Remember the scene from Life of Brian? "Crucifixion or Freedom?" Choose carefully. Or to put it another way, "Tea and Cake or Death?" That's your option. A nice cuppa with a piece of moist chocolate cake with icing, or suffer the most horrible of deaths.
Think carefully, and chose. That's where my post will leave you. To get there, you just need to read the beginning bit. The beginning bit isn't this bit, it's the bit after this. Actually it starts just here:
Is all religion bad? Is all politics bad? The broad brush of terms like religion and politics make such thoughts weak. As weak as the rather old chestnut: "Some people do bad things in the name of their religion. Therefore all religion is bad."
There's another chestnut to answer with this question too. The idea that atheists don't conduct mass murder in the name of atheism, therefore atheism is the only moral alternative to religion (assuming all religion is bad, of course). Hey, that's not my logic. I'm just responding to it.
My response will not be delivered in one large, carefully thought out treatise. My answers will be delivered according to the medium of the blog. Brief, simple, occasional, and reliant on reasonable commenters to flesh the detail out.
Cake or Death? We'll get there.
Are all religions equal? Are all political ideologies destructive? What makes atheists dangerous? What makes people dangerous? If we have to fear something delivered by mad people using God or Atheist Ideology as their justification, then I suggest Totalitarianism is the word to be wary of. Atheists don't kill in the name of atheism. Why would they, when you look at the definition of the word?
If we could define a secular religion, it would have to be the religion of totalitarianism. Take your flavour - fascism or communism. Both brands have killed millions upon millions of people.
Sure, there is also religious totalitarianism. See the word that has come up in both discussing both political ideology and religious ideology?
What kind of monsters believe they are so right in their beliefs, they can kill millions. Irrespective of the reasons? The answer is not particularly palatable. It will come, in part, in an upcoming post.
Cake or Death? That is the question we are faced in this post.
Are all religious people extreme? To say all religions are equal is preposterous. To say all fundamentalist extremists are operating on the same moral level as the Christians running the city soup kitchen is preposterous. Let's answer that question now.
Cake or Death
There's no Church of England fundamentalism. We can't have Church of England fundamentalism. You know, like they have Islamic fundamentalism. Jihad! … Ah ha … Church of England fundamentalism is impossible because you can't have: "You must have tea and cake with the vicar... or you die!"
Related Link: Tea and Cake or Death?
Think carefully, and chose. That's where my post will leave you. To get there, you just need to read the beginning bit. The beginning bit isn't this bit, it's the bit after this. Actually it starts just here:
Is all religion bad? Is all politics bad? The broad brush of terms like religion and politics make such thoughts weak. As weak as the rather old chestnut: "Some people do bad things in the name of their religion. Therefore all religion is bad."
There's another chestnut to answer with this question too. The idea that atheists don't conduct mass murder in the name of atheism, therefore atheism is the only moral alternative to religion (assuming all religion is bad, of course). Hey, that's not my logic. I'm just responding to it.
My response will not be delivered in one large, carefully thought out treatise. My answers will be delivered according to the medium of the blog. Brief, simple, occasional, and reliant on reasonable commenters to flesh the detail out.
Cake or Death? We'll get there.
Are all religions equal? Are all political ideologies destructive? What makes atheists dangerous? What makes people dangerous? If we have to fear something delivered by mad people using God or Atheist Ideology as their justification, then I suggest Totalitarianism is the word to be wary of. Atheists don't kill in the name of atheism. Why would they, when you look at the definition of the word?
If we could define a secular religion, it would have to be the religion of totalitarianism. Take your flavour - fascism or communism. Both brands have killed millions upon millions of people.
Sure, there is also religious totalitarianism. See the word that has come up in both discussing both political ideology and religious ideology?
What kind of monsters believe they are so right in their beliefs, they can kill millions. Irrespective of the reasons? The answer is not particularly palatable. It will come, in part, in an upcoming post.
Cake or Death? That is the question we are faced in this post.
Are all religious people extreme? To say all religions are equal is preposterous. To say all fundamentalist extremists are operating on the same moral level as the Christians running the city soup kitchen is preposterous. Let's answer that question now.
Cake or Death
There's no Church of England fundamentalism. We can't have Church of England fundamentalism. You know, like they have Islamic fundamentalism. Jihad! … Ah ha … Church of England fundamentalism is impossible because you can't have: "You must have tea and cake with the vicar... or you die!"
Related Link: Tea and Cake or Death?
That's a very funny clip!
ReplyDeleteAnd it points to what may be a deep problem with some Christian churches (or is that 'flavours' of Christianity?) today.
Ralph Peters wrote a very perceptive article about why islamism is growing so fast and why it may yet sweep all before it...because radical islam especially is clear, focussed and very, very simple. The ideology isn't watered down to suit a target market, the imams aren't mired in 'peace studies' and gender issues politics etc.
Simple, savage and very, very uncompromising.
Christianity needs to find its own muscular, uncompromising and militant voice if it's to survive as a counter to radical islam, otherwise radical islam will simply overtake it via political means and kill it.
I am not sure what you mean by "militant" KG, but i am not sure I like the sound of it. Obviously you don't want Christianity to becaome all that you have criticised of Islam.
ReplyDeleteAnyway you do raise a good point about Islam. It certainly does seem simple and uncompromising. Of course any time the Catholic church is uncompromising, it gets lambasted in the press. Not that I pay too much attention to what the liberals have to spout off about, but to be honest Islam is not the threat to Christianity - Christians have to look within and fix our own church(es) first, then that muscular voice needs to be directed at the enemy within our own society - atheism, apathy, consumerism, know-it-all pious liberal trash!
Radical Islam is a threat to liberal democracy. Radical Islam seems to come on the back of moderate Islam, making the threat real due to demographic trends.
ReplyDelete(Secular) liberal democracy is a danger unto itself, being undermined by rising anti-Christian sentiment being converted to legal intolerance, presented as Orwellian double-speak. Through that crack comes all sorts of harmful ideological bacteria.
I believe Christian based morals are a good check on a liberal democracy. However, they are being discarded by atheists and their foundations destroyed by liberal Christians within the Church.
We certainly have a battle within, and the greater society would do well to be interested in the outcome - unfortunately, they root for the wrong faction, and are only interested in so much as Christianity is destroyed. The softer way of speaking of this is "converted". Converted to Liberal Dhimmis.
They should be careful, because in a democracy with changing populations, Liberal Dhimmis would not be even offered Dhimmi status in a democratically elected Muslim society.
Sean, I guess I used the wrong word there.
ReplyDeleteBut I didn't mean 'militant' in the sense islamists do. Not at all.
I mean militant within the framework of our Western values. Such as throwing the weight of the Church behind suitable political candidates, using the courts very aggressively (as islamists do) to counter attacks on Christians and Christian values etc.
I know there's an argument that the Church should stand outside politics but in today's societies I don't believe that's either possible or wise.
(In fact I'd be very happy to see the Church mount another Crusade, with somewhat err..updated methods)
Joke.
well, half joking...