Monday, May 31, 2010

Memorial Day PPS

On a less happy note, Dennis Prager had a piece last week on the worldwide moral decline, complete with a sad but utterly convincing catalog of examples, among them this:
Europe long ago gave up fighting for or believing in anything other than living a life with as much economic security, as many days off, and as young a retirement age as possible. World War I killed off European idealism; whatever remained was destroyed by World War II. What I have written about the Germans is true for nearly all of Europe: Instead of learning to fight evil, Europe has learned that fighting is evil.

Other consequences of European secularism and the demise of non-materialistic ideals there include a low birth rate (children cost money and limit the number of fine restaurants in which one can afford to dine) and appeasement of evil. Thus most European nations are slowly disappearing and nearly every European country has compromised Western liberties in order to appease radical Muslims.
Meanwhile, the round-up of news this Memorial Day weekend confirms again that the universality of Original Sin remains Christianity's most empirically demonstrable doctrine. Edmund Burke's corollary, that: "All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing," is, I'm afraid, one that will soon be made all too clear to us.

Part of remembering is recognizing what we have lost and how we have betrayed those, as Dante put it, who will look on these as the ancient times -- the moments when decisions were made or evaded, decisions which will very significantly determine the kind of world in which our children's children will live.

14 comments:

Bentang said...

After reading Dennis Prager’s entire article, I can only conclude that he is confused. In his opening paragraph, he laments the demise of religion and the rise of secularism, but he later complains that the Ataturk Revolution (which secularized Turkey) is being undone and that the country is drifting toward fundamentalist Islam. He seems to have disproved his own thesis.

Thinking I might be the one who was confused, I re-read his preamble, where he presents his thesis. I see that, though he originally refers to the demise of “religion,” he quickly switches to “Christianity.” So the real opposition he wants to establish is not between religion and secularism but between Christianity and secularism. But no, that’s not quite it, because he needs to bring in Islam if he is going to complain about Iran later on. So what it really boils down to is Christianity versus everything else. I wonder why he couldn’t have just made that clear from the start. Maybe it sounds a little too improbable? Or too brashly sectarian?

So he turns to Iran, whose rulers are, as we know, deeply religious, and complains that they want to initiate a second Holocaust. He had previously blamed the first Holocaust on secularism (despite the fact that Germany and its leadership were almost entirely Catholic and Protestant during the war). He cannot now claim that Holocausts are post-religious or post-Christian or that they are caused by secularism. Let’s not forget that neither Hitler nor a single Catholic member of the SS were ever excommunicated for their crimes. (Goering was excommunicated for marrying a Protestant.) Nazism, he doggedly persists, was a secular movement. As, presumably, were the fascist regimes of Salazar, Mussolini, and Franco, all of which enjoyed the Vatican’s blessings.

Next there’s the Congo, whose population is 50% Catholic, 20% Protestant, and the rest Muslim, Kimbanguist, and other religious sects. The CIA’s World Factbook does not even show a fraction of one percent of the Congo’s population to identify as “none” on the census regarding religion. The question we should be asking is this: “With a population that is overwhelmingly Christian and entirely religious, how could genocide have occurred there?” The answer starts to become clear when you look at the almost overwhelming support among Ugandan Catholics and other Christians for the Draconian anti-gay legislation recently enacted (or pending) in their country and Pope Benedict’s unwillingness to bring up the subject during his recent visit with a Ugandan bishop.

Next there’s Mexico, fighting for its life against narcotics gangs. I think we can agree that these gangs are not sterling exemplars of Christianity, but are they secularist? “Post-Christian?” I think not. Mexico has always had its outlaws, and it’s unlikely that many of them have been strangers to the confessional. Only 3.1% of Mexicans identify as “none” (having no religion). Seventy-seven percent are Roman Catholics and the remainder are Christians of other denominations.

(More to follow...)

Bentang said...

Russia. Oh, to return to the halcyon days of the Tsars! Communism was certainly atheistic in the strict sense of the word, but its ideology was in every other way patterned on the template of Russian Orthodox Christianity. Like the Christians before them, Communists had their holy books, shrines, pilgrimages, saints, sacrifices, and all the other trappings of religion. Communist leaders—no fools—knew Communism could not survive for long without these consolations. The most striking shared features of Christianity and Communism were (and are) submission to authority, suspension of critical thinking, and totalitarian control over every aspect of life, from childrearing and sex to one’s innermost thoughts, which are constantly monitored by God or Big Brother.

Communist Russia may have been “secularist,” but it was hardly guided by reason or enlightenment values. And where are the secularists who claim that secularism is in and of itself a cure for the world’s ills? Secularism (as a movement) is usually coupled with “humanism,” a philosophy that advocates justice, fairness, pluralism, a balancing of equality and liberty, moral education, environmental responsibility, and so on.

Prager waxes nostalgic about pre-WWII Europe, but wasn’t that the Europe that produced two of the greatest catastrophes of the 20th century? Post-Christian Europe has been largely at peace, and where there have been conflicts (as in the Balkans and Ireland), religion has been the sole or major cause. Europe is facing new challenges around immigration, but there’s absolutely no reason to believe these challenges cannot be addressed by a mostly secular populace if they have the will to act. Why would a Christian Europe be better equipped for this task than a secularist one? Indeed, how well equipped was a “Christian” Europe for dealing with fascism in the pre-post-Christian era? None of this is made clear in Prager’s article.

Gordon said...

Bentang,

“The most striking shared features of Christianity and Communism were (and are) submission to authority, suspension of critical thinking, and totalitarian control over every aspect of life, from childrearing and sex to one’s innermost thoughts, which are constantly monitored by God or Big Brother.”

Perhaps, if by Christianity you mean a couple dozen angry fundamentalists holed up in a tent revival just outside Shreveport. For the rest of us, Christianity challenges our intellectual presumptions, calls in question shallow, confused and cliched historical reconstructions (cf. above), and drives us to struggle to understand and engage the world more deeply. It’s clear that you neither want to engage Gil nor Prager’s article intellectually. What is your point, then? To demonstrate your capacity to carry on the sort of prattle that sounds like wisdom after a few drinks in a bar?

Bentang said...

Christianity challenges our intellectual presumptions, calls in question shallow, confused and cliched historical constructions, and drives us to struggle to understand and engage the world more deeply.

Hey! Wait a minute! I thought that was what I was doing for Prager's readers! You claim that I do not want to engage Prager intellectually. But isn't that precisely what I did? Maybe the real problem for you is that I challenged his intellectual presumptions and called into question his confused and cliched historical constructions.

You can call a historical fact "cliched" because it is repeated over and over again, but that doesn't make it any the less true. All you are really saying is that you are tired of hearing it. The best way to "engage" is to provide counter arguments and evidence for your position. I didn't find either of these in your response.

Gordon said...

Bentang,

I’m all for you challenging people’s presuppositions. I hope to be up for it. But you’ve got to understand what those presuppositions are before you can challenge them. Again, your description of Christianity’s take on authority and critical thinking is simply not informed by a deep familiarity with Christianity. Certainly, it might be true of your personal experience; in that case, you need to get out more.

But your larger point seems to be a critique of (1) Prager’s separation of Radical Islam from Christianity/Judaism, (2) the role of "secularism" in moral decay. But you’re doing it on a website that is largely focused on the work of Rene Girard, who takes Islam to be resurgence of the violent archaic religions that were universal before God called Abraham and John the Baptist said “behold the lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.”
Girard also sees post-Christian culture as unable to return to archaic sacrifice as way maintaining social cohesion and peace, dooming it to increased chaos in the absence of faith. I don’t have a clue whether or not Prager shares Girard’s perspective — you’re welcome to ask him. But at this website the distinction between Religion in general, archaic religion, and the Judeo-Christian tradition is very well developed. If you want to understand them you’re welcome to listen to Gil’s talks, read his book, read some of Rene Girard works, or a good introduction like Michael Kirwan’s “Discovering Girard.” Then come back and join the discussion.

I promise you it’s one of the most interesting sets of ideas you’ll find. If Girard is right his theory is big as Freud, Marx and Nietzsche rolled into one -- only true.

Bentang said...

Gordon,

The “couple dozen angry fundamentalists holed up in a tent revival just outside of Shreveport,” as you describe them, are actually samples from a very broad swath of American Christianity, and not just in the deep South. Submission to authority, suspension of critical thinking, and totalitarian control over every aspect of life are common to every institutional form of Christianity that I know of, albeit in varying degrees. Belief in the authority of the Bible, the catechism, the Pope, tradition, theologians, or Christian anthropologists is certainly the rule, not the exception, even and perhaps especially on this Website. Critical thinking is permissible only up to the point where it does not challenge these forms of authority. (To my knowledge, no self-identifying Catholic on this site has ever expressed any skepticism whatsoever about trans-substantiation, the resurrection of Jesus, or the virgin birth, in spite of the fact that these events are clearly mythical.) And finally, most Christians I know of believe in an omniscient God who knows one’s every thought and keeps a detailed ledger of one’s deeds in preparation for Judgment Day. It is not just a few wacko fundamentalists who believe these things. The last I heard, the confessional was still a key feature of Roman Catholic faith and practice.

Though Christianity may indeed be superior to Islam, it is still waist-deep in the old sacred. Many of the mythical elements are intact, as are prohibitions and rituals rooted in pre-Christian cultures. The way out is through the door marked “secularization,” though we must certainly not discard humanist principles that have proven their worth over time, whether they came to us via Christianity or other religions. This is why I found Prager’s article to be off the mark. He sees Christianity as a counterforce against Islam in Europe (and it may well be), but pitting one great monotheism against another has never worked very well in the past. Strong secular states, on the other hand, can create social frameworks in which religions, given some modifications and compromises, may coexist. This has been a successful model in the U.S., where religion is thriving.

I realize that Prager and others see secularism as an anathema, but in our own country, some of the strongest and most outspoken secularists are Christians. Barry Lynn, who heads the organization “Americans United for Separation of Church and State,” is a minister. Marci Hamilton, secularist author of “God and the Gavel,” identifies as a Christian. The early Baptists in this country believed resolutely in this secular framework that, though somewhat tattered, still holds sway.

There are obviously two meanings of “secularism,” as I have just described. I consider myself a secularist in both senses of the word. I see the Old Sacred and secularism at the antipodes, while Girard appears to see a continuum from the Old Sacred to Christianity. But I also believe that religions are not likely to disappear anytime soon and that only a secular state can provide a framework for people of different faiths to coexist.

I have read nine of Girard’s major works, mostly in the original French and some of them twice. I have also read and studied Gil’s book and listened to his tapes. I used to give lectures and short classes about mimetic theory—to Unitarians, to Presbyterians, and even (gasp!) to a group of Catholics. I stopped presenting about Girard’s theory because there were significant aspects of it that I could neither explain nor justify to an audience. I am still awestruck by his early work on triangular desire (in “Mensonge romantique...” and in the “Theatre of Envy”) and I still am profoundly impressed by the clarity and cogency of his critique in “Violence and the Sacred,” “The Scapegoat,” and “Things Hidden...” For all these, he richly deserves his recent induction into the Academie Francaise. But it was while reading “Things Hidden...” that I realized Girard believes in supernatural interventions. I myself do not.

Mike O'Malley said...

Bentang said … I have read nine of Girard’s major works, mostly in the original French and some of them twice. I have also read and studied Gil’s book and listened to his tapes.
.
Now I’m flummoxed! How can someone for whom Things Hidden is accessible write such drivel as quoted below?
.
The most striking shared features of Christianity and Communism were (and are) submission to authority, suspension of critical thinking, and totalitarian control over every aspect of life, from childrearing and sex to one’s innermost thoughts, which are constantly monitored by God or Big Brother.
.
I mean no offense but I had not commented earlier because it seemed likely that this was cribbed from Christopher Hitchens and so (understandably) I was disinclined to waste time in correspondence.

And how might an erudite fellow propose the following?
Post-Christian Europe has been largely at peace, and where there have been conflicts (as in the Balkans and Ireland), religion has been the sole or major cause.
.
Or this:
(despite the fact that Germany and its leadership were almost entirely Catholic and Protestant during the war).!
.
And this quoted below is factually incorrect and meaningless to boot:
Let’s not forget that neither Hitler nor a single Catholic member of the SS were ever excommunicated for their crimes.
The German Catholic bishops excommunicated ALL active Nazi Party members in 1931. Further, after the crimes had been committed and discovered and the guilty apprehended it isn’t the Church’s job to warn straying members and apostates that they are in danger of falling in grievous sin, it is then time to call the sinners to repentance. Why don’t you not know this, Mr. Bentang? Moreover, during the War the Vatican worked with British MI6 and German anti-Nazi resistance to overthrow Hitler. Don’t you know this?

One could go on but it seems best to keep things concise as my time for correspondence is limited. I hope you find value in my brief post. Fare thee well for now Messrs. Bentang and Gordon.

Bentang said...

Mike and Gordon,

Please visit my photo gallery of "Nazism and the Church."

Here are some facts to consider:

1. 54 percent of Germans in 1939 were Protestant and 40 percent were Roman Catholics. 3.5 percent were neo-pagans, and 1.5 percent were atheists.

2. Catholic and protestant churches were state churches throughout the war. Chaplains served the military.

3. Article 24 of the Nazi Party Program professed "positive Christianity" as the foundation of the German state.

4. Adolf Hitler was a Catholic in good standing until his death. He paid his church taxes and was never excommunicated or even threatened with excommunication.

5. One-third of the German army, police force, bureaucrats, railway personnel, prison guards, etc., were Roman Catholic. Most of the rest were Protestants.

6. In the early 1930s, the German bishops ruled that Catholics could not be members of the Nazi party. I'd like verification of the claim that anyone was excommunicated over this.

7. The ruling in point #6 was rescinded in 1933, when the Papal Nuncio Pacelli and Hitler signed the Reichs Concardat. Hitler proclaimed on 2/1/1933: "The National Government regards Christianity as the foundation of our national morality..."

8. Protestant and Catholic churches provided the Nazis with church records to help them determine which Germans had "Jewish blood." Even those who converted to Christianity were sent to concentration camps.

9. The churches blessed the military who went off to fight for Germany and instructed the faithful to pray for a German victory.

10. In 1936, Hitler tried to separate church and state and demanded that churches remove the swastika from their newsletters and church altars. German pastors protested this policy, but they were forced by the Nazis to give up use of the swastika.

11. Hundreds of Catholic chaplains on the Eastern Front witnessed the slaughter of Jews and yet continued to give holy communion to the murderers.

12. "Mein Kampf" was never placed on the Catholic Church's "Index of Forbidden Books.

13. After the war, the Vatican helped Nazi war criminals flee to South America.

14. Since the war, there has been a flourishing industry of Catholic denial and historical revisionism about this history. It rivals Iran President Ahmadinejad's denial of the Holocaust.

Gordon said...

Doughlas (Bentang),

Why the name change? If I’d known it was you I wouldn’t have suggested you read Gil or Girard -- but that’s only because you told me you’ve read them. Certainly you’re intelligent enough to understand and challenge them. I can argue with you about climate change because I think it’s substandard science, and there are common assumptions about the rational order of the universe that allow a conversation. Also about issues of human sexuality. Or politics. I’ve very much enjoyed exchanges with you on these subjects. But when it comes to Christianity, you simply refuse to engage anything but the straw man you call Christianity. That’s why I again mistook you for someone half your age wandering into a site for which he had no background. How is that possible?

You said “…it was while reading “Things Hidden...” that I realized Girard believes in supernatural interventions. I myself do not.” And “supernatural intervention” is excluded on the basis of what? Can evidence change your assumption… or not? Girard, I’m sure you know, came to believe in “supernatural intervention” after the weight of anthropological data formed a pattern of culture, violence and religion that he realized he himself was only able to discern because Christianity had long ago understood and contradicted this fundamental enigma about humanity. That’s at least the intellectual side. It just gets more personal when you realize its offering what is missing in your own life. The “supernatural intervention” is not his assumption, nor mine; rather it’s the surprising turn, the unexpected twist that forces you to change you mind because its simply reality. Tell me, is reality allowed to change your mind?

Bentang said...

Gordon, I had been thinking for some time that I should adopt a pseudonym for reasons of privacy and security. It is not absolute, of course, and so I left you a clue in the new name. (My logo was the bent angle, you may remember, and my blog site is called "The Bent Angle. Hence, "Bentang.")

As for my take on Christianity, I am probably not as negative as you suppose--far from uniformly critical, at least. I realize there have been a lot of very fine Christians throughout history, and I've known my share of them. And I would certainly prefer living among Christians to living among Muslims. (I do agree with Girard about the superiority of Christianity over Islam, though I think that in some cases it is not superior by much...) But I see a tendency among Christians to view their religion as the ultimate answer to all the world's ills, when in fact this remains to be shown. This conceit is based, of course, on the various strains of Christian eschatology, which I view as mythical. In short, there is an ever-growing number of Christian beliefs and practices that I would place on the negative side of the ledger. Many of them have been advanced on this very blog site. In addition to these, I find an entrenched distrust of modern science nearly everywhere I look in modern Christianity. This is not healthy for Christianity, which is in retreat because it cannot adequately respond to scientific claims about the nature of reality. The circle of scientific understanding is widening exponentially, forcing all religions into the margins, if not numerically at least intellectually.

The overall tendency of Christianity over the centuries has been to resist any scientific theory that seeks to explain human nature or man's place in the universe in naturalistic terms. Christianity nearly always comes around, eventually; no educated Christian any longer believes that the Sun orbits the earth, and the crude "creationist" version of our origins is now thoroughly discredited. There is still, however, a great deal of resistance to evolutionary theory in American society (viz, the "Creation Museums" that have cropped up in several Southern states). The Catholic Church has now judiciously positioned itself on the side of science regarding many of these questions, but it is still mired in medieval thinking when it comes to human sexuality, especially pertaining to homosexuality and contraception.

(More to follow...)

Bentang said...

If there is to be change for the better, there must be open and critical discussion of the issues. I come to the discussion as a naturalist because supernaturalist explanations are impossible to verify. (In the language of science, they are "unfalsifiable;" any theory that cannot be falsified by any imaginable means is unscientific.) I've no doubt that you and I will have, over the course of our lives, many experiences that seem mysterious, enigmatic, and opaque to rational analysis, but I, for one, hope to resist the impulse to attribute them to supernatural causes. Cognitive psychology and neuroscience have made incredible strides in just the past decade, and I find their explanations--as tentative as they still are--to be much more gratifying than any explanation requiring "ghosts in the machine."

I think you will agree that Girard has had some astonishing insights, but you are probably aware that mimetic theory rarely cited in scientific journals because it is outside the scientific mainstream. I used to think this was just science's loss and I resolutely stuck up for Girard. But then I read a lot more science and saw things a little differently. I now believe mimetic theory needs bringing into the mainstream but that it will have to shed its supernaturalist trappings before it can do so. This is probably not going to happen, however, at least not until mimetic theory moves on well beyond Girard and Catholicism. And 50 years from now, there will be plenty of work on "meme theory," or something like it, and a few of us will remember that Girard was onto the same idea but that he made the mistake of giving it a supernaturalist spin, thus setting himself outside rigorous scientific discourse.

Things are happening very fast in the world of science. Non-materialist theories are rapidly being marginalized. Pick up Steven Pinker's "The Blank Slate" for an idea of where things are headed.

I hope I have answered your question about my reasons for rejecting the notion of supernatural interventions. You seem to think I had rejected evidence for such occurrences. But don't you see that I am asking you for evidence? I actually value evidence very much, and that is why I hold a scientific worldview. If you can offer evidence, I will certainly accept it, but only on the condition that it conforms to accepted evidentiary standards.

Bentang said...

Gordon, you may remember Gil’s recent citing of Lord Monckton as an authority on climate change. Here is an instructive video about Monckton and his views. When you access it, you’ll see a Part 2 in the right panel. The videos are by Peter Sinclair, and I urge you to view his entire series about climate change.

Mike O'Malley said...

Well what do you know! Mr. "Bentang" is none other than promoter of anti-Catholic bigotry (1) and self described (radical) homosexual activist, Mr. Douglhas Remy! And he's back with a his own Anti-Catholic website for the promotion of a new Black Legend for the 21st Century!

One may note the absence of the captions allowing visitors to identify pertinent parties in the photos and proper historical context.

Even quick google search can do better:
Hitler's Mufti





(1) referring to extended discussions regarding the promotion of notorious anti-Catholic bigot and closet anti-Semitie James Carroll in commentary appended to this blog during the Fall of 2009.
THE BIGGEST ANTI-CATHOLIC BIGOT ON THE BLOCK?

Bentang said...

You may be interested in this article I wrote a few months ago about James Carroll's views on reform in the Church.