January 5, 2007
DAWKINS SITS IN MUNICH, BUT THE MAN WITH THE UMBRELLA NEVER SHOWS:
Secular fundamentalists are the new totalitarians: Militant secularists like Richard Dawkins are taking their revenge on us believers for refusing to stay in the closet (Tobias Jones, January 6, 2007, The Guardian)
In recent years the nastier side of this totalitarianism has become blatantly apparent. It emerged with the hijab issue in France. With the hijab ban in French schools, a state was banishing religion not only from its corridors, but also from its citizens.It was an assertion that after centuries of the naked public square (denuded of religion referents) the public now too had to go naked. The former had been true tolerance, something exceptional and laudable. It allowed everyone to bring their own cosmic testimony to the square. But this new form of "tolerance" changed things. [...]
There's also the fact that we live in a cultural milieu dominated by postmodernism. Broadly speaking, it attempts to deconstruct power and its narratives. It tries to rescue the marginalised. A noble intent, but because it doesn't believe in truth, anything goes. The tyranny of orthodoxy has been replaced by the tyranny of relativism. You're supposed to believe in nothing, and hence nihilists and atheists are suddenly rather chic. Postmodernism has taken tolerance to the extremes, where extremists thrive. It's a dangerous form of appeasement. [...]
The reasons for that "outing" of believers are complex. But what is certain is that wise agnostics pleaded with believers to take a public lead again, because the point about believers is that they are obeying (and disobeying) all sorts of commandments that the state doesn't see or understand. Because they are able to differentiate sin from crime, they have a moral register more nuanced than most. Even a wise atheist (and I've met a few of them in church, as they desperately try to get their kids into the local C of E school) knows that believers can deal with social anarchy much better than the state ever can.
That is why these fundamentalists are so in evidence. They're not only needled by their own hypocrisy; they are also furious that believers have broken the old pact to stay out of public debate. Witness, for example, Mary Riddell's astonishing sentence in the Observer last month (try replacing "religion" with "homosexuality" to get the point): "secularists do not wish to harm religion or deny its great cultural influence. They simply want it to know its place." In other words: get back in the closet.
Christians feel particularly aggrieved because we believe that Jesus invented secularism. Jesus's teachings desacralised the state: no authority, not even Caesar's, was comparable to God's. As Nick Spencer writes in Doing God, "the secular was Christianity's gift to the world, denoting a public space in which authorities should be respected, but could be legitimately challenged and could never accord to themselves absolute or ultimate significance". Christianity, far from creating an absolutist state, initiated dissent from state absolutism.
The desire to rip the hijab and the crucifix off is, of course, an expression of one's own ultimate significance, though, not coincidentally, it can only be achieved by absolute statism. Posted by Orrin Judd at January 5, 2007 9:39 PM
One of the reasons the "Humanist Manifesto" has had to go through 2 big edits, is to mask the intellectual honesty of the first version - which makes clear that the signers intend "Secular Humanism" to be a religion imposed by the government.
While we are distracted by creche and hijab issues, we ignore the fact that our children are being bussed to tax supported churches and indoctrinated in "Secular Humanism" for 6 hours a day 180 days a year.
When your substandard (low SAT score) teacher isn't directly evangelizing for their religion, they are still undermining the concepts of any robust faith - both of which are defacto "religious instruction."
While the occasional hymn at a football game or Christmas recital is not meaningless, the daily undermining of any kind of faith - other than faith in "man" and his "government" - in the classroom is far more lasting.
So to review, public educaiton is bankrupting your state/district, miseducating your children, all while undermining your civilization.
Happy new year everyone!!
Posted by: Bruno at January 6, 2007 9:48 AMKids are exposed to a steady stream of patriotism and Judeo-Christianity and virtually no humanism in most public schools. That's why the rare exceptions get so much attention.
Posted by: oj at January 6, 2007 10:35 AMThe so-called hijab is less a religious symbol than an Ichthus bumpersticker. Like wearing a Che t-shirt, it's just a affection meant to show a comtempt and rejection of society at large. Besides, isn't society supposed to be dealing harshly with its heretics and witches and those within who reject it? (any society, or just "good" ones?)
I've closely followed my son's experience in public schools. Judeo-Christianity and patriotism are openly attacked.
Maybe NH is a small island of sanity, but in both city and suburban IL schools the secular humanist indoctrination is no longer concealed, but clearly and openly above the surface.
Posted by: Bruno at January 6, 2007 4:05 PMJust because you let your kid go to a bad school doesn't make schools bad.
Posted by: oj at January 6, 2007 5:26 PMOJ,
I wasn't in a position to "let" anything happen. I suppose I could have brought the matter to court with his mom, but I doubt it would made things better in the over all situation.
Regardless, re: schools, I could believe you, or a I could believe the reams of data, anecdotes, news stories, etc. etc. etc. that stream out of both the MSM and alternative media.
Surely, good parenting can ameliorate much of the nonsense that passes for education in schools, but why should they have to ameliorate anything?
There is no intellectually sound argument against 100% fully funded school choice for every American child. Conversely, there are zillions of intellectually sound arguments against today's city and suburban schools.
Even in those few instances where public education doesn't suck, it doesn't suck at far too high a price.
Posted by: Bruno at January 7, 2007 1:04 PMThe intelklectual argument is the most obvious one against. Most kids are getting excellent educations so why should parents transfer money to poor students who they're afraid will wreck those good schools? The argument for choice is moral, not rational or pragmatic.
Posted by: oj at January 7, 2007 5:54 PM