The woman who posts about whether or not engaging in sexual acts with animal carcasses is moral wonders why someone might be drawn to religion. Fascinating.
Thanks for writing this. I think Ayaan has come to religiosity by way of an intuitive, non-dogmatic approach. This is attractive to secular people and we should be encouraging it to strengthen the West.
Great post! Just wanted to point out that not all Protestants focus on and prioritize an individualistic, emotional and fundamentally sentimental faith. I am a confessional Lutheran (LCMS) and we believe in the trinity because it’s true, regardless of whether or not we may or may not be “feeling it” at every moment. Thank you for communicating that to the world. It cannot be said too many times.
I fully empathise with Ayaan Hirsi Ali's embrace of Christianity.... the wellspring after all of everything that defines our Western civilisation (or used to). I have no religious faith as such but often wish I had. It is a tragic irony that militant atheism has advanced during the course of my lifetime in tandem with various secular pseudo-religions-by-another-name. Atheists make the huge error of failing to notice that - like it or not - in all of human history the evidence is clear: religion is hard-wired into the human condition. To ignore this fact makes discussions about a fairy-tale world free of religion ultimately vacuous. As Chesterton (probably) said "When a man stops believing in God he doesn’t then believe in nothing, he believes anything".
Good post. As an evangelical, I would view the conversion of Ayaan Hirsi Ali as legitimate. For me, the legitimacy of her conversion would be measured more by her admission of Christianity as an answer to the void of her existence than by her recognition of the beauty and contributions of Christianity to Western culture.
There are those who respect the influence of Christianity on culture and see it as a positive thing for families, yet they still maintain a distance from Christianity on a personal level. They never actually come to believe anything about Christ. However, I don’t think Ali is this type of person or lacks personal faith.
She rejects the theological claims of Christianity, so in what sense is she a Christian? Because she thinks that the Chris-, sorry, Judaeo-Christian tradition leads to nice things?
The ‘ancient Greeks’ voluntarily chose Christianity as superior, as did countless types of ‘pagans’. Something people seem to have conveniently forgotten nowdays..
Right. But Greek culture and philosophy continued to be an inspiration for the elites and therefore our civilization. After all many great works of art have been commissioned by prelates of the church. Greek design and architecture informed and continue to influence western civilization. We still watch movies and read books based on Greek myth and many scholars still study and learn from ancient pre-Christian Greeks. Christianity was, overall, a positive addition to western civilization but it wasn't a total erasure. Today, Christianity, at least in the institutional form, seems to have lost the thread. Maybe a better understanding of our spiritual and intellectual heritage is in order.
Yes I agree, although it’s still very much present in the Catholic and Orthodox churches. My own view is that many of the modern confusions can be traced back to the likes of Ockham and Bacon, when the rediscovery of Aristotle ironically helped cause a break from the platonic Christian tradition. Aristotle was of course heavily platonic in many ways, but philosophers and theologians of the time (and now) focussed so much on the differences, that we ended up loosing the fundamental basis of reality that we had inherited from the Greeks (form, essence etc). After that, we began the long fall into relativism, with things only having the reality that we give them. The reformation was just part of this, with each person creating their own meaning.
Now this ‘nominalism’ is just the air we breathe, apart from some areas like maths where exploring and discovering in platonic realms becomes absurd if we’ve created those realms. So yes I kind of agree, but maybe not for the same reasons as you.
Of the Greek gods only Dionysus was murdered and reborn. The giants who killed him and ate parts of his body were the ancestors of humans. If you can think metaphorically about that it means Dionysus himself was a sacrificial victim and humans are descendants of his murderers.
Concerning Dionysian madness, the maenads of today are obsessed with abstractions called racism and sexism (and human rights). But these are Apollonian in character, manufactured by intellectuals, and are an attack on natural order, one would think. Therefore, Dionysian nature is asserting itself by destroying modernism, not traditional Christianity
"Europe has not yet learned how to be multicultural. And I think we are going to be part of the throes of that transformation, which must take place. Europe is not going to be the monolithic societies that they once were in the last century. Jews are going to be at the center of that. It's a huge transformation for Europe to make. They are now going into a multicultural mode, and Jews will be resented because of our leading role. But without that leading role, and without that transformation, Europe will not survive."
Barbara Lerner Spectre, founding director of Paideia, the European Institute for Jewish Studies in Sweden
The woman who posts about whether or not engaging in sexual acts with animal carcasses is moral wonders why someone might be drawn to religion. Fascinating.
Thanks for writing this. I think Ayaan has come to religiosity by way of an intuitive, non-dogmatic approach. This is attractive to secular people and we should be encouraging it to strengthen the West.
Even St. Constantine's famous conversion was based on "in hoc signo vinces".
Everyone's relationship with Christ is "mediated" in some way. And everyone is "stumbling on the path of faith."
Great post! Just wanted to point out that not all Protestants focus on and prioritize an individualistic, emotional and fundamentally sentimental faith. I am a confessional Lutheran (LCMS) and we believe in the trinity because it’s true, regardless of whether or not we may or may not be “feeling it” at every moment. Thank you for communicating that to the world. It cannot be said too many times.
I fully empathise with Ayaan Hirsi Ali's embrace of Christianity.... the wellspring after all of everything that defines our Western civilisation (or used to). I have no religious faith as such but often wish I had. It is a tragic irony that militant atheism has advanced during the course of my lifetime in tandem with various secular pseudo-religions-by-another-name. Atheists make the huge error of failing to notice that - like it or not - in all of human history the evidence is clear: religion is hard-wired into the human condition. To ignore this fact makes discussions about a fairy-tale world free of religion ultimately vacuous. As Chesterton (probably) said "When a man stops believing in God he doesn’t then believe in nothing, he believes anything".
Zero value add but there is a typo in your footnote, "did" was presumably intended to be "dig".
Nicely put and very sensible observations though, thank you.
Good post. As an evangelical, I would view the conversion of Ayaan Hirsi Ali as legitimate. For me, the legitimacy of her conversion would be measured more by her admission of Christianity as an answer to the void of her existence than by her recognition of the beauty and contributions of Christianity to Western culture.
There are those who respect the influence of Christianity on culture and see it as a positive thing for families, yet they still maintain a distance from Christianity on a personal level. They never actually come to believe anything about Christ. However, I don’t think Ali is this type of person or lacks personal faith.
She rejects the theological claims of Christianity, so in what sense is she a Christian? Because she thinks that the Chris-, sorry, Judaeo-Christian tradition leads to nice things?
Ali forgets the ancient Greeks. Maybe Catholicism incorporated Greek thinking in some way? Certainly, it was rediscovered in the Renaissance.
The ‘ancient Greeks’ voluntarily chose Christianity as superior, as did countless types of ‘pagans’. Something people seem to have conveniently forgotten nowdays..
Greek philosophy included the same kind of deconstructive strain that modern philosophy is suffering from.
Right. But Greek culture and philosophy continued to be an inspiration for the elites and therefore our civilization. After all many great works of art have been commissioned by prelates of the church. Greek design and architecture informed and continue to influence western civilization. We still watch movies and read books based on Greek myth and many scholars still study and learn from ancient pre-Christian Greeks. Christianity was, overall, a positive addition to western civilization but it wasn't a total erasure. Today, Christianity, at least in the institutional form, seems to have lost the thread. Maybe a better understanding of our spiritual and intellectual heritage is in order.
Yes I agree, although it’s still very much present in the Catholic and Orthodox churches. My own view is that many of the modern confusions can be traced back to the likes of Ockham and Bacon, when the rediscovery of Aristotle ironically helped cause a break from the platonic Christian tradition. Aristotle was of course heavily platonic in many ways, but philosophers and theologians of the time (and now) focussed so much on the differences, that we ended up loosing the fundamental basis of reality that we had inherited from the Greeks (form, essence etc). After that, we began the long fall into relativism, with things only having the reality that we give them. The reformation was just part of this, with each person creating their own meaning.
Now this ‘nominalism’ is just the air we breathe, apart from some areas like maths where exploring and discovering in platonic realms becomes absurd if we’ve created those realms. So yes I kind of agree, but maybe not for the same reasons as you.
Of the Greek gods only Dionysus was murdered and reborn. The giants who killed him and ate parts of his body were the ancestors of humans. If you can think metaphorically about that it means Dionysus himself was a sacrificial victim and humans are descendants of his murderers.
Concerning Dionysian madness, the maenads of today are obsessed with abstractions called racism and sexism (and human rights). But these are Apollonian in character, manufactured by intellectuals, and are an attack on natural order, one would think. Therefore, Dionysian nature is asserting itself by destroying modernism, not traditional Christianity
Ayaan sure seems like Hasbara targeted at boomers. She's right there is a civilization war going on but its not the one she says.
Frankly, we have two related civilizational wars going on, one internal the other external.
I'm talking about the one between Westerners and the small group of people who rule them. Other conflicts barely register in comparison.
You should look at what's happening in Europe for starters.
"Europe has not yet learned how to be multicultural. And I think we are going to be part of the throes of that transformation, which must take place. Europe is not going to be the monolithic societies that they once were in the last century. Jews are going to be at the center of that. It's a huge transformation for Europe to make. They are now going into a multicultural mode, and Jews will be resented because of our leading role. But without that leading role, and without that transformation, Europe will not survive."
Barbara Lerner Spectre, founding director of Paideia, the European Institute for Jewish Studies in Sweden