It puzzles me how self-professed libertarians can simultaneously subscribe to the Christian faith (or any faith for that matter). How do they reconcile their belief in non-aggression, or at least in the general absence of coercion, with the text of Leviticus, particularly with Leviticus 20? The passage is rife with injunctions from God that require the Israelites to kill those who commit adultery or engage in homosexual behaviour. Now neither appeals to me, but that these activities should solicit capital punishment makes very little sense to me. Would killing these individuals not qualify as a violation of the non-aggression principle? Don't ask me to consider the context; why are these requisitions in their holy book and how do they reconcile their libertarianism?
There are, to be sure, more passages within the Bible, in both the OT and the NT, that seem to be equivalently specious but I'll leave it at that.
I often wonder the same thing. I think many people who call themselves libertarians are actually not. They may like one libertarian idea (e.g., drug legalization) and not care about or understand the rest. I cannot even understand how a truly rational person could believe in god at all. I think many people shut off a certain part of their brains when it comes to religion. They just don't think too much about it.
ReplyDeleteThere is such a thing as "compartmentalization", where people demonstrate their brilliance in certain fields but simultaneously fail to do so in others. Take Noam Chomsky. I'm not familiar with his linguistic work, but I'm told its revolutionary. However, his political economy is atrocious.
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