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Italy Travel Ideas

Tuesday 20 January 2015

Imagine No Heaven and Lots of War

A Soviet IS-2 tank in Leipzig during the 1953 East Germany Uprising


It's a common, but misconceived, idea that Western people have grown disillusioned with religion because of religious wars in the distant or - in the almost unique case of Northern Ireland - recent past.

People on the Left have taken this view with a bit more consistency than those on the Right.

Think of John Lennon's song Imagine. He saw world peace and unification in the abolition of what he considered as all causes of division and conflict: religion, class, nation.

Lennon was, to put it in euphemistically-correct language, "cognitively challenged", but at least one can't deny his consistency and even-handedness in spreading the blame for war potential among different causative factors.

On the Right, instead, we have activists who condemn religion for provoking wars while at the same time strenuously supporting the value of nationhood.

Let's look at this as scientifically and empirically as we can.

Vast numbers of people have been killed in wars fought along class lines or for socialism, or proclaimed as such, and in their aftermaths: French Revolution, Russian Revolution, China, the spread of communism to Eastern Europe, Spanish Civil War, Vietnam, and these are only the main ones. Lennon's idea of the pacifying effect of the abolition of classes was not very far-sighted.

Many have also been killed in self-declared national wars: European wars, American Revolution, the Two World Wars, wars against colonial powers and so on.

And many have been killed in Christian religious wars; in fact there is an overlapping of several national and religious wars in Europe.

The reasons why I limit myself to Christianity are two: it's always been the religion of the West, and - not coincidentally - it's the only religion that can survive rational examination.

Writers like the New Atheists have had some influence in setting the current debate in terms of simply "religion", as if we could treat all religions in the same way.

But think if we did that with science.

After all, science includes many different theories. Some of them, like Ptolemy's geocentrism postulating the earth at the centre of the universe, have now been rejected. And yet Ptolemaic astronomy is a scientific theory, both in the historic sense that it was for centuries accepted by the scientific community, and because it used the best scientific methodology available at the time.

In the same way as, when we talk about science, we make distinctions between theories - invalid ones like geocentrism or Copernicus' circular orbits and currently valid ones like relativity and quantum physics -, so we should do when the subject is religion and distinguish among greatly different doctrines.

Religions other than Christianity are primitive and constraining: Judaism with its excessive, indeed obsessive, emphasis on a great number of laws and rituals; Islam ordering the slaughter of all infidels to establish a utopian paradise on earth; Hinduism with its plethora of deities representing contradictory values; Buddhism with its withdrawal from the world.

Christianity has represented an immense liberation and step forward for mankind.

I am not saying that attachment to one's nation is a bad thing; far from it. I think that - if it doesn't trascend into fanaticism - is a value to cherish.

Many good things can become bad if fanatically supported. That is true of defence of nationalism as well as blind defence of science of the kind that Richard Dawkins has accustomed us to.

I just question the consistency of someone who adduces religious wars as the reason to reject Christianity but doesn't consider national wars as a reason to reject nationalism, despite the fact that violence and massacres were caused by both.

Indeed, the first century after the triumph of "secularism", the 20th century, has seen some of the bloodiest conflicts and genocidal wars in history.

The reality is that the progressive abandonment of Christianity in its home, the West, in particular in Europe, has not been caused by a reaction to religious wars. It has not been a spontaneous process in the consciences of native people, but the effect of instigation and propaganda by few, by elites with their own ideological agendas and alien interests, often damaging to the indigenous population: communists, atheists and ethnic elites, frequently the same people.


"Bundesarchiv Bild 175-14676, Leipzig, Reichsgericht, russischer Panzer" by Bundesarchiv, B 285 Bild-14676 / Unknown / CC-BY-SA 3.0. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 de via Wikimedia Commons.

4 comments:

  1. You can insult the idea behind this one song, but as soon as you casually throw out a lazy ad hominem attack on Lennon, you lose me.

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    1. I don't think the comment about Lennon's cognitive abilities is an ad hominem; I think the implication is obviously there, based on the previous passage about his inability to look honestly at the causes of war, that he was unable to see the obvious.

      Just for the record, I was a fan of the Beatles, less so of Lennon in his post-Beatles phase, but notwithstanding he and Yoko were obviously ideologues like many of that era who disregarded human nature and history in favor of some feel-good utopian platitudes. Platitudes which have never translated into a heaven on earth; just the opposite.

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  2. Are you seriously suggesting that morality can only come from a set of proscribed conditions from some imagined deity? Now I am insulted! I am moral because the good for me is the preservation of human life. Life itself is the standard upon which I set my morals. My standard is, "Does this enhance conscious human life and well-being, or does it harm conscious human life and cause unnecessary suffering or death?"
    That is why I hate so-called "authorities" who think they know better than me what behaviour is necessary for the tribe or the group, or the collective. Religion is socialist by nature and does not promote the rights of the individual to pursue his own happiness, only laissez-faire capitalism can do that.
    Therefore I perceive it as my moral duty to promote the rights of the individual and fight the idea of the collective. This is a battle for the mind and I will win it!
    Why do you think that the world is so mindless and degenerate?
    You asked for it buster, you got the world you wanted, so stop complaining. That is the "love" your god offered you and that is your "peace on earth", your "goodwill towards men". It is based on the idea of self-sacrifice and you have sacrificed at every turn. How many more "sacrifices" must you make before the truth dawns on you? How many more corpses must we endure before you see the truth?
    Dare to examine your beliefs and you will see every mistake for yourself.

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  3. Enza is saying that all religions are not equal; some are superior. I agree. She's also saying that Europeans lose powerful connective tissues when they abandon Christianity. I would agree somewhat.

    I am concerned about whites becoming less united. A student of history knows that one of the reasons Ancient Greece fell was because the city states had difficulty uniting against a common enemy. They were loosely bound by a confederacy. Rome swept Greece because 'All roads led to Rome.' Rome had a centralized power and as a result was immensely powerful. Among other things this is why America is a federation and not a confederacy.

    Whites should understand that the main connective tissue between whites is their genetics. My loyalties are race first, nationality second. I am white first and an American second.

    There are massive problems in white countries as a result of our people misplacing our altruism and getting idealistic. We are denying that nature and race are real because we understand the incredible repercussions of what this means and we do not wish to hurt people's feelings. This is coming from Conservatives via religion who believe we are all equal. It is coming from Liberals via Egalitarianism who dismiss race and gender as social constructs.

    Whites have be shielding people from these genetic truths via censorship and dogma propaganda and many unfortunately have begun to buy into the dogma. As a result we are allowing third worlders to enter our homelands. This has to stop.

    We have to get past ideals and make concrete decisions about our future based on reality. I do not want to bicker with my fellow whites over ideologies and beliefs. Whites are my extended family and time is running out. The white homeland is Europe and America. Time for all the visitors in our home to pay respects.

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