tdaxp

Ralph Peter's June 25, 2007 article, "Faith's civil wars," has already drawn criticism from Curtis. Let me pile on.

Peters writes:

The great religious civil war of this century afflicts not only Islam but also Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism and Buddhism. It's the conflict between those in every faith who promote a punitive, disciplinary deity and those who worship a merciful, loving god. Not all confrontations will be violent, but many will be venomous.

No, it's not.

There are few Christians are bigoted against my faith as the Jack Chick organization, for instance:

Indeed there are many Roman Catholics who, in spite of their beliefs, looks past it all and reach out by faith to the living Saviour. Oh yes, such accept Christ as their personal Saviour, are born again and leave the old life behind. Such we call "converted former Roman Catholics."

But the question here is are there any saved Roman Catholics? That is, being a saved person and remaining in Roman Catholicism.

Just as you cannot mix fire and water, neither can one be a saved person and remain a faithful Roman Catholic.

But here's the thing. Jack Chick is not trying to kill me. And he does not apologize for those that do.

There is a real global insurgency, essentially Arabist and Islamist. Conflating that with bigotry is a big mistake, and one Ralph Peters makes all too easily.

I've criticized the goonish Group of 88, but at least one of the lynch-mob professors, Dr. Hardt, nonetheless is correct in his view of love as politically transformational. I got the video from Durham in Wonderland, a normally great blog, whose dismissal of Dr, Hardt for using jargon is off-base and unprofessional.

To quote from Michael Hardt's lecture on love:

"It seems to me that what love does, rather than solidarity, is that love extends beyond our standard conceptions of rationality. Beyond the rational calculus of interest... But I understand solidarity as essentially a calculation of interest in which we aid each other or unite with each other because of mutual interests.

I've written about love and the extending embrace as central to the Rise of Christianity.

Tom Barnett, the grand strategist, said it without the jargon:

Embrace.

Love.

Connect.

Embarrass yourself.

A final thought: How is it that someone who knows so much about love, as Mike Hardt seems to -- nonetheless acts out of hate and fear in the persecution of innocent youths?

Simple: we are rational. Speaking well does not correlate with acting well. We do what we do, we say what we say, and these activities tend not to influence each other much.

As a Catholic, I view the Protestant churches as essentially loyalty militias, forces that by-and-large assist the Christian correlation-of-forces but nonetheless escape any accountability from the earthly hierarchy. Thus, the Lutheran Church (Missouri Synod) is to the Holy See as the Badr Brigades are to the Republic of Iraq.

However, in this model there should be another category -- death squads -- of those who might be classified as loyalty militia except that the blowback from them is roughly as bad as the good they do. Death squads differ from other actors in that they are ideologically motivated and focus on the same concepts as the larger insurgency.

The most visible Christian ideological death squad is Islam, for obvious reasons. However, evangelical secularism or Ultracavlisnism, may form a Christian intellectual death-squad as well. Unqualified Reservations has more, courtesy of gnxp:

The "ultracalvinist hypothesis" is the proposition that the present-day belief system commonly called "progressive," "multiculturalist," "universalist," "liberal," "politically correct," etc, is actually best considered as a sect of Christianity.

Specifically, ultracalvinism (which I have also described here and here) is the primary surviving descendant of the American mainline Protestant tradition, which has been the dominant belief system of the United States since its founding. It should be no surprise that it continues in this role, or that since the US's victory in the last planetary war it has spread worldwide.

...

In fact, they are so unusual that most people don't see ultracalvinism as Christian at all. For example, on the theological side, ultracalvinism is best known as Unitarian Universalism. (It's an interesting exercise to try to find any conflicts between UUism and "political correctness.") Ultracalvinists are perfectly free to be atheists, or believe in any God or gods - as long as they don't adhere to any revealed tradition, which would make them "fundamentalists." In general, ultracalvinists oppose revelation and consider their beliefs to be pure products of reason. And perhaps they are right in this - but I feel the claim should at least be investigated.

...

And when we look at the real-world beliefs of ultracalvinists, we see that ultracalvinism is anything but content-free. By my count, the ultracalvinist creed has four main points:

First, ultracalvinists believe in the universal brotherhood of man. As an Ideal (an undefined universal) this might be called Equality. ("All men and women are born equal.") If we wanted to attach an "ism" to this, we could call it fraternalism.

Second, ultracalvinists believe in the futility of violence. The corresponding ideal is of course Peace. ("Violence only causes more violence.") This is well-known as pacifism.

Third, ultracalvinists believe in the fair distribution of goods. The ideal is Social Justice, which is a fine name as long as we remember that it has nothing to do with justice in the dictionary sense of the word, that is, the accurate application of the law. ("From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs.") To avoid hot-button words, we will ride on a name and call this belief Rawlsianism.

Fourth, ultracalvinists believe in the managed society. The ideal is Community, and a community by definition is led by benevolent experts, or public servants. ("Public servants should be professional and socially responsible.") After their counterparts east of the Himalaya, we can call this belief mandarism.

...

In fact, the four points are very common and easily recognizable tenets of Protestant Christianity, specifically in its Calvinist or Puritan strain. You can find them all over the place in the New Testament, and any subject of Oliver Cromwell's saintly republic would have recognized them instantly. Rawlsianism is definitely the last of the four to develop, but even it is very common in the 17th century, when its adherents were known as Diggers - a name that, not surprisingly, was later reused. Ultracalvinism fits quite neatly in the English Dissenter and low church tradition. (Note the blatant POV of the latter page, with loaded words like "reform," a good indication that Wikipedians incline to ultracalvinism.)

...

Ultracalvinism's camouflage mechanism is easy to understand. If you are an ultracalvinist, you must dispute the claim that the four points are actually Christian, because you believe in them, and you believe they are justified by reason rather than faith. Therefore they are universal and no one can doubt them, whether Christian, Muslim or Jew.

...

What are the adaptive advantages of crypto-Christianity? Why did those Unitarians, or even "scientific socialists," who downplayed their Christian roots, outcompete their peers?

Well, I think it's pretty obvious, really. The combination of electoral democracy and "separation of church and state" is an almost perfect recipe for crypto-Christianity.

As I've said before, separation of church and state is a narrow-spectrum antibiotic. What you really need is separation of information and security. If you have a rule that says the state cannot be taken over by a church, a constant danger in any democracy for obvious reasons, the obvious mutation to circumvent this defense is for the church to find some plausible way of denying that it's a church. Dropping theology is a no-brainer. Game over, you lose, and it serves you right for vaccinating against a nonfunctional surface protein.

Several intellegent and well spoken atheists, including Adam of The Metropolis Times, frequent this blog. I would love to hear their opinion

I am a big fan of Mark Shea. I read his blog regularly, and yesterday I finished listening to every episode of his podcast, Rock Solid. I'm also proud to say that he reads tdaxp. A bit ago we talked about my analysis of early Christianity as a political movement, and we agreed that because grace perfects nature, the rise of Christianity is an appropriate subject for scientific study.

However, Mark is less enthusiastic about my recent post on Mike Nifong, the disbarred prosecutor who knowingly, falsely accused three youths of rape. He writes:

Blog Entries Like This Are Why I am *So* Glad We Do Not Live in a Pure Democracy

The blogosphere is a daily reminder of the sinister moody mercurial power of the bloodthirsty mob.

Specifically, Mark objects to my contention that, had the laws allowed, Mike Nifong should be executed by the State of North Carolina. Or more generally, what is the appropriate Catholic view of the death penalty?



The answer: Catholics should support the use of the death penalty to the extent that it reduces crime. Christians not only may, but must, advocate the use of lethal punishment by the State.

Many Christians are bothered by the State's penal apparatus. We pray to Our Father in Heaven that He "forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who tresspass against us." And certainly we should forgive: not just those who ask for it, and not just those who deserve it, but especially forgive those who do not seek and do not deserve forgiveness.

This shouldn't keep the State from killing them.

It is prideful to confuse yourself with the State, but many Christians do just that when they confuse individual forgiveness with State clemency. We cause no harm when we forgive, aside from the odd Jonah perturbed by grace. But the State causes great harm when it releases criminals: it sacrifices the health, safety, and lives of innocents to criminals.

A prideful Christian, who forces the State to release a criminal because he has confused himself and the State, is condemning an innocent and releasing a criminal out of a misplaced feeling of self-righteousness. The prideful Christian who sacrifices the innocent out of concern for the guilty answers Pilate's question, "Which one do you want me to release to you: Barabbas, or Jesus who is called Christ?" the same way the question was answered two thousand years ago.

This is why the Bible (Romans 13:1-7) supports capital punishment.

Now that capital punishment is supported, the next question is: should Mike Nifong be executed, if the laws would allow such a thing? The answer is yes. Corrupt officials are a particularly odious form of criminal, because they use the machinery and offices of the State to do their evil. Nifong attempted to condemn innocent youths into decades of captivity, rape, and misery, bankrupt their family, and inflame divisions in the community, and while ordering the police to do his bidding.

If the laws would allow Mike Nifong to be executed, Christians must ask themselves: Do we prefer to condemn guilty men or innocent men? Are we as grand as the State?

Sin (Guilty, Yes) and virtue (Innocent, No) give different answers to this question.

This is the best news on America's Muslim community since 2000:

Membership in the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) has declined more than 90 percent since the 2001 terrorist attacks, Audrey Hudson will report in Tuesday's editions of The Washington Times.

According to tax documents obtained by The Times, the number of reported members spiraled down from more than 29,000 in 2000 to less than 1,700 in 2006, a loss of membership that caused the Muslim rights group's annual income from dues to drop from $732,765 in 2000, when yearly dues cost $25, to $58,750 last year, when the group charged $35.

The organization instead is relying on about two dozen individual donors a year to contribute the majority of the money for CAIR's budget, which reached nearly $3 million last year...

Critics of the organization say they are not surprised membership is sagging, and that a recent decision by the Justice Department to name CAIR as "unindicted co-conspirators" in a federal case against another foundation charged with providing funds to a terrorist group could discourage new members.

CAIR is a front-organization for Muslim extremists. Since 9/11, major news networks have highlighted them to give a "Muslim voice" (inevitably an apology for terror). It seems this publicity has allowed American Muslims to actually know what CAIR stands for, and to react accordingly.

Razib over at Gene Expression pens an encyclopedic review of Philip Jenkins' God's Continent: Christianity, Islam, and Europe's Religious Crisis. Razib is a scienceophile atheist and rightist -- an admirer equally of Nicholas Wade and John Derbyshire. The review is in some ways a repudiation of his earlier, alarmist writings on the rise of Islam in Europe. After pointing out interesting facts, such as the cycle of reconversions in European history...

The Mizo peoples of northeast India were originally converted to Christianity by Welsh Protestant nonconformists, but with the decline of fidelity to organized Christianity in Britain they have now sent missionaries back to Wales (in some ways one might contend this is an expanded recapitulation of the evangelization of Anglo-Saxon Britain from Ireland during the late 6th and early 7th century, as the Irish themselves were converted to Christianity by the Romano-British).

He spends most of the post on two highly visible minorities: Europe's secular elite and Europe's Islamist underclass. Much has been written about the microstates before, so a word on the elite and their governments:

Though American elites are often accused of being "out of touch," Jenkins argues that European elites exhibit a far greater distance from their "hinterlands" in terms of outlook and world-view (he suggests that the small size and low number of cultural capitals results in a far greater centralization in terms of elite socialization). Dutch elites in the immigrant filled cities no doubt find it easy to forget that their nation is host to a "Bible Belt" of Calvinist believers. Nations as disparate as Norway, France and Scotland have regions of elevated Christianity commitment. But these concentrations of organized Christianity highlight the second trend: the reemergence of the ancient classical pattern where Christianity is simply a major cult within a religiously diverse landscape.

A reminder of Europe's anti-Christian past is also useful, for putting the most recent Dawkins atheist-tirade into perspective:

in 1798 the Pope was held captive as anti-Christian revolution swept Europe. Many savants of the age predicted the death of Christianity and the ancien regime. Despite the restoration after the fall of Napoleon, the ancien regime did fall and transform into the modern era of nation-states, but Christianity did not die. It is also important to remember the power of anti-clericalism throughout much of the 19th and early 20th century, and the allure and appeal of radical politics for the European working classes. In 1881 Italian nationalists attempted to seize the body of Pius IX and throw it into the Tiber river. In France the Catholicism and laicism have been at tension for two centuries.

Read the whole review.

Catholicgauze has posted his really cool powerpoint slides for "United Caliphates of Europe," which he presented at AAG '07. CG looks at retaliatory violence through the group level of analysis:

Earlier, in "The Wary Guerrilla, I looked at the phenomonon on the individual level:




Stay tuned to tdaxp for an expanded version of "The Wary Student," which will follow up previous research by looking at classroom settings. Or even check out the attack on Mike Daisey for another example of this sort of intolerance.

Mike Daisey, the hillarious author of 21 Dog years: Doing Time @ Amazon.com, had his notes ruined during an assault during a walk-out. The whole thing is on Youtube, and Mike's blog.

Apparently, the criminal (Mike calls him a terrorist, and it's hard to disagree with that term) is a self-described Christian. Of course the assalut wasn't Christian. The assault was the opposite of Christian. This isolate crime -- this particular act of terror -- has a more in common with the Muslim cartoon riots. Which, perhaps, is appropriate. The assault against Mike Daisey is a perversion of a Christian, as Islam is an heresey of Christianity.

Phoicon has joined the team over at Amendment Nine, and his second post takes a shot at this humble blog:

Dan, the author of the blog TDAXP, was a favorite of Federalist X's. I have no idea why. I've visited Dan's blog often. The vast majority of what he has to say is completely incomprehensible, though there is a good deal of the Catholic guilt thrown in so it isn't all incomprehensible to me I suppose.

and, more interestingly, at my Easter message




Phoicon's critique is direct, and well thought out:

The drawing is in fact a mockery of Christ. It is laughing in the face of the resurrection. The artist undoubtedly was amused, like most easterners so cynically are, at the notion that the dead were raised. The Buddha-like hand gestures again show disdain for Christianity and certainly for the Orthodox faith. The whole thing is an abomination. One must wonder whether Dan posted the picture as an insult to Christians intentionally or just naively?

Phicon seems to prefer a more Greek form of iconography:



Writing:

Here is no faceless godhead, but a man. A strong man victoriously lifting the dead from their tombs. He has conqured death and is unblemished. Everyone is beneath him as he lefts the dead from their eternal slumber. This is Jesus, son of Man, winning the fight.

Again, Phoicon chose is thoughts well. He is correct in his condemnation of the Byzantine artwork. But, I think, wrong in his negative criticism...

Barnett, T.P.M. 2007. Like Hanson... Thomas P.M. Barnett :: Weblog. April 8, 2007. Available online: http://www.thomaspmbarnett.com/weblog/2007/04/toms_column_this_week_6.html#comment-16630.

Tom Barnett, who I admire greatly, responded to my concerns that Turkey may not belong in Europe:

Like Hanson, I think you're too observant of friction and not of force (the former being primary a function of the latter, but hardly its master). It's very seductive and seems very perceptive in historical terms (hence the appeal to historians), but it's a trap of immense proportions in terms of solid strategic thinking (live in the world you find yourself in, because these are revolutionary times).

Acutlaly, I think Tom and I are closer than that. The recent Islamism in Turkey is doubtless a response to the uncertainties of a globalizing economy, and thus come from different sources than Arab extremism. And again, I am naturally sympathetic to the Turkish cause. I've criticized German maltreatment of Turks before. But the idea of mass Turkish immigration to Europe, which is inseparable from a meaningful entry of Turkey to the European Union, is too dangerous.

Earlier, Dr. Barnett opined on a possible strike on Iran.

Back to our asynch dialogue of late: to me, attacking Iran overloads the Core on feedback, thus putting it at risk. I can't grow the Core if I split it, thus my fear.

This is the best reason for keeping Turkey out of Europe. Europe is in making national identities more fluid than they have been any time since the Dark Ages. That's not an exaggeration. The blending of German, French, and Italian peoples has not happened on this scale since Charlemagne. Europe apperas to be able to handle this, but Europe already is having problems processing Muslim immigrants. Allowing Turks to live freely in Europe would ramp up this disruptive feedback to Europe, perhaps splitting Europe off from the rest of the Core. (The concern is not that Europe would descend to a third-world country -- though the no-go zones already have --- but that Europe's attention and concerns would become centered on its unique Islam problem and not applicable to other Core-wide pursuits.)



The impact of massive Turkish immigration to Europe would far, far exceed yet another chapter in the "America acts recklessly in the Middle East" saga that Europe's been watching for decades. So how can one oppose an Iran War, out of concern for the Core's reaction, while supporting Turkish immigration to Europe? Especially when other larger and vital states, such as Ukraine, have yet to be integrated.