Bernard Shaw's Remarkable Religion: A Faith That Fits the Facts

Catching Up with Shaw 243
Such goals could be simply stated, which conventional wisdom declares a
necessity in the age of the sound bite. Here are a few:
Everyone willing to work for a living should be guaranteed a living
wage.
No one should be allowed to partake of the national product without
having contributed labor to create it.
No child should be punished for unwisely choosing her parents.
These should be catchy enough slogans, but they will not be used until
those who would be reformers genuinely accept the idea of equality: that
no one who helps to make the pie “deserves” a larger piece than anyone
else.
One of the most important lessons we could learn from Shaw is that
metaphysics matters. Our conception of the basic structure and principles
of the universe must influence the way we choose to act in it. Scientific
materialism has become so ingrained in our intellectual life that it has vitiated,
almost to impotence, the liberal intelligentsia. Once accept that the
universe is a cold, indifferent machine and that we are merely cogs, and
you lose any foundation for ethics. You will accept, as fashionable liberal
intellectuals now do, that no moral code is better than any other, even if
you do not realize that such a position entails the abandonment of ethics
altogether. Without a metaphysical basis for your ethics, you will be left to
whine impotently about the cruelty of the powerful to the weak. The powerful,
who have tacitly accepted Social Darwinism as the unofficial established
religion of the West, cynically flaunt bumper stickers proclaiming,
“He who dies with the most toys, wins.” If we have become so mean, and
so proud of our meanness, it is in large part owing to dereliction of duty
on the part of the liberals—the would-be reformers—whose real functions
were understood by Major Barbara and her father: they must supply
gentle fans to awaken the embers of near-extinguished consciences and
provide protecting shields to guard those embers from the destroying
winds of hate and fear. The responsibility of creating Godhead is not one
that can be undertaken without the firmest of foundations. Barbara has
been accused of arrogance when she declares her intention to leave God in
her debt. Whether or not she is guilty of hubris, such an assertion does
require supreme confidence and a certain conviction of one’s destiny. To
take the terrifying responsibility of accomplishing the world’s will, it is
necessary to know with utter certainty that the world has a will.