Kontextmaschine

27th September 2021

Post reblogged from Kontextmaschine with 63 notes

Meditating on that line that American atheism is markedly post-Christian
You see a lot of liberal stuff like “sure this violates conservative ~pRiNcIpLes~ but my god can’t they see real human lives are at stake?”
And approvingly cite the Jewish principle of pikuach nefesh – survival as overriding other divine commandments, or even taqiya, which ‘00s anti-Islamists saw as Muslim duplicity but can be glossed as “privately keep the faith, but publicly go along with whatever in the name of pluralist civic order”
But Christianity doesn’t have those, it has instead the ideal of martyrdom – that given a choice between accommodating wrongfulness and the certain destruction of your self and all you value, the latter is the righteous, correct, and even enviable one.
And even American Enlightenment tolerance is fundamentally post-Christian? What are the tales of the persecution of Galileo, the Inquisition, but foundational martyrs’ tales? (They used to be stories British Protestants told about how Catholics were bad)
And the tolerance ideal was that you’d accept that other groups were living in wrong ways but you had the option of keeping faith and being accepted in turn, anyway, is that still on offer?
(In fairness, the US once changed Mormon doctrine with an army, and in my life alone I’ve seen government power wielded against “cults”, “Satanists”, and Islam)
Shows that modern liberalism is, like we were warned in the 90s, increasingly secular humanist, that holds mortal human life as its highest value because… because… uh, ~HyOoMaN~! Hooooooooly
Which is dumb, because “life” is flopped to mean “willed satisfaction of desire” or “bare animal survival” there even where they’re directly opposed. And doomed, because human value and meaning arises from existential conflict.

Tagged: rerun