There's a lot here, and at least some of it seems to be tied to a beef with a (former) friend of yours, so I'll just lay out some objections to the idea that Wokism isn't filling a god-hole. (BTW, I'm an atheist, but a reluctant one--I wish there was a benevolent father figure looking out for at least some of us. I'd love to believe that. There just isn't.) Since October 7, we've watched Westerners demonstrate that they are suicidally committed to something (Queers for Palestine marching for people who explicitly tell them that they'd love to toss them off the nearest building; young women chanting "They've got tanks; *we've* got hang-gliders" about rapist-murderers). Wokism has original sin in varying degrees by identity caste except black or brown women, preferably ones born male or engaged in sex work. Unlike Christianity, however, there is no redemption from the original sin. What word would we give to a belief system so all-consuming that it can cause people to believe in original sin and take positions as dramatically opposed to their self-interest that it might as well be "Chickens for KFC" or "Mice for Outlawing the Spaying and Neutering of Cats"? If not religion....what, exactly, do we call that? Some would call it a lack of reason, but these people universally believe that theirs is the reasonable position, which is why Colin, the owner of this Substack, literally cannot get a job at a university because he believes in biology. If this isn't a religion, it's something so like one that saying it's not a religion seems like a distinction without a difference.
Hi Holly. I don’t disagree with any of this. Yes, wokeness is a religion, and yes much of the extremism with which people spread it is likely an attempt to fill the god-hole. As I write, “I’d agree their fervor could be filling the god-hole religion left behind.”
But just because people “believe” their position is reasonable doesn’t mean that it is. We need actual reason, and it’s objectively determinable what this looks like. Formal logic has rules that the woke trample all over in their terrible arguments.
WOKE IS AN INVERTED CLASS WAR, RELIGION IS A SIDE DISH
Wokeism is largely a result of the intentional destruction of morals and high-social-trust by psychopathic and sociopathic (Cluster B) neo-communists in their "long march through the institutions".
(see James Lindsay's recent blog post on "DEGROWTH" and Marcuse's scheme to merge neo-marxism with the corporate-state.)
Wokeism is largely funded by corrupt, creepy crawly billionaires (they love to mutilate trans kids) and their zombie cargo cult of LUXURY-DIGITAL-GNOSTICISM (see NS Lyons).
The whole point of wokeism is to create "cultural revolution" (Mao) via an INVERTED CLASS WAR (Joel Kotkin, Musa Al-Gharbi) of the "woke" wealthy elite (and their cultural storm troopers, the PMC {Ehrenreich}) against the working and middle class.
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Why classical rationalism (Enlightenment, "progress", etc.) has failed and needs to become meta-rational in response to disruption from techno-economic change and disruption from postmodern social conditions:
We do need actual reason, which Woke seems to have abandoned. However, you incorrectly put Christian faith on the side of Wokism thinking it to be an unthinking, unreasoning faith without logic. That’s false.
Sure, some individuals believe in Christianity without reason or logic, but the same can be said for many atheists who haven’t fully thought out their position and just parrot talking points from prominent atheists.
The atheist position is equally a faith claim. You reason that God cannot exist because you PRESUPPOSE that anything supernatural doesn’t exist. Of course natural phenomenon cannot give full evidence to supernatural phenomenon. We can’t prove anything either way, but we can look at all available evidence and judge what the preponderance of evidence points to by evaluating it with reason and logic.
There is a preponderance of evidence that points to a reasonable conclusion that God exists (especially if you don’t presuppose that the supernatural isn’t possible) and volumes of evidence that the Bible is reliable. You, the atheist, may not find this evidence compelling enough to believe, but that is vastly difference that “no evidence” and “no logic” that is blatantly untrue of the Christian faith.
If you don’t want to believe in God or you don’t find the evidence compelling, that’s ok. But at least:
(1) own your presuppositions
(2) don’t pretend that there is “no evidence” when that is blatantly untrue (instead argue why you think the evidence is not compelling to you)
(3) don’t insult Christianity by confusing reasonable faith with “blind faith.” Faith can and should be underlined by reason and logic. Reason assesses, faith trusts. Reason assesses whether or not something or someone is trustworthy, and then faith believes that certain things are true in light of the reasons. Not blind faith, but a reasonable step of trust. Because you can’t definitely prove that God does not exist, you are using reason to assess and then having faith that certain things are true (in your case, having faith that God does not exist).
Stop conflating Christian faith with blind faith. It’s not. To those who say that if we use reason then we leave no room for faith-- that is a gross misunderstanding of “faith.” Faith is not wishing. Faith isn’t way of knowing, it’s a way of trusting. But you need to assess (reason) first to determine if something is worth trusting in.
Jesus didn’t come to earth and simply say “Trust that I am Lord” without giving any evidence for it. The signs and miracles, and of course, the resurrection and appearance of Jesus to hundred of people after the resurrection where all given as EVIDENCE for people to evaluate to determine whether they then believed that Jesus is who He says He is. Jesus also tells his disciples to study the Old Testament Scriptures for more evidence that Jesus is the Messiah.
A more specific example can be found in Mark 2, where Jesus says, “In order that you may know that the Son of Man has the power to forgive sins, I say to you, take up your pallet and go home.” He didn’t just say, “Trust me on blind faith that I am able to forgive sins.” The act of healing was something they could see to secure the reality, the knowledge, the certainty, the fact of something they couldn’t see—forgiveness of sin. It was evidence of Jesus’s power. And it was this that inspired their acts of trust. They had knowledge that sin could be forgiven, and this is precisely why they were able to exercise trust.
The opposite of faith is not reason; the opposite of faith is unbelief, or lack of trust. The opposite of reason is not faith; the opposite of reason is irrationality.
As a Jew who came to belief in Christianity in his mid-forties, I would tell you there's plenty of evidence for God. It takes some diligence to study it out and weigh it, and most skeptics don't want to bother. Others would like it to be different and more "scientific" evidence, but it is not.
After 20 of sifting through various apologetic arguments, dinner which are good but none of which are slam-dunks and any of which I could come up with a counter to, here is the way I would recommend doing the research.
a) Watch testimony videos on YouTube. Some object that testimony is subjective, and it is. But as you watch you start to sort out the truth, and first-person testimony has much more power than we would give it credit for. Where to start? Oddly, the Christian Broadcasting Network. I am not a fan of Pat Robertson but his organization has done a terrific job of producing videos recounting testimonies, miracle accounts, etc.
An organization called DeLafe ministries has a huge number of testimonies online. They are perhaps overlong and not slick, but they are good ones.
I like Michael Knowles' interviews featuring ex-fortune tellers, present day exorcists, and any others whose theme is Christianity and not politics Knowles is a conservative and has somewhat of a smart-ass demeanor that could be slightly off-putting, but he interviews good people and is quite intelligent.
Finally, be sure to review videos featuring Father Vince Lampert and other exorcists from the Catholic church. He recounts his experiences doing many exorcisms which include supernatural happenings, and his sober and down to earth presentation is hard to disbelieve.
There is a ton of great video information out there, but researching it is a journey, it's not an afternoon's effort. But for a determined seeker it is sufficient.
One caveat would be that since Christians are human, sometimes they are going to make faith-related pronouncements that are simply wrong. Avoid making the mistake of writing off a person's whole testimony because you see them to be wrong from time to time.
There is plenty of evidence for the Bible and for God. Some great places to explore:
Cold-Case Christianity by J. Warner Wallace,
New Evidence that Demands a Verdict by Josh and Sean McDowell, any of Lee Strobel’s books, Stand to Reason website by Greg Koukl, and work by Stephen Meyer.
I get incredibly frustrated by atheists like Klein who want to degrade Christianity as having “untenable faith claims” supposedly without reason, but fail to acknowledge their own faith claims inherent to atheism! The atheist presupposes that nothing supernatural exists, that only the natural world is all there is and all that can be. But can they prove this with evidence? No. And they won’t be able to. But it’s still faith claim. And they can even argue that it *may* be a reasonable faith claim. But it’s not a *more* reasonable faith claim than the claim that a supernatural God create the Universe.
Thank you for this response to Ayaan Hirsi Ali's recent article regarding her conversion to Christianity. I will start by saying that, like Ayaan, I would love to be able to be a part of a spiritual community, but I have never been able to squeeze myself into the thought prisons that organized religions generally become. The same is true with respect to political parties.
I do not have the privilege of knowing Ayaan and I do not want to criticize her choice of religion. What struck me most about her article is its similarity to other recently published accounts of conversions of former "Progressive Democrats" to GOP or "conservative" affiliation. (Sasha Stone, for example).
I can appreciate the felt need to belong to something bigger than oneself, an intellectual and emotional "home" that includes the perceived power of numbers and longevity to oppose woke tyranny. There is a lot of felt tension for many of us in not being able to enter such a home. Yet all of these systems have tended to develop the same authoritarianism and internal pressure towards conformity that repels individuals like me. Those tendencies appear to not be accidental, but rather are essential elements of what appeals to so many members of religious and political organizations.
As our society continues to disintegrate, we are seeing more attempts at self-conversion to thought constructs that offer a promise of being safe harbors from the vulnerabilities of uncertainty, isolation and attack by outsiders. I kind of envy those who can pull off this kind of conversion, but adopting the beliefs of Old Time Religion is not the answer for me.
"Every single one told me this wasn’t sufficient to be a Christian" because they aren't 1st century Christians. Early Christians did indeed attempt to convert others to a mystical or symbolic idea of Jesus. They quickly found that literal-Jesus was much more impressive to the unconverted, and so the gospels reflect a literal belief, calling anyone who says that Jesus has not come in the flesh (i.e. literally walked the earth) "antichrist."
From your writing I expected more depth of thought, but you failed here I'm sorry to point out. Why would you expect Ayaan to put her entire understanding of theology in a piece written for a different purpose? You did catch that purpose (atheism is insufficient to help in difficult times) but expected more? The way I read her piece suggests she is happy to have something in her understanding that will help her in the current madness, not that a "Christian resurgence" is necessary. And your grasp of Christian faith is also uninformed. The deity of Christ is a central tenant, so why expect anyone to bless your 'metaphor' idea? You are better than this, I've seen it in you.
There is a certain level of -- one might say 'panic' -- on the part of the atheists that they have lost a devotee back to the Old Religion, no? Protestants panicked the same way when someone returned to Catholicism.
I am struck by "every single one told me this was insufficient to be a Christian". I lead children and youth ministry at an Anglican (Episcopal) church, where I am careful to teach kids that the supernatural stuff in the Bible is indeed metaphor. I explain the concept of myth (which they no longer learn about in school) -- that certain kinds of stories are not meant to be literally true, but are spiritually true because they tell us something important about the human experience. I emphasize that faith does not require total certainty, and that total certainty is not the point of faith. Salvation in the "afterlife" is irrelevant compared to spiritual salvation in this lifetime -- freedom from despair, and from behaviour which draws us out of "alignment" with God, ie with what our deepest selves know to be right. So it would seem that you spoke to a fairly narrow sampling of Christian, Jake, because I know many who would not care whether you believe in the factually if a virgin birth or a literal rising from the dead. There are Christians who do not believe those are the principal tenets of belief. To be frank, I think such people have little imagination, and religion is an outflow of imagination. We may think of imagination as being the source of invention only; I say it can also be what uncovers deeper truths... If someone wants to participate in church on the basis of their belief in the importance of the Christ concept, as opposed to belief in a supernatural occurrence, why the HELL should that matter to people who DO believe literally? I know for sure that my church is full of people who are there for different reasons and believe in different ways. The important thing is that we *show up for each other*. We walk the walk much more than we talk the talk.
wait a second, the last time this was tried repackaging Christianity into an ethical system without "untenable faith claims" it came-out as wokeness... am I wrong? Tell me how I'm wrong! Christianity is the extended phenotype our genome needs to thrive, that's been demonstrated.
Atheists in my feed are really coming out of the woodwork in response to Ali’s announcement. They seem desperate for it not to be true.
I’ve got a lot to say and might come back later, but for now would just like to point out that I clicked on the author’s link to an article that claims to have found a list of “errors” in the Bible. The first one I bothered to look into (that the Bible mentions Kings before there was a king in Israel) is nonsensical because God was telling them what to do in the future. Presumably the article fits with the author’s confirmation bias and therefore there was no need to actually look into any of the claims. You could say the author accepted the claims “by faith”
Just 31% of Evangelicals accept the preposterously weak argument that climate change is predominantly driven by human activity. Yet 90% of atheists accept it--and thus many of the insane policy prescriptions that go with it. Your theory that that American Christianity is impotent and easily co-opted has holes in it.
What you refer to as "secular Christianity" was the norm for most of the 20th Century. Neither I, my parents or grandparents believed in the literal truth of the bible although we went to church every Sunday, and we were like most Americans in that respect. When biblical fundamentalism emerged in the 1960s and 70s its adherents were referred to as "Jesus freaks" precisely because their beliefs were considered freakish (ie rare). Fundamentalism reached a pinnacle when Jimmy Carter was elected President but part of his unpopularity came from his fundamentalist religious views which most Americans considered embarrassing. Biblical fundamentalism continued as a cultural phenomenon on TV for several decades but most Christians did not embrace it. The fundamentalist minority only created a straw man for the "New Atheists" to attack as they hacked away at the Christian foundations of the nation. They "killed God" by questioning the literal accuracy of a scripture that few believed to be literal anyway, and in the process gave birth to the wokeism, neo-Marxism and neo-feudalism of their corporate masters. Now we all have to live with the consequences of a civilization bereft of its divinity. Perhaps we can restore stability to our civilization by returning to the secular Christianity you have rediscovered, but it is far easier to destroy magnificence than to resurrect it.
I recently read Stephen Meyer's "Return to the God Hypothesis". It is a strong hypothesis that there is a Creator. A Creator who can create out of nothingness - who is there - outside of time and matter, is so outside my ability to truly comprehend, I need to give my respect. The complexity of this world and universe can be watched through the lense of math and science but it's full understanding of why can only be explained by The Creator. Why did the Creator make earth with all of its beauty, love, ugliness and hate. Why not create beings who had no free will? I work in the medical field and I see good and evil in humanity (myself included) everyday. Everyday I help people and show my capacity to love and forgive. Everyday, I swear under my breath at some policy, person or frustration. I look over my mistakes and failings and hang onto the failings of others. I am imperfect like the rest of mankind. Why did the Creator allow for this? It did not have to be designed this way.
The Bible states that man was created in God's image. A Creator with such abilities is certainly not a programed robot. I am not a programed robot, a Stepford wife. I have the capacity for love and hate, forgiveness and anger.
Because of the works of John Lennox, Sean McDowell, Stephen Meyers, Greg Koukl, Christorpher Yuan, Chuck Colson and many others, I do believe in the God of the Bible. I believe Jesus died, was buried and rose again - witnessed by many. His disciples never swayed from this (Wow!) nor did the early believer's first opponent, Saul (changed to Paul). I feel the need to point out where my view differs from the author. I do believe there is evidence has demonstrates the fact-claims in the Bible to be plainly TRUE. I don't think that is a stretch for a Creator that can pull off the Universe and Earth with all of its complexities.
Help me to understand why a political party has do be aligned with a religion? Acknowledging the legacy of the Christian community does not make you a Christian, ask Tom Holland. Stating that you are a Christian does not necessarily make you a Christian. Many people use that definition for themselves because of family tradition, not true understanding of the Nicene Creed. I could actually repeat the Nicene Creed faster than anyone I knew, long before I had an understanding of it.
I am grateful for people like this author who want to explore the definition of words and motives for beliefs. That character trait reflects a Creator who thinks, cares and has substance behind what is done in their name. At the same time, the Creator sees that heart and The Creator will decide the eternal fate of all of us: professing Christians, Atheist, Communist, Marxist and Woke-ist.
I will pray for American and all of it's people. What I know in my heart is that even if I am killed by some radical group, God's remnant will remain until we are all taken home - where all of these image bearers can express to The Creator their true gratitude for this amazing world.
This is an excellent essay but wrong. Not wrong in the binary true/false way but it misses the mark subtly and it will be a challenge to explain why. It would take hours to do it properly but let me just take a few potshots:
> While far-leftism may be a disproportionately atheistic movement, if Christianity is supposed to be a bulwark against it, it’s historically done a terrible job.
An abandoned fortress can't protect anything. Christianity is not a 'thing' it is only as strong as the people who comprise it. Because Christians have not stood strong against wokeness, wokeness has prevailed. The fault is not with Christianity but with Christians. As the Bible continually points out, the Believers fail more often than they succeed and this is an example.
> The allegation that far-leftism arises in secular nations because people need to find something to fill the god-hole simply isn’t true. On the contrary, far-leftism predominantly arises in Christian nations
Sure, but that's because wokeness (and communism really tho it's harder to see) is a Christian heresy. One expects Christian heresies in Christian lands, no? Just as atheism opens the door to Nazism so Christianity opens the door to all variations of leftism. It is not the 'fault' of atheism that some people will take 'survival of the fittest' and build a political movement around it -- there's no helping that. Nor is it the fault of Christianity that the 'socialist' values that it embodies will give birth to certain deviations such as communism. One might say that communism is an overly idealistic Christianity without God.
> This fundamental belief ties together both classical Marxism and its modern, woke, culturally Marxist variant.
Exactly. They are Christian heresies.
> how could she so wrongly come to believe that Christianity is an effective bulwark against leftism?
As a parent is responsible for both her child's bad behavior, and yet is the one tho has the responsibility to discipline that child, so Christianity both gave birth to leftism but also is best positioned to correct the errors of the left.
> It’s not that we need to create values, it’s that Christianity is failing miserably at sustaining the ones we already have.
As above, no, it is Christians who have failed. They were unprepared for the assault the left waged on them. They ignored Jesus' command to 'keep on the watch'. They did not realize until it was (almost?) too late that the left intended to destroy the foundations of western civilization. Waking up, they panicked and, unforgivably, ran into the arms of the Disgusting Thing for comfort.
> I believe that when you’re trying to sail across an ocean, you don’t attach yourself to a sinking ship just because it’s always sailed well in the past.
On the contrary, the ship is sinking *because* the crew have abandoned their duties to sail her. One might say that she is not abandoned because she is sinking, she is sinking because she has been abandoned.
Meanwhile, let us not fight among ourselves. Let the atheists who believe in civilization and the Christians likewise stand together against both jihad and wokeism. No hysteria please about the Christians burning the atheists at the stake if 'we' win -- Christianity also gave birth to the Enlightenment -- we know that all souls must be free.
Thank you for this reminder that we need more than anything to form coalitions that focus on our common goals to preserve both our civilization and our freedom.
We are being torn apart by centrifugal forces, and the efforts to counteract the disintegration include movements towards authoritarian centralization and coerced conformity of thought. We need to stay with the anxiety created by uncertainty and threat to our foundations, and not seek security at the expense of everything else that matters.
I think back to the days when the left and the right had polite disagreements on what the price of a bus ticket should be. Right now all sane people are my comrades. The common enemy is the forces that would destroy civilization as we know it: The woke left, the Trumpist right, and Islam. The center must hold.
Again, no evolutionary theory or related biology? Population genetics???
The OP doesn't have anything to do with science, and your response doesn't either.
(I don't know why non-scientific arguments are being made on the substack of a biologist.)
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Some social scientists disagree that Enlightenment values are rooted in Christianity, and provide evidence that the Enlightenment was primarily the gathered remnants of pre-Christian european culture (such as Greco-Roman rationalism).
Others see the Enlightenment as the result of outbreeding and the ban on cousin marriage, which changed the gene pool in NW Europe, making it more "classically liberal" (Henrich @ Harvard's WEIRD model).
(Also see Robert Kegan's stage theory.)
Christianity got dragged along for the ride, and to some extent was able to adapt to the deeply disruptive aspects of modern rationalism (in the context of the situation described by the WEIRD model).
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You didn't account for several sources of evil, depravity and sin:
1. fundamentalists
2. neocons
3. ultra zionists
4. tanzanians that practice albino cannibalism
The biggest thing absent is techno-economic disruption of legacy sense-making systems.
Both mythic religion (Kegan stage 3) and modern rationalism (stage 4) are NOT anti-fragile to disruption under postmodern social conditions (stage 4.5).
Here is one summary of the urgent need to get past pre-liberal myth, and liberal rationalism, and postmodern relativism, to Kegan "stage 5" awareness and culture:
"(I don't know why non-scientific arguments are being made on the substack of a biologist.)"
Ask the biologist who published the original essay, it is not about science either but social questions. Seems to me Colin can publish whatever he wants.
"Some social scientists disagree that Enlightenment values are rooted in Christianity,"
The answer isn't going to be yes or no, is it? There's going to be a spectrum among Christians from active advancement of the Enlightenment right across to moral enemy opposition. And quite obviously there were more vectors than religion at play. What is undeniable is that the Enlightenment happened in Christian Europe and no where else.
"You didn't account for several sources of evil, depravity and sin:"
I didn't write the essay, I merely commented on some aspects of it. I didn't account for lots of things.
It is about science (DNA, population genetics). About the only thing connecting the Enlightenment to Christianity is a weird accident of history: the early church banned cousin marriage, which resulted in an outbred gene pool, in which "liberal personality traits" were selected for because they increased survival of higher IQ/liberal people in that gene pool (long story, again see Henrich @ Harvard's WEIRD model).
Christianity was layered in on top of older genes and "cultural DNA". The Enlightenment rejected Christianity's basic feature, "Alter and Crown" (conformity to social hierarchy) and revived AGENTIC VALUES (individual achievement, etc.).
A culture war and actual wars resulted that went on for 100s of years, including the British Civil War (1600s) and the American Revolution.
If Christianity was so happy with the Enlightenment, why were they at war for so long???
re: "I didn't account for lots of things."
Yes, including the fact that many Christians will cherry pick data to fit their narrative, missionary tendencies and confirmation biases, to the detriment of accurate history.
It's the sort of thing where you can find whatever you want to support your own bias. I don't think a genuinely dispassionate view of the question is even possible. But as I said, the bottom line is that the Enlightenment did arise in the Christian world and nowhere else.
Still it's interesting to discuss. You mention the American Revolution. They were Enlightenment dudes, to be sure, but most of them also very Christian. But there again you can find whatever you want. I've seen the American FF painted as devout Christians, and also as rabid atheists.
RELIGION WAS REFITTED, PAINFULLY, TO NEW, LIBERAL REALITIES
Beating a dead horse ...... another attempt at the relevant scientific facts:
biological and cultural evolution is:
- variation
- selection
- retention
1. the early church got lucky in causing a historical accident: banning cousin marriage (in the peasant and urban commoner classes). that ban was not "theological", it was political, intended to weaken the power of clans. political and religious elites continued to hold power via cousin marriage, so there was no coherent theological justification. elites did frequently try to justify their politics with claims that they had divine favor, and in most cases such claims were absurd to a rational observer.
2. banning cousin marriage resulted in an outbred gene pool with higher variability.
3. selective pressures for INCREASED SURVIVAL ensured that genes for higher IQ (to satisfy demands for increased literacy and numeracy) and "liberal" personality traits were retained in the gene pool and that genes for "clannish" (pre-liberal) personality traits were DESELECTED.
4. a feedback loop developed in which higher IQ commoners with classically liberal personality traits, including holding to ideas such as peasants' rights (see Leonard Liggio), formed HIGH-SOCIAL-TRUST practices, including forming Constitutional order (to replace fealty oaths and moots), forming educational and research institutions, institutions (legal and insurance) to support market economics, such as increased river and sea trade (German Free Cities, Hanseatic League), new, advanced agricultural practices and other technologies, and so forth engaged in more SELF INHIBITION by delaying marriage and child bearing. In plagues for instance, the more affluent urban commoners had fewer children, but born to parents well past their teenage years who were better able to protect their children.
While classical liberalism flourished and provided economic advancement, (pre-liberal) clannishness literally died off in something like 33% of the peasant population during plagues, wars and food shortages.
The more classically liberal the gene pool became, the stronger HIGH-SOCIAL-TRUST practices and institutions became, conferring even more success and greater survival to liberal personality traits.
5. RELIGION WAS REFITTED, PAINFULLY, TO NEW, LIBERAL REALITIES
See the history of various wars and class conflicts along the theme of Catholic-vs-Protestants (such as Spain-vs-England)
The scientific data contradicts both traditional mythic narratives AND it contradicts traditional materialist-atheist narratives.
That opens up possibilities for the "meta" (integrative) values that the author admits he doesn't understand (that transcend the left-vs-right and religion-vs-science narratives).
About your common motif that some of his critiques are not the fault of Christianity but rather of Christians, I guess it's technically true, but about as useful as saying that true socialism has never been tried because people aren't devoting themselves strongly enough to it. And given his references to arguments made as to the consistency of Christian values with collectivist authoritarian ideologies, perhaps it's not surprising that they run into similar issues of adherence.
My assumption is that Klein frequents libertarian circles given his affiliation with FEE, and I've found libertarians to be quite keen on mechanistic analysis — which I think is what he's going for here. You speak of people deserting Christianity, but he refers to some potential reasons why people are turning away from it. Personally I find the latter (mechanistic) approach more compelling because it centers its analysis on real imperfect people rather than abstract and idealized ideas — though both modes have their place. As a fellow centrist, I think you would greatly appreciate the YouTube video essays of ShortFatOtaku — especially his more recent ones on topics such as Antonio Gramsci, the cyclical nature of civilizations as a struggle between the dynamism of meritocracy and the stability of aristocracy, and applying different modes of political analysis (e.g., conservative vs. progressive) to the story arcs of videogames. Obviously there's plenty I disagree with him on, but from my experience watching him since before COVID, I always find him to be cogent, well-read, and good-faith.
An issue that I take with both your reply as well as Klein's original piece is the almost casual (and implicit) acceptance that one can arrive at a coherent and consistent ethical or social theory which is not at times inherently pathological. I come from the pure math world, and I've seen just how painstaking it is to properly define things, formulate questions appropriately, find counterexamples, and develop/apply machinery appropriate to solving the problem at hand. Christianity is full of issues of its own, and Klein seems to think that ethics can be arrived at satisfactorily through logic (linking objectivist ethics, which has its issues). I need to look more into ethical intuitionism, since it seems to be more in line with how people unknowingly develop their own moral codes.
"but about as useful as saying that true socialism has never been tried because people aren't devoting themselves strongly enough to it"
That's perfectly fair. At the end of the day the utility of a belief system is that the folks professing to believe it really do end up being better people. On average! There are always going to be disappointments. Communism is wonderful in theory but a disaster in practice so talking about the former is a waste of time.
"the consistency of Christian values with collectivist authoritarian ideologies"
I'd claim the opposite. One and all understand that Islam is a totalizing belief system, mosque and state are one and the same, and Allah chooses the caliph, so it's best not to argue with him. But there's nothing like that in Christianity. We seek God as individuals. Still, any 'state religion' will pander to the Glorious Leader, will it not?
It's certainly fair to measure belief systems by what effects it has on the average person, but in a way that could part of the reason why people turned away from Christianity in the latter half of the 20th century. As we became more and more wealthy, some people started to realize that some of the things which Christianity espoused about scientific and social issues were actually hindering people from being as good as they could be. But plenty of those who did this, if they didn't try to actually try to think about ethics, ended up throwing out the baby with the bathwater and becoming worse people.
Also I won't dispute that Islam is more totalizing than Christianity in its message, partially because I'm not well acquainted with the texts of either, but I want to again focus on the people. Islamic people are, on average, more inclined towards integration of religion with the state or at least enforcement of Islamic dictates via state power. But when it comes to Christianity, there's a pretty large variance which suggests to me that it doesn't say anything conclusive on the matter. Like most things, people will use quotes/values from their religion which suit their interests and tastes. However, I do think that Christianity can be relatively pro-hierarchy, which can manifest as support for a strong paternalistic state which gives leeway to favored sectors of society/the economy. You may find this interesting, a Christian friend sent it to me to help me locate where his beliefs lie: https://christoverall.com/article/longform/what-is-the-spectrum-of-major-views-on-political-theology-a-proposed-taxonomy-of-seven-views-on-religion-and-government/
"I think you would greatly appreciate the YouTube video essays of ShortFatOtaku"
I don't have the patience to watch videos, I like text because I can read 4X faster than I can listen.
"I come from the pure math world, and I've seen just how painstaking it is to properly define things, formulate questions appropriately, find counterexamples, and develop/apply machinery appropriate to solving the problem at hand."
But how does one apply logic to humanity? The commies thought that that's what they were doing.
"I like text because I can read 4X faster than I can listen."
I just watch/listen at 2.5x speed usually, which I find to be fast enough that I don't get annoyed with how slow it is but slow enough that I can take in the lion's share of the information. His content is really very worthwhile.
"But how does one apply logic to humanity? The commies thought that that's what they were doing."
I guess what I'm getting at is that it's a fool's errand to apply logic to humanity in a rigorous way. All you can do well is use logic to point out contradictions/hypocrisy, understand why things happened, say how things likely will happen given a certain set of inputs, and generate arguments for/against certain proscriptions predicated upon different moral/ethical suppositions. I still haven't seen a way to bridge the ought/is divide without introducing values.
The remedy is community, and recognition of the rights of those communities to exist and exercise their values in the public square. Our federalist system makes that possible, but it has been dismantled. We have discredited the legitimacy of religious institutions and even made illegal/immoral their participation in the public sphere--simultaneously we made the national government the sole arbiter of truth. Of course this was hijacked as a tool for political power, which has now gone off the rails of reason.
No, a national theocracy is not the answer, but a simultaneous dismantling of the power of the national government and empowering of state and local governments--that also show deference to the religious and non-religious beliefs of their respective communities, is.
It occurs to me that there is an interesting angle to Ayaan’s conversion. In a world where so many people believe that men can become women without actually changing their sex, it should be even easier to believe that atheists can become Christians without actually believing in God. We live in a postmodernist paradise,it seems.
After WW2, anthropologists like Gregory Bateson and Margaret Mead made great progress by developing more nuanced, pluralistic (postmodern), ecological understandings of non-western cultures (primitive, pagan, etc.).
The Hindu sacred cow was one example. Mead/Bateson saw sacredness as having an unexpressed, natural, environmental and evolutionary logic: by prohibiting the death of cows, milk and fertilizer would always be available, or something like that, ensuring survival of the peasants.
That kind of early postmodern anthropology could have been extended to more complex, nuanced understandings of the ecological evolution of western religion*, but instead it mutated into the cancer of neo-marxist "wokeism".
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* the theoretical framework of ecological-evolutionary ideas was well developed anyway by Gerald Lenski:
One feature of Lenski's work that has won fairly wide acceptance among sociologists, as reflected in its incorporation into leading introductory textbooks in the discipline, is his ecological and evolutionary typology of human societies ...
This typology is based on a combination of two elements: (1) the kind of environment to which the society must adapt, and (2) its level of technological development. In its most basic form, Lenski identifies seven types of societies:
re: "it is the ethics of self-sacrifice, of altruism, that one should live for others rather than themselves (reread Jordan’s quote above). All Christians properly following their doctrine believe in the ethics of altruism; it’s the core “virtue” of the faith represented in Christ on the cross. It’s what separates a society of Christian ethics from its Greco-Roman predecessor. "
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Christian (and all Axial-contemplative religions, including Buddhism) are separated from previous religions (and the previous mode of tribal-dynastic social forms) by SALVATION and the ritual RENUNCIATION of evil, since and depravity. (like it or not)
As explained in another comment, science tells us that ALTRUISM (inhibition of self) is an evolved, biological moral in humans (as applied within kinship groups), and thus a universal.
What Axial (see Karl Jaspers) Renunciate-Contemplative religion did was to increase the circle of social trust beyond kinship groups.
Purity myths (which hold that the world is spiritually impure and full of evil and sin) evolved into RENUNCIATE, SALVATION religions to enable agrarian city states to further expand the circle of social trust across multiple tribes, forming a larger social systems that were more able to repel nomadic "pagan" marauders of the kind that began to flourish after the Bronze Age Collapse.
Note that the "pagan" culture system had been disrupted by techno-economic change (farming, settlement), just as the agrarian social form later was disrupted by industrialization.
This morning I “wrote” a few books of short stories (before driving to work) in the style of Franz Kafka, one German one in English, with a toolkit I’ve been refining since 1993 that creates literature with an network of AI agents - a 150 page paperback by any author is about 20 minutes (without synthetic illustrations, midjourney stretches the automation to an hour) and I discovered my new favorite word, dystheism.
The stories were quite beautiful. A bit:
“In the hushed corners of St. Raphael’s, where the stained glass cast a mosaic of guilt across the pews, Father Josef found himself in uncharted repentance. Upon his decision, a black box had been installed — a flawless cuboid of silence, save for the whirring of circuits and the glow of a soft blue interface. This was the modern confessional, an Artificial Intelligence programmed with the vast canon law and penitential consolations, ready to absorb the sins of a troubled flock.”
We of course know where that’s going....
Ayaan has a bad case of dystheism perhaps.
“Belief” if that’s what it is, in a disembodied chaotic all-powerful intelligence... Philip K. Dick called it “Valis”. Rational people got past that hopefully at the end of childhood or before. Children think all objects are animate, that behavior sort of disappears with nervous system remodeling at puberty.
There's a lot here, and at least some of it seems to be tied to a beef with a (former) friend of yours, so I'll just lay out some objections to the idea that Wokism isn't filling a god-hole. (BTW, I'm an atheist, but a reluctant one--I wish there was a benevolent father figure looking out for at least some of us. I'd love to believe that. There just isn't.) Since October 7, we've watched Westerners demonstrate that they are suicidally committed to something (Queers for Palestine marching for people who explicitly tell them that they'd love to toss them off the nearest building; young women chanting "They've got tanks; *we've* got hang-gliders" about rapist-murderers). Wokism has original sin in varying degrees by identity caste except black or brown women, preferably ones born male or engaged in sex work. Unlike Christianity, however, there is no redemption from the original sin. What word would we give to a belief system so all-consuming that it can cause people to believe in original sin and take positions as dramatically opposed to their self-interest that it might as well be "Chickens for KFC" or "Mice for Outlawing the Spaying and Neutering of Cats"? If not religion....what, exactly, do we call that? Some would call it a lack of reason, but these people universally believe that theirs is the reasonable position, which is why Colin, the owner of this Substack, literally cannot get a job at a university because he believes in biology. If this isn't a religion, it's something so like one that saying it's not a religion seems like a distinction without a difference.
Hi Holly. I don’t disagree with any of this. Yes, wokeness is a religion, and yes much of the extremism with which people spread it is likely an attempt to fill the god-hole. As I write, “I’d agree their fervor could be filling the god-hole religion left behind.”
I speak more to the idea of wokeness as a religion in my first article in Reality’s Last Stand. Check it out here: https://www.realityslaststand.com/p/why-the-right-needs-more-atheism?utm_source=/search/klein&utm_medium=reader2
But just because people “believe” their position is reasonable doesn’t mean that it is. We need actual reason, and it’s objectively determinable what this looks like. Formal logic has rules that the woke trample all over in their terrible arguments.
WOKE IS AN INVERTED CLASS WAR, RELIGION IS A SIDE DISH
Wokeism is largely a result of the intentional destruction of morals and high-social-trust by psychopathic and sociopathic (Cluster B) neo-communists in their "long march through the institutions".
(see James Lindsay's recent blog post on "DEGROWTH" and Marcuse's scheme to merge neo-marxism with the corporate-state.)
Wokeism is largely funded by corrupt, creepy crawly billionaires (they love to mutilate trans kids) and their zombie cargo cult of LUXURY-DIGITAL-GNOSTICISM (see NS Lyons).
The whole point of wokeism is to create "cultural revolution" (Mao) via an INVERTED CLASS WAR (Joel Kotkin, Musa Al-Gharbi) of the "woke" wealthy elite (and their cultural storm troopers, the PMC {Ehrenreich}) against the working and middle class.
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Why classical rationalism (Enlightenment, "progress", etc.) has failed and needs to become meta-rational in response to disruption from techno-economic change and disruption from postmodern social conditions:
https://metarationality.com/
John Vervaeke's work goes into the same issues (the meaning crisis, "systems colonize lifeworld" Habermas, etc.) from a more academic perspective.
We do need actual reason, which Woke seems to have abandoned. However, you incorrectly put Christian faith on the side of Wokism thinking it to be an unthinking, unreasoning faith without logic. That’s false.
Sure, some individuals believe in Christianity without reason or logic, but the same can be said for many atheists who haven’t fully thought out their position and just parrot talking points from prominent atheists.
The atheist position is equally a faith claim. You reason that God cannot exist because you PRESUPPOSE that anything supernatural doesn’t exist. Of course natural phenomenon cannot give full evidence to supernatural phenomenon. We can’t prove anything either way, but we can look at all available evidence and judge what the preponderance of evidence points to by evaluating it with reason and logic.
There is a preponderance of evidence that points to a reasonable conclusion that God exists (especially if you don’t presuppose that the supernatural isn’t possible) and volumes of evidence that the Bible is reliable. You, the atheist, may not find this evidence compelling enough to believe, but that is vastly difference that “no evidence” and “no logic” that is blatantly untrue of the Christian faith.
If you don’t want to believe in God or you don’t find the evidence compelling, that’s ok. But at least:
(1) own your presuppositions
(2) don’t pretend that there is “no evidence” when that is blatantly untrue (instead argue why you think the evidence is not compelling to you)
(3) don’t insult Christianity by confusing reasonable faith with “blind faith.” Faith can and should be underlined by reason and logic. Reason assesses, faith trusts. Reason assesses whether or not something or someone is trustworthy, and then faith believes that certain things are true in light of the reasons. Not blind faith, but a reasonable step of trust. Because you can’t definitely prove that God does not exist, you are using reason to assess and then having faith that certain things are true (in your case, having faith that God does not exist).
Stop conflating Christian faith with blind faith. It’s not. To those who say that if we use reason then we leave no room for faith-- that is a gross misunderstanding of “faith.” Faith is not wishing. Faith isn’t way of knowing, it’s a way of trusting. But you need to assess (reason) first to determine if something is worth trusting in.
Jesus didn’t come to earth and simply say “Trust that I am Lord” without giving any evidence for it. The signs and miracles, and of course, the resurrection and appearance of Jesus to hundred of people after the resurrection where all given as EVIDENCE for people to evaluate to determine whether they then believed that Jesus is who He says He is. Jesus also tells his disciples to study the Old Testament Scriptures for more evidence that Jesus is the Messiah.
A more specific example can be found in Mark 2, where Jesus says, “In order that you may know that the Son of Man has the power to forgive sins, I say to you, take up your pallet and go home.” He didn’t just say, “Trust me on blind faith that I am able to forgive sins.” The act of healing was something they could see to secure the reality, the knowledge, the certainty, the fact of something they couldn’t see—forgiveness of sin. It was evidence of Jesus’s power. And it was this that inspired their acts of trust. They had knowledge that sin could be forgiven, and this is precisely why they were able to exercise trust.
The opposite of faith is not reason; the opposite of faith is unbelief, or lack of trust. The opposite of reason is not faith; the opposite of reason is irrationality.
As a Jew who came to belief in Christianity in his mid-forties, I would tell you there's plenty of evidence for God. It takes some diligence to study it out and weigh it, and most skeptics don't want to bother. Others would like it to be different and more "scientific" evidence, but it is not.
After 20 of sifting through various apologetic arguments, dinner which are good but none of which are slam-dunks and any of which I could come up with a counter to, here is the way I would recommend doing the research.
a) Watch testimony videos on YouTube. Some object that testimony is subjective, and it is. But as you watch you start to sort out the truth, and first-person testimony has much more power than we would give it credit for. Where to start? Oddly, the Christian Broadcasting Network. I am not a fan of Pat Robertson but his organization has done a terrific job of producing videos recounting testimonies, miracle accounts, etc.
An organization called DeLafe ministries has a huge number of testimonies online. They are perhaps overlong and not slick, but they are good ones.
I like Michael Knowles' interviews featuring ex-fortune tellers, present day exorcists, and any others whose theme is Christianity and not politics Knowles is a conservative and has somewhat of a smart-ass demeanor that could be slightly off-putting, but he interviews good people and is quite intelligent.
Finally, be sure to review videos featuring Father Vince Lampert and other exorcists from the Catholic church. He recounts his experiences doing many exorcisms which include supernatural happenings, and his sober and down to earth presentation is hard to disbelieve.
There is a ton of great video information out there, but researching it is a journey, it's not an afternoon's effort. But for a determined seeker it is sufficient.
One caveat would be that since Christians are human, sometimes they are going to make faith-related pronouncements that are simply wrong. Avoid making the mistake of writing off a person's whole testimony because you see them to be wrong from time to time.
Let me know if I can be or service.
There is plenty of evidence for the Bible and for God. Some great places to explore:
Cold-Case Christianity by J. Warner Wallace,
New Evidence that Demands a Verdict by Josh and Sean McDowell, any of Lee Strobel’s books, Stand to Reason website by Greg Koukl, and work by Stephen Meyer.
I get incredibly frustrated by atheists like Klein who want to degrade Christianity as having “untenable faith claims” supposedly without reason, but fail to acknowledge their own faith claims inherent to atheism! The atheist presupposes that nothing supernatural exists, that only the natural world is all there is and all that can be. But can they prove this with evidence? No. And they won’t be able to. But it’s still faith claim. And they can even argue that it *may* be a reasonable faith claim. But it’s not a *more* reasonable faith claim than the claim that a supernatural God create the Universe.
Thank you for this response to Ayaan Hirsi Ali's recent article regarding her conversion to Christianity. I will start by saying that, like Ayaan, I would love to be able to be a part of a spiritual community, but I have never been able to squeeze myself into the thought prisons that organized religions generally become. The same is true with respect to political parties.
I do not have the privilege of knowing Ayaan and I do not want to criticize her choice of religion. What struck me most about her article is its similarity to other recently published accounts of conversions of former "Progressive Democrats" to GOP or "conservative" affiliation. (Sasha Stone, for example).
I can appreciate the felt need to belong to something bigger than oneself, an intellectual and emotional "home" that includes the perceived power of numbers and longevity to oppose woke tyranny. There is a lot of felt tension for many of us in not being able to enter such a home. Yet all of these systems have tended to develop the same authoritarianism and internal pressure towards conformity that repels individuals like me. Those tendencies appear to not be accidental, but rather are essential elements of what appeals to so many members of religious and political organizations.
As our society continues to disintegrate, we are seeing more attempts at self-conversion to thought constructs that offer a promise of being safe harbors from the vulnerabilities of uncertainty, isolation and attack by outsiders. I kind of envy those who can pull off this kind of conversion, but adopting the beliefs of Old Time Religion is not the answer for me.
This is a very insightful comment and you and I share a lot in common.
Thanks!
Me too. I like to pray because it relieves my anxiety temporarily, but I pray to me 😁
"Every single one told me this wasn’t sufficient to be a Christian" because they aren't 1st century Christians. Early Christians did indeed attempt to convert others to a mystical or symbolic idea of Jesus. They quickly found that literal-Jesus was much more impressive to the unconverted, and so the gospels reflect a literal belief, calling anyone who says that Jesus has not come in the flesh (i.e. literally walked the earth) "antichrist."
Fascinating. I will need to look more into this.
Richard Carrier is the place to start. Whether or not you adopt the mythicist view, his scholarship on this point is solid.
From your writing I expected more depth of thought, but you failed here I'm sorry to point out. Why would you expect Ayaan to put her entire understanding of theology in a piece written for a different purpose? You did catch that purpose (atheism is insufficient to help in difficult times) but expected more? The way I read her piece suggests she is happy to have something in her understanding that will help her in the current madness, not that a "Christian resurgence" is necessary. And your grasp of Christian faith is also uninformed. The deity of Christ is a central tenant, so why expect anyone to bless your 'metaphor' idea? You are better than this, I've seen it in you.
There is a certain level of -- one might say 'panic' -- on the part of the atheists that they have lost a devotee back to the Old Religion, no? Protestants panicked the same way when someone returned to Catholicism.
I am struck by "every single one told me this was insufficient to be a Christian". I lead children and youth ministry at an Anglican (Episcopal) church, where I am careful to teach kids that the supernatural stuff in the Bible is indeed metaphor. I explain the concept of myth (which they no longer learn about in school) -- that certain kinds of stories are not meant to be literally true, but are spiritually true because they tell us something important about the human experience. I emphasize that faith does not require total certainty, and that total certainty is not the point of faith. Salvation in the "afterlife" is irrelevant compared to spiritual salvation in this lifetime -- freedom from despair, and from behaviour which draws us out of "alignment" with God, ie with what our deepest selves know to be right. So it would seem that you spoke to a fairly narrow sampling of Christian, Jake, because I know many who would not care whether you believe in the factually if a virgin birth or a literal rising from the dead. There are Christians who do not believe those are the principal tenets of belief. To be frank, I think such people have little imagination, and religion is an outflow of imagination. We may think of imagination as being the source of invention only; I say it can also be what uncovers deeper truths... If someone wants to participate in church on the basis of their belief in the importance of the Christ concept, as opposed to belief in a supernatural occurrence, why the HELL should that matter to people who DO believe literally? I know for sure that my church is full of people who are there for different reasons and believe in different ways. The important thing is that we *show up for each other*. We walk the walk much more than we talk the talk.
wait a second, the last time this was tried repackaging Christianity into an ethical system without "untenable faith claims" it came-out as wokeness... am I wrong? Tell me how I'm wrong! Christianity is the extended phenotype our genome needs to thrive, that's been demonstrated.
Atheists in my feed are really coming out of the woodwork in response to Ali’s announcement. They seem desperate for it not to be true.
I’ve got a lot to say and might come back later, but for now would just like to point out that I clicked on the author’s link to an article that claims to have found a list of “errors” in the Bible. The first one I bothered to look into (that the Bible mentions Kings before there was a king in Israel) is nonsensical because God was telling them what to do in the future. Presumably the article fits with the author’s confirmation bias and therefore there was no need to actually look into any of the claims. You could say the author accepted the claims “by faith”
Just 31% of Evangelicals accept the preposterously weak argument that climate change is predominantly driven by human activity. Yet 90% of atheists accept it--and thus many of the insane policy prescriptions that go with it. Your theory that that American Christianity is impotent and easily co-opted has holes in it.
What you refer to as "secular Christianity" was the norm for most of the 20th Century. Neither I, my parents or grandparents believed in the literal truth of the bible although we went to church every Sunday, and we were like most Americans in that respect. When biblical fundamentalism emerged in the 1960s and 70s its adherents were referred to as "Jesus freaks" precisely because their beliefs were considered freakish (ie rare). Fundamentalism reached a pinnacle when Jimmy Carter was elected President but part of his unpopularity came from his fundamentalist religious views which most Americans considered embarrassing. Biblical fundamentalism continued as a cultural phenomenon on TV for several decades but most Christians did not embrace it. The fundamentalist minority only created a straw man for the "New Atheists" to attack as they hacked away at the Christian foundations of the nation. They "killed God" by questioning the literal accuracy of a scripture that few believed to be literal anyway, and in the process gave birth to the wokeism, neo-Marxism and neo-feudalism of their corporate masters. Now we all have to live with the consequences of a civilization bereft of its divinity. Perhaps we can restore stability to our civilization by returning to the secular Christianity you have rediscovered, but it is far easier to destroy magnificence than to resurrect it.
I recently read Stephen Meyer's "Return to the God Hypothesis". It is a strong hypothesis that there is a Creator. A Creator who can create out of nothingness - who is there - outside of time and matter, is so outside my ability to truly comprehend, I need to give my respect. The complexity of this world and universe can be watched through the lense of math and science but it's full understanding of why can only be explained by The Creator. Why did the Creator make earth with all of its beauty, love, ugliness and hate. Why not create beings who had no free will? I work in the medical field and I see good and evil in humanity (myself included) everyday. Everyday I help people and show my capacity to love and forgive. Everyday, I swear under my breath at some policy, person or frustration. I look over my mistakes and failings and hang onto the failings of others. I am imperfect like the rest of mankind. Why did the Creator allow for this? It did not have to be designed this way.
The Bible states that man was created in God's image. A Creator with such abilities is certainly not a programed robot. I am not a programed robot, a Stepford wife. I have the capacity for love and hate, forgiveness and anger.
Because of the works of John Lennox, Sean McDowell, Stephen Meyers, Greg Koukl, Christorpher Yuan, Chuck Colson and many others, I do believe in the God of the Bible. I believe Jesus died, was buried and rose again - witnessed by many. His disciples never swayed from this (Wow!) nor did the early believer's first opponent, Saul (changed to Paul). I feel the need to point out where my view differs from the author. I do believe there is evidence has demonstrates the fact-claims in the Bible to be plainly TRUE. I don't think that is a stretch for a Creator that can pull off the Universe and Earth with all of its complexities.
Help me to understand why a political party has do be aligned with a religion? Acknowledging the legacy of the Christian community does not make you a Christian, ask Tom Holland. Stating that you are a Christian does not necessarily make you a Christian. Many people use that definition for themselves because of family tradition, not true understanding of the Nicene Creed. I could actually repeat the Nicene Creed faster than anyone I knew, long before I had an understanding of it.
I am grateful for people like this author who want to explore the definition of words and motives for beliefs. That character trait reflects a Creator who thinks, cares and has substance behind what is done in their name. At the same time, the Creator sees that heart and The Creator will decide the eternal fate of all of us: professing Christians, Atheist, Communist, Marxist and Woke-ist.
I will pray for American and all of it's people. What I know in my heart is that even if I am killed by some radical group, God's remnant will remain until we are all taken home - where all of these image bearers can express to The Creator their true gratitude for this amazing world.
This is an excellent essay but wrong. Not wrong in the binary true/false way but it misses the mark subtly and it will be a challenge to explain why. It would take hours to do it properly but let me just take a few potshots:
> While far-leftism may be a disproportionately atheistic movement, if Christianity is supposed to be a bulwark against it, it’s historically done a terrible job.
An abandoned fortress can't protect anything. Christianity is not a 'thing' it is only as strong as the people who comprise it. Because Christians have not stood strong against wokeness, wokeness has prevailed. The fault is not with Christianity but with Christians. As the Bible continually points out, the Believers fail more often than they succeed and this is an example.
> The allegation that far-leftism arises in secular nations because people need to find something to fill the god-hole simply isn’t true. On the contrary, far-leftism predominantly arises in Christian nations
Sure, but that's because wokeness (and communism really tho it's harder to see) is a Christian heresy. One expects Christian heresies in Christian lands, no? Just as atheism opens the door to Nazism so Christianity opens the door to all variations of leftism. It is not the 'fault' of atheism that some people will take 'survival of the fittest' and build a political movement around it -- there's no helping that. Nor is it the fault of Christianity that the 'socialist' values that it embodies will give birth to certain deviations such as communism. One might say that communism is an overly idealistic Christianity without God.
> This fundamental belief ties together both classical Marxism and its modern, woke, culturally Marxist variant.
Exactly. They are Christian heresies.
> how could she so wrongly come to believe that Christianity is an effective bulwark against leftism?
As a parent is responsible for both her child's bad behavior, and yet is the one tho has the responsibility to discipline that child, so Christianity both gave birth to leftism but also is best positioned to correct the errors of the left.
> It’s not that we need to create values, it’s that Christianity is failing miserably at sustaining the ones we already have.
As above, no, it is Christians who have failed. They were unprepared for the assault the left waged on them. They ignored Jesus' command to 'keep on the watch'. They did not realize until it was (almost?) too late that the left intended to destroy the foundations of western civilization. Waking up, they panicked and, unforgivably, ran into the arms of the Disgusting Thing for comfort.
> I believe that when you’re trying to sail across an ocean, you don’t attach yourself to a sinking ship just because it’s always sailed well in the past.
On the contrary, the ship is sinking *because* the crew have abandoned their duties to sail her. One might say that she is not abandoned because she is sinking, she is sinking because she has been abandoned.
Meanwhile, let us not fight among ourselves. Let the atheists who believe in civilization and the Christians likewise stand together against both jihad and wokeism. No hysteria please about the Christians burning the atheists at the stake if 'we' win -- Christianity also gave birth to the Enlightenment -- we know that all souls must be free.
Thank you for this reminder that we need more than anything to form coalitions that focus on our common goals to preserve both our civilization and our freedom.
We are being torn apart by centrifugal forces, and the efforts to counteract the disintegration include movements towards authoritarian centralization and coerced conformity of thought. We need to stay with the anxiety created by uncertainty and threat to our foundations, and not seek security at the expense of everything else that matters.
I think back to the days when the left and the right had polite disagreements on what the price of a bus ticket should be. Right now all sane people are my comrades. The common enemy is the forces that would destroy civilization as we know it: The woke left, the Trumpist right, and Islam. The center must hold.
I am absolutely with you in this struggle.
Again, no evolutionary theory or related biology? Population genetics???
The OP doesn't have anything to do with science, and your response doesn't either.
(I don't know why non-scientific arguments are being made on the substack of a biologist.)
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Some social scientists disagree that Enlightenment values are rooted in Christianity, and provide evidence that the Enlightenment was primarily the gathered remnants of pre-Christian european culture (such as Greco-Roman rationalism).
Others see the Enlightenment as the result of outbreeding and the ban on cousin marriage, which changed the gene pool in NW Europe, making it more "classically liberal" (Henrich @ Harvard's WEIRD model).
(Also see Robert Kegan's stage theory.)
Christianity got dragged along for the ride, and to some extent was able to adapt to the deeply disruptive aspects of modern rationalism (in the context of the situation described by the WEIRD model).
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You didn't account for several sources of evil, depravity and sin:
1. fundamentalists
2. neocons
3. ultra zionists
4. tanzanians that practice albino cannibalism
The biggest thing absent is techno-economic disruption of legacy sense-making systems.
Both mythic religion (Kegan stage 3) and modern rationalism (stage 4) are NOT anti-fragile to disruption under postmodern social conditions (stage 4.5).
Here is one summary of the urgent need to get past pre-liberal myth, and liberal rationalism, and postmodern relativism, to Kegan "stage 5" awareness and culture:
https://metarationality.com/stem-fluidity-bridge
Heavy link! I'll try to get thru it.
"(I don't know why non-scientific arguments are being made on the substack of a biologist.)"
Ask the biologist who published the original essay, it is not about science either but social questions. Seems to me Colin can publish whatever he wants.
"Some social scientists disagree that Enlightenment values are rooted in Christianity,"
The answer isn't going to be yes or no, is it? There's going to be a spectrum among Christians from active advancement of the Enlightenment right across to moral enemy opposition. And quite obviously there were more vectors than religion at play. What is undeniable is that the Enlightenment happened in Christian Europe and no where else.
"You didn't account for several sources of evil, depravity and sin:"
I didn't write the essay, I merely commented on some aspects of it. I didn't account for lots of things.
That is my point:
It is about science (DNA, population genetics). About the only thing connecting the Enlightenment to Christianity is a weird accident of history: the early church banned cousin marriage, which resulted in an outbred gene pool, in which "liberal personality traits" were selected for because they increased survival of higher IQ/liberal people in that gene pool (long story, again see Henrich @ Harvard's WEIRD model).
Christianity was layered in on top of older genes and "cultural DNA". The Enlightenment rejected Christianity's basic feature, "Alter and Crown" (conformity to social hierarchy) and revived AGENTIC VALUES (individual achievement, etc.).
A culture war and actual wars resulted that went on for 100s of years, including the British Civil War (1600s) and the American Revolution.
If Christianity was so happy with the Enlightenment, why were they at war for so long???
re: "I didn't account for lots of things."
Yes, including the fact that many Christians will cherry pick data to fit their narrative, missionary tendencies and confirmation biases, to the detriment of accurate history.
It's the sort of thing where you can find whatever you want to support your own bias. I don't think a genuinely dispassionate view of the question is even possible. But as I said, the bottom line is that the Enlightenment did arise in the Christian world and nowhere else.
Still it's interesting to discuss. You mention the American Revolution. They were Enlightenment dudes, to be sure, but most of them also very Christian. But there again you can find whatever you want. I've seen the American FF painted as devout Christians, and also as rabid atheists.
RELIGION WAS REFITTED, PAINFULLY, TO NEW, LIBERAL REALITIES
Beating a dead horse ...... another attempt at the relevant scientific facts:
biological and cultural evolution is:
- variation
- selection
- retention
1. the early church got lucky in causing a historical accident: banning cousin marriage (in the peasant and urban commoner classes). that ban was not "theological", it was political, intended to weaken the power of clans. political and religious elites continued to hold power via cousin marriage, so there was no coherent theological justification. elites did frequently try to justify their politics with claims that they had divine favor, and in most cases such claims were absurd to a rational observer.
2. banning cousin marriage resulted in an outbred gene pool with higher variability.
3. selective pressures for INCREASED SURVIVAL ensured that genes for higher IQ (to satisfy demands for increased literacy and numeracy) and "liberal" personality traits were retained in the gene pool and that genes for "clannish" (pre-liberal) personality traits were DESELECTED.
4. a feedback loop developed in which higher IQ commoners with classically liberal personality traits, including holding to ideas such as peasants' rights (see Leonard Liggio), formed HIGH-SOCIAL-TRUST practices, including forming Constitutional order (to replace fealty oaths and moots), forming educational and research institutions, institutions (legal and insurance) to support market economics, such as increased river and sea trade (German Free Cities, Hanseatic League), new, advanced agricultural practices and other technologies, and so forth engaged in more SELF INHIBITION by delaying marriage and child bearing. In plagues for instance, the more affluent urban commoners had fewer children, but born to parents well past their teenage years who were better able to protect their children.
While classical liberalism flourished and provided economic advancement, (pre-liberal) clannishness literally died off in something like 33% of the peasant population during plagues, wars and food shortages.
The more classically liberal the gene pool became, the stronger HIGH-SOCIAL-TRUST practices and institutions became, conferring even more success and greater survival to liberal personality traits.
5. RELIGION WAS REFITTED, PAINFULLY, TO NEW, LIBERAL REALITIES
See the history of various wars and class conflicts along the theme of Catholic-vs-Protestants (such as Spain-vs-England)
The scientific data contradicts both traditional mythic narratives AND it contradicts traditional materialist-atheist narratives.
That opens up possibilities for the "meta" (integrative) values that the author admits he doesn't understand (that transcend the left-vs-right and religion-vs-science narratives).
About your common motif that some of his critiques are not the fault of Christianity but rather of Christians, I guess it's technically true, but about as useful as saying that true socialism has never been tried because people aren't devoting themselves strongly enough to it. And given his references to arguments made as to the consistency of Christian values with collectivist authoritarian ideologies, perhaps it's not surprising that they run into similar issues of adherence.
My assumption is that Klein frequents libertarian circles given his affiliation with FEE, and I've found libertarians to be quite keen on mechanistic analysis — which I think is what he's going for here. You speak of people deserting Christianity, but he refers to some potential reasons why people are turning away from it. Personally I find the latter (mechanistic) approach more compelling because it centers its analysis on real imperfect people rather than abstract and idealized ideas — though both modes have their place. As a fellow centrist, I think you would greatly appreciate the YouTube video essays of ShortFatOtaku — especially his more recent ones on topics such as Antonio Gramsci, the cyclical nature of civilizations as a struggle between the dynamism of meritocracy and the stability of aristocracy, and applying different modes of political analysis (e.g., conservative vs. progressive) to the story arcs of videogames. Obviously there's plenty I disagree with him on, but from my experience watching him since before COVID, I always find him to be cogent, well-read, and good-faith.
An issue that I take with both your reply as well as Klein's original piece is the almost casual (and implicit) acceptance that one can arrive at a coherent and consistent ethical or social theory which is not at times inherently pathological. I come from the pure math world, and I've seen just how painstaking it is to properly define things, formulate questions appropriately, find counterexamples, and develop/apply machinery appropriate to solving the problem at hand. Christianity is full of issues of its own, and Klein seems to think that ethics can be arrived at satisfactorily through logic (linking objectivist ethics, which has its issues). I need to look more into ethical intuitionism, since it seems to be more in line with how people unknowingly develop their own moral codes.
"but about as useful as saying that true socialism has never been tried because people aren't devoting themselves strongly enough to it"
That's perfectly fair. At the end of the day the utility of a belief system is that the folks professing to believe it really do end up being better people. On average! There are always going to be disappointments. Communism is wonderful in theory but a disaster in practice so talking about the former is a waste of time.
"the consistency of Christian values with collectivist authoritarian ideologies"
I'd claim the opposite. One and all understand that Islam is a totalizing belief system, mosque and state are one and the same, and Allah chooses the caliph, so it's best not to argue with him. But there's nothing like that in Christianity. We seek God as individuals. Still, any 'state religion' will pander to the Glorious Leader, will it not?
Such a delightful post! More later.
It's certainly fair to measure belief systems by what effects it has on the average person, but in a way that could part of the reason why people turned away from Christianity in the latter half of the 20th century. As we became more and more wealthy, some people started to realize that some of the things which Christianity espoused about scientific and social issues were actually hindering people from being as good as they could be. But plenty of those who did this, if they didn't try to actually try to think about ethics, ended up throwing out the baby with the bathwater and becoming worse people.
Also I won't dispute that Islam is more totalizing than Christianity in its message, partially because I'm not well acquainted with the texts of either, but I want to again focus on the people. Islamic people are, on average, more inclined towards integration of religion with the state or at least enforcement of Islamic dictates via state power. But when it comes to Christianity, there's a pretty large variance which suggests to me that it doesn't say anything conclusive on the matter. Like most things, people will use quotes/values from their religion which suit their interests and tastes. However, I do think that Christianity can be relatively pro-hierarchy, which can manifest as support for a strong paternalistic state which gives leeway to favored sectors of society/the economy. You may find this interesting, a Christian friend sent it to me to help me locate where his beliefs lie: https://christoverall.com/article/longform/what-is-the-spectrum-of-major-views-on-political-theology-a-proposed-taxonomy-of-seven-views-on-religion-and-government/
"I think you would greatly appreciate the YouTube video essays of ShortFatOtaku"
I don't have the patience to watch videos, I like text because I can read 4X faster than I can listen.
"I come from the pure math world, and I've seen just how painstaking it is to properly define things, formulate questions appropriately, find counterexamples, and develop/apply machinery appropriate to solving the problem at hand."
But how does one apply logic to humanity? The commies thought that that's what they were doing.
"I like text because I can read 4X faster than I can listen."
I just watch/listen at 2.5x speed usually, which I find to be fast enough that I don't get annoyed with how slow it is but slow enough that I can take in the lion's share of the information. His content is really very worthwhile.
"But how does one apply logic to humanity? The commies thought that that's what they were doing."
I guess what I'm getting at is that it's a fool's errand to apply logic to humanity in a rigorous way. All you can do well is use logic to point out contradictions/hypocrisy, understand why things happened, say how things likely will happen given a certain set of inputs, and generate arguments for/against certain proscriptions predicated upon different moral/ethical suppositions. I still haven't seen a way to bridge the ought/is divide without introducing values.
The remedy is community, and recognition of the rights of those communities to exist and exercise their values in the public square. Our federalist system makes that possible, but it has been dismantled. We have discredited the legitimacy of religious institutions and even made illegal/immoral their participation in the public sphere--simultaneously we made the national government the sole arbiter of truth. Of course this was hijacked as a tool for political power, which has now gone off the rails of reason.
No, a national theocracy is not the answer, but a simultaneous dismantling of the power of the national government and empowering of state and local governments--that also show deference to the religious and non-religious beliefs of their respective communities, is.
But yeah, good luck with that.
It occurs to me that there is an interesting angle to Ayaan’s conversion. In a world where so many people believe that men can become women without actually changing their sex, it should be even easier to believe that atheists can become Christians without actually believing in God. We live in a postmodernist paradise,it seems.
After WW2, anthropologists like Gregory Bateson and Margaret Mead made great progress by developing more nuanced, pluralistic (postmodern), ecological understandings of non-western cultures (primitive, pagan, etc.).
The Hindu sacred cow was one example. Mead/Bateson saw sacredness as having an unexpressed, natural, environmental and evolutionary logic: by prohibiting the death of cows, milk and fertilizer would always be available, or something like that, ensuring survival of the peasants.
That kind of early postmodern anthropology could have been extended to more complex, nuanced understandings of the ecological evolution of western religion*, but instead it mutated into the cancer of neo-marxist "wokeism".
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* the theoretical framework of ecological-evolutionary ideas was well developed anyway by Gerald Lenski:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerhard_Lenski#Ecological-evolutionary_theory
excerpt:
One feature of Lenski's work that has won fairly wide acceptance among sociologists, as reflected in its incorporation into leading introductory textbooks in the discipline, is his ecological and evolutionary typology of human societies ...
This typology is based on a combination of two elements: (1) the kind of environment to which the society must adapt, and (2) its level of technological development. In its most basic form, Lenski identifies seven types of societies:
Societies of hunters and gatherers
Horticultural societies
Agricultural or agrarian societies
Industrial societies
Fishing societies
Herding societies
Maritime societies.
...
re: "it is the ethics of self-sacrifice, of altruism, that one should live for others rather than themselves (reread Jordan’s quote above). All Christians properly following their doctrine believe in the ethics of altruism; it’s the core “virtue” of the faith represented in Christ on the cross. It’s what separates a society of Christian ethics from its Greco-Roman predecessor. "
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Christian (and all Axial-contemplative religions, including Buddhism) are separated from previous religions (and the previous mode of tribal-dynastic social forms) by SALVATION and the ritual RENUNCIATION of evil, since and depravity. (like it or not)
As explained in another comment, science tells us that ALTRUISM (inhibition of self) is an evolved, biological moral in humans (as applied within kinship groups), and thus a universal.
What Axial (see Karl Jaspers) Renunciate-Contemplative religion did was to increase the circle of social trust beyond kinship groups.
Purity myths (which hold that the world is spiritually impure and full of evil and sin) evolved into RENUNCIATE, SALVATION religions to enable agrarian city states to further expand the circle of social trust across multiple tribes, forming a larger social systems that were more able to repel nomadic "pagan" marauders of the kind that began to flourish after the Bronze Age Collapse.
Note that the "pagan" culture system had been disrupted by techno-economic change (farming, settlement), just as the agrarian social form later was disrupted by industrialization.
This morning I “wrote” a few books of short stories (before driving to work) in the style of Franz Kafka, one German one in English, with a toolkit I’ve been refining since 1993 that creates literature with an network of AI agents - a 150 page paperback by any author is about 20 minutes (without synthetic illustrations, midjourney stretches the automation to an hour) and I discovered my new favorite word, dystheism.
The stories were quite beautiful. A bit:
“In the hushed corners of St. Raphael’s, where the stained glass cast a mosaic of guilt across the pews, Father Josef found himself in uncharted repentance. Upon his decision, a black box had been installed — a flawless cuboid of silence, save for the whirring of circuits and the glow of a soft blue interface. This was the modern confessional, an Artificial Intelligence programmed with the vast canon law and penitential consolations, ready to absorb the sins of a troubled flock.”
We of course know where that’s going....
Ayaan has a bad case of dystheism perhaps.
“Belief” if that’s what it is, in a disembodied chaotic all-powerful intelligence... Philip K. Dick called it “Valis”. Rational people got past that hopefully at the end of childhood or before. Children think all objects are animate, that behavior sort of disappears with nervous system remodeling at puberty.
Dystheism.