Christianity, as people in their 60s and 70s have observed, was pushed off the public stages of the West over the past two generations. At this point, whoever speaks well of it in such places must be prepared to absorb blows.
Nonetheless, nature abhors a vacuum and just about everyone, including the most strident atheist, requires something to believe in. And so the exit of Christianity drew in new faiths, and one in particular, to replace it.
Faith, whether it be called religion, anti-religion or whatever, is a practical requirement for nearly everyone, simply because people aren’t prepared to face an overpowering universe and all the uncertainty in it as a lone individual. They require beliefs like a man requires garments in winter.
The people who pushed Christianity out of the West, however, were anti-religionists, and abysmally bad at mythology. They didn’t even try to replace the old myths until fairly recently, and poorly at that. And so their new mythology came together haphazardly. It was, in fact, confused and unclear, which gave all sorts of rehashed lunacies an opportunity to plug in.
Perhaps a still greater problem with this mythology is that it made course correction all but impossible. With nothing specified, each new addition had equal standing with what had come before: So long as they weren’t friendly to the old Christian way, there was no justification for removing them.
That, I hope, helps to explain the current craziness of the West. And we can add this to help round things out:
A semi-coherent group of people bent on destroying the old ways finally succeeded, then replaced them with nothing at all… because they knew only how to tear down, not how to build.
The one thing they did have was a very old superstition. It had been around for more than six thousand years, and while it failed continually, it had a tremendous pedigree, which was enough. And since pedigree was sufficient, it seems that no one cared to identify its central dogma.
I, however, think it’s necessary to get specific. The lords of the new faith promise this:
We will regiment human life; as a result, your life will be cleansed of pain. Our rules will eliminate evil, error and even hurt feelings.
If you stay with that statement for a couple of minutes, I think you’ll see that it stands behind nearly all political action in the modern world.
It’s also the case that the new faith has a private dogma. It pertains only to those who are clever enough and aligned well enough, but I think it’s too important not to mention. Here it is:
If you are accepted into The Party, you’ll have power over other people.
This private dogma is crucial, because the new faith needs armies of such people to keep their machine running.
Now, to continue…
Christianity promised justice in the future (a Final Judgment), whereas the new faith is more ambitious, claiming that it will eradicate pain and irritation in the here and now.
It’s also interesting to see that the believers in the new faith act precisely like disappointed Christian believers, when their faith fails to work.
Consider the Millerites, who sold all their possessions back in 1844 and waited on hilltops for Jesus to appear. Now think of believers in the West’s new Regimentation Faith, as the solemn promises of their leaders fell flat. (“If you take our vaccine you won’t get or spread Covid.”) In the face of open failure, both groups displayed the same reactions.
The Millerites looked for a new date, then believed in it. The regimentation believers pretend the broken promise never happened, holding their faith above reality and expecting perfect results next time.
There’s more to say on this subject, but I think we’ve covered enough for one post. For more, you can begin with The Two Types of Religion.
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Paul Rosenberg
freemansperspective.com