Atheism and the Unlimited Liability Universe

 "A limited liability company is one in which the liability of each shareholder is limited to the amount of his shares or stocks, or to a sum fixed by a guarantee called "limited by guarantee." The purpose of limited liability laws is to limit responsibility. Although the ostensible purpose is to protect the shareholders, the practical effect is to limit their responsibility and therefore encourage recklessness in investment. A limited liability economy is socialistic. By seeking to protect people, a limited liability economy merely transfers responsibility away from the people to the state, where "planning" supposedly obviates re­sponsibility. Limited liability encourages people to take chances with limited risks, and to sin economically without paying the price. Limited liability laws rest on the fallacy that payment for economic sins need not be made. In actuality, payment is simply transferred to others.

Limited liability laws were unpopular in earlier, Christian eras but have flourished in the Darwinian world. They rest on important religious presuppositions.

In a statement central to his account, C. S. Lewis described his preference, prior to his conversion, for a materialistic, atheistic uni­verse. The advantages of such a world are the very limited demands it makes on a man.

To such a craven the materialist's universe has the enormous at­traction that it offered you limited liabilities. No strictly infinite disaster could overtake you in it. Death ended all. And if ever finite disasters proved greater than one wished to bear, suicide would always be possible. The horror of the Christian universe was that it had no door marked Exit. . . . But, of course, what mattered most of all was my deap-seated hatred of authority, my monstrous individualism, my lawlessness. No word in my vocabu­lary expressed deeper hatred than the word Interference. But Christianity placed at the center what then seemed to me a tran­scendental Interferer. If its picture were true then no sort of "treaty with reality" could ever be possible. There was no region even in the innermost depth of one's soul (nay, there least of all) which one could surround with a barbed wire fence and guard with a notice of No Admittance. And that was what I wanted; some area, however small, of which I could say to all other beings, "This is my business and mine only."

This is an excellent summation of the matter. The atheist wants a limited liability universe, and he seeks to create a limited liability political and economic order. The more socialistic he becomes, the more he demands a maximum advantage and a limited liability from his social order, an impossibility."

-R.J. Rushdoony in Institutes of Biblical Law