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 | Friday, January 15, 2010 at 8:25:23 mst
Comment ID: #1
Name: Chris
Atheists are a far bigger threat to liberty than Christians. You should evaluate your obsession with all things Christian. |
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| Friday, January 15, 2010 at 8:55:17 mst
Comment ID: #2
Name: Michael A. Slivka
E-mail: michaelslivka1(at)comcast.net
URL: http://slivkalaw.com
Paul, you hit the nail on the head with this one. When the witch doctor teams up with Al Gore and Atilla becomes a Marxist, very few will have the intellectual armor to fight them. Please keep up the good fight! |
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| Friday, January 15, 2010 at 9:39:43 mst
Comment ID: #3
Name: Greg Perkins
E-mail: greg(at)ecosmos.com
URL: http://dianahsieh.com/blog
Chris, lacking a belief in a god doesn't say much of anything about what one *does* believe. Case in point: there are atheists committed to violently-achieved, absolutely rights-violating enslavement of all humanity (Communists) -- and there are atheists who are committed to an absolutely rights-protecting government (Objectivists). Not believing in a god simply doesn't dictate whether one respects rights.
For more on this issue, please see http://www.dianahsieh.com/blog/2008/05/why-new-atheists-cant-even-b ... |
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| Friday, January 15, 2010 at 10:33:58 mst
Comment ID: #4
Name: Thibodeaux
"Specifically, the biggest danger will be a deadly merger of religion and socialism/environmentalism."
It's already happening: http://i833.photobucket.com/albums/zz255/joebobbriggs_2010/commandm ... |
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| Friday, January 15, 2010 at 10:39:04 mst
Comment ID: #5
Name: anonymous
And yet, the only thing that prevents a total leftist takeover of the United States is the conservative half of the country and these conservatives, whatever their flaws which are many, are Christian. Its today's Christian Americans that prevent America from becoming a socialist cesspool. There must be some better elements to Christianity no matter what its flaws. After all, who on the left defends any liberty at all? |
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| Friday, January 15, 2010 at 13:37:55 mst
Comment ID: #6
Name: Richard
I think that this brand of Pentecostalism is too strange and explicit for most average Americans today. At least, watching these people contort themselves into fits is disturbing to me. But the likelihood of Pentecostal immigrants affecting politics sounds probable.
"In fact, there is a sense today that these three regions are emerging as the new stronghold of Christianity. Pastors and religious scholars even imagine a reverse-missionary scenario, in which Latin Americans coax disillusioned Americans and Europeans back to mainstream churches."
This is a notion I've heard a number of times now. It may turn out to be true if some form of Christianity can adapt and mold itself in a way to accommodate modern average Americans. Religion is highly dogmatic, but on the other hand Christianity has been very successful by reinventing itself to adapt to particular people and issues. (Catholicism isn't working in South America you say? Make Mary resemble the natives, and voila!) Christianity in one form or another enjoys a global influence the like of which Nazis, Socialists, and other power lusting ideologies could only dream of. Taking a guess I would say that the growing non-denominational mega churches, combined with a new environmentalist/social justice savvy type of religiosity has a good chance of become the creed of the modern American.
It's easy to become complacent about religion and think of it primarily as a bunch of Right-wing lunatics. But in the longer term it's important to remember that religion is endlessly (and ironically) evolving to suit its environment. |
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| Friday, January 15, 2010 at 13:46:53 mst
Comment ID: #7
Name: Jim May
E-mail: seerak(at)gmail.com
And again, for the Christian trolls like #1: the Dark and Middle Ages were an era ruled by Christianity. Stop acting as if history only began in the 18th century.
#5: That is a non-sequitur. That the conservative half of the country has slowed down the Left is a matter of luck, and has occurred *despite* their religiosity, not because of it... it is the remnants of the Enlightenment in them that our liberty depends upon.
As a demonstration, examine the response of most mainstream Christians to Pat Robertson's recent statement that Haiti got what it deserved due to making a "pact with the Devil". They decry getting tarred by association with him, and openly declare that his interpretation of their faith is "beyond the pale" etc. and make various claims to distance themselves from him, most commonly that he isn't a "real Christian" because he goes too far.
The same sort of thing happened in the aftermath of 9/11, when Christians reacted against the (proper) connection of Islamic terrorism to religion per se; in that case, what I found interesting was that the arguments made back then was that 9/11 was an "extreme" act, that anyone invoking faith in God to justify such things is "going too far".
What I found fascinating in each case, was that the ones attacking the "extremist" will always argue implicitly from the viewpoint of reason, usually understood as "common sense", that they got from the Enlightenment. Contra Kant, we are seeing reason being used to morally constrain faith.
You are doing so in #5, sir. In your case, implicit in your argument is that liberty is a good thing, and that socialism is bad. These are correct, but this knowledge DID NOT COME TO US FROM ANY RELIGION.
It came from the secular Enlightenment and its roots in Aristotle.
The "better elements" that are to be found in today's mainstream Christianity originate in its antithesis -- secular reason. As we see in the years between the fall of Rome to the rise of America, Christianity did not lead us to liberty, in concept or fact, despite over a thousand years of opportunity. As I've put it before, Christianity was tamed (civilized) by the secular Enlightenment, and liberty was achieved because of the latter, DESPITE the former.
So, if I'm right, why the association today of capitalist liberty with the Right? Isn't this a contradiction? Of course it is... but it isn't MY contradiction; it is conservatism's. That contradiction is why this tension between mainstream Christians, and "Core" Christians like Robertson exist.
It is a matter of political expediency that the old enemies of the Enlightenment picked up the battered remains of the old Enlightenment/American political ideals; the Left was shedding them faster than the American people were willing to do, so it made sense for the "reactionary" Right to do so.
This can only be temporary, however, for the reasons I have cited. Liberty is not a Christian ideal, any more than it was ever a Leftist one, and someday soon it will be jettisoned by the religious conservatives in the same way and for the same reasons the Left did in the 60's. Paul's post illustrates this process happening in real time; it shows the contradiction between Christianity and liberty being worked out in precisely the manner I predict. Religious conservatism and the Left are both anti-Enlightenment, and are commensurable with each other in ways that neither is in regards to liberty and reason. |
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| Friday, January 15, 2010 at 13:55:36 mst
Comment ID: #8
Name: Jbenton
These trends are very good news in an important respect. They put religion and socialism into the same camp where they properly belong. This helps to destroy the error held by the public that socialism is based on reason and capitalism on religion. This will make possible real change for the better, at least in the long run. |
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| Friday, January 15, 2010 at 14:01:04 mst
Comment ID: #9
Name: Mike
E-mail: michaelbahr(at)cox.net
Mr. Anonymous Coward,
If you're so confident in your god, why hide? What would he ever let happen to you? |
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| Friday, January 15, 2010 at 14:14:45 mst
Comment ID: #10
Name: Mel McGuire
I don't remember any Pope (an "old" face of religion) being pro-capitalist. I have to give some credit to Michael Moore--a Catholic--for recognizing and that "capitalism is anti Christian." This statement was made in a recent TV appearance as shown in this short YouTube video. When I first heard this, I had to think: "What a nice thing to say about capitalism." I was thrilled.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OHgx3-vP2HI |
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| Friday, January 15, 2010 at 18:01:24 mst
Comment ID: #11
Name: Amit Ghate
URL: http://amitghate.blogspot.com/
Thanks for that comment Jim, I found it very helpful. |
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| Friday, January 15, 2010 at 22:04:49 mst
Comment ID: #12
Name: Guy
Folks here in the South are even becoming "churchier," if you can imagine that. Friends from high school who were agnostic or indifferent are now full bore Christian socialists. Another example: for my son's 7th birthday party he just wanted to invite a few friends. Of the four invited, two couldn't come because of church--on a Saturday afternoon! What kind of sick people make their kid go to church instead of letting them go to their friend's birthday party!? |
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| Saturday, January 16, 2010 at 8:06:21 mst
Comment ID: #13
Name: RussK
E-mail: rkeni_(at)_netscape.net
I think that Pentecostalism has grown throughout the world because of its growth and acceptance in the United States. Pentecostalism is an American creation, and as the movement gained members and acceptance over time it has been able to branch out and provide 'mission' programs to other nations. The biggest Pentecostal bank rollers of third-world missionary aid that I know of is the Assemblies of God church. These churches have a strong youth out-reach program--probably because of their more liberal forms of worship--and also have a profound effect on many of the kids who become members. Someone in my family, who is still in high school, has changed their goals completely because of the influence of AoG. Now this person wants to forgo REAL college education and instead complete a 'Masters Commission' tract instead, with a end goal of perpetual mission work. |
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| Saturday, January 16, 2010 at 8:22:00 mst
Comment ID: #14
Name: Chris
Jim,
Blah blah blah blah. You can spout all your rhetoric and examples and point out logical fallacies. I will point to the facts. Thomas Jefferson, Ben Franklin, John Adams, George Washington, Patrick Henry, Alexander Hamilton, James Hill, Rockefeller, Edison... Shall I continue? Or now will you retort with "they accomplished what they accomplished in spite of their Christian faith"? I would like to hear you argue with them on that point.
Or how about you list some of the feats of Objectivists, outside of Ayn Rand? They have had over 50 years. Maybe Greenspan? Hillary Clinton mentioned Atlas Shrugged as one of her favorite books. Of course there is Angelina Jolie. The only worthwhile examples I can think of is the President of BB&T and Nathanial Brandon.
You keep worrying about Christians while Iran, China, Russia and Left wing atheist environmentalists, gobble up the world. They don't need a moral grounding outside of "because we said so". That is truly terrifying.
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| Saturday, January 16, 2010 at 8:54:27 mst
Comment ID: #15
Name: Andrew Dalton
E-mail: andrew.s.dalton(at)gmail.com
URL: http://witchdoctorrepellent.blogspot.com
"Blah blah blah blah."
http://realityandreason.blogspot.com/2009/12/blah-blah-blah.html
So much for you Christians being a bulwark against leftists, eh, Chris? |
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| Saturday, January 16, 2010 at 9:07:03 mst
Comment ID: #16
Name: Pablo Romero
E-mail: kainscalia(at)gmail.com
URL: http://aristotleslighthouse.blogspot.com
To quote Frasier Crane:
"Hello Chris. Tell me, what color is the sky in your world?" |
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| Saturday, January 16, 2010 at 10:57:43 mst
Comment ID: #17
Name: C Andrew
E-mail: ca4papen(at)mindspring.com
Jim,
"Rhetoric and examples and ... logical fallacies" OH MY! And then, of course, your interlocutor will point out facts! I am
curious, though. Don't examples and the existence of logical fallacies fall under the facts category? Or are facts merely
composed of the recitation of the names of historical figures?
I'd address the questions to Chris, but unfortunately, I'm looking for an informative reply. If I were to engage on his
level, it might go something like this...
Augustine of Hippo, Arnaul Amalric, Tomas de Torquemada, Heinrich Kramer, Pope Innocent VIII, Christian IV of Denmark, Mary Tudor of England, Martin Luther, John Calvin, Pope Urban VIII, Cotton Mather, William Jennings Bryan, Francisco Franco...*
Jim, what I most appreciate about your posts is the analysis of ideas. That while men might hold conflicting ideas and thus
create a mixed legacy analysis allows one to parse that legacy into its various components. So, one can esteem Martin Luther
King for his insistence on "the content of one's character" and find his support for collectivism abhorrent. Or on another note,
one can appreciate that Martin Luther helped break the monolithic power of the Catholic Church thus starting the Reformation and
keeping the various christian persecutors too busy with each other to kill the Enlightenment before it could leave its cradle.
On the other hand, Luther's anti-semitism was an important aspect to the German Cultural willingness to enact the Holocaust and it
is interesting to me that the two major Lutheran organizations in the USA did not repudiate Luther's anti-semitism until 1983 (ELCA)
and 1993 (The Missouri Synod.) For a more modern example, one might engage George Gilder on his ideas on the future of media, but
reject the absurdity that loaning money to a startup is an act of altruism.
What the recitation of historical figures without such analysis does is save one the effort of analysis as many concrete-bound conventions
do. It also saves one the effort of discerning the truth.
*For the historically curious, my list of frozen concretes represents, in order; advocating the death of dissenters (heretics), "Kill them all, God will know his own" in the first official Christian genocide, First Grand Inquisitor of the Spanish Inquistion, Initiator of the great witch hunts of the 15th and 16th centuries by writing the How to Find, Interrogate and Kill Witches (The Hexen Hammer), issued the papal bull authorizing the previous (for which it acts as the foreword), A practitioner of those witch hunts, another killer of heretics, anti-semite and witch hunter apologist, another heretic burner (Michael Servetus), as Pope, supported the finding of "vehement suspicion of heresy" against Galileo, cheerleader for the Salem Witch Trials, Special Prosecutor in the Scopes Trial architect of prohibition and the precursor to the modern war on drugs, Spanish Falangist Dictator and defender of Catholicism. |
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| Saturday, January 16, 2010 at 16:15:06 mst
Comment ID: #18
Name: Monica Hughes
E-mail: monicabeth10(at)gmail.com
URL: http://ancestralgeneration.com
Oh, Guy! You have no idea!
I wasn't allowed to attend all sorts of events due to such absurd conflicts. Of course, we were never allowed to celebrate Hallowe'en after my parents became "born again" Christians whn I was 8... we called it "harvest Day" and celebrated it at church. Bo. Ring.
So, I have fond memories of trick or treating at age 6, but not thereafter. Bummer. |
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| Saturday, January 16, 2010 at 22:18:38 mst
Comment ID: #19
Name: Jim May
E-mail: Seerak(at)gmail.com
Andrew: thanks for that, I only read that yesterday and was going to post that.
Chris: you are way out of your league here. You do yourself no favors by cribbing from your Leftist siblings' rhetorical playbook.
C. Andrew: what I do is follow the strands of ideas through history and through a man's words and actions. Mixed cases like Martin Luther King are the rule, and being able to trace the pathways of ideological causation is key to making these analyses possible. |
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| Monday, January 18, 2010 at 11:36:42 mst
Comment ID: #20
Name: Steve D'Ippolito
"I will point to the facts. Thomas Jefferson, Ben Franklin, John Adams, George Washington, Patrick Henry, Alexander Hamilton, James Hill, Rockefeller, Edison... "
Your so called facts are at least partially mistaken.
Thomas Jefferson and John Adams were not Christians, they were deists. (I suspect that Ben Franklin wasn't, either.) There is also zero evidence that Washington was a Christian and some evidence that he was not (he refused to have a priest or minister at his deathbed, and never took communion at a church when he went).
Admittedly you *did* get Patrick Henry right.
I am *particularly* irritated by the Washington example as there is a small cottage industry of people selling paintings of him praying, etc. as if it proves he was a Christian. This is *particularly* dishonest. |
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