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Notes -
Time for current culture war item, reviving 20 years old controversies in much different world.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali is now a Christian
Some feel it as betrayal, some as vindication, but all see it as big thing. But is it a thing of any importance?
Reading through the manifesto, it seems strange. First, it does not contain the word "Jesus", not even once. Neither the word "salvation".
So what it talks about?
Threats to precious Western democracy, freedom, rules based international order and Judeo-Christian tradition
historical facts as accurate as "Cleopatra was black"
and mid-life crisis. Permanent Middle Eastern crisis is child's play compared to eternally recurring middle life crisis.
So why Christianity?
How is Christianity supposed to help in fighting "China, Russia and Iran" is left unclear. Of these coutries, Russia explicitly claims to fight for Christianity against Western Jewish Nazi homosexual Satanism.
How would AHA answer Putin, how would she prove that his interpretation of Christianity is wrong and her "Judo-Christian" faith is the true Christian tradition and true message of Jesus?
And for wokeism, Christianity hadn't proved not to be very effective in fighting it.
(and if you need Christianity do defeat something so absurd as wokeism, you already lost)
SENIOR: What would you like for your birthday, son?
JUNIOR: I want to chop off my dick, dad.
SENIOR: Do not do it, son!
JUNIOR: Why?
SENIOR: (long pause and head scratching) The Bible! The Bible forbids it, son!
JUNIOR: Where?
SENIOR: (fast and frantic searching through book) Wait, son! It must be here, somewhere!
Curious what exact church AHA joined. Churches that simultaneously reject wokeism and support "civilization war" against Axis of Evil, churches that fly Ukraine, Israeli and Taiwan flags but lack rainbow, trans and BLM flags tend to be rather thin of the ground.
None of the reasons she gives for why she now considers herself a Christian are anything even close to "I have come to believe that Jesus Christ is the son of God and literally rose from the dead". In other words, by my outsider's understanding of Christianity, she is not a Christian.
I don't see why I would have to be a Christian in order to enjoy the various good ways in which Christianity changed Western Civilization. There is no contradiction when a man enjoys the fruits of democracy without also adopting an ancient Athenian's entire political worldview. It is fine to take the good things from Christianity but ignore the rest. Indeed, just as modern democracy is much more actually democratic than Athenian democracy, it is possible that we can figure out how to extend and improve on the benefits that Christianity brought to the West, but in a secular way. Indeed, I would say that this is already happening. In some ways modern secular societies are politically much more to my taste than the much more heavily Christian societies of, say, 100 years ago.
I guess she is saying that Western society needs some real spiritual belief to unite it against its enemies, but I don't see how one could manufacture such a belief on a mass scale and I don't think that it would be desirable even if one could. Part of what makes Western modernity good is the respect for truth as opposed to belief, and I think that adopting Christianity is in contradiction to this.
The Athenians took the word "democracy" to mean one thing, and modern Western politicians take it to mean [almost anything they want]. It's small-minded to claim one particular state of affairs is more "democratic" than another - very many political system can fairly lay claim to the term.
It's a defensible position to describe as "democratic" any that involves a reasonable number of people voting on what's to be done/whom to rule them.
Beyond those bare bones, it's like arguing which of Louisiana and Utah is the more American, or Pentecostalism and Anglicanism is the more Christian. Ie, a futile endeavour to rile up true believers
I am using the common notion of "more democratic" in which the larger a fraction of the population has the franchise, the more democratic the system is.
My understanding is that about 10-20% of ancient Athenians could vote, so by the common notion it was much less democratic than the modern US system, for example, in which maybe about 70-75% or so of the entire population can vote. I say about 70-75% based on some quick rough research about how many of the humans who live in the US are citizens older than 18, but I could be off a bit.
Would the USA be "more democratic" if toddlers could vote?
Obviously yes.
It wouldn’t be better, but it would be more democratic.
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