Discussion about this post

User's avatar
Stephen T Johnson's avatar

Aurelien:

I'll go you one further. Messianic liberalism is very bad at understanding and interpreting the behaviours of its *own* culture (at least, those elements who don't buy in to the belief system) as well. Look at the responses to "Anti-vaxers", the Gilets Jaune, the Canadian trucker convoy, etc. The vast gulf of incomprehension between the quondam Masterrs of the Universe and the great unwashed, as well as their outrage that anyone might question or disagree with their plans or actions reveals an extraordinary social gulf that can only result in violence - “Qu’ils mangent de la brioche” Indeed.

I think this winter we'll see how the whole Euro elite scheme that "Europeans should be willing to starve and freeze in the dark to support the glorious forces of Ukrainian democracy" plays out. My guess is torches and pitchforks ultimately followed by either a new storming of the bastille, or some weird kind of neoliberal quasi-fascist repression to suppress wrongthink and thoughtcrime. Good times!

For Rev. Graham:

I can't make head nor tail of your point. What's in your heart (literally) is blood and muscle. What's in your heart (metaphorically) seems little different from belief. Caveat: I am not a theologian or even theology-adjacent, but to me, your argument sounds like a distinction without a difference.

I will cheerfully acknowledge that this may be a pure product of my limited understanding of theology, but I doubt I'm unique there, and frankly when I've read much of the deeper works of theology, it makes my head hurt, but leaves me no wiser.

Expand full comment
John Ennis's avatar

Sir:

I just re-read this piece and it passes muster. Again thank you for the quality work.

As an aside, it reminds me of a character from Douglas Adam's "Hitchhiker's guide to the Galaxy".

"The Babel fish is small, yellow, leech-like, and probably the oddest thing in the Universe. It feeds on brainwave energy received not from its own carrier, but from those around it. It absorbs all unconscious mental frequencies from this brainwave energy to nourish itself with. It then excretes into the mind of its carrier a telepathic matrix formed by combining the conscious thought frequencies with nerve signals picked up from the speech centres of the brain which has supplied them. The practical upshot of all this is that if you stick a Babel fish in your ear you can instantly understand anything said to you in any form of language. The speech patterns you actually hear decode the brainwave matrix which has been fed into your mind by your Babel fish.

"Now it is such a bizarrely improbable coincidence that something so mind-bogglingly useful could have evolved purely by chance that some thinkers have chosen to see it as a final and clinching proof of the non-existence of God.

"The argument goes something like this: 'I refuse to prove that I exist,' says God, 'for proof denies faith, and without faith, I am nothing.' 'But, says Man, the Babel fish is a dead giveaway, isn't it? It could not have evolved by chance. It proves you exist, and, by your own arguments, you don't. QED.' 'Oh dear,' says God, 'I hadn't thought of that,' and vanishes in a puff of logic. 'Oh, that was easy,' says Man, and for an encore goes on to prove that black is white and gets himself killed on the next zebra crossing.

"Most leading theologians claim that this argument is a load of dingo's kidneys, but that didn't stop Oolon Colluphid from making a small fortune when he used it as the theme of his best-selling book, Well That About Wraps It Up For God.

"Meanwhile, the poor Babel fish, by effectively removing all barriers to communication between different races and cultures, has caused more and bloodier wars than anything else in the history of creation."

Expand full comment
7 more comments...

No posts