by Tim Heydon
Those who Denigrate Christianity are Supporting the Marxist Social Engineers who Hate Britain
They must be confronted however because in condemning Christianity, the people who hold them are vilifying not just beliefs which have inspired many of the greatest minds mankind has ever known but our history and our very selves. The history of the British, possibly the most successful of peoples ever, has been for the best part of two millennia the story of the influence of Christianity on the native peoples of these islands. Our culture was made by it; we have been made by it. Whether we realise it or not our language is replete with references to the Book of Common Prayer and the King James Bible. Those who condemn Christianity are actually joining hands with the Marxist denigrators of our history and thus of ourselves and are giving support to those who think we can and should be engineered into something else.
Marxists who Hate Christian Britain have Imported Islam to Help Destroy It
Let us not forget that these secularising Marxists wish to destroy the Christian character of Britain so much that they have been so inexpressibly foolish as to import Islam as a tool for the purpose. (If they didn’t like a Christian Britain, just wait until they get a Moslem one as an unintended consequence of their stupidity!) Or the destroyers are equally stupid and ignorant neo-con followers of David Cameron who are engineering the same grim fate for our country in pursuit of a marxoid vision in which the lion will lie down with the lamb when a materialist utopia of plenty arrives. This utopia will be engineered through free –market economics including the free movement of millions of Moslem Turks (for a starter) to Britain).
The Mystifying Belief that Secularism would bring Tolerance
What is mystifying in the arguments of these people is the strange supposition that a truly secular society would of its nature be more tolerant and less prone to violence than any society shaped by any form of faith. That Christian values will survive de-Christianisation. Given that the modern age of secular governance has been the most savagely violent in human history by a factor (or body count) of incalculable magnitude, it is hard to identify the grounds for their confidence. (The suggestion that these forms of secular government were little more than ‘secular religions’ should be laughed off as the shabby evasion it obviously is).
The Idea that People are ‘Naturally Good’ went up with smoke at Auschwitz
It is also not clear in the least why these enthusiasts for secularism should imagine that a world devoid of faith would choose to be guided by moral principles remotely similar to their own. The idea that people are ‘naturally good’ and left to their own devices things will work out just fine surely disappeared down the shell craters of the Somme or up in smoke at Auschwitz. Perhaps these optimists don’t want to have such a morality, and think that ‘nature will provide.’ However, the only attempts at an ethics consistent with Darwinian science have been the socialist eugenics movements of the early twentieth century and the Nazi movement which sprang from it. Is this what they want?
There are no Moral Principles to be found in Nature
For most people though, this should surely be enough of an answer to those who think that a thorough-going materialism informed by Darwinian biology will actually help us to ‘rise above’ our ‘tribalism’ and ‘irrationality’ and that we will instead live in tolerant harmony with each other. The fact is that, understood purely as a base, material event, there are no moral principles at all to be found in nature and so it can provide none; all it can do is to provide its own example, which is not remotely gentle.
The Delusions of Secularism
In any case there is something delusional in the optimistic certainty of ‘liberal’ secularists of whatever stamp that human beings will wish to choose altruistic values without invoking transcendent principles. They may do so, but they may also wish to build death camps and may very well choose to do that instead. For every ethical theory developed apart from some account of transcendent truth – of, that is, the spiritual or metaphysical foundation of reality – is a fragile fiction credible only to those sufficiently obstinate in their willing suspension of disbelief.
The Godless Disappear when Nitty Gritty Help is Needed
Not that one needs an ethical theory to be a charitable person. But (drawing one admits on personal experience), outside the realm of mere civil obedience to dominant social values – in the hell-holes of our cities and towns where in the gutters (sometimes literally) there exist the most forsaken and forgotten among us, those who depend on the concrete, heroic charity of selfless souls - the ranks of the godless tend to thin out remarkably quickly and few are seen except the Salvation Army and the like.
Outsourcing ‘Compassion’ to the State; the Shallowness of Liberal ‘Caring’
Secularists tend to want to outsource all that nitty grittiness to the state; to the tender mercies, or rather the lack of them, of ‘social services.’ It is worth noticing also that the quantity of charitable aid supplied and sustained by Christian churches continues to be unimaginably vast. A world from which the Gospel has been banished would surely be one in which millions more would go unfed, unnursed, unsheltered and uneducated.
Religious People Can indeed be Nasty
Still, it should be allowed that the both the religious and the irreligious are capable of varying degrees of tolerance or intolerance, benevolence or malice, depending on how they understand the moral implications of their beliefs. What we should never forget though is where our overarching notions of the moral good, to which even atheists feel an allegiance, actually come from. Compassion, pity and charity as we understand them are not found in nature like trees or butterflies, but are historically contingent conventions of belief and practice formed by cultural convictions that need never have arisen at all.
Many Societies have risen and endured without the Christian Virtues
Many societies have arisen and have endured quite well without them. They were hardly in evidence for example in the Roman amphitheatres whose cruel public torture of their victims went on for centuries, nor in the slave states of ancient Greece, nor among the Vikings, nor in the Yurts of Genghis Khan and his heirs, nor much in the history of Japan, nor in a thousand other times and places one could mention.
Killing will Continue Regardless of Who or What Dominates
It should go without saying that if the teachings of Jesus were genuinely to take root in human hearts – that if indeed we all believed that God is love and that we ought to love our neighbours as ourselves, (meaning we should treat them decently) – we should have no desire for war, we should hate injustice and we should find indifference to the sufferings of others impossible. But in fact human beings will continue to make war, will continue cheerfully to murder the innocent and the defenceless; they will continue to distract themselves by killing on a huge scale, glorying in their power to do so (one thinks of Blair’s ‘progressive’ wars in Yugoslavia, in Iraq and in Afghanistan). And human society will continue in various time and places to degenerate into a murderous horde, even when it remains so civilised as to depute the state to do its killing for it. All Christians can do is to keep the faith that turning to Jesus will transform the hard hearts of Men.
The Ignorance of the Detractors of Christianity
Many of the most vociferous critics of Christianity, who are themselves ignorantly living off the proceeds of two millennia of largely Christianity-inspired endeavour and achievement know little more of them than some childish images of bloodthirsty Crusaders and sadistic Inquisitors, a few damning facts and a lot more damning legends. Such people may very well know so little of human nature as to imagine that a society ‘liberated’ from Jesus would love justice, truth or beauty, or compassion or even life.
Christianity’s Shrewd View of Human Nature
Christianity makes no such mistake. It sees humanity as at once the image of a loving God and also as the wellspring of almost inexhaustible nastiness, greed and brutality. Christians are aware of these things because their Jesus, who takes the part of the oppressed, was himself murdered by the combined political, judicial and religious powers of society.
Christianity is Hated by those who Demand Total Freedom to Behave as they Please
The antipathy to Christianity we are seeing in our own society stems from a belief, not so much in nothing, although there is that, but in the freedom of the will which ultimate nothingness bestows. A stable human nature or a God beyond us would limit and channel our freedom to make choices and nothing must infringe our personal dignity in that way! Those who think like this do not realise that a human nature which is not stable can be moulded by leftists, and how much dignity is there in that? Or that without God we are indeed nothing and can ‘nothing’ have dignity? Ask Hitler or Stalin!
