timeimmortal

This is the question that bothers Peter Hitchens this week, and it’s a good one to reflect on given the recent confrontation with police had by Christian preachers Arthur Cunningham and Joseph Abraham, who were told by police officers that the area in which they were handing out literature was a Muslim community, that their evangelism was a “hate crime,” and that if they returned to the area ever again and were perchance beaten…well, they’d already been warned.

A police constable who was present during the incident in the Alum Rock area of Birmingham is also alleged to have told the preachers not to return to the district.

It comes amid growing concern over the development of Islamic ‘no-go areas’.

The preachers, Americans Arthur Cunningham and Joseph Abraham, are demanding an apology and compensation from West Midlands Police.

They say their treatment breaks the Human Rights Act, which guarantees freedom of religious expression.

The preachers, who have the backing of the Christian Institute pressure group, say they will take the force to court for breaching their human rights if they don’t receive an apology.

They have accused the officer, PCSO Naeem Naguthney, of behaving in an ‘aggressive and threatening’ manner. A complaint by their lawyers said he interrupted as they spoke to Muslim youths about their beliefs.

Mr Abraham, 65, who was born a Muslim in Egypt and is a convert to Christianity, said: ‘He told us we were trying to convert Muslims to Christianity and that that was a hate crime.

‘He was very intimidating and it concerns me that somebody holding his views can become a police officer, albeit at PCSO level.’

Mr Cunningham, 48, a fellow American Baptist missionary, said: ‘He realised we were Americans and then started ranting at us about George Bush and American foreign policy.

‘He said we were in a Muslim area and were not allowed to spread our Christian message. He said he was going to take us to the police station.’

At any rate, Peter Hitchens — the sane Hitchens brother, mind — muses thusly:

Why did we have to wait for Bishop Michael Nazir-Ali, born and raised in Muslim Pakistan, to remind us that, as he put it, ‘the beliefs, values and virtues of Great Britain have been formed by the Christian faith’?

Just as important, why did we have to wait for him to urge us to do something about restoring that faith before we either sink into a yelling chaos of knives, fists and boots, or swoon into the strong, implacable arms of Islam?

Most of our homegrown prelates are more interested in homosexuality or in spreading doubt about the gospel or urging the adoption of Sharia law.

Then again, why did it take the French President, Nicolas Sarkozy, to explain to us that our parliamentary system was the best guarantee of liberty in the world and to remind us of the courage and valour of our people in war?

This is not what British leaders say or even think, not least because they are busy pulling the constitution to pieces.

It is not what our children are taught in schools.

In fact, any expression of national pride is viewed with suspicion by the state, by the education system and above all by the BBC.

It was not always so. Half a century ago, we had churchmen, broadcasters, academics and military men who thought it normal to love their own country, normal to support the Christian faith which made us what we are, and were willing to defend it.

The question of what happened in the years between is one of the most interesting in history.

I suggest reading the whole thing — it isn’t terribly long, but is a good summation of just what has gone wrong with modern Britain.

There was a time when the British had the gumption and courage to stand up to all manner of menaces, internal and foreign alike, and when the British people took pride in their nation. Those days would seem to have expired, as Britain sinks more and more into two separate chasms: that of rampant, primitive and violent Islam in its immigrant communities, and that of demoralized, nihilistic secularism everywhere else. And the latter does not have the desire, strength, or courage to resist the advance of the former.

Update: Welcome, Steynians!

Another wave of atheists seems to be upon me; while I can’t quite set my watch by them, at least I can be assured that there will be periodic sources of content not related to doings on any other blog save this one, which I appreciate.

In this case, the amusingly-handled Aspentroll writes in with a few thoughts on this article.

“Atheism will endure, as it has for many ages now. But it will never dominate a free people, and in due course gives way to the spiritual. Falsehood must necessarily give way to truth in the end, or at least to a less severe falsehood.”

The word “atheism” above could be replaced by the word “Religion” or “Christianity” and the rest of the quote would be just as true.

Atheists believe that the Bible is a huge falsehood and to pattern your life on such a nebulous writing is in most cases dangerous. You cannot govern a country using the laws of the bible which seems to be what some “fundies” want. We would all be up in arms if Sharia Law was allowed in the US, because it is archaic and discriminatory against women and free thought.

Atheism, agnosticism and free thought is the only check and balance we have to keep overly zealous delusional people from taking over and spoiling what is a normal modern way of life.

Did the reader note the tacit suggestion that religious people are necessarily delusional? The footnote to this more recent article seems relevant to mention here.

A good first question I might ask is: what checks and balances exist to keep overly zealous atheists from taking over and spoiling what is a normal, modern way of life that, in the West at least (though it perhaps does not always realize it), benefits greatly from reserves of Christian moral capital built up over the centuries? History has demonstrated that those states which have made atheism an explicit policy of the state have inexorably become brutal and bloody-minded, and several examples of the trend persist to this day.

The Mark Shea article I cited previously addresses this point rather directly: it is within human nature to desire to believe, and when force of will fails to ensure that the populace does not stray back toward the spiritual, force of arms is a necessary recourse of the atheistic state. It might be easy to laugh this off as fallacy, but one observes that in the explicitly atheistic regimes in places such as the Soviet Union, Burma, China, and North Korea (an incomplete list of examples, but sufficient for our purposes) did have something of a penchant for murderously cracking down on spiritual movements and religions within their borders. Certain exceptions to the trend exist, of course, but only in those cases where the religion(s) in question — the Orthodox Church in Russia, the “Catholic” Church in China — has allowed itself to be co-opted by the state.

One possible objection is that the generally secular regimes in many Western nations do not actively persecute the religious faithful in their midst. While the statement about persecution is up for debate, it is generally true that secular Western states do not, at least, murderously persecute their religious citizens. But then, even in various Scandinavian nations, the secularism itself is not explicit state policy, and most of those states still acknowledge that there is a Christian aspect to their origins.

As to the quote of mine that Apentroll cites in opening his message, it should be observed that his attempt to gainsay it, in the first sentence of his response to me, really amounts to little more than saying “I know you are, but what am I?” Although it sounds more reasonable than that on the surface — heck, it even sounds somewhat rational — the statement itself can be revealed to be something of a patent falsehood, on several levels, upon closer examination.

First off, Christianity’s aim — and the aim of true religion (as opposed to the various false teachings one can stumble across from time to time*) — is freedom. And by freedom, I don’t mean being free “from rules of conduct or social constraints” (as the all-too talented authors of the character of Durandal in the Marathon series of games so eloquently word it). I do, however, mean being free “to understand, to imagine, to make metaphor.”

Freethinking, a misnomer if ever there was one, actually ruins freedom. “Freethinkers supposedly want “the pursuit of ideas for their own sake,” but no one pursues ideas simply for their own sake, but in order to understand, to act or to believe, or to have some combination of these. Men pursue ideas so that they may understand the world, and they seek to understand the world to have wisdom. Men desire wisdom in order to live well, and part of living well is to pursue and know the Good, and the Good is that which fulfills human nature and causes it to flourish. The desire to know is a natural desire, one implanted in us as part of our created being; we yearn to know and to enter into the unknown because we yearn for unity with the One Who desires that all things be united in Him. If no religion had ever caused men to live virtuously and flourish, religion would have disappeared ages ago. If no religion had produced saints and cultivated the finest aspects of human nature, very few would adhere themselves to it and even then it would only be the mad and obsessive. There is nothing interesting in rehearsing the catalogue of crimes that religious adherents have committed against each other, since men have always been slaughtering and oppressing one another and they have tended to do more of it when they are less in thrall to their religious tradition than when they are strictly obedient to it. What is remarkable is how much at least some religions have contributed to the civilisation and edification of men, which would hardly seem probable if they were not much more than elaborate exercises in self-deception and nonsense.”

One point, in particular, that can be taken out of the above quotation is that “we yearn to know and to enter into the unknown because we yearn for unity with the One Who desires that all things be united in Him.” It is the result of no accident that science and discovery flourished in the Christian West after ending up misfiring almost everywhere else in the world (historically speaking). As David Warren notes, “[to] those who know some history, the modern sciences emerged in an unambiguously Christian milieu. They flourished, over centuries in the West, as the direct result of the Judaeo-Christian teaching that “God does not contradict Himself.” The whole notion of unalterable physical laws, and thus a universal order that will repay inquiry, is the product of a theological position unique to the West. It is a view that has been glimpsed in other civilizations, but could only be doggedly pursued in this one. Science was stillborn in all other civilizations.”

And the same is true of the wider concept of freedom. Nowhere else in the world, save in a West born out of Christendom, did the concept of human freedom, individual liberty, and human rights genuinely flourish. It did not, certainly, flourish in the Islamic world, nor in the castes of Hinduism in India, nor in any of the places where Buddhism took hold, nor in…any other place, really, save for the West that Christendom birthed. Indeed, the ideas that man should be free and that all men are “equal” is, ultimately, only defensible from within a teleological framework, and then a Christian teleology.

And in the numerous examples one could draw out of the 19th and 20th centuries, one can observe that in those regimes where atheism has, so to speak, become the law of the land, not only has human freedom been impaired and/or outright trampled on, but so too has science, to say nothing of human rights.

Now, I will grant that I stand in agreement with Aspentroll’s objetion to governance by “fundies” — fundamentalism leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Equally, though, I don’t think that society has any right to demand that a politician leave his Christianity at the door when he takes office.

Atheists are welcome to consider the Bible a book of falsehoods; I consider it God’s inerrant, infallible revelation to the world**. Who is to say which of us is right? I will grant that many, many people have a poor understanding of exactly what the Bible teaches, and fundamentalists seem especially prone to this unfortunate reality. But is it genuinely dangerous to pattern one’s life on the core teachings of Scripture? Exactly how terrible a place would the world be to live in if we all actually followed what Christ taught? Exactly how terrible a place would the world be to live in if everyone followed, as a bare minimum, the Ten Commandments and the Beatitudes, and patterned their lives on the concepts articulated therein?

I very much doubt it would be a perfect place to live in…but I’ve no doubt that it would be a much better world. But then, Chesterton had it exactly right when he noted that “the Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult, and left untried.”

I also agree with Aspentroll that it would be horrible if Islamic sharia law became the law of the land, in Canada or anywhere else. I suspect that Aspentroll, however, has temporarily taken leave of reason and erroneously assumes that because some types of religious law are brutal and evil, all forms of religious law must necessarily also be brutal and evil. It’s a rather common logical fallacy among atheists to assert this — Christopher Hitchens is particularly vulnerable to it.

The main problem with the assertion is that a thing may be true even if certain individuals don’t accept it as being true. This is easily understood in the case of the fundamentalist objection to e.g. the theory of evolution and the geological research that has revealed the approximate age of the Earth. Young Earth Creationism insists, passionately, that Earth is a mere 6,000 years old, and most creationists of this bent do not accept as truthful or valid the various discoveries made in the fields of geology, astronomy, and evolutionary biology (among others). That doesn’t mean that the theories and discoveries aren’t true, however.

The same is true in regard to atheistic assertions regarding religions. Aspentroll would hardly be the first atheist to look at, say, the evils perpetrated in the name of Islam and declare that all religions are murderous death cults obsessed with paedophilia and suicide belts. That might come as news to Buddhists, and indeed to most Christians, but not everyone can be counted on to let facts get in the way of good rhetoric, especially if it sells books with provocative titles. And yet, a more reasonable, rational person would notice that there are many critical differences between, say, Islam and Catholicism, visible both by a close analysis of doctrine and by taking an honest, objective look at the actions of the followers of each respective faith on a global scale.

As previously noted, the creature we call a human being is wired to be a believer, and the only real question is what said human being will believe in. We’ve seen this played out through history, and we see its logical consequences played out in that movement which denies this very aspect of human nature: atheism. In individual atheists like Sam Harris or Andre Comte-Sponville, we see the beginnings of post-atheistic spiritualism beginning to creep in. The same trend can be observed in Russia, in the wake of the collapse of an explicitly atheistic regime. It’s regrettable that the spirituality that such people are gravitating towards is, quite often, some new form of paganism (or “new” in that Roger Daltry “same as the old boss” sense of the word), although it is good that people are also finding, or rediscovering, the Church.

There seems to be a rather pernicious lie going around that religion and freedom are antithetical to one another; this is not completely true. It is true in regard to specific religions (e.g. Islam), but not in regard to the Christian truth. Indeed, it was a particularly Christian sense of telos that informed the very constraints, concepts, and ideals which enabled the West to value freedom. By contrast, the application of atheistic ideals as the formative values of a state has tended to be the true antithesis of freedom, of science, and of human rights.

And in perhaps the most amusingly ironic twist, I just realized that if I re-worded Aspentroll’s message to me and flipped the references to religion and atheism in every instance (and substituted the title of any New Atheist tract for “the bible”), the message itself would not only be a lot more truthful, but also a lot more historically defensible.

* this statement said with tongue firmly implanted in cheek

The former may exist. The latter, as Mark Steyn points out, does not:

What the west calls “moderate Muslims”, Islam regards as apostates. Sometimes, as with Dr [Wafa Sultan], they’re atheist apostates; sometimes, as with Miss [Irshad Manji], they’re lesbian apostates; and sometimes, as with Magdi Allam, they’re Christian apostates. To Islam, it doesn’t matter which branch of apostasy you opt for: As the Prophet [Muhammad] puts it, “Whoever changes his Religion, kill him.” All four principal schools of Islamic jurisprudence agree. So do the 36 per cent of young Muslims in Britain who believe apostasy should be punished by death. But, to the west, which branch of apostasy has most appeal to Muslims is an interesting question.

There are two main reasons why I feel myself compelled to take such a hard-line stance against Islam, its false prophet, and the various violent excesses of many who hold to that religion. The first, of course, is that Islam is, itself, a false religion, and is worthy of opposition on those grounds alone.

Equally, though, I cannot comprehend how one could view Islam as being in any way compatible with Western, Christian-founded ideals like human rights, equality before the law, equality before God, and other fundamental tenets of what we call “freedom.” In Islam, none of these things exists. There is no free will; there is only the will of Allah. There is no equality; there is Sharia. There is no freedom; there is only submission.

And ultimately, there is no love either; there is only hatred. Whether that hatred is directed at the Jews or at those who are not sufficiently “Islamic” in their character shifts week to week, but the hatred itself is ever-present.

On the one hand, Magdi Allam’s conversion is bad news…on the other hand, it’s good news in that it suggests the most effective strategy against a resurgent, radicalized Islam may be the oldest of all — an evangelizing Christianity.

The response of Europe to its progressive Islamicization has been a predominantly secular one that has sought to push Christianity even further toward the sidelines. In Canada, Muslim lobby groups (like the Canadian Islamic Congress, headed by terror-supporter Mohamed Elmasry) use human rights commissions to silence and censor those who dare to articulate any views that holds Islam suspect. In America, CAIR attempts to do the same through the civil courts.

And for the most part, when the West has roused itself to push back, it has done so through secular avenues. And while it is good to meet the enemy on the battlefield, whatever form that battlefield might take, it is not enough to merely win at the secular side of the game, because that is the distraction, the feint. And indeed, becoming too entrenched in a secular response to Islam will be our undoing, because Islam’s advantage is its ability to proselytize into the void that secularism leaves in its wake.

A strong, expanding religion like Islam can only be met, and subsequently thrown down, by a strong, vibrant religion that exists in opposition to it. Traditionally, this has been Christianity.

And so it must be, again.

Update: Welcome, Steynians!

Count Roland invokes Neil Postman’s classic work in his response to this article.

Neil Postman, in various books but especially Technopoly, makes a similar argument about technology and how it and ‘scientism‘ have become our civil Religion. One of my favourite anecdotes is the student who could not declare a room to be hot before consulting the thermostat.

Socrates said it 2500 years ago that writing would impoverish humanity, as it would lead to a weakening of memory. Maybe it has, but likely not since writing can help us discover and adapt beyond one man’s lifetime work. But the kernel of truth is that every technology we develop changes us, and not necessarily for the better. Our trust in technology and in ‘they’ is as irrational as the faith we hold, if secularist claims about religious faith are to be beleived (they are not), and more irrational than the actual faith claims and their rational justifications especially in light of the ends to which they are going. GPS may save time on a temporal shipment; our faith has the telos of our immortal souls and the eternal situation in which they end.

What is increasingly troubling is that the gap between those who know (in a full sense) the technology and those who use it is widening. For example, thirty years ago most men could fix their own cars — they were simple nough to understand — or at least know if the mechanic was being less than honest, but today most drivers can not fix many problems because cars have become more technical. Yet, we seem to be putting more trust in said technologies. Trusting more what one understands less of, as a society, is irrational insofar as it makes us more vulnerable to personal and corporate catastrophe — a broken car on a lonely highway in winter, a terrorist attack using a Tandy 3000 on our power network. That is the opposite thrust to what Christians strive to do — trust more as we understand more. Now, we can never fully understand God and a childlike (NOT childISH) faith is important, but a child’s most important question is ‘why?’ and we seek to find the answer to that question about God and about creation. Blind faith in what ‘they’ tell us is right is not mainstream Christianity. Mainstream Christianity is fides quearum intellectum — faith seeking understanding — and while we,in sin, can follow the wrong path, a sincere journey will eventually take us towards the Truth. Modern society’s faith in ‘they’ — usually scientists or media-political elites — is indicative of cult (in the contemporary sense) behaviour.

Chesterton was so right, but then again, aren’t we Christians just ignorant fools? Everyone is, but sometimes God graces us with wisdom — I suspect Chesterton would have told the two mothers to cut the child in half, too.

Roland hints at a rather curious thing — the underlying paganism in atheism (or, more broadly, secularism).

Even a cursory look at history should inform the reader that, for as long as humanity has had any semblance of society (even down to the tribal level), humanity has had Religion. The act of worshipping is an intrinsic aspect of human nature, and the philosophers of atheism have it exactly wrong. The question is not, as some might suppose, whether we shall worship; the question is what we shall worship.

For example, Daniel Dennett would ultimately suggest that we worship the meaty organ located an inch or two behind our eyes, and its capacity for reason and rational thought. Other secular categories of worship include the environment (through movements such as radical global warming/climate change alarmism) and animals (through movements such as PETA and other rabid animal rights organizations), the sexual organs and the sexual act, money, power, technology (which we are discussing here), and Barrack Hussein Obama. Most adherents of these movements and philosophies might not regard their participation in them as being an act of worship, but fundamentally that is what it distills down to, personal opinions nonwithstanding.

In other words: formal, ardently disbelieving atheism is but a temporary interlude between (in the West at least) Christianity and whatever religion will supplant Christianity, or between old Christianity and a new, resurgent Christianity.

Humanity’s reliance on — and increasing credulousness in the face of — technology, however, seems poised to continue and to worsen. Roland is exactly right in noting the widening gap between the typical user’s understanding of the complexity of a particular piece of technology and the actual complexity of that technology. Think for just a moment, O Reader, about the last time someone — if not yourself, mind — pointed at a computer tower and called the whole assembly a “hard drive.” That’s a tiny (if somewhat irksome, in my opinion) example, but illustrative all the same.

We trust too much in technology, while at the same time knowing less and less about the ins and outs of pieces thereof. That’s not a good — nor very Christian — position for us to be in.

Joel’s paranoid fears nonwithstanding, in the real world it does not appear to be Christianity that is invading America and silencing freedom of expression. Indeed, secularism seems to be taking on that role.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit has ruled that a football coach may not silently bow his head or “take a knee” with his team as gestures of respect during student-led prayers prior to a game.

Think about that for a second. The students are allowed to pray before a game if they wish, but the coach isn’t. He can’t even bow his head for a moment. Whatever happened to freedom of religion, or freedom of expression (come to think of it)? Whither the Constitution, as I asked Joel previously?

It is ridiculous to think that a court can rule on whether or not head movements by an individual are permissible or not — especially in America. And yet, essentially, that is what has been done. The coach must refrain from engaging in any voluntary motion which might indicate any sympathy with the actions of his students or the beliefs they are expressing as they pray, in spite of the fact that the coach very likely shares some of those beliefs and has a Constitutionally-protected right against the law intruding into his right to expres them.

Most of the media coverage of the Pope’s visit to the U.S. seems to focus on his addressing the sexual abuse scandals that have rocked the Church. And I for one am not going to complain that Pope Benedict XVI has chosen to address this issue as thoroughly as he has — it needed to be done, and Benedict himself is a great person to have in charge of handling the situation.

The folks at GetReligion, however, point out that the Pope also took time to speak out against the dangers of secularism and relativism — this, it seems, has been woefully underreported.

Pope Benedict XVI visited the White House on Wednesday, his 81st birthday, and praised America as a nation where strong religious belief can coexist with secular society.

But he later warned, in a speech to American bishops, of the “subtle influence of secularism” that can co-opt religious people and lead even Catholics to accept abortion, divorce and co-habitation outside of marriage.

“Is it consistent to profess our beliefs in church on Sunday and then during the week to promote business practices or medical procedures contrary to those beliefs?” he asked in a lengthy address to the bishops. “Is it consistent for practicing Catholics to ignore or exploit the poor and the marginalized, to promote sexual behavior contrary to Catholic moral teaching or to adopt positions that contradict the right to life of every human being from conception to natural death?”

“Any tendency to treat Religion as a private matter must be resisted,” he said.

What’s interesting is that the Pope approaches the issue from two directions; he confronts secularism directly and opposes it directly, but he also confronts and opposes the creeping influence of secularism — including the spread of moral relativism — that afflicts members of the body of the Church. He reminds us all that if one yokes oneself to the Catholic Church, one necessarily accepts Catholic teaching in matters pertaining to, among many other things, sex, marriage and abortion. And he then follows that up with an admonishment to the non-religious: religion cannot kept out of view.

I’ve always been offended by those who insist that religion is merely a private matter, because…well…because it isn’t. After all, if there is any truth to the religion I am a member of (Catholicism, natch), then what is at stake is not merely some temporary thing, but an immortal soul that resides within my being. If in fact we Catholics have it right, then it can only follow that the most important thing in our lives, above all other considerations (including family and friends, jobs and leisure activities) is our faith.

Simply put, we can no more be expected to set that aside than we can be expected to set aside our skin colour, because our religion is even more important than the biological realities at work in our bodies. Especially for Catholics — who experience Christ both directly, in the Eucharist, and in the context of community — religion cannot be relegated to the realm of “the private.”

And to suggest that it should be thusly relegated is laughable.

Jonah comments on a phenomenon that is getting a bit on the old side by now — the “Darwin Fish“. You know, that “clever” little modification of the classic “Jesus Fish” that you see tacked onto the bumpers of some cars, that has taken the classic fish shape and added legs to it, with either “Darwin” or “Evolve” replacing the traditional texts one finds printed in the “Jesus Fish”?

It’s one of those things that I think was meant, by whoever came up with it, to be a witty little statement against religious faith. Of course, instead of being witty, it typically comes off as petty, especially when paired (as Jonah notes that it so often is) with some sort of bumper sticker preaching “tolerance.”

Not that one ever expects truly rational thinking from secular folk. It’s nice to find, when it happens, though. But the “Darwin Fish” isn’t an example thereof.

Update: as a bonus, Michael Coren discusses that other great secular bigotry, tolerance, frameworking the discussion in the story of Magdi Allam, the Italian journalist welcomed this Easter into the Church by none other than Pope Benedict XVI himself. Allam’s conversion from Islam has been treated as controversial in the media, and has been condemned as a move calculated to inflame Christian/Muslim tensions.

Aref Ali Nayed, one of a group of 200 Muslim scholars who claim to be intent on establishing a new, open relationship with Christianity, condemned the Pope’s behaviour as “a triumphalist tool for scoring points.” The group in question tends to say very little about, for example, suicide bombings, forced conversion of Christians to Islam in Sudan or Turkey’s closing of a Catholic seminary. But is extremely upset that the Pope has behaved as, well, the Pope.

It’s a spurious, disingenuous critique. Theological dialogue may have been a Muslim tendency 800 years ago but nobody seriously believes that religious pluralism is a regarded concept in contemporary Islam. The denial and double-talk is sickening. Allam had been under police protection long before his conversion because of his staunch critique of violent Islamic fundamentalism. Death threats have increased since his embrace of Christianity and all that allegedly moderate Muslims are saying is that if there is going to be a conversion, for goodness sake keep it quiet.

But why? This is not about changing a shirt but transforming a life. According to Christian belief, Magdi Allam has begun a journey that will lead to eternal life. He has found not interesting opinion but absolute truth. Jesus didn’t say “I may be” but “I am” The Way. The only way. The Catholic Church is far more accepting than many Protestants in the way it views the salvational possibilities of non-Catholic goodness; but it still teaches that the only guaranteed way of meeting God is through the Sacramental structure of a church founded by Christ.

This notion of exclusive truth, however, is not just a problem for Muslims but for secularists as well, what with their fetish for ostensible tolerance. Modern liberalism has not merely abandoned certain commandments but replaced those it has expunged with a set of its own. The most important of which is toleration. I tolerate therefore I am. It’s nonsense of course, in that it is self-contradictory by nature — the tolerant cannot tolerate intolerance and are thus no longer tolerant — but it’s also a grand, great lie. Human rights commissions, student unions and leftist activists remind us every day of the authentic meaning of genuine intolerance.

Yet it still plays to the core of secular thinking. The standard argument, taught in universities and passively accepted in popular dialogue, is that because religion believes that it has the truth it is not broad-minded and broad-mindedness is an indication of sophistication and urbanity.

Magdi Allam said yes this Easter. Yes to a truth and no to its rivals. No to Islam, no to atheism. Which has made many Muslims and just as many of their relativist, secular allies extremely angry. An Easter present slightly more important than a chocolate egg or even a teaching course on why nothing really matters.

Chesterton defined bigotry as the inability to form a rational conception of an alternative to a proposition. To be fair, that definition allows the label of “bigot” to be applied to many a believer…but it can also be applied to many, many more on the secular/atheist side of the equation; only genuine agnostics could be considered exempt.

As a person of faith and a committed Catholic, I can nevertheless admit that I may be incorrect in my faith. I nevertheless choose to practice it, in the expectation that I am not wrong…but, certainly, I might just be. I can, to wit, conceive the alternative to the proposition I make by saying that I am a believer, a person of faith.

I’ve yet to met a self-declared atheist who can admit an ability to understand that s/he might likewise be incorrect. At best, one can expect to be told that is irrelevant and also a poor evangelical tool. Of course, the initial question — that is, the ability to rationally conveive the alternative to the atheistic proposition — did not concern Pascal’s musings at all, and the rejection itself (seen, for example, in the Rational Response Squad’s FAQ section) is evidence of the bigotry of the atheist in question.

Update: Welcome, WebElf readers! If you enjoyed this article, you may also be interested in some more recent discussions I am having with a pair of atheists named Joel and Sam!

A beautiful and meaningful reflection from Pope Benedict XVI delivered earlier this month just prior to leading the Angelus on March 2nd. And in addition to being yet another good example of why any sane person should reject theodicy as a legitimate objection to the Christian faith, it discusses another very visible trend at work in the post-modern world.

In the face of men and women marked by limitations and suffering, Jesus did not think of their possible guilt but rather of the will of God who created man for life. And so he solemnly declares: “We must work the works of him who sent me…. As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world” (Jn 9: 5).

And he immediately takes action: mixing a little earth with saliva he made mud and spread it on the eyes of the blind man. This act alludes to the creation of man, which the Bible recounts using the symbol of dust from the ground, fashioned and enlivened by God’s breath (Gn 2: 7). In fact, “Adam” means “ground” and the human body was in effect formed of particles of soil. By healing the blind man Jesus worked a new creation.

But this healing sparked heated debate because Jesus did it on the Sabbath, thereby in the Pharisees‘ opinion violating the feast-day precept. Thus, at the end of the account, Jesus and the blind man are both cast out, the former because he broke the law and the latter because, despite being healed, he remained marked as a sinner from birth.

Jesus reveals to the blind man whom he had healed that he had come into the world for judgement, to separate the blind who can be healed from those who do not allow themselves to be healed because they consider themselves healthy. Indeed, the temptation to build himself an ideological security system is strong in man: even Religion can become an element of this system, as can atheism or secularism, but in letting this happen one is blinded by one’s own selfishness.

Atheists, secularists, skeptics, and other materialists do not tend to notice that they make the same mistakes the accuse the religious faithful of making; they are blinded to their own lack of reason and rationalism about a great many things, especially when the discussion turns to thinks like doubts about the scientific consensus (as has been happening, recently, with the global warming alarmists and those, like me, who doubt them), or religion itself. Moreover, they are blind to the consequences of their own views, as a reader of Vox Day’s recently noted in a comments thread at the Bad Astronomy blog, which is run by a self-professed skeptic.

Because the plain fact of the matter is that, if the secularists are right and if a human being is little more than a meaty outer container for an internal stew of random or hormonally-driven chemical reactions, why should human beings choose to sacrifice even a moment of the fun- and pleasure-driven “get what you can while you can” hedonistic ethos that is the highest moral reasoning of a purposeless existence for something so banal and demanding as a baby? It is in the “reasoning” of atheism and godlessness that humanity finds the strongest justification for its own extinction — why let something so taxing as procreation get in the way of an endless succession of Friday night romps and Thursday afternoon trips to the shoe store?

Moreover, how can we even say — rationally, and from reason — that human beings, being (in the secular view) little more than a meaty outer container for an internal stew of random or hormonally-driven chemical reactions, are even capable of reason? That seems to be one of the most irrational faith claims yet made, even more irrational than the notion that if in fact there is a God, He sent His only Son to Earth to die and rise again for the forgiveness of sins. At least it makes sense that a deity, if one of such power as the Judeo-Christian God did exist, could arrange for such a set of events to transpire. Reason from randomness? Not so much.

Allowing for the base assumption of the existence of the deity, the claims that follow from that assumption are reasonable. Conversely, by allowing only for the base assumption that humanity seems to have arisen randomly, and that human beings are just animals — some muscle and some bone, and a slough of random chemical interactions — it is wholly irrational to claim that reason even exists, let alone that human beings are capable of grasping at it.

Not that one is surprised that atheists are so muddle-headed, of course — when one is wandering in darkness, away from the light of truth, it is not surprised that one stumbles about as though blind. The same, by and large, can be said for religious folks who have fallen into the (temporary) darkness of sin. The Pope’s statement, above, addresses both realities, and the rest of his Angelus statement remarks on the method by which all people can be cured of this blindness and emerge from the darkness in which we are caught up — Christ. But to be healed by Christ, we must first allow ourselves to be healed by Christ, which begins with admitting our need for healing. Jesus will not force salvation upon any of us, because to love God and to desire to be with God is something each human being must choose, both by force of reason and by living out his or her life in a manner which is suitable and in accordance with both God’s teachings and one’s own desire to dwell with God in eternity.

Christians who have fallen into sin can and do often choose to return to Christ. Atheists and secularists may never even understand the need to do so. Theirs, then, is the darker night…theirs is the deeper blindness.

GuyInCT writes in with a wistful reflection on the current state of freedom of expression in Canada.

The thing you have to realize is that the Leftists are basically cowards and bullies. Like any bullies, they capitulate in the face of bigger bullies. Thus Christians calling for their natural and legal rights are ignored or ridiculed. Similar calls from Islamists have the unspoken threat of physical or economic harm behind them. So like true cowards, the Left backs down and turns on the other guys even harder.

There is definitely a correlation between the actions of the average modern progressive and the actions of the average schoolyard bully, and I think one could even make the case that the mentalities are similar, as are the relative levels of emotional maturity. The fact is, progressives are very quick to pounce upon what they see as being the “traditional” values of a nation like Canada, which inherit (heavily) from Judeo-Christian tradition and the moral law of the Church (and/or its various Protestant offshoots). Stepping on, transgressing, offending, and pushing the boundaries of those values — preferably in ways which are so offensive as to elicit a response from those who still find value in said values — are the highest virtues of leftist philosophy.

And those “traditionalists” who do complain can, for the most part, be denigrated as rubes, as backwards, as being opposed to (take your pick…) modernity, progress, human rights, etc.

It really is a bully-esque mentality, and much like a bully the average progressive cowers in fear when someone more aggressive shows up on the scene.

The fact is, Rome doesn’t issue fatwas. Sinead O’Connor tearing up a picture of the Pope, art like Piss Pope and Piss Christ, or depictions of the Blessed Virgin made out of elephant dung will not inspire murderous riots around the world in regions where Christians comprise the majority population segment — when you offend Christians, most of the time the worst that Christians will do is shake their head, maybe tell their friends to not bother going to the museum this week, and then offer prayers for you and whatever issue is your beef with Christianity. But if you draw a scribbled cartoon of Muhammad, rampaging throngs of tens of thousands will take to the streets worldwide, burn your national flag, burn you in effigy…and perhaps even murder a priest or a nun, just for good measure. Oh, and call for the extermination of the Jews.

And there have been numerous instances, in recent months, of so-called “cutting edge” artists actually admitting that while they have no problem maligning Christ or Christians, they are in fear for their life when the issue of Islam arises, and so produce no similar mockeries of the Koran or the (false) prophet Muhammad. Is this blatantly hypocritical? Yes, it is…but then, one tends to expect no less from bullies, or from liberals/progressives.

Still, this must all come to pass — Jesus foretold that we who believe in Him would be hated for that exact reason — and pass it will. The Christian victory is already assured, which (I think) is why the post-modern world is so harsh toward Christians. The secular world can be driven by nothing other — and can have no greater “good” — than power, and the average post-modern fears those who, by their actions, exert more power than s/he. That is why transgressive artists fear the violence of Islam.

But even more than that, the average post-modern fears something more than power — s/he fears those who do not fear. Post-modernism fears that we — Christians, assured in the victory that Christ has not only promised but in fact already delivered — see no need to fear. That makes us something to fear not in the way that leads those who array themselves against us to cower, but in the way that leads those who array themselves against us to lash out, desperate for any means by which they might push us aside.

I think all Christians can take heart when someone maligns us. They are, after all, just a desperate coward, a fact which they almost always demonstrate even as they attempt to insult us.

When we’re fed the lie that you can separate sex from procreation, we make up other lies to convince ourselves that the evil being done as a result isn’t really evil, and even more, is a “right” and a good worth fighting for.

As with most things that pit Christianity against the secular, it is the secular that will ultimately fail — indeed, in Christ, the Christian victory is assured, and has already been won. And in a way, one can look to the future in observations like the above, and in the contemplation of just how often secularism’s “wisdom” must be propped up on lie after lie. This is particularly true with regard to abortion, birth control, and the post-modern view of sexuality. For sex is indeed special, despite all our attempts to deny that it is, and is meant to be life-altering in many exciting and beneficial ways. It is also designed to foster procreation, and we cannot completely separate our sexuality from that biological imperative (no matter how many barriers we use or drugs we ingest). That we so often try to do just that is not a testament to our enlightenment, but to our ignorance.

I’m dead tired this morning, so this will kind of just be a list of things that I noticed on my morning browse through a few parts of the internet. Regular posting will resume tomorrow, ideally.

Apparently, the Milky Way is twice as thick as was previously thought — 12,000 light years, instead of 6,000. That’s kind of interesting, admittedly, although also rather “ho hum” — given the massive distances we’re talking about here, what’s a factor of two? Apparently, the researchers at the University of Sydney were just doing some basic fact-checking on internet-available data and realized the error after a few hours of computation. Guess it just goes to show: science is never 100%.

Moving on to more terrestrial matters, it appears that Danish “youths” — “mainly with immigrant backgrounds” — are burning things again, mainly cars, but also schools and trash bins. Officially, it’s not clear what caused the riots to trigger. Personally, I’m thinking that this is another case where we can strike out the words “immigrant youths” and replace them with “Muslims.” Probable cause? Here’s one guess:

(In Soviet Russia, hat tips you: RightGirl)

Speaking of Terrorism (since really, what else can we call it when Muslims are rioting and burning things?), the possibility is emerging that those undersea cables that got cut, thereby denying Internet access to millions of users across the Middle East and Africa, may have been destroyed in an act of sabotage, not in an accident as previously thought.

I hope nobody is too surprised by that.

In a follow-up to yesterday’s post about demographic winter, I see that Vox Day has added his own thoughts on the phenomenon to the virtual din.

You can’t completely grasp the extent of Europe’s post-Christian decline until you walk through the ghost towns of Italy, populated by no more a dozen elderly women and one old man sleeping in the sun. It’s not something that any tourist is going to see in Florence, Venice or Rome, much less Milano, but go outside the tourist tombs and the desolation of demographic winter is impossible to miss. And the imported African hookers scattered along the truck routes in the countryside are hardly adequate compensation for what were once famously vibrant family units.

There’s a large and spectacular church on the outskirts of a town near which we like to wander. Its doors are only unlocked for an hour or so every month, because despite its gorgeous interior architecture and painted ceilings, there’s not only no one around to attend it, there’s not even anyone left to visit it.

There is no cause of the demographic decline that is now afflicting much of the West that has done more to exacerbate the problem than secular progressivism and related ideologies. Put plainly, the societies we have built for ourselves (and, indeed, most human societies in general) are predicated on the expectation of a populace that maintains an almost “Catholic” birthrate — an average of 2 to 3 kids per woman. Our present fad of 0 to 1 kids per woman, and then usually one “designer” baby at age 35 (I shamelessly crib Mark Steyn’s phrasing here) is, quite frankly, insufficient to sustain Western society. To keep up our end, we need immigration.

That will, I think, be our untimely end.

Should Canada require its immigrants to “earn” their citizenship?

In the past, simply having lived in Britain for a sufficient length of time was enough to qualify a person for citizenship there. Now, a move is afoot to have immigrants “move on” through a system that encourages citizenship by encouraging the adoption of national traditions and values (possibly at the expense of the traditions and values those immigrants have brought with them from the “old country”), at the end of which they may achieve citizenship…or may be asked to leave, if in fact they do not integrate satisfactorily.

Methinks we need something like that in Canada.

According to the Associated Press, pro-lifers and other ‘domestic’ extremists account for “most of the damage” from terror-type attacks committed on American soil, to a larger degree than even Islamic terror.

As a pro-lifer, I’m pretty accustomed to having all manner of lies told about me and my beliefs — it comes with the territory. But the above assertion is pretty egregious, if somewhat easily refuted. Just for context, Muslim terrorists killed nearly 3,000 people in one day back in 2001, and destroyed two of the tallest skyscrapers in America in the process. Since 1973 (the year of Roe vs. Wade), misguided pro-lifers have killed just seven people in the U.S.

But clearly, those pro-lifers account for “most of the damage” done in acts of terror on American soil. The newsman says so!

Ezra Levant remarks that since it’s clear that Stephen Harper is gunning for an election, the Conservative government might as well try passing a few different pieces of increasingly more ambitious legislation, all via confidence motions, until Stephane Dion finally slips up and stops trying to avoid bringing the government down.

Gun control, the Wheat Board, tax cuts — and how about a gentle amendment to Section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act?

The irony is that last bill wouldn’t be controversial at all. Other than a lone Liberal lobbyist who hasn’t been in the party’s good graces for four years, and a fringe ethno-political special interest group, I don’t think anyone in the country would even consider such an amendment controversial.

As they say in the funnies…”it’s just crazy enough to work!”

And speaking of pro-life issues, the ladies of ProWomanProLife are suggesting contacting the Governor General directly to let her know that Henry Morgentaler does not deserve the Order of Canada. Fully 85% of online respondents to the Globe & Mail’s poll on the issue said “no,” and while that can hardly be called a truly “representative” number, I think it does indicate rather clearly that a majority of Canadians think that giving Morgentaler this sort of official recognition is a very bad thing.

The PWPL ladies also provide the names of the various people who sit on the “independent” advisory council that considers nominations for the Order of Canada.

Update: Suzanne Fortin sends in the following additional information by email. Here’s the process one can follow to contact the Governor General’s office:

It’s easy.

First call the Governor-General’s Office. Phone numbers:

Ottawa: 613-993-8200

Rest of Canada: 1-800-465-6890

You will get a receptionist.Ask to speak to Madeleine Proulx (pronounced “Prew”). She deals with the Order of Canada. When I phoned today, I got a voicemail and I have been told by another pro-life caller that calls about Henry Morgentaler are being re-directed to her voicemail. State your name. Tell her that you want to register your objection to Henry Morgentaler receiving the Order of Canada. State the reason why. Please try to be neutral in your tone– calling him a bloodthirsty murderer probably won’t gain us a lot of credibility. I stated that he’s a symbol of inequality as he is the reason that unborn children have no legal status today and that I believe in the equality of all human beings, and that he fought this struggle in my name as a woman, and I resent that.

And that was it.

If you’re a pro-lifer, O Reader, or even if you aren’t but nevertheless think that Henry Morgentaler doesn’t deserve the Order of Canada, I encourage you to follow the steps above. Be civil and be articulate, and choose your words carefully. Calling him a murderer with blood on his hands might seem like a reasonable objection to raise, but it’s also a very good way to ensure that your phone message gets ignored. Present your case fairly and without appeal to emotion or horror, and it will be listened to.

May his name be blotted out. No details yet on the gunman, and conflicted reports on casualties (15 to 18 wounded, 1 to 3 dead including the shooter).

Pray for the victims of this latest tragedy, O Reader. And as much as you can, try not to remember the name of the shooter once it hits the press. These cowardly psychopaths do what they do partly because they want to “make a name” for themselves. The Bible suggests the perfect response to such sinful attempts at fame.

May his name be blotted out.

Update: 7 dead, 15 wounded appears to be the current count. The shooter was a white male (former?) graduate Sociology student (still no name, at least not officially), and his target was an Ocean Studies introductory class.

Continuing yet another pattern, the shooting happened in an area where heavy restrictions on firearms are in effect — Illinois has some of the more rigorous gun control legislation in the United States. No concealed-carry weapons are allowed, and it is illegal to have a firearm on the campus of an Illinois college.

One cannot help but note that this has been a pattern in recent shootings — the gunmen have preferred to target areas with strict gun bans. And why not? Why risk having the spree cut short by anything so inconvenient as an armed fellow student who can and will shoot back?

Updates: The shooter “felt” passionate about social justice. Interesting way to demonstrate that commitment. It also appears now that he had some manner of disorder which required medication (and that he had lapsed in taking said medication). I guess, when you’re off balance to begin with, secular progressivism probably isn’t the best philosophy to add to the mix.

Update 3: Apparently, the shooter was also a fan of — that’s right — Friedrich Nietszche. All this secular progressivism that abounds today does nothing at all to inspire hope in people, and it seems that far too many of those who not only want to take their own life, but the lives of all those around them, have given themselves over to the despair of godlessness.

Seems pretty straightforward — the DVD apparently chronicles diminishing birthrates world-wide, although its principal focus seems to be on Europe, where no nation has a birthrate at (or even near) “replacement level” — 2.1 live births per woman. This replacement rate is the absolute minimum necessary birthrate for “zero population growth” to be a reality.

Most European nations have birthrates approaching half of replacement rate. There is no parallel in history for the kind of demographic implosion that is now imminent in places like Russia and Spain. Not that any of this comes as a surprise, of course. A replacement level birthrate basically requires a Catholic moral approach to marriage and childbearing, and every European nation (even once-strong Catholic bastions like Italy and Spain) have largely given themselves over to secularism, progressivism, and moral relativism — abortion and casual sex are now almost the rule, rather than the much-derided exception.

Funnily, that transformation in the soul of the nation has turned out to be destructive for the nation. Who ever could have seen that coming?

Besides the Church, that is?

(In Soviet Russia, hat tips you: Mark Shea)

Update: Welcome, Steynians!

…Bishop [the Rt Rev Michael Nazir-Ali] made another point about the way in which the growth of Islam has been used as a pretext to dethrone Christianity in British public life.

He said “It is now less possible for Christianity to be the public faith in Britain. The existence of chapels and chaplaincies in places such as hospitals, prisons and institutions of further and higher education is in jeopardy either because of financial cuts or because the authorities want “multifaith” provision, without regard to the distinctively Christian character of the nation’s laws, values, customs and culture.”

I think this probably the most worrying aspect of the problem. Diplomacy, tolerance and good sense can - in the right conditions - almost certainly bring about integration in the divided cities of this country, given enough time and a breathing space in which mass immigration is halted.

A strong Muslim minority in this country could have many good effects (I’ll come to that later). But it is important that Islam does not gain the status of Christianity, for that will mean a moral and cultural revolution of enormous force.

One of the great puzzles of modern Britain is the political left’s attitude to Islam.

Why should an atheist, sexual liberationist, morally relaxed liberal attack people such as me (as they do) for criticising Islam? They have nothing in common.

It is in fact quite simple.

The left will deal with any ally against conservative Britain. It thinks it can use Islam to further its ends, just as in the past it has allied itself with any anti-conservative, anti-patriotic cause that was going. But the alliance lasts only long enough to allow the Left to destroy what it doesn’t like.

The trouble is, Islam is more serious and determined than any of the other people whom the left have sought to use for such purposes.

And so, while intending to dethrone Christianity and make this a secular society, the left now risks helping make this an Islamic society, which - if it comes to pass - will be profoundly hostile to everything the left wants.

These are the fruits of cynicism.

As the bishop notes, and as hospital chaplaincies so clearly show, the disestablishment of Christianity has not led to the opening of Richard Dawkins reading rooms in our hospitals, but in the increasing creation of multi-faith rooms which have an increasingly Islamic character, thanks to the fervour and devotion of Muslims, and the fading faith of the Christian churches.

Likewise the removal of Christianity from the state schools may well end in the existence if an increasing number of state schools which are in effect Islamic, while the official national religion, Christianity, goes neglected and untaught.

A Christian country would have kept the chapels, and allowed and encouraged the opening of separate rooms for other faiths.

I haven’t room or time here for an argument about the respective merits of Christianity and Islam, though it would be interesting to have one.

But I finish with this point.

There is no doubt that the laws, institutions, customs, language, marital arrangements, relaxations, family structure, even the diet of this country are the result of centuries of Christianity.

If it became a Muslim country, all these things would change, some beyond recognition.

If we want that to happen, and deliberately choose it, then all well and good.

Islam, as I stated earlier, has many admirable characteristics and would surely be better than total Godlessness, but how foolish to let it happen by mistake, and then regret it when it was too late.

The militant ‘war on terror’ sorts who inveigh against Islam still seem to think that the Maxim gun, or the CIA, or MI5, or airstrikes on Afghanistan, or invasions of Iraq and Iran, will defeat this powerful ideology.

The anti-British left seem to think, by contrast, that Islam is a pet pussycat which they can toy with, set on their enemies for while, and lay aside.

Both are wrong.

If you prefer our sort of society to an Islamic one, then you have to recognise that the good things about our society come from Christianity - and the more we throw those good things aside and the more we dismantle Christianity in our state, our schools, our culture in general, the weaker our society will become and the more likely it will be to embrace Islam - which suffers from no doubts about its rightness and is not in the least bit afraid of Professor Dawkins.

When I speak of atheism as the greatest threat to human liberty, I do so for two reasons. One is that, of course, if one is to look at the lessons of history, one observes an essentially 1-to-1 correlation between the act of a regime making atheism an explicit policy of the state and the engagement of that regime in murderous, repressive actions against its own people. The gulag is, really, the most logical outcome of officially-mandated state secularism.

But second to that is that atheism, in those states which drift toward a secular character without ever officially enshrining atheism as the ‘religion’ of the land, also serves as an enabler. Faced with the hopelessness that the materialist philosophy houses at its core, many people who have grown up in essentially secular lifestyles are finding, more and more, the need to discover meaning in their existence. And we see, in Europe especially, that they are finding it, in droves, in religion. Fortunate are those that find their way into Catholicism, or even into some of the various noble and respectable forms of Protestantism that have emerged from European tradition. Less fortunate are those whose thirst for meaning finds its fulfillment in the confidence and swagger of the more radicalized forms of Islam now sweeping through that same continent, and indeed through all the world.

Nature, as they say, abhors a vacuum, and the same can be said for the spiritual vacuum that the secular worldview causes in the human soul. So not only is applied atheism a threat, but so is ‘merely philosophical’ atheism, for it serves as an enabler for other violent pathologies to insert themselves into Western societies.

(In Soviet Russia, hat tips you: Kathy Shaidle)