more important because it served as an institutional base of operation. It was also communicative organization, between the NAACP chapters in Montgomery and Baton Rouge, where a shorter but successful boycott campaign had been waged. It was the use of the NAACP's national structure to gain lawyers to work in the Federal Courts.. It was in the communicative organization of being able to call a meeting one night and have the entire community show up to vote for a boycott the next night. It was a community that organized alternative transportation networks in order to maintain the boycott I guess, the issue for me, is that Dr. King matters deeply, but there was a whole lot of other stuff going on as well..

While religious belief may have inspired some to action, it also historically caused others to accept their suffering, knowing they'd be "rewarded in the next life." Belief alone is not enough to account for the role of churches in the civil rights movement.

And honestly, do you think that a politically active and aware black man living in the 1950s American Apartheid wouldn't be focused on Jim Crow? One needn't believe in a deity to see the injustice of that system. Indeed, many believers saw that system as just. And, there were many ways to understand Jim Crow, and operate from theoretical bases other than religion. See Bayard Rustin, whose socialist politics led him to be extremely important as an organizer within the movement (even though his homosexuality forced most of that work to occur behind the scenes).

I respectfully disagree with the idea that MLK did not influence the world because of religion. I go with this writer who states:

This seems inconsistent with MLK's speeches and writings. He drew heavily upon the writings of the prophets when choosing his words. If you read or hear his speeches and then take a look at Amos, it is impossible not to see how his ideas and rhetoric were shaped by his religious education.
+++++++++++++++++++++
There was a heavy emphasis on both personal and collective relationship to God and man whenever MLK spoke or wrote.

I guess the question is, how do athiests harness that power of persuasion in order to reach those who may think the same, but are afraid to live it out loud? If athiests as a group agree on a few fundamental concepts, how can that message target the silent ones who dare not speak up because of repercussions like the example Paula Zahn used.

The problem as I see it is we are not unlike the Christians that we decry. I am being presumptious maybe when I say this, but here at Pharyngula I see the hardcore, the moderate and the laissez faire athiests represented on many topics. When PZ and Ed were warring, in what one reader tongue in cheek wrote seemed like a "doctrinal schism" I was reminded of the Christians that opposed racism and could quote chapter and verse the parts of the bible that represented their side, and those who wanted nothing to change and could quote the verses about how a slave should obey his master.

Part of my fascination with this site is how PZ pulls no punches. It is also wonderment and a bit of bewilderment, because I honestly do not know how anyone expects to change anyone's mind by calling the other stupid and delusional. It indeed is a wake-up call, but it also makes rational and reasonable discussion a bit difficult. In my home there are a mix of religions- some believers, some athiests and some agnostics. There is nothing I find more horrific as when one "side" goes on the attack and tries to "convert" the other. I as the parent, no matter what I believe, must protect the inherent value of the person. The personal attack is not allowed. The discussions around the table about whether athiesm is a philosophy or another form of religion are daunting. What do athiests and agnostics believe and how do they make decisions are other questions we touch upon, as well as hedonism and nihlism. Why do people react to religion-- what needs does it fill--- those are topics we talk about on the way to sports events and school. My home seems like a microcosm of society as it is today, with people in various stages of belief and unbelief.

Again, my final answer to all of the questions comes down to this- we are here to help each other out. If you become an ER doctor, you do not get to make decisions based on your morality/belief system as to whether or not you treat the injured patient in front of you. Same as in everything else. When there is an urgent situation, you need to use your expertise to help out -- whether it is by your vote, your letter to a paper, your choice of reading material and education and political candidate, or your decision to volunteer with an organization that can make a difference. And no matter what, you need to see that there are reasons people do things, and these are fellow humans who are precious. We live on an earth that is beautiful, and it must be taken care of. And those are the important things in life.

How do athiests make this point collectively and effectively and cohesively? Can they do this? Or will there be "doctrinal schisms" and philosophical differences that divide "them"?

abeja:
I agree that we can't know with any certainty what MLK would or would not have done had he been an atheist. I was objecting to the statement that his "good works were not due to religion". When you have a man who has chosen to become a Christian minister, who uses the language of Christianity in his speeches, who tells us that religion demands that we fix the injustice of segregation, you have someone whose good works are very much due to religion.

Your argument would seem to excuse the bad works that are done for religion as much as the good. If someone commits fraud for religious reasons would you also argue that since some atheists also commit fraud it couldn't be due to religion? This seems a strange argument to make. Why wouldn't you take MLK at his word?

There are many atheists who are inspired to improve the world, MLK wasn't one of them.

Trinifar: If you think Ellen Johnson blew it on Zahn's show, then you've already bought into the whole "serious topics can be rationally discussed in three minutes" fashion of today's "news" shows. Anna Nicole Smith gets days of coverage, religion versus secular humanism a few minutes, global warming a 10 second headline.

Oh, I was absolutely fuming at how short that whole "panel discussion" was! It's why I don't bother with network news, talk radio, .......

MLK did good works. MLK was religious. Correlation != causation. The arguments he made can be and have been made, many times and powerfully, in non-religious terms. (Actually his most powerful argument of all, that America was failing to live up to the implicit promise of its own founding and instutions, was not a religious argument.) The most one can say for the importance of his status as a minister is that there was no other social institution in the black community with anything like solidarity and mobilizabiloty of the church, and he made astute use of that institution as he found it. But that state of affairs is an accident of history, something that could well be otherwise in a less religion-drenched society.

For the most part I have not cared about a candidate's religious affiliation. However, especially in recent years, there has been reason for me to be concerned: I cannot vote for a candidate who will appoint people to positions such as sec'y of Interior who believe we don't have to take care of the environment because The Rapture is immanent, and I can't vote for a candidate whose religious beliefs cause him or her to insist that we teach our children to be stupid. And then there are those candidates who will stymie scientific research because every sperm is sacred, or whom God told to hate certain kinds of people, et cetera, et cetera. Of course, when a candidate declares how godly he is, I suspect he is merely pandering anyway.

Lets put it another way Anon. If Communist Russia had proposed saving the rain forests, would anyone have cared, or did it *require* a people from a nation that already claimed to value such things to make it matter? Maybe that's a bad example, but its not easy thinking of an appropriate one. Point is, if most people think "scripture" its obvious that scripture is going to be the way to push them quickly in a particular direction. For MLK that was towards greater civil rights. For someone else, a few centuries earlier, it was scripture that led them to push for the domination of lesser people's by those *chosen* followers of the only true faith.

Both slavery and civil rights where defended, sanctioned and promoted from the same text. The only difference? MLK showed up with a commanding voice, the power and conviction to do something about the situation, and an audience that was far more receptive to hearing it than any prior generation to the message, which still would have, as others pointed out, fallen on deaf ears had it come from someone with less conviction, less presence or without the use of the right stick and carrot to convince believers. Lots of other people where using far more rational means to drive the same change, but, unfortunately, it took religious messages, necessarilly devoid of all the anti-civil rights messages and hand picked passages delivered by untold numbers of other preachers, who wanted the exact opposite, to get the "believing" part of society to take it seriously.

While it was a great thing, it was also on some level no different than convincing children to act like adults when at the doctors, by offering them a lollipop and a promise of a new bedtime story. Rational examination of the situation and attempts by those people to change anything happened "after" the story telling, not before hand. Before that, most wouldn't have lifted a finger to do a damn thing about it, especially if someone came along and told them, "Just think about it. What is going on doesn't make any sense and it needs to change."

I agree with everyone here. He strove for something he believed in, and then misattributed the result to the *tool*, instead of the tool user. Kind of like someone giving all credit for building their house to the hammer they used, while happilly ignoring the years of struggle and effort *they* put into swinging it to pound nails. People use religion as a tool to make other people act when they wouldn't otherwise, but then they read the EULA on the side and go, "Ah, well... It says here I now have to give all credit to the tool itself, or the corporation that licensed it too me.", and being "good Christians" they do exactly what the EULA says.

Steve LaBonne writes:

Correlation != causation. The arguments he made can be and have been made, many times and powerfully, in non-religious terms.

I don't think anyone denies that you can have a civil rights movement without religion. Likewise there is little or no disagreement (at least from me) that powerful arguments in favor of civil rights can be made without recourse to religion. It seems to be deliberately ignoring MLK's own words, however, to say that religion was not a huge part of his message and of his choice as to how to argue in favor of civil rights. While correlation doesn't equal causation, the evidence does seem fairly clear that at least for MLK his religion was a key factor in his good works.

Again with the "atheists, them, they need to organize, those people, what do they believe," yada. I have a problem with this. The only thing that unites "us" atheists is what we don't believe.

I joined an atheist organization because I like the people. But let's face it, I don't get up every Sunday and go to atheist meetin'. I don't sing in an atheist choir. I don't go to atheist toastmasters, walk my dog (well, I don't have a dog) in an "atheist way," have a personal relationship with my atheism, etc. How absurd!

I'm just a person who doesn't believe in anything supernatural.

And why does someone else's belief in something that doesn't exist supposed to give Americans a sense of what they "believe?" As far as I'm concerned they're the ones who don't believe anything, because it's not real. So there we are. We're at an impasse.

the evidence does seem fairly clear that at least for MLK his religion was a key factor in his good works.

Contingent factor != necessary factor. And as I noted, his most effective avenue of appeal to the American civic conscience wasn't even religious at all.

When you have a man who has chosen to become a Christian minister, who uses the language of Christianity in his speeches, who tells us that religion demands that we fix the injustice of segregation, you have someone whose good works are very much due to religion.

Certainly not. Plenty of people have chosen to become a Christian minister, and use the language of Christianity to demand just the opposite.

Your argument would seem to excuse the bad works that are done for religion as much as the good.

Okay, I'm utterly not following you here. If some people who claim to be motivated by Christianity claim that their religion demands that we do A, and other people claiming just as vociferously that Christianity demands we do not-A, how can you ascribe either of their works to their religion?

Likewise, good works and bad works are also done by non-believers. That is, the goodness of one's work isn't even correlated with one's religion, much less caused by it.

However, that isn't the point I want to make.

I think the important point here (by which I mean, "the thing I hadn't fully grasped until I read Nathan Newman's post") is that people like MLK have a built-in audience, which isn't available to atheists.

I'm well aware of the attitudes toward atheists among most of the religious, and how that causes our ideas to be dismissed out-of-hand. What I hadn't considered was plain old-fashioned logistics.

Atheists in 2004 AD got no mass communication.

Sure, we've got this interweb thingy here, but the ACLU, NOW, Greenpeace, and the Sierra Club put together don't have the captive audience of any large denomination. Even stacks of large denominations can't buy you that kind of access.

Now I have to go think about what solutions might exist to this problem, cause right now I got nuthin'.

"Contingent factor != necessary factor"

apparently you are unfamiliar with the new field of "accentuated logic".

if I merely own a banjo and do good works, clearly the latter is not due to the former. however, if I own a banjo, play it loudly, babble endlessly about it, and do good works, then the last does indeed follow from the previous. (see "Topics in Accenuated Logic" by Hidec I. Bell.)

Jeff Alexander:

Perhaps I'm being misunderstood. Let me try to be more clear (a challenge for me in written communication, I'm afraid).

I believe that MLK got his inspiration from his religious beliefs. To simplify it: he read the bible, and he was inspired by the things he read in the bible to fight for civil rights. But that doesn't mean that religion was the cause of his good deeds. It was simply one factor. He may very well have been passionately pro-civil rights even if you take away the bible influence. When I said that MLK's good works were not due to religion, I wasn't saying that he wasn't inspired by religion. My statement simply meant that religion is not the cause of good in the world, or in this particular case. To me, saying religion causes good is to say that lack of religion means that someone can't be a good person. I know for a fact that a person doesn't need religion to do good things.

You said:

"Your argument would seem to excuse the bad works that are done for religion as much as the good. If someone commits fraud for religious reasons would you also argue that since some atheists also commit fraud it couldn't be due to religion?"

No, I don't think that religion is the root cause of bad behavior, just like I don't think it's the root cause of good behavior. Human nature, an individual's upbringing, personality traits, and many other factors lead us to do good or bad.

When you have a man who has chosen to become a Christian minister, who uses the language of Christianity in his speeches, who tells us that religion demands that we fix the injustice of segregation, you have someone whose good works are very much due to religion.

And yet, curiously, when you have men who have chosen to become Christians, who use the language of Christianity in their speeches, who tell us that Christianity demands that we torture heretics, burn witches, persecute Jews, stone adulterers, discriminate against women and homosexuals, and so on, you have someone whose bad works are merely "in the name of" religion rather than "very much due to" religion. Those bad things are "due to" bad men, or racism, or disputes over land, or some other non-religious cause. Religion is just an excuse or pretext for bad behavior, not a cause of it.

Or so Christians and apologists for Christianity keep telling me.

MLK always tied his religious beliefs to actions. That's the point. He took his own story and gave it a context in the struggle of the Israelites against Rome. Fine. But ultimately, we know what he stood for because he did something.

That's what atheist believe in, if "we" believe in anything--doing something. But today, people act as if talking about something is doing something, when in fact faith is no predictor of future behavior at all, whereas behavior is a good indicator of a person's true beliefs.

When people just start talking about "Jesus put the whatamacallit in the whojeejigger," what is that supposed to tell me? But somehow, people hear that and say, "Ah, now I know what this person stands for," when in fact, two people who both said it could be George W. Bush and Georges Lemaître. So, that doesn't tell you what anything about what they believed, did it?

But when I go to Uncommon Descent, say that I think global warming is a very serious problem, state that evolution is a fact and that Wells is a ghastly quote-miner, etc., what I get is: "But you don't believe anything! What do you believe? I don't get it. Someday you're going to have real problems, and [yeah, I've never had real problems--real perceptive] then you'll need something to believe in! Blah, blah!" I mean, what? I don't believe anything? Didn't I just tell you what I believe?

What's the problem here? Arthur Conan Doyle believed in fairies. Does that make him of stronger convictions about real things than me? Would you elect him president were he alive today? A grown man, believing in fairies. I guess he already is president.

Johnny Vector, abeja, and Jason,
I'm not willing to be quite so forgiving of religion. It seems that religion can and does lead people to do things that they would not otherwise do (as would many forms of indoctrination). It is one of the reasons that I think that religion can be quite dangerous.
I suspect we are talking past each other.

No, I don't think that religion is the root cause of bad behavior, just like I don't think it's the root cause of good behavior. Human nature, an individual's upbringing, personality traits, and many other factors lead us to do good or bad.

Since "an individual's upbringing" typically involves indoctrination in religious beliefs, including religious moral beliefs, if upbringing is a "root cause" of bad behavior then so is religion. But terms like "root cause" aren't terribly meaningful in this kind of discussion.

Human behavior is either caused solely by human nature (genes), solely by environment, or by a combination of the two. It is not remotely credible that human behavior is caused solely by genes or solely by environment. It must be a combination. One of the primary environmental influences on behavior is culture, and religion has been a central component of culture for all of recorded human history, a component that specializes in telling people how they ought to behave towards other people. Therefore, I consider the idea that religion is not a central cause (or even "root cause") of human ethical behavior to be preposterous. Of course it's a central cause.

I suspect we are talking past each other.

Then let me sum up my feelings on this particular question. I think religion sometimes causes people to do good. I also think that it far more often causes people to do bad. I think religion overall is by its nature destructive of human welfare and progress because it is worthless as a source of knowledge about the nature of the world, including the nature of human beings.

Jeff Alexander:

I am absolutely unforgiving of religion. Let me make that clear. I HATE religion. I also hate rape. A rape victim might end up leading a victim's rights group because she herself had been raped. She might say her rape had caused her to be a champion for that cause. Was the rape a good thing? Is it ever good? Of course not. Was it the cause of her activism? Here's where we seem to disagree. Some people say that the rape was the cause, some say that it was just one factor--the thing that pushed her into the fight, but not the only thing that could have led her there. Perhaps we're stuck on a proximate cause/ultimate issue?

Jason:

I believe that we are influenced by both nature and nurture. No argument from me on that. But I don't consider religion to be the central cause of human ethical behavior. If I'm following you correctly, you're rehashing an argument that's been played out so many times now that I can't count--the argument that morality can't exist without a god. Is that where you're going with this? arguing in circles about that subject is something I gave up on long ago.

Jason:

you said:

"I consider the idea that religion is not a central cause (or even "root cause") of human ethical behavior to be preposterous. Of course it's a central cause."

Then you said:

" I think religion sometimes causes people to do good. I also think that it far more often causes people to do bad."

The way I'm reading you, you're saying that religion causes ethical behavior, and then you're saying that religion causes people to be bad. So are you attributing all human behavior to religion?

The way I'm reading you, you're saying that religion causes ethical behavior, and then you're saying that religion causes people to be bad. So are you attributing all human behavior to religion?

No, I'm saying that sometimes religion causes people to do good, but more often it causes them to do bad, and that it's overall effect on human welfare is bad. Very bad.

No, I'm saying that sometimes religion causes people to do good, but more often it causes them to do bad, and that it's overall effect on human welfare is bad. Very bad.

[typical idiotic critic of Dawkins] Oh, how very unsophisticated. What are your credentials in theology? What, you have none? Why then you have no business opining on religion. [/typical idiotic critic of Dawkins] ;)

I am watching with great interest the kerfuffle in NZ about a 'national statement' about relgious diversity in NZ. I assumed it would be cut and dried, but no! It has gone all funny.

I blogged about it here, and got my first ever comment from a fundie. I didn't bother answering it. It speaks for itself, SO eloquently. It seemed pointless to add anything.

When someone says "I believe in God" why do we believe them? When someone talks to me about God, I assume they do not believe what they are saying. They are simply saying what they think will serve their ends, as I do in Church whenever I testify. If I say nice things about God, people are more likely to like me and give me stuff. If I say I don't believe, they won't like me or give me stuff. (Jobs, money, etc.)
Doesn't everybody else do the same? Can they prove otherwise?

Jeff Alexander: On the other hand, he might have found secular sources, or perhaps classical/diversity of sources. But it is clear that MLK drew upon religious imagery. (Listen to his speech about "the promised land", where he basically alludes to being Moses-like.) On the other hand, none of his positive social goals (some of which have been acheived) are terribly religious in character.

Mooser: When someone tells me those things, I do believe them most of the time (unless they happen to be Straussians) - but I am not always sure what it is they are claiming. These days a lot of people are very close to being metaphorists.