Atheism is a False Hope (a dialogue).

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Against Atheism, Arguments for religion, Atheism Plus, Atheists against Atheism, Bill Nye, Christopher Hitchens, Cultural Marxism, Defend the modern world, Ken Ham, Marx, nietzsche, PZ Myers, richard dawkins, Sam Harris, Theodore Dalrymple

Dramatis Personae : A – a fictional interrogator: DTMW – Myself.

A: “Is there a God?”

DTMW: “Possibly.”

A: “The God of conventional religion?”

DTMW: “No.”

A: “So you’re an atheist in that regard?”

DTMW: “Not really. Atheism has become a positive concept. While once it was simply an absence of belief, it is now a very politicised label and suggests a specific worldview built around materialism, liberalism and a forced veneration of science. The New Atheists I find especially dangerous. They do not understand the function religion plays in the maintenance of a civil society, and what would necessarily occur were it removed.”

A: “Which is…”

DTMW: “It protects society from the full consequences of scientific truth. We’ve gotten too used to the idea that the ‘truth will set us free’ – that truth, being a positive value, can only have a positive effect. We forget that it can be beneficial or harmful only depending on its interpretation. Human beings are not naturally good, I’m afraid. Hobbes had this almost correct, except that religion and not government is the most effective Leviathan. Without it, the less evolved among the world population would feel they had no reason to stay within moral boundaries. Without the fear of hellfire, morality becomes a matter of consent. That’s all well and good for intelligent people with their evolved sense of empathy and social nuance. But most people are not intelligent.

And even among the intelligent, atheism allows for an icy, almost mathematical form of ethics that can be used to rationalise just about anything. Abortion, murder in all by name, can very easily be made logical by atheist thinking, but less so by the slightly fuzzy sentimentalism of the religious mind. That fuzzy sentimentalism, even if ridiculed by the petri dish and microscope, protects us from a lot of evil ‘common-sense’. The ‘New Atheists’ are greasing the wheels towards a very cold and dangerous void, the eventual filling of which they shan’t themselves be around to influence.

A: “Richard Dawkins says we can be good without God.”

DTMW: “As well he might. He is the product of a charmed life and first-class education. He belongs the upper-middle class and has never truly experienced hardship of the kind the poor must contend with. Solace of an earthly, material kind was at his side come what may. When the poor are faced with a reality that is horrid in every rational interpretation, they must look beyond reality for comfort. Peace between the classes depends in no small way on this function of religion. The concept of a human ‘equality’ before God; of a levelling after death; of a divine reward measured to match the hardship endured in life – all of these concepts prevent the fires of revolution bursting into life. There is a good reason that Communists went for the churches with as much venom as the banks and corporations.”

A: “What about Islam?”

DTMW: “Not all religions are equal. Some are more moral than others. It’s important to remember that a living religion is more than its foundational text. It is the product of elaborations and philosophies inspired by that text over hundreds of years. This is why Judaism and Christianity evolve and Islam doesn’t. The Qur’an, unlike the Bible, is a book that cannot be re-interpreted without fear of death.

A: “So you’d rather the Arabs and Persians and others converted to Christianity?”

DTMW: “I think that would be transformative. A Christianised Islamic world would solve so many of the worlds anxieties that it is difficult to describe how highly I favour the idea. I also expect the second generation growing up in a forcibly Christianised Pakistan (say) would be thankful to those who dominated and converted their elders. Islam makes life hell. Even Islamists are desperate to escape the fruits of their own labours. They are too proud to admit otherwise of course.”

A: “Are atheists evil?”

DTMW: “No. But many are certainly elitist. Elitism hides behind atheism rather well. You might say ‘No, I don’t hate poor White Americans; I just enjoy ridiculing their belief in Noah’s Ark. It’s got nothing to do with the fact that I went to University and they didn’t.’ I’m not convinced by that sort of thing I’m afraid.

As both Nietzsche and the Nazis understood, Christianity has always opposed elitism and made it politically impossible. This is the case today in America. The anti-intellectual instinct of Southern Baptism for example is something I sympathise with. The elite of America would love nothing more than to re-order society based on IQ or erudition. Christianity demands that other qualities are taken into account; unscientific qualities – like modesty, friendliness and warmth.

On a social level, mass atheism (as opposed to scattered, disorganised disbelief) would open Pandora’s Box. Many sleeping ideologies would awaken and moral values would be re-examined. It isn’t enough to say that ‘reason’ would take the place of religion. Whose reason? Can you not make a reasonable case for unreasonable things?

A: “Do you prefer Catholic or Protestant culture?”

DTMW: “My father is a retired C-of-E minister and so Protestantism is more familiar to me. I don’t like the hierarchicalism of the Catholic church, but I like the aesthetics of Catholic communion. Protestantism is more earthly. The West would fare well with either.

A: “Should children be raised with religion?”

DTMW: “I couldn’t be insincere in that regard, so instead I would make them understand that this is historically a Christian culture and that Islam, Hinduism and the like, are foreign to it. We reserve the right to uphold traditions and to maintain a unifying sense of identity. A religious core strengthens a nation by giving it a point of focus. It is terribly short-sighted to recommend the removal of religion from public life entirely.

D, LDN.

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Reflections on the Nuclear Option.

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American Liberty, Bombing of Japan, Civilisation, Counter-Jihad, Counterjihad, Defend the modern world, Hiroshima, Hiroshime, Imperial Japan, Iran Nukes, Nuclear Bombs, Nuclear Holocaust, Nuclear Sam Harris, Nuclear Winter, Sam Harris, Samson Option, Theodore Dalrymple

This past week saw the anniversary of America’s demolition of the city of Hiroshima, then a major manufacturing hub of the Imperial Japanese Empire. As we are always reminded, this was the first and as yet only use of nuclear weapons in warfare.

I’ll let it be known where I stand on that episode without hesitation. The bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, as well as the coventrations of Tokyo and Kyoto before them, were not only justified actions (in a strategic sense) but represented an act of profound kindness to the peoples of Asia. Just as Germany had arrogantly sought to enslave the peoples of Europe against their will, so Japan – with its terrifying efficiency – was actively seeking to imprison the whole of East Asia under a Yamato herrenvolk.

Americans should rightly be proud of this stroke of moral and military genius. It saved many more lives than it took.

From their creation, nuclear weapons have always provided a philosophical as well as strategic dilemma for policy-makers. Does anyone really have the right to unleash the forces of hell on another country? Can the death of innocents ever be necessary?

As I’ve already suggested, the answer to both of these questions is ‘yes’.

There are many different kinds of war. It is not always a war between rational actors, or even between states. Sometimes a whole society is mobilised in a shared hysteria and must be dealt with accordingly. Both Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan had thoroughly indoctrinated populations as well as governments. In Germany, the concept of a master-race was believed by judges and street-sweepers, government officials and housewives. Similarly, there is an ocean of evidence to suggest that millions of ordinary Japanese believed in the divinity of Hirohito and were ready to kill and die for him. The nuclear bombing of Japan was thus designed to avoid a lengthy (and bloody) confrontation with a whole nation. A US occupation (without prior surrender) would have been opposed by civilian suicide attacks too numerous to be humanely controlled. One word from the emperor could have mobilised a million men, women and children into crazed violence.

In 2007, the neuroscientist and irreligionist Sam Harris was quoted as having said the following: “Some propositions are so dangerous that it may even be ethical to kill people for believing them”. He was broadly condemned for this (including bizarrely by Theodore Dalrymple), despite it being the active policy of the Western World in regard to armed jihadis in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Harris if correct of course, and Islam (his main concern) is a bigger threat than Japan could have ever mustered. If Islam cannot be dealt with by our conventional forces, we will eventually have to consider the use of a nuclear pacifier.

The objection to the use of nuclear weapons under any circumstance is (whilst moral in origin) energised largely by exaggeration. The use of nuclear weapons on Tehran, Riyadh and Ankara for example (and this would represent the most obvious opening salvo in a Western offensive against Islam) would not for certain lead to a ‘nuclear winter’. The environmental effects of nuclear explosions have been subject to significant pacifist hype. Since the Second World War, there have been over 2000 nuclear bomb blasts in many different environments. None have caused lasting environmental damage. This is considerably more than would be used in the situations we are talking about. And even if the objection is raised against me that nuclear tests do not actually burn structures and therefore don’t emit smoke into the atmosphere, we still have the examples of Hiroshima and Nagasaki to draw from. About these very real test cases, Skeptoid’s Brian Dunning wrote the following:

“Hiroshima developed a firestorm… that peaked two to three hours after the explosion. Six hours after the explosion, nearly everything combustible within a one-and-a-half kilometer radius had been consumed, and the fire was almost completely out, leaving over 8 square kilometers destroyed… Photographs taken of Hiroshima over the next few days do not show any significant evidence of vast amounts of smoke.”

Other examples of nuclear over-hype are given in the article: I shall post the link in the comments section.

Of course, there are some circumstances in which nuclear weapons are too powerful to be safely deployed by a state. Israel for example could not use nuclear weapons on Jordan or Egypt without the threat of environmental risk to its own population. But in general, both Israel the West cannot permanently discount this kind of arsenal as a tool of resistance.

We have the moral right to defend our happiness and to preserve the possibility of happiness for mankind. When you compare our relaxed, macchiato lifestyle against the desert mutilations of Planet Sharia, ask yourself this: Isn’t the preservation of one from the other worth a nuclear explosion or two?

There is only one earth for humans to inhabit. What worth can human life have if freedom is abolished on it? When you’re fighting for reasons as big as that – heaven against hell, light against eternal darkness – all options must remain firmly on the table.

D, LDN