Why is the sun setting on the West? Vishal Mangalwadi argues that is is due to one factor: the brand Christianity.
In November 2011, I visited two classes at a Christian university in North America. I asked both: “How many of you would still believe Christianity if you found out tomorrow that Christianity was not true. That is: God never became a man; Jesus did not die for our sin; or, that he did not rise from the dead?”
Twelve hands went up in each class of about 25 and 45 students. These sincere and devout students had grown up in Christian homes, gone to church all their lives and studied in Christian schools. Some had been in that Christian university for three years! They respected their elders who taught them that Christianity was all about faith with little concern for truth.
Christianity lost America because 20th-century evangelicalism branded itself as the party of faith. Secularism (science, university, media) became the party of truth. This is one reason why 70% Christian youth give up meaningful involvement with the church when they grow up.
In the second class, only one in four students perceived Christianity as disconnected with truth. This was because my host professor had taught them to believe because Christianity is true. Some professors and pastors do teach that, yet the “truth-less” brand is common perception because it is reinforced by most pastors, Bible teachers, and some Christian professors.
I asked both classes if they thought secular universities knew truth. Overwhelmingly the answer was positive. When I asked them to name one secular professor who claims to know the truth, both classes named Stephen Hawking. (No student, however, had read Hawking’s latest book which demolishes the God of Western logic but not the God who has revealed Himself.) Secularism acquired the “Truth” brand by default because evangelicalism began defining Church’s mission as cultivating Faith, not promoting knowledge of Truth (compare 1 Timothy 2:4; 2 Tim 2:25; Titus 1:1, etc.).
(Via: Thinking Christian)
December 28th, 2011 | 9:47 am
Could this all be the logical outcome of the idea “sola fides”? As a balance to that, I suggest the encyclical by John Paul II “Fides et Ratio.” And any number of Benedict’s writings, from his famous perspective that a reasoned approach to studying God is a valid and necessary pursuit.
The only decent reason to follow a religion is that it be true. All else is tragic self-deception. We may be afraid to assert that our beliefs are truly true, but what else is there?
One reason Christianity loses in the argument for truth is its fragmentation. How can our truth claims be credible when we present thousands of fragments of belief, many contradictory? We must work and pray for Christian unity, if not to recover our own credibility, then at least to honor and obey our Founder as he prayed for unity in John 17. We take for granted multiple denominations, but denominations represent an open wound in the Body of Christ.
December 28th, 2011 | 11:05 am
A great part of American evangelicalism indeed misunderstands the Protestant Reformation’s slogan, “Faith Alone.” Reformers such as Wycliffe and Luther were teachers in (Roman Catholic) universities because they agreed with the church that we must seek and believe what is true. Faith Alone meant that we are saved not by acts of piety, such as buying indulgences, but by trusting in the Lamb of God who takes away our sin. Truth, Grace, and faith are good First Grounds upon which to unite.
December 28th, 2011 | 11:39 am
I think, by its nature, the Christianity of, say, a century or more ago is difficult for rational, educated, contemporary people to believe. Unless you are a young-earth creationist, modern geology and biology have drastically complicated the matter of where human beings came from, also complicating doctrines like original sin. On the one hand, if you believe in an omnipotent God, you have to admit that he could have done, and can do, anything. On the other hand, once you begin re-explaining old Christian doctrines based on current cosmology, geology, and biology, you are on a slippery slope.
December 28th, 2011 | 12:18 pm
Right. Because the modern cosmology, etc. is subject to drastic changes over time?
December 28th, 2011 | 12:25 pm
I thought the God of logic and the God Who has revealed Himself are the same. Is this not supposed to be the case anymore?
December 28th, 2011 | 12:55 pm
Hello, Vishal Mangalwadi,
The problems you so very clearly understand and describe in your article are the inevitable result of the disunity of Christianity.
In Matthew 23 Christ harshly condemns those who sat it the “Chair of Moses.” Yet He still insisted that “You must be careful to do everything they tell you.” That was because they wielded an authority instituted and protected by God in spite of the sins and failings of those who wielded it. This is made clear in John 11:
Until a there was a new, divinely instituted authority, the “children of God” were to submit to the divine authority of the Chair of Moses. It was protected by God even as those who wielded it plotted the worst evil (Although St. Peter informs us they didn’t really know what they were doing): deicide. Christ brought about inestimable good from this, and did so, according to John, for the sake of the “children of God” – in order to “make them one.” There can be no unity without submission to a common authority. Everyone becoming their own authority or picking one of many competing authorities to which to submit is the antithesis of unity for which Christ so ardently prayed. Scripture makes it clear that Christ desired our unity – which cannot happen without submission to one divinely instituted authority no matter how corrupt those who wield it become.
After Pentecost – the birth of the Church – there was a new divinely instituted authority and the “children of God” were no longer bound to obedience to the old authority:
Gamaliel realized that opposition to divine authority was doomed, that a movement throwing itself against it was doomed to be broken into pieces like a clay pot thrown against a stone wall:
Gamaliel was right. Protestantism, although it had many entirely legitimate complaints against those wielding the authority God had established in the “Chair of Peter,” just as did those who could see the hypocrisy of those sitting in the Chair of Moses, splintered into pieces like pottery thrown against a stone wall. God hadn’t established a new authority.
Even if all of the anti-Catholic claims were historically accurate – which they most certainly are not – and even if Christ would condemn the behavior of those exercising the authority of the Chair of Peter as much or more than He did those in the Chair of Moses, He would still say to the children of God: “You must be careful to do everything they tell you.” John 11 tells us why – to make them one.
December 28th, 2011 | 1:21 pm
Right. Because the modern cosmology, etc. is subject to drastic changes over time?
I sense a criticism, but I am not sure what it is!
There have been dramatic changes in the understanding of the cosmos in the past century, and who knows that the next century will bring, but—and I don’t believe I am going out on a limb—it will definitely not make it easier to take the creation account in Genesis as literally true.
December 28th, 2011 | 2:22 pm
I think, by its nature, the Christianity of, say, a century or more ago is difficult for rational, educated, contemporary people to believe.
That’s because our education is missing important chunks – and what is taught, is taught with unrecognized biases.
Even the mythology professor who wrote the book in where I first read about the so-called “myth of mythlessness” ends up taking it as a given that all his readers understand Marxist poets are more grounded in “real” reality than Christian ones (now that Marxism has displaced Christianity, don’t you know).
There’s nothing “rational” about an ideology that first started promising truth, happiness, and an end to all social ills over two hundred years ago, and has yet to actually deliver (though it’s as true as it ever was that if you don’t hand over your unquestioning obedience, it will be your fault if the promised truth, happiness, and eternal life is not forthcoming). We’re expected to take it on faith that life is better and that this improvement is entirely due to secular humanism – and if it turns out that peasants in India or China might actually be living longer, healthier lives than people in US cities, then obviously it’s the measurements that are screwed up, and/or we’re forgetting that secular humanism is only responsible for all improvements (but not things like crime or AIDS).
And for all that science pretends it has answers, the answers always seem to gloss over the part they don’t understand. Ask why an atom acts the way it does and you’ll get an answer that explains the rules by which an atom acts – and the person explaining it will act as if you’re the one who is stupid for not accepting that as an answer. There is no explanation for the self-organizing nature of the universe – only faith-based assertions, along with huge doses of justifications and contortions and tautological circles.
Secular humanism is the religion of educated people because educated people have been educated in the religion of secular humanism.
December 28th, 2011 | 2:34 pm
This is of a piece with the “So what?” article posted here a few days ago. Money quote from that article:
‘ The Rev. Mariann Edgar Budde, Episcopal Bishop of Washington D.C., … finds this “very sad because the whole purpose of faith is to be a source of guidance, strength and perspective in difficult times.” ‘
December 28th, 2011 | 4:28 pm
it will definitely not make it easier to take the creation account in Genesis as literally true.
But
a) it was never required to take it as a narrative of actual events (cf. Augustine, et al.)
b) creation ≠ cosmology, geology, etc.
c) neither myth (Gen2) nor poetry (Gen1) has journalism as its primary end.
I took your original comment that “re-explaining old Christian doctrines based on current cosmology, geology, and biology” was a “slippery slope” because current cosmology, etc. is likely to be wrong and thereby the concordance would lead to discrediting the truths of the account along with the facts of the account. After all, they went to great pains to achieve concordance with then then-current cosmology, etc. of Aristotle, and look where it got them. And that was a science that had stood the test of time for well nigh two thousand years.
December 28th, 2011 | 5:14 pm
I have a question: If God came to Earth as Jesus,why did Jesus repeatedly refer to His ”Father”? Why did Jesus, on the night He was arrested, go into the garden to pray to His ”Father”? Answer those and you might have the answer to why too many Christians are wishy-washy about their beliefs. No matter, EVERYONE is going re-cultivated their relationship with Jesus AND His ”Father” real soon.
December 28th, 2011 | 5:40 pm
This is a great post. Another awful thing about this from where I sit (and I could very well be wrong to be bothered by this) is the whole science-religion debate, which always stuck me as rather high school. With their backs up against the wall because of too much inattention to truth, some evangelicals are getting suckered into arguing science on the terms set by their enlightened detractors. Man created the language and method of science, and then the modernist camp decided that anything we call “Truth” must answer to this creation of ours. Too many evangelicals have become sold on this idea that their faith can only survive if it somehow passes through this post-modernist scientific filter, and they end up trying to make sure their faith squares with everything that Steven Pinker or Stephen Jay Gould has to say.
December 28th, 2011 | 5:57 pm
it was never required to take it as a narrative of actual events
Ye Old Statistician,
Required by whom? No matter what tradition you come from, if you were a Christian, until quite recently you almost certainly did believe at least some of the creation story was historically true. If you are speaking as a Catholic, Pius XII in Humani Generis (1950) was still clinging to the idea of the entire human race descending from two and only two individuals. The Catechism still speaks of our “first parents,” and I don’t think that is intended figuratively. (I do think that in later documents the Church, and Benedict XVI himself, have quietly abandoned the idea of “two parents” of the human race.)
December 28th, 2011 | 7:08 pm
David
Pius XII in Humani Generis (1950) was still clinging to the idea of the entire human race descending from two and only two individuals. The Catechism still speaks of our “first parents,” and I don’t think that is intended figuratively.
YOS
I regard it as highly unlikely that a significant mutation would arise simultaneously in a large population. Besides, the dogma is that all human beings share a common descent from a single male ancestor. But we can acknowledge that we are all descended from A without insisting that we are descended only from A. Remember, Cain went out and found a wife among the children of men, and there were enough other people around for him to found cities.
Here is a discussion based on a distinction made in 1964:
http://www.nd.edu/~afreddos/papers/kemp-monogenism.pdf
Here is a more humorous approach:
http://tofspot.blogspot.com/2011/09/adam-and-eve-and-ted-and-alice.html
December 28th, 2011 | 7:11 pm
In “The Book That Made Your World:How the Bible Created the Soul of Western Civilization” (see 96 reviews on Amazon.com) I have discussed why and how the Bible birthed science. Science was presumed to be a study of truth only because it was an aspect of General Revelation Once science is separated from biblical theology, there are no grounds for assuming that science deals with truth. Dawkins admits that the brain evolved in the jungles of Africa to cope with the struggles for existence, there is no reason to assume that it can make sense of the observations of quantum physics. If Logic is not rooted in a divine logos, then it is an invention of the white male (e.g. Aristotle) to dominate over (intuitive) female. (see the chapter two in Dawkins “A Devil’s Chaplain)
December 28th, 2011 | 10:44 pm
Re: “… little concern for truth.”
One of the prime examples of this is the evangelical mantra that “Christianity is a relationship not a religion.”
Such claptrap would be impossible for anyone who had read Augustine or Luther or Wesley or any Christian writer prior to the late 20th Century.
Prior to this, the conversation regarded the question of true versus false religion.
If there is any hope of regaining lost ground, it will come from those leaders who wean themselves from the tit of the zeitgeist and follow C.S. Lewis’ rule for reading: “…after reading a new book, never allow yourself another new one till you have read an old one…keep the clean sea breeze of the centuries blowing through our minds…”
December 28th, 2011 | 10:59 pm
[...] essay on the matter, and I’d reckon hits closer to the mark than is comfortable for most. (HT Joe [...]
December 28th, 2011 | 11:25 pm
I don’t know anything about the author but he’s sure got one thing right — people DO think of science, etc., as true and religion as something you either believe or don’t believe. The whole idea that religion even COULD be true came as a revelation to me! But more and more, it’s the main thing. It’s strange how many people don’t care if a religion is true or not, or set religion off as a thing that somehow has nothing to do with truth. I love St. Augustine’s Confessions — he was one of the smartest people to ever live and he had no patience for anything that was “sort of” true, or “true in a sense”… it’s either true or it’s not!
December 28th, 2011 | 11:32 pm
The claim that the Bible “birthed science” would surprise the ancient Greeks. The Amazon reviews left me unimpressed. Real history is a good deal more complicated and interesting. Just like real Christianity.
December 29th, 2011 | 4:27 am
Surely, a distinction has to be made.
Religion rests on immediate experience. As Abbé Bremond says, “In the course of the normal development of man there occur moments in which the discursive reason gives place to a higher activity, imperfectly understood and indeed at first disquieting.” “This activity—this hidden inhabitant—is intuitive rather than logical in its methods. It knows by communion, not by observation. It cannot give a neat account of its experience: for this experience overflows all categories, defies all explanations, and seems at once self-loss, adventure, and perfected love.”
Now, this experience is “like bathing in a fathomless ocean, or breathing an intangible and limitless air. It gives contact and certitude, but not understanding: as breathing or bathing give us certitude about the air and the ocean, but no information about their chemical constitution.”
Revelation presupposes this experience and joins it with understanding.
December 29th, 2011 | 5:01 am
The idea that one cannot believe in Christianity, or at least will have difficulty believing it, is silly. Perhaps the ones making such claims should look at the profoundly rich intellectual tradition, within Christianity, that has shown Christianity’s congruence with reason, and empirical science: Augustine, Albert the Great, Aquinas, Duns Scotus, william of Occam, Descartes, John locke.. you get the idea.
And evolution is not a problem either. It was merely God’s way of allowing life to arise.
I’m reminded, several years ago, Richard John Neuhaus, taking in his “WHILE WE”RE AT IT” section, about NEW OXFORD REVIEW’s ad’s for subscriptions. One of their ads then, (before they got, shall we say, more entertaining) was, can a religious person be intelligent? RJN properly addressed this.
December 29th, 2011 | 8:13 am
Craig Payne–yes the God of logic and the God of revelation are one and the same. “Faith and Reason” again. A principal theme of this letter is that truth is unitary; there cannot be multiple, self-contradictory “truths.”
If science is true, then it cannot conflict with true knowledge of the true God. “If science is true” may sound strange, but in history science has famously shown itself to be false, or incomplete, more or less continually. (BTW, I’m an engineer, and in no way a skeptic about science.)
Again, the only valid criterion for practicing a religion is that its truth claims are credible. There are many valid reasons people become attracted, or curious, or (its mirror image) hostile toward religion, but in the end, only truth matters in the ultimate act of faith. Believer, atheist, agnostic–ultimately one must place his life-bet somewhere specific.
December 29th, 2011 | 8:58 am
Very Odd that this article turns to Science to find Truth – rather than using science to explore the teachings of Faith. Applying Science to Faith is the correct use of Science. For example, regarding “Humani Generis,” if Cain married “from among the children of men” it should clue science to examine how Eve-descendent humans differ from previous humans. It might just be that God-created humans ARE DIFFERENT from previously existing humans. Science should try to explore that area, rather than just ASSUMING that all humans are the same. Just like animal flesh differs from human flesh, perhaps Eve-descendent human flesh differs in some quality from earlier humans. I would suggest that such a possibility is reinforced by other actions of God.
Jesus transformation of Water-Wine-Blood is an example of how things can be changed without noticing the process of change. Perhaps, regarding “Humani Generis” again, the change may not be a Physical genetic change (as I have just suggested it may be) but is a QUALITATIVE CHANGE in humans caused by an encounter with God. How cognizant we are now of how modern humans permanently alter primitive isolated cultures just through making cultural contact with each other. So, what it means to BE HUMAN would be altered irrevocably by contact with a LIFE FORM (God) from Whom humans ultimately derive their very being – their Creator.
I think God-altered people ARE qualitatively different from people for whom the name “God” means nothing. I even think the Science of History can bear that out by examining qualitative difference between “God-believing” cultures, and “Non-Theistic” cultures….So, to sum, I have given several ways in which Science needs to reorient its methodology by examining Faith as the avenue to Truth.
December 29th, 2011 | 9:47 am
YOS
Right. Because the modern cosmology, etc. is subject to drastic changes over time?
No it’s actually not. Scientific cosmology has always been consistently the best explanation of the evidence available at the time. Whether you go to the early previous century with Einstein proposing the ‘steady state model’ or later the Big Bang model, both represent no dramatic change in that they were the choosen because they best described what was known.
December 29th, 2011 | 12:11 pm
My essay “Why Christianity Lost America” focused mainly on the problem that during the 20th century American evangelicalism branded itself as the party of faith. University, science, media began as aspects of the Judeo-Christian passion for Truth. As American evangelicalism abondoned these fields, by default secularism (Liberal Protestantism) acquired the Truth-brand. On its own terms, secularism (naturalism, materialism) has no place for Truth. A fundamental assumption of post-Christian secularism is that no one knows the Truth or can know it. Anyone who claims to know the Truth is a bigoted fundamentalism. The implications of Karl Popper and Thomas Khun’s insights are that science does not and cannot deal with Truth. That is why evolution has turned into dogmatic “occultism” (Rodney Stark) where non-initiated intellectuals are not allowed to ask for evidence. Ben Stein’s “Expelled” and the ClimateGate leaks show what happens to science in a culture that no longer believes in Truth. (Exactly what happened to so-called Greek Science – died). Science was born only in the 16-17 centuries, only because one stream of Catholic-Protestant Christianity shared a common theological assumption that the human mind can know the Truth. We can know because God has revealed it through His works and His words, and made our minds in His own rational image.
My next essay will focus on law. One of Catholicism’s greatest blessings to Western civilization is the institution of the Advocate. America is declining because secular law is separated from Grace and Truth.
December 29th, 2011 | 3:33 pm
It’s fun to practice pseudo-history and pseudo-theology because you can put all the people you like on one side and all the people you don’t like on the other, and you win the game every time.
When Mangalwadi follows terms like “secularism” with a supposedly clarifying parenthesis like “(Liberal Protestantism)”, then you know you are dealing with historical reasoning that is as nuanced as a sledgehammer.
December 29th, 2011 | 4:51 pm
The claim that the Bible “birthed science” would surprise the ancient Greeks.
Especially since they would not recognize what you meant by “science.” Mathematics is not science. Engineering/technology is not science.
We tend to think that the Greeks were more rational and scientific than they actually were because the medievals preferentially copied texts dealing with logic, reason, mathematics, and natural philosophy. But science as we understand it was alien to them. A glance at =why= Aristarchus thought the earth went around the sun, or =why= Democritus though everything was made of unbreakable atoms would be instructive.
Aside from a few serendipitous rules of thumb, there was no effort made to quantify and understand “laws of nature.” The school that came closest, the Aristotelians, was not the favored school of ancient times. It was the medievals who rediscovered him and made him the centerpiece. Perhaps too much so.
(Yes, some muslim faylasuf were entranced by Aristotle, too. The House of Submission was a close second when it comes to inventing natural science. But most of the faylasuf were persecuted, and their writings were never taught in public. Science is a cultural artifact, and it requires more than a handful of interested individuals to embed it in a culture.)
Yes, history really is more complex than most suppose.
December 29th, 2011 | 5:32 pm
Postmodern universities have black-history, gay-history, feminist-history, native-American history etc but no History in the medieval and modern sense of the word. Now, History is only a point of view. Truth is dead. The Judeo-Christian passion for Truth studied history because it was interested in “pondering on the works of the Lord” (Psalm 111). The sun is setting on the West because (as the Buddha knew and Pyrro learned from Buddhist philosophers) Absolute Skepticism as epistemology undermines the very possibility of the intellect knowing Truth. If the ultimate reality is Silence or Nothingness then the intellect is a product of Cosmic Ignorance. Rationalism must die. The Academy must cease being about pursuit of Veritas – Truth. It must become a battle ground for vested interests masquerading as Ideas. The choice before the West is to return to Revelation or die as did Greek Rationalism.
December 29th, 2011 | 5:57 pm
When Mangalwadi follows terms like “secularism” with a supposedly clarifying parenthesis like “(Liberal Protestantism)”, then you know you are dealing with historical reasoning that is as nuanced as a sledgehammer.
It is actually entirely possible to trace which strains of thought derive from Christianity, and which derive from the Enlightenment.
“Liberal Protestantism” calls itself Christianity, but most of the beliefs it holds are derived from the Enlightenment, rather than from Christian teachings.
It’s actually pretty easy to tell: Christianity has always been concerned with spiritual concerns, whereas the Enlightenment is all about material concerns. So when you encounter a bunch of people who are trying to make Christianity be more about material/Enlightenment concerns – at the expense of traditional Christian concerns – it is easy to see that the “Christianity” involved is primarily strategic and political.
December 29th, 2011 | 7:33 pm
“Why Christianity Lost America” focused mainly on the problem that during the 20th century American evangelicalism branded itself as the party of faith.”
This is a very intersting observation. I think it is generally true. I also think it doesn’t go far enough. American Evangelism consciously abandoned truth, elevating faith over truth.
By abandoning truth, it left it for others to pick up the “truth” mantle.
December 29th, 2011 | 8:11 pm
Ye Olde,
The point is that when you decide to practice history in the way Mangalwadi does you can make words like science mean anything you want them to. Have you read any of the simplicities he’s trying to sell?
December 29th, 2011 | 8:17 pm
Blake,
I’m not surprised to see you come to the defense of simplified versions of history. The Christianity of the Enlightenment and the materialism of two thousand years of Christian thinking slip right past you because it’s not convenient for your tidy packages.
December 29th, 2011 | 9:40 pm
Vishal Mangalwadi –
Er… nuh-uh. The problem is getting people to actually look at the evidence available.
December 29th, 2011 | 10:26 pm
Do you know what is missing from all the information I have just read and the comments.
It is the person of Jesus Christ the Son of the Living God who died for us on the Cross. It is not religion, it is personal relationship with HIM. He is the TRUTH. You cannot know him intimately with reading HIS words in the Bible. We who believe and trust in our Savior live in his Kingdom. He is the source of all good. He is the benefactor of all our needs. Our relationship with Jesus is spiritual. We live in this material world
that He spoke into being. Science is all about what you can see in this physical realm. Consider Jesus in all your ways and He will direct your steps on this earth. He is our Life and the length of our Days. Read Psalm 119.
December 29th, 2011 | 10:32 pm
I see a spelling error in my post above. The word “with” in the fifth sentence should be “without” reading His words in the Bible.
December 30th, 2011 | 7:14 am
I think I understand what the students meant when they said, “Even if the incarnation and resurrection are not ‘true,’ one should continue to believe in them.”
Interpretation of Scripture always involves both the literal and allegorical senses. Obviously, in the case of the incarnation (and resurrection) the literal sense has to be true, i.e., it has to have happened, or all of Christianity is a waste of time, as St. Paul says.
But when speaking of God, the literal is necessarily metaphorical to some extent; there is simply no other way space-delimited, time-delimited mortals can talk about Him.
God did not become incarnate in the same way we do, and he did not rise from the dead in the same way as, for example, Lazarus or the man in II Kings 13:20.
So, if you learned the incarnation was not like the incarnation of a normal human, for example, that Christ did not have an appendix or developed a notochord, would you stop believing? But wouldn’t this mean, to some degree that the incarnation was “not quite true?” Or if you read that the resurrected Christ was able to pass through walls and be in multiple places at the same time, would you stop believing in the resurrection?
How different can the phenomenon be, when it occurs in the divine order, from its way of occurring in the human order, before we say the doctrine is “not true?” That’s the question the students seem to have thought they had been asked.
December 30th, 2011 | 8:15 am
Then again, it may have something more to do with the concept of truth claims and how thinking about them has developed over time, as outlined in this article.
The main point of intersection with Mr. Mangalwadi’s article seems to be the first sentence of the fourth paragraph, viz.:
I have not reproduced the links in that sentence, but they may be worth following.
I am not affiliated with that site, nor even a registered commenter there.
December 30th, 2011 | 2:05 pm
[...] Now this article, Answering Questions People Actually Ask, has amazing stats and graphics on how our culture thinks about the meaning and purpose of life. It’s kind of startling actually. Speaking of startling, read Why Christianity is Losing America. [...]
December 30th, 2011 | 2:17 pm
Secularization is an attempt to make Christian doctrines more palatable in a multicultural situation. But in multicultural, multi-religious countries like India, many are resisting secularism precisely for this reason: its Christian roots. This attempt is combined with the effort to go back to a mythic past where ingenious stories, which privilege a small section of people over the vast majority, are more important than searching for truth that demands allegiance by all.
December 30th, 2011 | 5:04 pm
which privilege a small section of people over the vast majority, are more important than searching for truth that demands allegiance by all.
This is why I oppose the unlimited expansion of the humanist “religion” deriving from the so-called Enlightenment: it naturally privileges a small section of people over the vast majority.
Its elites – self-proclaimed “Experts” – are taken to be more Enlightened than others, creating a hierarchical structure that is rigid and authoritarian in a way that reminds me of the Inquisition (though hopefully we are capable of learning from our past and will not let secular humanist priests get so out of control as Christian priests once did!!!)
January 4th, 2012 | 12:32 pm
This is why I cringe when I hear the term, “faith based!” If anything is faith based it is the many “gods” of liberalism, none of which can be proven by even secular science but must be accepted on pure faith, like man-caused global warming, Darwinism, etc.
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