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PaperclipPerfector  5mo ago (text post)   27120 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 6, 2023

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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

Part of the answer is global. Western civilisation is under threat from three different but related forces: the resurgence of great-power authoritarianism and expansionism in the forms of the Chinese Communist Party and Vladimir Putin’s Russia; the rise of global Islamism, which threatens to mobilise a vast population against the West; and the viral spread of woke ideology, which is eating into the moral fibre of the next generation.

But we can’t fight off these formidable forces unless we can answer the question: what is it that unites us? The response that “God is dead!” seems insufficient. So, too, does the attempt to find solace in “the rules-based liberal international order”. The only credible answer, I believe, lies in our desire to uphold the legacy of the Judeo-Christian tradition.

historical facts as accurate as "Cleopatra was black"

To me, this freedom of conscience and speech is perhaps the greatest benefit of Western civilisation. It does not come naturally to man. It is the product of centuries of debate within Jewish and Christian communities.

and mid-life crisis. Permanent Middle Eastern crisis is child's play compared to eternally recurring middle life crisis.

Atheism failed to answer a simple question: what is the meaning and purpose of life?

So why Christianity?

In this nihilistic vacuum, the challenge before us becomes civilisational. We can’t withstand China, Russia and Iran if we can’t explain to our populations why it matters that we do. We can’t fight woke ideology if we can’t defend the civilisation that it is determined to destroy.

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!

That is why I no longer consider myself a Muslim apostate, but a lapsed atheist. Of course, I still have a great deal to learn about Christianity. I discover a little more at church each Sunday. But I have recognised, in my own long journey through a wilderness of fear and self-doubt, that there is a better way to manage the challenges of existence than either Islam or unbelief had to offer.

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.

As always I'm thankful not to be cursed with such absurdities as a God-shaped hole, or a drive for someone to hand me "objective" meaning instead of being perfectly content in deriving my own as I see fit.

At any rate, I've never heard of this woman, even if I am familiar with the usual thought-leaders in the early 2000s New Atheism movement, even if that was before my time really. I don't mourn it, it managed to do its job before it died, or was subsumed into proto-Wokism as Scott suggests.

Frankly speaking, I find this intellectually dishonest and a bad idea overall, I doubt her beliefs are sincerely held, and I agree with you that Christianity, nor any other major religion, is a solution to the problems of modernity. Belief-in-belief rarely stands for much, and I regard anyone who can intentionally subvert their own cognition and better judgement of reality to adopt it with scorn. I respect people who take their religion seriously more than I do such wishy-washy Cultural Catholics, "moderate" Muslims and the like. If the clear and obvious demands of your religion are to go on Jihad against the infidels, then that's what you should do, even if I find that a terrible act. If you think your holy books are the Word of God, then why the fuck are you cherry picking the aspects you find convenient rather than doing your best to sincerely adopt all of it, even if it's incompatible with modern civilization?

At any rate, I think this is more of a grift/attempt at seeking attention from a C-list intellectual than anything worth taking seriously, but it is illustrative of a certain minority of people who decide that adopting the trappings of a religion and mouthing some of the lines might fill the void in their hearts. Won't work, and is a bad idea either way, while modern Western society is far from ideal, it's not going to be improved by a RETVRN.

At any rate, I've never heard of this woman, even if I am familiar with the usual thought-leaders in the early 2000s New Atheism movement, even if that was before my time really. I don't mourn it, it managed to do its job before it died, or was subsumed into proto-Wokism as Scott suggests.

If you missed the Great Atheist-Christian War of the noughties, you missed the peak of the internet. All went downhill since then.

And if you were there, you would know that the "proto-woke" side was the creationist intelligent design one.

At least the better part of them - while the dumb ones tried to scientifically prove that six day creation and Noah flood were literally real, the smarter were loud antiracists and antifascists who were roaring how Darwin was racist colonialist genocidist and how "Darwinism" is source of all evil in modern history.

You got things like From Darwin to Hitler, Darwin's Plantation: Evolution's Racist Roots or even this.

STALIN'S FAITH--WHAT WAS IT?

Often an individual's faith is firmly attached to a book of some kind. Muslims have the Koran; Hindus, their Veda; and Christians, the Bible. Writings of Confucius, Buddha, and indeed, Mao Tse-Tung, serve similar purposes for other groups. In Stalin's case, the writings of Marx, Engels, and Lenin incited him, but to stop here would be premature. There is one man-book amalgam which may have been even more determinative for Stalin, especially during his youthful, impressionable years.

The man was Charles Darwin.

The book--his The Origin of Species.

To document this, appeal is made first to a book published in Moscow entitled, Landmarks in the Life of Stalin. It was written during Stalin's "glory," and was designed to set him in a positive light. Note in the selection cited, that faith in Darwin and his "book" contrasts markedly with faith in a supreme being:

At a very early age, while still a pupil in the ecclesiastical school, Comrade Stalin developed a critical mind and revolutionary sentiments. He began to read Darwin and became an atheist.

G. Glurdjidze, a boyhood friend of Stalin's, relates:

"I began to speak of God, Joseph heard me out, and after a moment's silence, said: "'You know, they are fooling us, there is no God. . . .' "I was astonished at these words, I had never heard anything like it before. "'How can you say such things, Soso?' I exclaimed. "'I'll lend you a book to read; it will show you that the world and all living things are quite different from what you imagine, and all this talk about God is sheer nonsense,' Joseph said. "'What book is that?' I enquired. "'Darwin. You must read it,' Joseph impressed on me"

They failed to cancel Darwin and all of his work, but not for the lack of trying.

And if you were there, you would know that the "proto-woke" side was the creationist intelligent design one.

idk, Scott makes a compelling case that the proto-woke side was the atheists. That coheres with my personal experience as well. https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/10/30/new-atheism-the-godlessness-that-failed/

proto-woke side was the atheists Well some of them at least. Like a third? Maybe a third-ish. There were the atheists who hated their dad and then there were the atheists who were too autistic so they made the unfortunate mistake of actually reading the bible. The atheism+ side disintegrated into a million little pieces mostly by canceling each other and purity spiraling, but not before killing the fun for everyone else.

To add to this, as one of the "dumb ones" on the pro-Christian side (though for the record I've never been a Young Earth Creationist) I don't recall seeing many people on the pro-religion side making arguments along the "evolution is racist" angle.

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