[arjie]

Most of his comments I can understand, but to be honest I can not glean a shred of understanding from the following answer to the question about his Christian faith and libertarianism:

> To think of Christ as a politician might be the easiest way to get him all wrong. The theological claim that Christ is the "son of God" is also the anti-political claim that Augustus Caesar (the son of the divine Julius Caesar) is not the "son of God." So I think that Christ should be thought of as the first "political atheist," who did not believe that the existing political order is divinely ordained. Now, I think that there is lot of resonance between political atheism and libertarianism, even if they are not strictly identical...

http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/2g4g95/peter_thiel_tec...

[nopinsight]

Julius Caesar was the first historical Roman deified as a god, and Augustus promoted himself as a son of god, partly or mostly for political reasons.

Christ denied the prevailing notion of the day that Julius Caesar is a god (and Augustus is a son of god). Therefore, he is an anti-establishment, and an atheist or unbeliever in the political realm. Thiel refers to this as 'political atheism'.

In his last sentence, he mentioned that libertarianism is related to 'political atheism', which was Christ's view of the political order of the day.

The commonality I make out of his reasoning is that both Christianity in those days and current-day libertarianism are anti-establishment.

A very interesting shift in frame of reference. And you can point out that, politically, some Christian beliefs have in practice become part of the establishment today, which sort of contradicts his point. What do you think?

Please correct me if I'm wrong. My scant knowledge of the Roman era is mostly from Crash Course [1] (highly recommended for learning in an entertaining way, and I believe most of the contents are good too) and a bit from Wikipedia [2].

[1] https://www.khanacademy.org/partner-content/crash-course1/cr...

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julius_Caesar#Deification

[humanrebar]

tl;dr - Jesus was roughly apolitical, not "politically atheist"

Jesus wasn't anti-establishment: "give to Caesar what is Caesar's".

Political atheist is not a great term. But I guess the Jesus of the Bible is a "political atheist" to the extent that he doesn't think rulers necessarily have God's approval. Jesus started life as a refugee from a king that wanted to murder him. But that is not a new thought. After all, the pharoah (allegedly a god) refused to release the Israelites even after Moses told him God's will and performed miracles to prove it.

Interestingly, the contemporaries of Jesus were expecting him to reassert the political (and probably military) might of Israel in his role as Messiah. In the Bible, there is a lot of confusion around him and his teachings sprouting from the meme that he was a divine political savior, not a primarily spiritual one.

When Jesus rejected that notion (riding into Jerusalem on a donkey instead of a regal horse, submitting to execution, etc.), he took a particularly apolitical stance: that politics aren't as important as loving God, loving neighbors, and living in the spirit of God's laws.

Jesus was a fan of quoting the canon scriptures of his time. Something he surely read and agreed with is: "In the Lord's hand the king's heart is a stream of water that he channels toward all who please him."

...which implies that politics and rulers aren't a particularly big deal compared to pleasing God.

[lclarkmichalek]

I read it (after substantial rereading) as that Christ should be viewed as a "disruptor"; that he did not view the established authority as special (divine right of kings and all that). Political atheism as a term could be seen to make sense in this context, with the "theism" being the acceptance of the class hierarchy/strong ruler/whatever was oppressive about the State back in Christ's days. That would make political atheism seem (I assume in Theil's eyes) analogous to libertarianism, which calls for great freedom (in its most basic form; some would not call it true liberality, but eh, different argument).

So yeah, Christ can be seen to be against the controlling social order of his time, as can Libertarianism today.

Disclaimer: I'm so far left wing that most libertarians would call me a fascist, so assume some bias.

[rattray]

Hopefully Thiel clarifies what he means by "political atheism". All I could find on the net was an urban dictionary entry[0] and, well, this[1].

[0] http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Political%20A... > A person or persons who has a disbelief in the ruling of a dominating government with morals of any kind. Those who have belief that not everything produced by politics or the media hold truth of any kind. He/she whom holds their own belief in what is wrong or right not based on what is fed to them by what the general public allows themselves to be brainwashed with.

[1] http://politicalatheist.com/

[Spooky23]

Think of it this way.

Absolute rulers generally need to have some linkage or endorsement of their power. It's an important critical element of political legitimacy. So they tie themselves to some higher power -- god, "the people", the sun, ideology.

Christianity broke the mold (by acknowledging only one god, not caesar) and undermined the legitimacy of imperial Roman rule.

[humanrebar]

I noted this elsewhere, but when the story of Exodus very much undermines the notion that Jesus broke any molds by asserting that rulers can be spiritually illegitimate.

If anything, Jesus broke the mold by not being interested in running things, which would be the first thing many of us would reach for if we had a Bruce Almighty opportunity.

[return0]

I guess he means that libertarianism is mainly anti-statism, with statism being the imposed/de-facto religion nowadays.

On the other hand, the blind faith in the 'forces of the market' is another politically deistic stance, so i don't know how 'politically atheist' it is.

[humanrebar]

> the blind faith in the 'forces of the market' is another politically deistic stance

It's really humanist. It's the idea that none of us is as smart as all of us. Markets are considered distorted when they aren't free or start to resemble other types of organizations like autocracies, aristocracies, plutocracies, kleptocracies, etc.

So there is faith, but it's in humanity as a group, not magic math per se.

[return0]

It's the idea that none of us is as smart as all of us

That's the idea behind democracy. I believe the idea behind libertarianism is quite the opposite (that the few that are better should not be hindered by the hivemind).

[icebraining]

Does he have a blind faith in the "forces of the market", or does he just think that as flawed as they are, they're the best we have?