Do Not Attack a Soldier When He’s in the Middle of Attacking Your Enemy, Or Richard Dawkins Publicly Praises Christianity

There was a much-talked-about recent public declaration by Richard Dawkins that he considers himself to be a cultural Christian, that he likes living in a culturally Christian (i.e., Christian) country, that “if we substituted any alternative religion, that would be truly dreadful,” that Christianity is a “fundamentally decent religion,” and the Islam that surrounds him in England is not.

It generated a lot of reaction, but I have not heard anyone point out the most important thing. Dawkins said publicly that Christianity is “fundamentally decent” and he greatly prefers it to Islam. He publicly supported our side. Richard Dawkins, of all people, said things that are dangerous to say in public but which support our side.

Christ the King of All the Heavens has Defeated His Rebellious Satrap Azazel

Having conquered Death, Jesus has conquered our entire system of things, of which Satan is yet still Lord – for a time. The Logos, who is the King of kings and Lord of lords, the God of gods and Light of light, gave dominion of our cosmos at her beginning as a fief to his satrap, the seraph Satan. Satan then, with some number of his vassals, rebelled against his Lord and King, and so Fell from grace, and from his throne in the Court of Heaven. With him and his angels the whole realm of which they were minsters Fell in train, defected by their defection. So death – entropy, noise, error, sin, thus the gradual decrease of her power and being, her beauty, activity, life – began to eat her.

An Archon of Right Liberalism Takes the Turn to Orthogony

John C. Wright has long been one of the most intelligent and effective writers at the Right end of the political spectrum. He has been a great defender of the Constitution, the Enlightenment, the private sector as against the state, of traditional customs, mores and values, and so forth; and, in particular, of Christianity. He is one of the more competent, clever and entertaining Christian apologists now writing online.

He’s prolix, even compared to such as I. But his writing is always sprightly, and fun to read … so long as one has a half hour or so to spare for it each day. He’s a lawyer, so his comments on current affairs are well grounded in the tradition of English Common Law, in its down to earth common sense. And he’s also a competent and successful writer of science fiction novels, so he is able, ready and indeed eager to explore novel notions, and consider imaginatively how they might work out in practice.

A formidable guy, altogether. And what is more rare in these latter days of cultural antagony and deliquescence, sweet tempered and irenic withal. He is valuable and discerning wit.

Having grown jaundiced upon it myself circa 2009, it had bugged me for some years that despite all that, he had been so far still convinced of the Enlightenment as a natural and just evolution of Christian culture, rather than a divagation therefrom.

Well, I am pleased to report that he has recently suffered – nay, enjoyed – a paradigm shift of an orthogonal sort.

“Pascal’s Wager, 21st Century Edition”

(HT Patriactionary.)

Someone calling himself Bleppstein von Sama says

Pascal’s Wager for the 21^st century:

God may or may not be real, but the other side is so passionate, so committed to worshiping Satan, evil, homosexuality and corrupting children that even if god wasn’t real, believing in him to fend these demons off is preferable.

Yep. The other way doesn’t work. So the Christian way is, at minimum, preferable.

This is evidence for God rather than a full proof, but it’s strong evidence for the truth. Sooner or later, you must commit yourself to that to which the evidence leads.

This is an argument presuppositional in spirit. But you can just call it not being a dumba**.

An Informal Introduction to Presuppositional Apologetics

Introduction to the Introduction

This is a lightly-edited version of a talk I gave to my Christian men’s group. I was asked to present a topic of my choosing and I chose to try to refine my understanding of Christian apologetics.

Dealing with the other person’s faulty presuppositions is not only important in Christian evangelism. The present world crisis is at root a matter of good presuppositions overthrown and no good ones put in their place.

Most people feel unmoored, because they are. To discover how to fix things, we must first know how to identify faulty Systems. A faulty System is recognized primarily by the evident fact that it doesn’t work. People are emotionally attached to a bad system when it is the only one they know, but freedom begins when people start to acknowledge that their System doesn’t work. Only then might they be able to hear about another, better System.

The Talk

“Apologetics” means giving reasons why Christianity is true. It means using facts and logic to show that Christianity is true.  It does not mean apologizing!

The word apologetics comes from the Greek apologia, which means giving a verbal and intellectual defense. Giving reasons. In ancient Greece, when a defendant was on trial he gave an apologia to prove his innocence.

In apologetics, the first person you must convince is yourself. Apologetics ministers first to the believer. We must preach the Gospel to ourselves daily; we must also remind ourselves that Christianity is true.

Apologetics is often not needed when we witness to unbelievers. We begin with Scripture, by delivering the Good News of salvation in Jesus Christ:

So faith comes from hearing, and hearing by the word of Christ.  [Romans 10:17]

For the word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing as far as the division of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart. [Hebrews 4:12]

Showing people the Gospel message from the Word of God is often enough to produce faith.

Reimagining the University

Imagine how different the universities would be if, as of old, all the professors were priests, who were – by lifelong vocation, and at great hedonic cost to themselves – explicitly devoted first and so only to the service of the Lord; of the Lógos; of the Truth; of Lux & Veritas, as the Yale sigil has it.

Imagine then how different the universities would be if all their students were expected to be novice monks or nuns, in the process of discernment; if, indeed, one could not gain admission to collegiate studies except by strict prior vows of chastity, abstinence and obedience while engaged therein.

More About That Reconquista Thing…

Original context here.  More discussion here.

Ackerman’s plan was summarized by me as strengthening biblically-faithful congregations, and strengthening and then reconquering moderate (i.e, wavering) congregations, all within the most infamous of the mostly-far-left mainline Protestant denominations. Eventually, if all goes well, we can retake entire denominations because liberal Christianity cannot sustain itself.

(By “we,” I mean Christians who are faithful to the message of Christ and the Apostles. I’m not calling on anyone here to join the Reconquista.)

That’s the key point. Liberal “Christianity” cannot sustain itself. It’s weaker than it looks.

For me, the most important thing about Ackerman’s plan is its spirit. Take the fight to the enemy in one of his strongholds.

This might require a little guile every now and then but not, it seems to me, much more that is required for normal life. To be a useful reconquistador requires one to be forthright in the faith just about all the time. You might have to be more discrete when under the eye of a liberal bishop, but even so, you cannot hide what you are doing and still be useful.

“Unite the Right:” A Conceptually Simple Framework Based on First Stopping the Destruction

By “The Right” I mean those who are relatively sane, moral, and devoted to construction. The Left consists of those who are insane, immoral, and devoted to destruction.

This gives the Left a structural advantage. Destruction is conceptually simple. Just take away what exists and replace it with something new and untried (and therefore suboptimal), or with nothing. Disgruntled people naturally agree that the existing order is bad; from there it’s a small step to desiring destruction. It’s easy to rally the legion of the disgruntled with a campaign of destruction. The Left is more cohesive than the Right because it’s easier to organize a lynch mob than a construction crew.

While sane people agree that the existing leftist order is bad, they cannot agree on what should replace it. The Right lacks a unifying principle.

Ultimately social renewal will require a specific blueprint. But we can do a lot of good right now without any blueprint by devoting ourselves to stopping the destruction. And it’s done by destroying or at least blocking the institutions and laws that carry out the destruction.

Christian Reconquista: Retaking the Mainline Denominations

In The Secret to Retaking American Culture, Richard Ackerman (also known as Redeemed Zoomer) lays out a plan for real Christians to retake the mainline Protestant denominations from the liberals. He argues that reconquest is both feasible and beneficial.

It’s feasible because liberal congregations cannot sustain themselves and are necessarily dying out. And it’s beneficial, Ackerman argues, because the mainline Protestant denominations still have valuable resources that could be redirected from their current destructive uses to directions beneficial to individuals and societies.

The Left has a strategy we can copy:

While conservative Christians have focused on evangelizing individuals, generally those with less cultural influence, the Left has successfully evangelized the centers of culture and exerted top-down influence.

The Left desired to conquer the mainline denominations because

they know …that religion was originally at the heart of the culture and its major institutions. Every Western culture was built on a certain institutional Church… Therefore, Leftists have been very intentional in hijacking the most culturally important churches in every Western nation and replacing them with their own ideology.

Why Did the West Go To Hell?

A guest post from long time commenter Imnobody, who has revealed his hidden nom de plume: Virapala

[Why Did the West Go To Hell attempts to be a logical and historical explanation of the genesis of today’s Absurdistan: a world where you are evil if you say that pigs cannot fly. You can contact the author on virapala.merdeta.com]

Part I.a.: A General Overview

Introduction

After some decades of observing, thinking and reading about the decadence of Western civilization, I have decided to write my ideas about this topic. I started writing about the concept of rights, which went completely out of control, producing four different long posts. I quickly realized that the topic of Western decline is so complex that there is the danger of the forest not being seen for the trees.

So I have decided to write a general overview of the causes of decadence in Western civilization, trying to hide or summarize as many details as possible. The outcome has been this text, which is divided into two different posts. The text is a bit long, a bit heavy in information and includes some claims that are not justified. My idea is to start from this general overview and write other texts to tie up the loose ends and explain better the ideas presented here.