This is a revolution! And a revolutionary must become a cold killing machine motivated by pure hate.
–Che Guevara

The revelation of the logical anti-gospel of no-god, as triumphantly proclaimed by the great secular preachers of our time — the likes of Dawkins and Hitchens — is abuzz the world over. I have been a bit harsh in my reaction to the devangelists of Atheism, because of course, if you study the evidence logically, they are exactly right.

All Christians are either luke-warm or mad; and all are scoundrels — pass the collection plate, God tells me He wants you to give us loads of money, Jesus loves you, please come back again. They pass their brother bleeding on the road, and puff their chests out in the house of worship. They just bend with the wind and intone their sombre utterances to whichever political master flatters them best.

As for the Catholic Church, for most of the last millennium, they were basically a totalitarian dictatorship. Yep, that’s right. I won’t deny it. Protestants, too. Luther, Calvin, Mother Theresa, all were crazed fanatics, as is anyone who assumes there is more of the world than the random movements of atoms and photons.

The Buddhists and Muslims are no better, the Jews are worse. In fact wherever you look you will see proud, wicked, self-serving hypocrites, both religious or otherwise.

Beyond the flickering cone of light provided by established science, the masses stumble in ignorance and superstition.

All humans are wretched. Even the seed of truth sown by science falls ever on barren ground. Whatever philosophy or belief, humans excel at only self interest and satisfying their urges. Any pretence of philanthropy or compassion is simply evidence of an unhealthy craving to be admired.

The Bourgeois — liberated from religion, but still smugly shackled in their imaginary moral code — still persist in the the delusion that morality can exist. In their conceit they repackage the corpse, calling it Humanism or Natural Morality. But humanism might as well be dog-ism or mud-sim. No bright wrapping can stifle the smell of an idea that is dead and decomposing. Nietzsche was right. There is no natural basis of morality. Morality is what Man creates, so let him create and destroy it freely to gain whatever advantage he may. Even the Bourgeois will embrace this bloody truth when their lives or livelihoods are threatened.

Who then can argue with the promoters of infanticide, euthanasia, abortion or eugenics? Their logic is irreproachable. No person’s life deserves special status. A life can and ought to be freely taken if the loss of it can bestow a net benefit to others. You have no soul, and nor do I. What is your life to me if by your death I might benefit?

Besides, if none will stop me, why should I care?

As for the great tyrants, let them be called Great Prophets of the the Misangelion! The prohibition of murder is just an archaic human construct. Human Elimination is the most efficient way to bring material benefit — the only benefit that exists — to the greatest number of people. So why not? The greatness of a man can only be measured by his impact on the living. Once the dead pass into non-existence, they are immediately irrelevant (even before the grass has grown over their mass graves).

What is it to stamp out human life anyway? If the Greens are to believed, and their argument is entirely logical, humanity is a destructive plague (and if it suits us, let us believe them one week and feed them into the ovens the next).

Here it is then, the logical conclusion of a purely scientific approach to life: Nothing is valid and nothing is true. There are just shifting theories; our drives and urges; and untamed nature. None of us deserve life, and everyone will die one day. Happiness and affection, love, hope, awe and sadness are worse than mere sentiment, they are chemical-induced hallucinations. There is no purpose to life, and nothing has any meaning. Do whatever gives you stimulation, and answer to no one and no thing.

The devil spreads wide his arms, saying ‘Welcome, my children. At last it is settled. I am the Way, the Warmth and the Darkness. Come, the road is wide and the way is all downhill.

The only true and correct philosophy is nihilism.

…just as I suspected when I was seventeen years old.

But there’s only one problem; I’ve tried nihilism, and there was nothing in it. Apart from anything else, I do indeed have to die one day, but between then and now I want to live. I raced towards that grim rendezvous at far greater speed as a nihilistic young man than at any time since. And even that dispirited youth came to realise a cold heart and a cold sneer — dressed in black and looking out for number one like a Wild West gun-fighter — were a poor investment for his fleeting hours.

If that’s the outcome of a logical approach to the truth of life, what use is logic to me?

I want to live an world, that contains the warm glow of Joy; the delicate precipitation of Hope; the burning ecstasy of Love; the sweet pain of shared Sadness; the cool breeze of Forgiveness; and the uplifting and vivifying stimulation of that distant light on the hill — Truth.

So the question must be, having arrived at nihilism, how does one get to that other location from here?

It’s all over the news of course — Dawkins, Hitchens, ‘religion is superstition’, ‘there is no god but Reason’, you know the sort of thing.

It’s grimly amusing to see these atheists, in trying to twist facts to suit their theories, categorise Nazism and Communism as forms of religion, in order to inflate their case that religion is the cause of the world’s woes. What all these godless beliefs — atheism, Nazism, Communism, Jacobinism, Greenism, you name it — have in common, is that they are philosophically materialistic.

One of the characteristic delusions of the materialist is that they think they can find a materialistic means to fix the faults of Man. You know how it goes:- Things can be made perfect… …if only we can change how people think, …if only we can eliminate this superstitious belief, …if only we can liquidate this class of people, …if only we can exterminate this race.

One of the things that first drew me towards Christ (a long journey), was realising that, behind its archaic expressive style, the Bible holds a more accurate, insightful and enlightened understanding of humans and human nature than any amount of Darwinism or Psychology.

The Bible explains that Man is imperfect, and no amount of self-improvement or social engineering can fix him. No amount of murdered class enemies, or race enemies, or evolutionary rejects can be enough to fix Man. If you could reach into his heart and mind and set every dial to the ideal, he would still be imperfect. And the Devil would still be out there waiting to tempt him.

The Bible explains all this. Despite its ancient poetry, it is still the authority on the soul of Man.

Incidentally, Dawkins, Hitchens and their kind never properly describe anything close to Christian belief. They paint a picture of a superstitious pagan-style deity — the ‘invisible friend’ or ‘the macaroni monster’, ‘the old man in the sky’ — and then say ‘how absurd’. Well, I agree. There are no false gods with flowing beards living on Mt Olympus or anywhere.

But that also goes for the false gods of our new ruling class — the gods of Reason, Science, The Self, The Environment, Freedom– or the king of all the new gods, Politics. These false gods truly are what their followers claim, human constructions with no existence outside our own imaginations.

But as King David said,’My soul thirsteth for the living God’. The Bible teaches that God is mysterious, His nature unknowable, that life and all things come are of Him and from Him. This is the enlightened truth. And the more I learn of the universe — with its multitude of miraculous coincidences, its intelligent and self-organising nature, its simplicity and complexity; and the more I see of living things, how exceptional and unbound Life is by the laws of the material world; the more logical and obvious seem the philosophies of true religion, and the more sadly benighted those of the materialist.

With this, I know every free thinking reader will agree.

A few nice links from one of my current favourite Blogs, Ali Eteraz, who has a nice mix of Islamic matters and politics.

He has a link to a translation of Surah Rahman from the Koran, which I think most Christians would enjoy.

He also has an interesting piece on ‘Iblis the Jinn’.

Iblis was the jinn who prior to the creation of man was a faithful and virtuous being. His piety was such that he spent an infinity of worship upon every square foot of the universe, and where he bowed he left roses blooming in the night. (more…)

Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth.
The Gospel of St Matthew 5:5

But there were false prophets also among the people, even as there shall be false teachers among you, who privily shall bring in damnable heresies, even denying the Lord that bought them, and bring upon themselves swift destruction.
2 Peter 2:1

Also sprach Zarathustra

The bombastic and overblown but musically brilliant tone poem ‘Also sprach Zarathustra’ (’So said Zoroaster’) by Richard Strauss, inspired by Nietzsche’s book of the same name, was famously used by Stanley Kubrick as theme music his classic movie ‘2001, A Space Odyssey’. For the most part this movie is an intelligent and entertaining sci-fi thriller. It begins and ends, however, with some memorable but rather odd scenes.

The movie opens with a man in an ape suit symbolically evolving to humanity through an act of violence, cracking the skull of his ape-man neighbour — man in a Godless world creating himself by an act of pure Will — boom-boom boom-boom goes the kettle drum, taaa daa ta-daa go the trumpets. It ends with an individual alone in the void, pursuing his destiny, transformed, in a long tedious series of scenes of incoherent cartoon mysticism, into an infant super-being.

Boom-boom boom-boom goes the kettle drum, taaa daa ta-daa go the trumpets.

Friedrich Nietzsche would probably have loved it.

(more…)

Don Camillo and Peppone match wits

(from ‘The Carburettor’, Chapter XIV of ‘Don Camillo and the Devil’), Giovanni Guareschi

This chapter of ‘Don Camillo and the Devil’ is a real favourite. Like a Socratic Dialogue, it is full of subtle ideas — on Materialism, Faith, God, Nature and Man — expressed in a charming, everyday way. Don Camillo and Peppone have been discussing the case of a sick child who was recently cured using a technologically advanced medicine brought from the United States by the American ambassadress.

In the story, Peppone, the Communist Mayor, has just accused the Church of using the child as a propaganda tool, because he was reported to have had a dream where the Madonna took him to heaven where he spoke with Jesus who said he would be cured thanks to the United States. Their conversation continues as follows…

Peppone was as red in the face as the October Revolution.

“Why didn’t Divine Providence stop the child from getting sick, in the first place?’ he asked.

“Divine Providence didn’t bring about the sickness,” Don Camillo explained “Sickness is a product of Nature, and Nature is governed, fortunately, by very rigid laws. If we fail to observe them, then trouble is bound to ensue. As a Gild mechanic, you know, Mr. Mayor, that a motor runs smoothly just as long as its single parts are in good order. If a carburettor is out of order, is it the fault of Divine Providence or of the dirt that got into it? Everything connected with Matter is in the providence of Nature. There is sickness even in Russia, which created not by God but by Lenin.”

Peppone had gradually relaxed and at the end of Don Camillo’s little harangue he turned to Smilzo and said with a smile, pronouncing every word slowly:

“Smilzo, apropos of the carburettor, would you ask the Reverend whether when this mechanic gets the dirt out of the carburettor he represents Divine Providence?”

Smilzo looked over at Don Camillo, and asked:

“Has the defendant heard the plaintiff’s demand;”

“Yes,” Don Camillo replied “The plaintiff’s complaint is a weakness of the brain, but at any rate the defendant has heard it. The mechanic doesn’t represent Divine Providence; all he represents is a screwdriver, with a man attached to the handle. All this lies in the realm of the very lowliest kind of matter — Everything happens in accord with natural rather than divine law.”

This reply seemed to give Peppone further satisfaction.

“Let’s put it differently, Father,” he said. “Let’s say that the carburettor isn’t working for lack of a screw. Unfortunately, it’s an American carburettor, and we haven’t the right screw to replace it. What are we to do? Scrap the car? Fortunately the United States ambassadress sends a plane to Washington to get it; the screw is put in and the car moves. We’re still in the realm of matter, because a humble carburettor is the protagonist of our story. But since the new screw comes from the U.S.A. we must shout Hurrah for Divine Providence. If the carburettor comes from the East you reason one way, and if it comes from the West another.”

Peppone’s gang hooted their approval, and Don Camillo let them hoot to their hearts’ content Then he said:

“My reason works the same way in both directions.”

“Bunk!” shouted Peppone. “If the child’s sickness is the result of natural law, just as the carburettor is broken for lack of a screw, then why is Divine Providence responsible for the American ambassadress’s offer of the missing part, or, in this case the missing medicine?”

“Because a child isn’t a carburettor, that’s all,” said Don Camillo calmly “A carburettor can’t have a child’s faith in God. And this child gave proof of his faith in a spectacular way. The human machine, its disturbances and remedies are material and natural affairs. Faith in God is something quite different, which you, Comrade Carburettor, seem unable to understand. Instead of seeing Divine Providence, you see only the United States ambassadress and the Atlantic Pact. A man without hearing can’t hope to understand music, and one without faith in God can’t fathom the workings of Divine Providence.”

“Well then, this Divine Providence is something for the privileged rather than the needy. If a hundred persons are starving and only seven of them have faith, then God is unjust to send a tin of Spam only to these seven.”

“No, Comrade Mayor, God sends the Spam to the whole lot of them, but only seven possess a tin-opener, with which the rest will have nothing to do.”

Peppone had once more lost his self-possession and was sweating under the collar.

“Father, let’s drop the parable and look at reality. In our country only seven people out of a hundred and seven eat meat, because they believe in Divine Providence and have the tin-openers with which to get at it. Whereas in Russia, where nobody believes in Divine Providence, there are tin-openers for all.”

“But no tins of Spam,” said Don Camillo.

The bystanders laughed at Don Camillo’s thrust and Peppone was beside himself with fury.

‘The Carburettor’, ‘Don Camillo and the Devil’, Giovanni Guareschi