April 16, 2019
Relativism and Relativism's god
Timothy Birdnow
Selwyn Duke has a wonderfully insightful article at American Conservative today.
Here is a brief glimpse:
Read the whole thing! A quick thought; the atheist criticism of religion in general is apt in regards to false faiths, or rather faiths that serve a human purpose; the atheist accuses the religious of adopting a storybook religion, a belief system without any evidenciary foundation. It's true in many instances, but it paints with far too broad a brush. The fact is, few people actually LIKE Christianity, which, in my opinion, is precisely why it rings true. Unlike Islam, which appeals precisely because of its simplicity, Christianity teaches concepts at the limits of human understanding, such as the Trinity. We struggle to grasp that just as we struggle to grasp quantum physics; we can see a logical consistency, and manipulate the images, but we don't really understand it. That's one of the reasons I think it is probably true; we are speaking about an infinite, omnipotent being, after all. We shouldn't be able to understand Him. Other things the non-Christian finds disagreeable include Christian forgiveness. It's not Natural to forgive. It is natural to hold grudges, because that is a survival mechanism. The Muslim for instance, holds long grudges because he sees himself as a warrior for Allah. The Christian might fight wars, and be a warrior, but he is duty bound to forgive and to turn his cheek to be struck again and again. The very unnatural aspect of this bespeaks something higher than the natural order, which the Bible says is fallen. Anyone who has lived in the world understands that, the natural order is corrupted and miserable. Entropy. Entropy is the tendency of things do move from an ordered to a disordered state, for the universe (and our bodies) to wind down. We are cursed with entropy. Why? If forgiveness is unnatural is not entropy a natural disorder that perhaps has befallen us for our fallen nature? Most religions eschew the kind of forgiveness that is required of Christians (most but not all.) It is the very disagreeable unnatural nature of Christianity that makes it most appealing - and most despicable. Very few people actually want to be Christians.
And it was Christianity that gave us our civilization in the West. While there was a solid foundation based on Greco-Roman reason, the reality is Christianity tempered social mores and norms. Prohibitions against torture, or slavery, or oppression came out of the Christian tradition, not out of the secular. Enemies of the Church often point to Medieval excesses, and in the process fictionalize some of them, to disavow Christianity, but the reality is the Christian faith moderated so much of what could have been a truly terrible world. The utter ingratitude toward the Christian faith for that is truly amazing but not surprising. As I said, nobody likes Christianity. It works, but it is rarely tried, as G.K. Chesterton so aptly pointed out.
So those who lead our modern world seek desperately to find an alternative, ideally an amalgamation that will please everyone. But as Christ said, broad and easy is the path that lead to damnation, and the path to salvation is steep and rocky and largely untrod.
Many of the original Nazis were members of the Thule Society, which was a quasi-occult religious organization practicing Theosophism. Theosophism is a belief system that says all religions have a kernal of truth, and so it amalgamates aspects of everything. Well, when you can cherry pick your belifs you will end up choosing what is most pleasing to you, which will lead you down the path of the Natural Man aka make you brutish, lecherous, unforgiving, and vile. That's precisely why the Nazis were such bad guys; they had a faith that made it easy to do as they pleased. (Hitler, by the way, was never shown to have joined the Thule Society, and in fact he eventually repressed it, but Rosenberg, Himmler, Goering, and a bunch of others were avid members.)
Sadly, Western Civilization has stopped believing in the search for one true faith and instead has adopted a Thulian cafeteria plan - where they seek faith at all. The end result of this is an apostacy, a falling away. Our culture is dying from too much multiculturalism.
At any rate, read Selwyn's excellent article.
Selwyn Duke has a wonderfully insightful article at American Conservative today.
Here is a brief glimpse:
Interestingly, though, Lavrov rightly criticizes the West for wanting to meld nations and cultures, yet himself has proposed what could be construed as the melding of all religions. He might say that he simply supports distilling commonalities out of them for universal use, but, in reality, globalization’s immigrationism and multiculturalism and his global-values notion reflect the same mistake.
It’s irrelevant whether something is "shared.†Venereal disease can be shared, and the flu is widely shared. Commonality tells us nothing about quality. Where "values†are concerned, and we should be speaking of "virtues,†all that matters is whether they’re true.
But moderns don’t generally believe in the true because they don’t believe in Truth (correctly defined as absolute and existing apart from man); they’re moral relativists, believing all "values†are human inventions and hence relative and, in theory, equal.
This is what breeds the West’s cultural relativism and religious relativism (the latter of which Lavrov seems to espouse). After all, what differentiates different cultures is what differentiates different faiths: that they involve different values. Yet this is a distinction without a difference if "all values are equal.†For then all cultures and religions would have to be morally equal, too, since what differentiates them — "values†— are actually all qualitatively the same.
Thus (mis)informed, it follows that it doesn’t matter what culture or faith you embrace or if you mix them all up, from any objective standpoint; they’re all just flavors of the day. In other words, it’s silly to criticize cultural relativism while entertaining the religious variety. If religions are qualitatively "relative,†cultures would also have to be. Both ideas are corollaries of moral relativism.
Instead of wallowing in this confusion, one question we should ask is: What is the ideal culture? If we have it, we should retain it; if we’re lacking, we should move toward it. But simply mixing cultures together, haphazardly, allowing certain cultural elements to supplant others, unthinkingly, is free-association foolhardiness. It’s like supposing that you could randomly slap mechanical parts together and luck into building a functional airplane. Or, it’s like instead of finding a great recipe and following it meticulously to create your delectable dish, just throwing whatever comes your way into the pot, oblivious to whether the result will be an unpalatable or even poisonous brew.
It’s irrelevant whether something is "shared.†Venereal disease can be shared, and the flu is widely shared. Commonality tells us nothing about quality. Where "values†are concerned, and we should be speaking of "virtues,†all that matters is whether they’re true.
But moderns don’t generally believe in the true because they don’t believe in Truth (correctly defined as absolute and existing apart from man); they’re moral relativists, believing all "values†are human inventions and hence relative and, in theory, equal.
This is what breeds the West’s cultural relativism and religious relativism (the latter of which Lavrov seems to espouse). After all, what differentiates different cultures is what differentiates different faiths: that they involve different values. Yet this is a distinction without a difference if "all values are equal.†For then all cultures and religions would have to be morally equal, too, since what differentiates them — "values†— are actually all qualitatively the same.
Thus (mis)informed, it follows that it doesn’t matter what culture or faith you embrace or if you mix them all up, from any objective standpoint; they’re all just flavors of the day. In other words, it’s silly to criticize cultural relativism while entertaining the religious variety. If religions are qualitatively "relative,†cultures would also have to be. Both ideas are corollaries of moral relativism.
Instead of wallowing in this confusion, one question we should ask is: What is the ideal culture? If we have it, we should retain it; if we’re lacking, we should move toward it. But simply mixing cultures together, haphazardly, allowing certain cultural elements to supplant others, unthinkingly, is free-association foolhardiness. It’s like supposing that you could randomly slap mechanical parts together and luck into building a functional airplane. Or, it’s like instead of finding a great recipe and following it meticulously to create your delectable dish, just throwing whatever comes your way into the pot, oblivious to whether the result will be an unpalatable or even poisonous brew.
Read the whole thing! A quick thought; the atheist criticism of religion in general is apt in regards to false faiths, or rather faiths that serve a human purpose; the atheist accuses the religious of adopting a storybook religion, a belief system without any evidenciary foundation. It's true in many instances, but it paints with far too broad a brush. The fact is, few people actually LIKE Christianity, which, in my opinion, is precisely why it rings true. Unlike Islam, which appeals precisely because of its simplicity, Christianity teaches concepts at the limits of human understanding, such as the Trinity. We struggle to grasp that just as we struggle to grasp quantum physics; we can see a logical consistency, and manipulate the images, but we don't really understand it. That's one of the reasons I think it is probably true; we are speaking about an infinite, omnipotent being, after all. We shouldn't be able to understand Him. Other things the non-Christian finds disagreeable include Christian forgiveness. It's not Natural to forgive. It is natural to hold grudges, because that is a survival mechanism. The Muslim for instance, holds long grudges because he sees himself as a warrior for Allah. The Christian might fight wars, and be a warrior, but he is duty bound to forgive and to turn his cheek to be struck again and again. The very unnatural aspect of this bespeaks something higher than the natural order, which the Bible says is fallen. Anyone who has lived in the world understands that, the natural order is corrupted and miserable. Entropy. Entropy is the tendency of things do move from an ordered to a disordered state, for the universe (and our bodies) to wind down. We are cursed with entropy. Why? If forgiveness is unnatural is not entropy a natural disorder that perhaps has befallen us for our fallen nature? Most religions eschew the kind of forgiveness that is required of Christians (most but not all.) It is the very disagreeable unnatural nature of Christianity that makes it most appealing - and most despicable. Very few people actually want to be Christians.
And it was Christianity that gave us our civilization in the West. While there was a solid foundation based on Greco-Roman reason, the reality is Christianity tempered social mores and norms. Prohibitions against torture, or slavery, or oppression came out of the Christian tradition, not out of the secular. Enemies of the Church often point to Medieval excesses, and in the process fictionalize some of them, to disavow Christianity, but the reality is the Christian faith moderated so much of what could have been a truly terrible world. The utter ingratitude toward the Christian faith for that is truly amazing but not surprising. As I said, nobody likes Christianity. It works, but it is rarely tried, as G.K. Chesterton so aptly pointed out.
So those who lead our modern world seek desperately to find an alternative, ideally an amalgamation that will please everyone. But as Christ said, broad and easy is the path that lead to damnation, and the path to salvation is steep and rocky and largely untrod.
Many of the original Nazis were members of the Thule Society, which was a quasi-occult religious organization practicing Theosophism. Theosophism is a belief system that says all religions have a kernal of truth, and so it amalgamates aspects of everything. Well, when you can cherry pick your belifs you will end up choosing what is most pleasing to you, which will lead you down the path of the Natural Man aka make you brutish, lecherous, unforgiving, and vile. That's precisely why the Nazis were such bad guys; they had a faith that made it easy to do as they pleased. (Hitler, by the way, was never shown to have joined the Thule Society, and in fact he eventually repressed it, but Rosenberg, Himmler, Goering, and a bunch of others were avid members.)
Sadly, Western Civilization has stopped believing in the search for one true faith and instead has adopted a Thulian cafeteria plan - where they seek faith at all. The end result of this is an apostacy, a falling away. Our culture is dying from too much multiculturalism.
At any rate, read Selwyn's excellent article.
Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at
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