I can see the argument against certain forms of religion, such as radical Islam, often termed Islamism, for the violence it imposes on the world in the form of terrorism, jihad, honor killings, etc. But to argue against religion as a whole is like trying to catch the wind or tilting at windmills. It's an insane quest because religion is built in the DNA of humanity. We are religious beings by nature. Homo religiosus. This can take benign or malign forms, as history proves - even in secular societies where various -isms become secular religions (e.g, Communism, fascism, feminism, consumerism, transgenderism, environmentalism, socialism, anti-colonialism, etc).
The invasion of Europe by Islam now taking place is not a good thing but it could have been prevented, as it was in the past, by Christianity. When Europe and the West became secular its citizens lost faith in themselves and became vulnerable to a religion that's more aggressive. Sort of like a good bacteria keeping a bad bacteria at bay in the body. Religion also softens the hard heart and can make society better. Christianity gave the West countless good ideas and institutions. In truth it is a double-edged sword that can be used for good or evil, for peace and for violence. Sam Harris and the new atheists can try to fight it all he wants but it's not going away. The truths that faith refer to are eternal, even if veiled in symbolic languages as through glass darkly.
Peter Berger and others in the 1960s said the West would be entirely secular in the future. That did not come to pass. First, the threats posed by modernity and the weakening of traditional beliefs often gives rise to fundamentalism. Thus the growth of Pentecostalism and charismatic faith. Secondly, secular religions arise in the absence of traditional religions. New Ageism as well. Leftism is a religion that's overtaken the West, and not for the better. The collectivism of DEI, BLM, and woke ideology are not an improvement on Judeo-Christian and Enlightenment values.
Thank you very much for this comment. I couldn't agree more. Regarding the issue of religion as a double-edged sword, I've come up with the notion of a "will to incorporation" to account for how it is that both religion and science suffer from the same trouble. It's not just religion and science of course, but also ethnicity, ideology, club, association, political affiliation, etc. In all these phenomena of community or society formation, the goal is to incorporate, define, delimit, and close off. We can observe this process in the basic structure of a biological cell, and the process extends upward from the cell to the organ, to the body, to the family, the city, the corporation, the political party, the state, and as far as we'd like to extend the "organism."
My hope is that by finding a term other than "religion" to define the problem, it may be universally applied and thereby serve to critique any entity that may come about and cause confusion over who or what is to blame for any given tyranny or movement toward dictatorship. In all these cases, there is only one right way to do things and anyone who dissents must be purged and often made an example of as warning to those who might bring corruption to the unity and cause it to crumble and die. The Church as body of Christ is a perfect metaphor here and exemplifies the will to bring everyone under one roof, or into one body.
Every movement, it seems, goes through periods of tyrannical barbarism until it establishes ascendency. Christianity of course had its crusades and inquisitions. The fact that these events are behind us now doesn't mean that will to incorporate and purge by violence is out of its system for good. Islam under the Ottoman Empire went through its Enlightenment and decay like the spiritual roots of all other civilisations. During the decline of the Ottoman period, religious values were in decline. As in every decadent period, the civilisation winds up being run by bureaucratic mechanism. The rise of Scientism now marks the decadent phase of the Western secular project begun in the Enlightenment as the whole point and purpose of science is lost to this desire to round up believers and purge its society of unbelievers, not in science, but in the institutions that run things. Hence the establishment of a bureaucratic priesthood that is meant to lead by unquestioned authority.
The opportunity that I think lies before humanity with this revelation in sight (the will to incorporation), and with scientistic globalism attempting to net the whole planet, is a frameshift, a paradigm shift, or transformation of consciousness by which we figure out how to accept and nurture a multiplicity of corporations or organisms (essentially, human groupings of all manner) and a cooperative spirit among this truly diverse collection of human enterprises. The key here is for all these corporations to understand the need to close themselves off, while also being aware of the pitfalls involved, and thereby remaining open in the right ways. This sort of perception requires a special sort of consciousness, one that is never fanatical about being the One Truth or One True Way.
The alternative, which seems perhaps more likely, is that the believers will win, and by that I mean that our declining civilisation that is beset by self-loathing, having no spiritual source from which to draw courage, will succumb to the fanatics, especially the militant ones with basic survival abilities. I should add that the new atheist fanatics who have no skills whatsoever (other than self-seduction through blathering) will have no role in any future. They are simply too effete and fey.
If the believers are winning, it's ironic because they don't believe in anything. It makes sense, on one level, and yet it's perplexing how fundamentalism can emerge in a society without foundation. We seem to go through this process again and again as a species, one culture building up a history and traditions and a set of deep-rooted common values that we share and that binds us; then we forget about it all and decay and collapse; then we have to rediscover our roots and use them to reimagine and rebuild a culture again . . . I suppose a renaissance of some sort will occur down the road, but it probably won't be in our life times. For now we have to put up with the lunatics running the asylum and making everbody hysterical until the walls come crashing down, before a reconstruction can begin. The situation reminds me of the one in that poem by Mark Strand called "Always," where "the great forgetters were hard at work" until "only the cold zero of perfection" remained for the imagination, which then, paradoxically, saw "the blaze of promise everywhere."
Aye. Good point Harry. Perhaps I was unclear there. I suppose I don't really see the believers in scientism as true believers but passionless, hollow men. Their belief is anchored in nihilism; and they are elites who live easy, privileged lives. There is a sort of etiolated passion that they express (like Harris) in silly and obviously impossible( and even harmful) ideas of reformation of "the masses." The religious believers, on the other hand, are ready to die and shed blood for what they believe. I don't endorse either form of fanaticism; I just think it's obvious who will ultimately win the battle.
As for having "to put up with the lunatics," there are actions we can take to help buffer ourselves from the damage these minions are causing. The more we do for ourselves, our families and friends in that regard, the better we will feel. I think there is plenty of room for grassroots efforts to establish the footings of the renaissance you expect will ultimately arise. No need to wait for others to do it, when we ourselves are capable of setting the foundations today.
Agreed, Asa. Thanks for offering those positive thoughts. Much needed. It's easy nowadays to get bogged down in negativity and despair, to feel overwhelmed and helpless. You're right that we can get started building the foundations immediately, and there are lots of people already doing that. Best of all, there's a huge tradition of historical literature - religious, scientific, philosophical, artistic - filled with wisdom and knowledge, that's available to us to use as a guide and to innovate from.
I can see the argument against certain forms of religion, such as radical Islam, often termed Islamism, for the violence it imposes on the world in the form of terrorism, jihad, honor killings, etc. But to argue against religion as a whole is like trying to catch the wind or tilting at windmills. It's an insane quest because religion is built in the DNA of humanity. We are religious beings by nature. Homo religiosus. This can take benign or malign forms, as history proves - even in secular societies where various -isms become secular religions (e.g, Communism, fascism, feminism, consumerism, transgenderism, environmentalism, socialism, anti-colonialism, etc).
The invasion of Europe by Islam now taking place is not a good thing but it could have been prevented, as it was in the past, by Christianity. When Europe and the West became secular its citizens lost faith in themselves and became vulnerable to a religion that's more aggressive. Sort of like a good bacteria keeping a bad bacteria at bay in the body. Religion also softens the hard heart and can make society better. Christianity gave the West countless good ideas and institutions. In truth it is a double-edged sword that can be used for good or evil, for peace and for violence. Sam Harris and the new atheists can try to fight it all he wants but it's not going away. The truths that faith refer to are eternal, even if veiled in symbolic languages as through glass darkly.
Peter Berger and others in the 1960s said the West would be entirely secular in the future. That did not come to pass. First, the threats posed by modernity and the weakening of traditional beliefs often gives rise to fundamentalism. Thus the growth of Pentecostalism and charismatic faith. Secondly, secular religions arise in the absence of traditional religions. New Ageism as well. Leftism is a religion that's overtaken the West, and not for the better. The collectivism of DEI, BLM, and woke ideology are not an improvement on Judeo-Christian and Enlightenment values.
Thank you very much for this comment. I couldn't agree more. Regarding the issue of religion as a double-edged sword, I've come up with the notion of a "will to incorporation" to account for how it is that both religion and science suffer from the same trouble. It's not just religion and science of course, but also ethnicity, ideology, club, association, political affiliation, etc. In all these phenomena of community or society formation, the goal is to incorporate, define, delimit, and close off. We can observe this process in the basic structure of a biological cell, and the process extends upward from the cell to the organ, to the body, to the family, the city, the corporation, the political party, the state, and as far as we'd like to extend the "organism."
My hope is that by finding a term other than "religion" to define the problem, it may be universally applied and thereby serve to critique any entity that may come about and cause confusion over who or what is to blame for any given tyranny or movement toward dictatorship. In all these cases, there is only one right way to do things and anyone who dissents must be purged and often made an example of as warning to those who might bring corruption to the unity and cause it to crumble and die. The Church as body of Christ is a perfect metaphor here and exemplifies the will to bring everyone under one roof, or into one body.
Every movement, it seems, goes through periods of tyrannical barbarism until it establishes ascendency. Christianity of course had its crusades and inquisitions. The fact that these events are behind us now doesn't mean that will to incorporate and purge by violence is out of its system for good. Islam under the Ottoman Empire went through its Enlightenment and decay like the spiritual roots of all other civilisations. During the decline of the Ottoman period, religious values were in decline. As in every decadent period, the civilisation winds up being run by bureaucratic mechanism. The rise of Scientism now marks the decadent phase of the Western secular project begun in the Enlightenment as the whole point and purpose of science is lost to this desire to round up believers and purge its society of unbelievers, not in science, but in the institutions that run things. Hence the establishment of a bureaucratic priesthood that is meant to lead by unquestioned authority.
The opportunity that I think lies before humanity with this revelation in sight (the will to incorporation), and with scientistic globalism attempting to net the whole planet, is a frameshift, a paradigm shift, or transformation of consciousness by which we figure out how to accept and nurture a multiplicity of corporations or organisms (essentially, human groupings of all manner) and a cooperative spirit among this truly diverse collection of human enterprises. The key here is for all these corporations to understand the need to close themselves off, while also being aware of the pitfalls involved, and thereby remaining open in the right ways. This sort of perception requires a special sort of consciousness, one that is never fanatical about being the One Truth or One True Way.
The alternative, which seems perhaps more likely, is that the believers will win, and by that I mean that our declining civilisation that is beset by self-loathing, having no spiritual source from which to draw courage, will succumb to the fanatics, especially the militant ones with basic survival abilities. I should add that the new atheist fanatics who have no skills whatsoever (other than self-seduction through blathering) will have no role in any future. They are simply too effete and fey.
If the believers are winning, it's ironic because they don't believe in anything. It makes sense, on one level, and yet it's perplexing how fundamentalism can emerge in a society without foundation. We seem to go through this process again and again as a species, one culture building up a history and traditions and a set of deep-rooted common values that we share and that binds us; then we forget about it all and decay and collapse; then we have to rediscover our roots and use them to reimagine and rebuild a culture again . . . I suppose a renaissance of some sort will occur down the road, but it probably won't be in our life times. For now we have to put up with the lunatics running the asylum and making everbody hysterical until the walls come crashing down, before a reconstruction can begin. The situation reminds me of the one in that poem by Mark Strand called "Always," where "the great forgetters were hard at work" until "only the cold zero of perfection" remained for the imagination, which then, paradoxically, saw "the blaze of promise everywhere."
Aye. Good point Harry. Perhaps I was unclear there. I suppose I don't really see the believers in scientism as true believers but passionless, hollow men. Their belief is anchored in nihilism; and they are elites who live easy, privileged lives. There is a sort of etiolated passion that they express (like Harris) in silly and obviously impossible( and even harmful) ideas of reformation of "the masses." The religious believers, on the other hand, are ready to die and shed blood for what they believe. I don't endorse either form of fanaticism; I just think it's obvious who will ultimately win the battle.
As for having "to put up with the lunatics," there are actions we can take to help buffer ourselves from the damage these minions are causing. The more we do for ourselves, our families and friends in that regard, the better we will feel. I think there is plenty of room for grassroots efforts to establish the footings of the renaissance you expect will ultimately arise. No need to wait for others to do it, when we ourselves are capable of setting the foundations today.
Agreed, Asa. Thanks for offering those positive thoughts. Much needed. It's easy nowadays to get bogged down in negativity and despair, to feel overwhelmed and helpless. You're right that we can get started building the foundations immediately, and there are lots of people already doing that. Best of all, there's a huge tradition of historical literature - religious, scientific, philosophical, artistic - filled with wisdom and knowledge, that's available to us to use as a guide and to innovate from.