Guest Post by Paul Craig Roberts
Christmas is a time of traditions. If you have found time in the rush before Christmas to decorate a tree, you are sharing in a relatively new tradition. Although the Christmas tree has ancient roots, at the beginning of the 20th century only 1 in 5 American families put up a tree. It was 1920 before the Christmas tree became the hallmark of the season. Calvin Coolidge was the first President to light a national Christmas tree on the White House lawn.
Gifts are another shared custom. This tradition comes from the wise men or three kings who brought gifts to baby Jesus. When I was a kid, gifts were more modest than they are now, but even then people were complaining about the commercialization of Christmas. We have grown accustomed to the commercialization. Christmas sales are the backbone of many businesses. Gift giving causes us to remember others and to take time from our harried lives to give them thought.
The decorations and gifts of Christmas are one of our connections to a Christian culture that has held Western civilization together for 2,000 years. In our culture the individual counts. This permits an individual person to put his or her foot down, to take a stand on principle, to become a reformer and to take on injustice.
This empowerment of the individual is unique to Western civilization. It has made the individual a citizen equal in rights to all other citizens, protected from tyrannical government by the rule of law and free speech. These achievements are the products of centuries of struggle, but they all flow from the teaching that God so values the individual’s soul that he sent his son to die so we might live. By so elevating the individual, Christianity gave him a voice.
Formerly only those with power had a voice. But in Western civilization people with integrity have a voice. So do people with a sense of justice, of honor, of duty, of fair play. Reformers can reform, investors can invest, and entrepreneurs can create commercial enterprises, new products and new occupations.
The result was a land of opportunity. The United States attracted immigrants who shared our values and reflected them in their own lives. Our culture was absorbed by a diverse people who became one.
In recent decades we have lost sight of the historic achievement that empowered the individual. The religious, legal and political roots of this great achievement are no longer reverently taught in high schools, colleges and universities or respected by our government. The voices that reach us through the millennia and connect us to our culture are being silenced by “political correctness” and “the war on terror.” Prayer has been driven from schools and Christian religious symbols from public life. Constitutional protections have been diminished by hegemonic political ambitions. Indefinite detention, torture, and murder are now acknowledged practices of the United States government. The historic achievement of due process has been rolled back. Tyranny has re-emerged.
Diversity at home and hegemony abroad are consuming values and are dismantling the culture and the rule of law. There is plenty of room for cultural diversity in the world, but not within a single country. A Tower of Babel has no culture. A person cannot be a Christian one day, a pagan the next and a Muslim the day after. A hodgepodge of cultural and religious values provides no basis for law – except the raw power of the pre-Christian past.
All Americans have a huge stake in Christianity. Whether or not we are individually believers in Christ, we are beneficiaries of the moral doctrine that has curbed power and protected the weak. Power is the horse ridden by evil. In the 20th century the horse was ridden hard, and the 21st century shows an increase in pace. Millions of people were exterminated in the 20th century by National Socialists in Germany and by Soviet and Chinese communists simply because they were members of a race or class that had been demonized by intellectuals and political authority. In the beginning years of the 21st century hundreds of thousands of Muslims in seven countries have already been murdered and millions displaced, because their religion does not submit to Washington’s hegemony.
Power that is secularized and cut free of civilizing traditions is not limited by moral and religious scruples. V.I. Lenin made this clear when he defined the meaning of his dictatorship as “unlimited power, resting directly on force, not limited by anything.” Washington’s drive for hegemony over US citizens and the rest of the world is based entirely on the exercise of force and is resurrecting unaccountable power.
Christianity’s emphasis on the worth of the individual makes such power as Lenin claimed, and Washington now claims, unthinkable. Be we religious or be we not, our celebration of Christ’s birthday celebrates a religion that made us masters of our souls and of our political life on Earth. Such a religion as this is worth holding on to even by atheists.
As we enter into 2015, Western civilization, the product of thousands of years of striving, hangs in the balance. Degeneracy is everywhere before our eyes. As the West sinks into tyranny, will Western peoples defend their liberty and their souls, or will they sink into the tyranny, which again has raised its ugly and all devouring head?
Greetings,
The author is correct. You can not have a tower of Babel society and expect things to work. Though I am I an Atheist, one that brought up his child in a like-minded manner, I still taught her Judeo-Christian values. I taught her concepts like The Golden Rule without the magic and blood sacrifice found in the other common religions. Frankly, Christianity offers too many loopholes such as it is OK to murder if you are wearing a clown suit provided to you by the government (give unto Caesar). If murder is wrong, then murder is wrong. If stealing is wrong then calling it “taxes” doesn’t make right.
Happy Holidays
Darn, always with the thumbs down crowd. I sure hate to do it but. . .
Over 99% of the people in prison are “believers”. Atheists make up less than 1% of the prison population with Christians being the overwhelming number found there. Show me a vicious murderer or rapist and I’ll show you a Christian.
There are no atheists in foxholes. True. Atheists are an extremely small percentage of our military. When I enlisted in the military and I was in-processing, I went to the station where my dog tags were being made and when I was asked for my religious preference, I told the civilian that I was an atheists and this old black man, probably a former soldier himself, looked me right in the eyes and said, “son, you don’t want to say that ever – they’ll go hard on you. Put something, anything.” I took this man’s advice as the military very much frowned on atheism. After all, as Voltaire said, “In order to commit atrocities, one must first believe in absurdities.” And, of course, no one can commit atrocities like we do. The NAZI’s were amateurs in comparison.
Finally, I can’t help but reflect on the fact that the most brutal monsters in all of history were believers – all of them.
So, you atheist haters can shove it up your asses.
Without Christ there would be no Western Civilization. Without Western Civilization there would be no Europe or Europeans. Without Europe There would be no America. These progressives want to destroythe Christian culture and replace it with some type of godless socialist ideology. These progressives are more religious then most Christians .The difference ?Through their ideology they unknowingly worship Satan. That’s the reason they always become mass Murderers when they get real power.They hate people but love a humanity they can rule over.
And here I thought the Magna Carta was the foundation of our freedom.
Nick, chill, we have a few aths here, we like them for their brains.
“I told the civilian that I was an atheists …” ———– NickelthroweR
More than one, eh? Cool. How many atheists were you?
“Without Christ there would be no Western Civilization.” ——- bb
Bullshit.
———-
“Without Western Civilization there would be no Europe or Europeans.” ——- bb
Bullshit.
———-
“Without Europe There would be no America.” ——- bb
Bullshit.
———-
“These progressives want to destroy the Christian culture ” ——- bb
Bullshit
———-
“Through their ideology they unknowingly worship Satan. ” ——- bb
Bullshit.
———-
That’s the reason they always become mass Murderers ” ——- bb
Bullshit.
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Please vote thumbs up if you enjoyed my insightful rebuttal.
Stucky , how could you be so Damn ignorant of history especially European history.?Christianity was taken to Rome by the apostle Paul.Rome later took Christianity as their Religion. Then it spread To all parts of the Roman empire. All the early politicians , scientists , theologians and lay people who formed the early governments of Europe were informed by the Christian faith.
Christianity =Western Civilization =The nations of Europe then America but it all started with Christ and the apostles (Paul ,Peter)
All the early scientists were informed by the christian faith.
Just admin it Stucky , you are an apostate which is a lot worse then being an atheist.
Stucky , anyone can say bull shit and repeat it like a trained monkey. PROVE ME WRONG .None of you have ever proved me wrong on anything of real value but yet you call me the village idiot. Maybe you guys are the real idiots. ONCE AGAIN PROVE ME WRONG .
33The Jews answered Him, “For a good work we do not stone You, but for blasphemy; and because You, being a man, make Yourself out to be God.”
34Jesus answered them, “Has it not been written in your Law, ‘I SAID, YOU ARE GODS ‘? 35″If he called them gods, to whom the word of God came (and the Scripture cannot be broken),…
“Finally, I can’t help but reflect on the fact that the most brutal monsters in all of history were believers – all of them.”
—-NickelThrowR, the atheist
What a blind idiot.
Tell me what religion Lenin, Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot subscribed to, asshole. Huh? They were fucking ATHEISTS, you goddamned fool. They OUTLAWED religion. And they killed an estimated 80-100 million people in one century.
Group hug for atheists, people.
That is funny T4C! I’ve never thought I was a god but it does cross my mind from time to time that I might be perfect. Like I said in that weird prison planet/alien post you made, when it’s over I just hope it’s over. I don’t need to continue on as a spirit, ghost or omnipotent being. If I had to come back as something else I’d like to be a long lived Giant Sequoia or Bristle-cone Pine on a high promontory……….unless the other trees could talk. I’d be up next to the bb tree. Coming back as a stroke of lightening might be cool. I could smite a few believers just to see the look on their face.
What can I say? I’m twisted. Why fight it?
You wonder why bb offends you so. The above post is the silliest thing you’ve ever written I-S. I don’t like to mess with non-believers. But I have argued, if you have no spirit inside you, how can you ‘come back’ as anything?
You have got to be kidding when you say you might be perfect. Who do you think you are, llpoh?
A lot of people want to wear themselves out trying to convert atheists. It is a belief system, one of hundreds if not thousands. But a person does not need to have a whole system worked out: Truly I tell you, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there..
You and a lot more here have the courage of your conviction that there is no God; that is something I would greatly fear if I didn’t have my small faith that there is. I don’t have time to worry about your soul, I have enough to worry about mine.
SSS, I wouldn’t say atheism is an a priori condition of mass murderers, I think they were first psychopaths who could not believe that humans have a soul or that they were created by a god.
Religion is humanities first attempt at controlling the masses. Just imagine for a minute that there was no such thing as religion on Earth and some dingleberry showed showed up today touting the stories of the Bible. Would that guy get 5 seconds of traction? Jeebuz would have to up his game and give out more free shit than the govt to get any converts. I don’t think religion is inherently bad. If religion is what it takes for bad people to turn their lives around, I’m in favor of it but it serves as a kind of welfare for the brain.
In that regard, modernity is a delusion. The world is still full of unbelievers and heathens and pagans. Evangelists still encounter resistance to a strange gospel of salvation. When the bible describes unbelievers as blinded and deceived, it’s a fact, jack. I’m here to tell you I was one of those. Actually, I have already told you but it’s hard for the light to penetrate a reflective nebulae.
IS ,I don’t know who is more hopeless. You or Stucky. I want kid you anymore about you bad foot.You have far greater problems.Peace.
Don’t despair, bb. The name of the game is the same as that played by AA, in helping others they help themselves. I_S can walk again, it’s a MIRACLE.
I don’t wonder for one second why bb offends me. I know exactly why he irritates me.
I said “If I had to come back” not that I want to come back. I’m perfectly ok with death being the end, fin, kaput, th th th that’s all folks!
So YOU get to sit in judgement of whether I’m perfect or not? I never said I AM perfect.
I thought atheism is the lack of a belief system, not a system itself. I’ve never really looked it up or given much thought myself. I don’t claim to be an atheist. I don’t attend the meetings either. I’m not entirely sure what my label might be or if one even exists for my affliction. Bat shit crazy might come close but feels a bit constrained to me. I know for certain that I don’t believe what the other 99% believe in terms of a supreme being.
I’m happy you have faith. I don’t fault you for it. You simply live your life in a way that brings you peace and happiness and I do the same. You could worship satan for all I care. It’s not going to change my life one bit. My own brother claims that Jeebuz appeared to him in a time of immense crisis and showed him a better way than the path he set out on that day. I’m happy for him. Despite years of looking, he’s never found a church that preaches what he reads in the bible. That seems odd to me.
Buddhism comes closest for me but I don’t consider myself a Buddhist.
I have nothing to gain or lose whether you change your mind or not and he who sows does not reap anyway. As for judging, judgment comes at the end, not midstream. Thanks for the courtesy of your replies.
“Despite years of looking, he’s never found a church that preaches what he reads in the bible”.
Even pastors lose their way:
1. Though you already know all this, I want to remind you that the Lord at one time delivered his people out of Egypt, but later destroyed those who did not believe.
2. I do not write to you because you do not know the truth, but because you do know it and because no lie comes from the truth.
I think I get what nick is saying. He likes the belief system, but without all the drama and ceremony. Do unto others, the wisest idea in human history. I love to watch the diaper-fills that protest the 10 commandments. Truly stupid people, they don’t realize that code is the basis of our civilization.
On occasion I get some sort of halfwit in front of me arguing against basic christian decency. I like to remind them that they owe their very life to those principles, at that exact moment. Because if I didn’t believe in them, I could have gutted them already.
SSS,
Lets start with a fine quote from Sam Harris:
“The problem with fascism and communism, however, is not that they are too critical of religion; the problem is that they are too much like religions. Such regimes are dogmatic to the core and generally give rise to personality cults that are indistinguishable from cults of religious hero worship. Auschwitz, the gulag and the killing fields were not examples of what happens when human beings reject religious dogma; they are examples of political, racial and nationalistic dogma run amok. There is no society in human history that ever suffered because its people became too reasonable.”
Because you are ignorant, you do not realize that Stalin and Mao banned religion not because they did not believe in god but because they saw organized religion as a direct threat to their own perceived notion that they themselves were living deities.
Again, the haters can shove it.
Nick, your a little late with your rebuttal: bb says: Through their ideology they unknowingly worship Satan. That’s the reason they always become mass Murderers when they get real power.
I believe that is what you meant when you said, “Stalin and Mao banned religion not because they did not believe in god but because they saw organized religion as a direct threat to their own perceived notion that they themselves were living deities.”
That they wanted to be as God is a Satanic idea – How you have fallen from heaven, O star of the morning, son of the dawn! You have been cut down to the earth, You who have weakened the nations! 13″But you said in your heart, ‘I will ascend to heaven; I will raise my throne above the stars of God, And I will sit on the mount of assembly In the recesses of the north. 14’I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will make myself like the Most High.’…
The only TRUTH I know is that which I can see, feel, hear, touch and smell. Everything else is open to question. If I am subject to some supreme being with powers that the 99% ascribe to him and that being gave me free will, why am I condemned to hell for exercising that free will? If I have to believe, repent and have faith to avoid hell, how is it that I have free will? Going through the motions to avoid hell seems just as disingenuous as professing belief when I have none. Seems to me that if I’m to be condemned for that then that is on the supreme being, not me.
That I can live a decent and honest life, not trying harm others, helping when I can and trying to leave things better than I found them and still be condemned to hell for failing to have faith in something that seems 110% fake to me is bullshit. That others can rape, rob, molest and kill and then “find God” ten minutes before they die is bullshit too.
There may in fact be an all powerful supreme being that will judge me at some point but based on what I see going on on this planet, I sure as hell don’t believe a single word of what any human claims as truth with respect to that supreme being! Based on what I see, heaven must be unbelievably lonely and bereft of souls. Short of divine guidance, how do you choose which humans, which texts and which religions I to follow?
Given the imperfections of my fellow man, it seems prudent to follow my own thoughts and feelings on the matter rather than what others tell me I should. Having an open, thoughtful and curious mind is the only truth I need to follow. One thing I’ve learned for certain is that others do not control my happiness or peace of mind.
T4C says: Don’t know what NickelthroweR thinks about what happens after one sheds their Earth Suit, but being in the same camp as he is in regards a ‘one and only one God’ …
We met a Korean pastor who followed this logic: offspring of dog – dog, son of man – man, son of god – god. We were alarmed because he went on to say that since the bible says we are adopted sons of god…
There were those who I-S calls spiritual free-shitters, they were the many who loved the free food but couldn’t accept Jesus’ teachings – 66As a result of this many of His disciples withdrew and were not walking with Him anymore. 67So Jesus said to the twelve, “You do not want to go away also, do you?”…
I posted that verse about ‘ye are gods…’ because your not far from the truth but like the rich young man, there is something else you need, what it is I don’t know. to paraphrase Jesus, ye believe in you, believe also in him who made you.
Nickel, you wrote that ” the most brutal monsters in all history were believers – all of them.” That’s demonstrably not true, as was evidenced by Stalin, Mao, etc. SSS didn’t bring them up to assert that their atheism caused them to be murderers, but merely to refute your statement, especially the “all of them” part.
Maybe we should focus on what we can all agree on: Muslim jihadis won’t get their 72 virgins.
1. If all you believe is what your 5 senses tell you, (you do have taste, don’t you?) how can you believe your thoughts, they do not originate externally for you to hear them.
2. It’s the craziest most astounding deal God has proposed, to save people who believe him, since Adam and Eve called him a liar and just for that tiny sin they were condemned to die.
3. Stucky called last minute repentance ‘gaming the system’ – it is a Catholic teaching, the idea people have that they can confess on their deathbed and all will be well.
4. Another delusion is the idea that surely God would not condemn the whole lot of sinners, they are too many to sacrifice.
5. non-believers actually get more of a break than those of us who profess to believe yet fall short of the mark, because they are your thoughts that condemn you.
EC said:
“I posted that verse about ‘ye are gods…’ because your not far from the truth but like the rich young man, there is something else you need, what it is I don’t know. to paraphrase Jesus, ye believe in you, believe also in him who made you.”
What proof do you have that the quoted verse is 100% true and not corrupt? How many scribes and scholars has the word of god gone though to get to your current interpretation of it. If scholars and believers who dedicate their lives to such things cannot agree on interpretation of that word, what hope do I have in that word? My crude understanding of the ancient texts is that many scholars agree that parts are missing and new discoveries of ancient texts related to the bible are still happening.
Perhaps I’ll have an epiphany one day, maybe not. I’m open to just about anything but blind faith is not included anymore than faux faith.
I’d bet that 99% of the reason you are a Christian has to do with where you were born or how you were raised. With a universe as big and varied as the one we apparently live in, to think that Christianity alone is the answer seems ludicrous.
Why are your beliefs or interpretation of the word true and others are not? Are you born with faith or do you learn it?
I’m out. Going to look at Comet Lovejoy down in Lupus, do some reading and go to bed:
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/12/141224-starstruck-comet-lovejoy-christmas-astronomy-science/
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“Man is certainly stark mad; he cannot make a worm, yet he will be making gods by dozens”
—Montaigne.
I recall a bizzaro cartoon where the JW’s go knocking at the Pope’s door, the caption said, nothing ventured..
Thanks for the responses, I-S. Sometimes it is more interesting to discuss a topic with another who disagrees. Someone said they discovered in conversation their own thinking. My mind has a lot of cobwebs on that particular subject, sorry I can’t provide a more doubt shattering argument.
The first Adam started out in a beautiful garden and was tempted and fell. The second Adam started out in the desert and the tempter thought easy peasy but it wasn’t nothing but a chicken wing as he expected.
My dreams reveal my own fragile state, I saw my ex girlfriend, let’s call her the temptress. I wanted to stay with her but wanted to go home. Look at the time, 9:30 and I couldn’t leave her but oh how I wanted to run home before it got later.
“Why are your beliefs or interpretation of the word true and others are not? Are you born with faith or do you learn it?”
It’s a gift that sustains you – Therefore let him who thinks he stands take heed that he does not fall.…
Michel Eyquem de Montaigne (/mɒnˈteɪn/;[3] French: [miʃɛl ekɛm də mɔ̃tɛɲ]; 28 February 1533 – 13 September 1592) was one of the most influential philosophers of the French Renaissance, known for popularizing the essay as a literary genre. He became famous for his effortless ability to merge serious intellectual exercises with casual anecdotes[4] and autobiography—and his massive volume Essais (translated literally as “Attempts” or “Trials”) contains, to this day, some of the most influential essays ever written. Montaigne had a direct influence on writers all over the world, including René Descartes,[5] Blaise Pascal, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Albert Hirschman, William Hazlitt,[6] Ralph Waldo Emerson, Friedrich Nietzsche, Stefan Zweig, Eric Hoffer,[7] Isaac Asimov, and possibly on the later works of William Shakespeare.
In his own lifetime, Montaigne was admired more as a statesman than as an author. The tendency in his essays to digress into anecdotes and personal ruminations was seen as detrimental to proper style rather than as an innovation, and his declaration that, ‘I am myself the matter of my book’, was viewed by his contemporaries as self-indulgent. In time, however, Montaigne would come to be recognized as embodying, perhaps better than any other author of his time, the spirit of freely entertaining doubt which began to emerge at that time. He is most famously known for his skeptical remark, “Que sçay-je?” (“What do I know?”, in Middle French; directly rendered Que sais-je? in modern French). Remarkably modern even to readers today, Montaigne’s attempt to examine the world through the lens of the only thing he can depend on implicitly—his own judgment—makes him more accessible to modern readers than any other author of the Renaissance. – Wikipedia