The faitheism of S.E. Cupp

The underrated Cambridge philosopher G.E. Moore once mused on the absurdity of stating a fact, but then claiming to believe its opposite. For example, the sentence, “S.E. Cupp is attractive, but I don’t believe she is,” while not a contradictory statement in and of itself, nonetheless conveys contradictory ideas. A statement like this is an absurd declaration that no rational person could utter with any sincerity. To assert A is to believe A (unless one is lying). Notice that what matters is not whether A is actually true or false, but whether A is being asserted or not. In a similar fashion, it is equally absurd to assert not-A, but believe A, e.g., “I didn‘t get an email from John, but I believe I did.”

Thankfully, real-world instances of Moore’s Paradox are few and far between, if they exist at all. But Cupp, the popular conservative columnist, author, and self-proclaimed atheist dangerously straddles the line demarcated by Moore’s Paradox that separates the world of rational thought from the world of total incoherence. There may not be another creature like her on the planet. Whether she truly holds wildly contradictory beliefs about faith and atheism, or, by calculated contrivance is carving out a profitable niche for herself as a nonbelieving defender of the faithful, we cannot know for sure. All we have are her words on the subject, and they make no sense at all.

Everything you need to know about atheist Cupp, author of Losing Our Religion—an attack on atheists (you heard right)—and her brand of nonbelief can be gleaned from this portion of an interview she gave to C-SPAN in 2009. Explaining her rejection of religion, she told interviewer Brian Lamb:

“I didn’t buy it. It wasn’t for me. But I’m envious. I’m envious of the faithful. So I defend the faithful, especially the Christian Right in America at every opportunity I get….I haven’t closed the door on faith. It just hasn’t found me yet.”

Yet?

“I don’t believe in a higher power of any kind. No deity whatsoever. I really believe that when I die I go in the ground like every other animal and that’s that.”

That’s good.

“I aspire to be a person of faith one day.”

What? What does that even mean? Becoming a person of faith isn’t like becoming a CPA. There’s no training or certification process. To say you aspire to be a person of faith one day makes as much sense as saying at some point you hope to be a postmodern feminist. Here’s a person who’s basically saying that she sees no good reason for believing in a deity, but that one day she hopes to believe in a deity that presently she does not think exists. In other words, “God doesn’t exist, but I hope I will believe he does.” Cupp hasn’t contradicted herself here, but this view is nevertheless bizarre.

The interview takes an even stranger turn when she starts heaping praise on George W. Bush:

"I’m a fan of George Bush…I think he had a conviction, personal principles that required him to answer to someone else when he went to bed at night. Not to the state and not to himself. I don’t see the same kind of reverence in some of our other recent presidents. Barack Obama included. Bill Clinton included. That gives me comfort as a citizen, knowing that my president is going to bed answering to a higher power. So he’s thinking about the decisions he’s making, not just because they’re going to affect him and his legacy, but because he has someone or something to answer to. I really respect that. And I think that whether you liked his policies or not, he really did what he thought was best for the country. And I think that’s really really rare."

At this point, Lamb asks what is no doubt on just about every viewer’s mind. Here is the rest of the exchange:

Lamb: If you don’t believe at all, why would you then follow somebody that has that as their way of life?

Cupp: As an atheist, I could never imagine electing, voting for an atheist president for exactly those reasons. I mean, religion keeps a person who is endowed with so much power honest. This is a person who is answering to a higher power every night. And not to the state. He doesn’t think that the state has all the power and he doesn’t think he himself has all the power. That’s important to me. I mean, I represent two percent of the world. Why would I, why would I want someone who thinks that 98% of the world is crazy running the country?

Lamb: [Composed but incredulous] But you don’t think that that higher power exists.

Cupp: I don’t. But I don’t think people are crazy. I understand the allure of religion. I really do. I’m just not going to be dishonest and say I believe in something I don’t yet.

Lamb: But what if he’s hearing voices all the time and taking advice from a higher power that doesn’t exist in your opinion, and makes decisions based on the higher power that doesn’t exist in your opinion?

Cupp: Well, I mean, people’s faith—it’s very personal, and I don’t judge the way that people use their faith to inform their decisions. I really don’t. We can judge him on his policies, whether he heard it from a voice in his head, he got it from the bible, he had a conversation with Laura one night over dinner. I mean, it doesn’t really matter to me. I’d like to judge the policies on face value.

Sensing an impasse, the interviewer moves away from Cupp’s whirlwind opinions on religion to spare the audience from further decreases in IQ.

Several statements stand out here. Let’s start with,

“That gives me comfort as a citizen, knowing that my president is going to bed answering to a higher power.”

Now, it’s one thing for Christians or Muslims or other theists to say this. After all, they believe in said higher power. But what about Cupp, who doesn’t? What are we to make of the person who essentially says, “I don’t believe in a higher power, but I’m glad the president answers to it”? As Lamb pointed out, she doesn’t believe in that higher power, so how could that possibly give her comfort? If anything, it should concern her that her president is getting guidance from a nonexistent entity. One has to seriously wonder whether Cupp thinks that a schizophrenic who receives instruction from benevolent voices is better qualified for the presidency than an atheist.

Her response is full of specious generalizations and tacit self-deprecation:

“As an atheist, I could never imagine electing, voting for an atheist president for exactly those reasons. I mean, religion keeps a person who is endowed with so much power honest. This is a person who is answering to a higher power every night. And not to the state.”

First of all, Cupp says she is an atheist, which is to say she believes that religion is false and deities are nonexistent. Yet simultaneously she insists that believers in such falsehoods are the only ones qualified to be president precisely because they believe in god. Ok?

Second, Cupp is claiming that the religious are made more honest because they believe in what she herself thinks is a false doctrine.

Third, the idea that god kept Bush honest is betrayed by his administration’s penchant for mendacity and deception. Also, how honest and decent are the ruling mullahs in Iran being kept by their higher power? Or the 9/11 hijackers? Or the people who blow up abortion clinics and murder doctors in the name of their higher power? And what about the fact that Bush’s former top advisor, Karl Rove, is an atheist? Rove was arguably the most influential man in the life of Bush the candidate and the Bush president, and yet he answered to no higher power.

Fourth, implicit in Cupp’s assessment is an admission that she would not vote for herself for president because she presumably would not be kept honest by a higher power since she does not believe in one. In which case, how could we trust anything she says?

But Lamb hits a home run with his question, “But what if he’s hearing voices all the time?”

Realizing she can’t reason her way out, she backtracks somewhat, now saying she judges the president based on his policies. She’s a conservative, and so if a president has conservative policies that match up with her political beliefs, she’s going to view him favorably. As she just said, she takes a policy at face value, and said it doesn’t matter how he arrives at it, whether “he got it from the bible [or] he had a conversation with Laura one night over dinner.”

So Cupp goes from saying that only believers should be president, to admitting it doesn’t matter how the president makes the decisions he does, just as long as they make for good policies, which for her means “conservative,” while seemingly maintaining her position that atheists like herself shouldn’t be president.

What do we call this position, where a person believes that what she believes to be false must be believed as true by another as a prerequisite for being awarded a special privilege, in this case the presidency? (I suppose this take would be fine if Cupp viewed holding the presidency as some sort of detriment or punishment.) Boiled down to its bare bones, Cupp’s view is,

“Atheism is true, and atheists should not be elected because they believe atheism is true.”

Or

“Faith is false, and only the faithful should be elected because they believe faith is true.”

Nonsense? Absurdity. Craziness? Cupp’s Conundrum?

Call it whatever you want, but I know what I’m calling S.E. Cupp: a faitheist.

- Max

max.canning@gmail.com