I am always wary when someone tells me that they are not at all religious. Human beings are religious beings, and we are all made to worship something. This is a point recently made by James Lindsay, an atheist who recently discussed on Joe Rogan’s podcast that perhaps he was wrong about his views on religion.
When you look at the recent demonstrations, it’s pretty clear that there are religious undertones driving the collective conscience. Many of the acts appear almost liturgical in nature. Chanting and kneeling are the obvious parallels, but there are other stunning analogs to familiar religious acts. Public confession of racism, iconoclasm, and the washing of feet have all appeared in recent protests. Finally, this ends in various forms of sacrifice for the gods of the woke.
During the pandemic, businesses were shuttered, livelihoods destroyed, church gatherings banned, sports cut off. Almost everything was shut down under the guise that the disease does not kill others, with one inexplicable exception.
Even medical professionals weighed in:
as public health advocates, we do not condemn these gatherings as risky for COVID-19 transmission.
Why were protests the one exception to the rule of shutting everything down to save lives? Perhaps it is because the value of inclusivity has taken the place of the ultimate good—the thing which our society holds up on the highest pedestal above all other virtues. It is the value to which all other values must submit without question. And finally, it is the virtue that is more valuable than human life itself.
To be clear, the value of diversity/inclusion is a good thing of course. The issue arises when we worship any virtue and make a god out of it. It is not sustainable, and ends up devouring itself. Absolute and total inclusivity is self-destructive, as every group must have some boundaries. A soccer club that allows car enthusiasts and knitters who have no interest in soccer is no longer a soccer club—it’s just a mass of people.
All virtues are good, and all need to be considered to have a functioning society. Justice and mercy need balance—one is not always better than the other. Too much mercy leads to anarchy; too much justice leads to tyranny.
two and two make five
When we realize that nothing is spared from the god that we created (not even human life itself), should we be surprised when biology, history, psychology, and even math are infiltrated with this ideology?
We shall soon be in a world in which a man may be howled down for saying that two and two make four, in which people will persecute the heresy of calling a triangle a three-sided figure, and hang a man for maddening a mob with the news that grass is green. -GK Chesterton (1926)
Okay Chesterton, let’s not get crazy. That would never happ…
Chesterton saw this all coming 100 years ago, and it is fully playing out now. I’ll leave you with this:
The modern world is not evil; in some ways the modern world is far too good. It is full of wild and wasted virtues. When a religious scheme is shattered (as Christianity was shattered at the Reformation), it is not merely the vices that are let loose. The vices are, indeed, let loose, and they wander and do damage. But the virtues are let loose also; and the virtues wander more wildly, and the virtues do more terrible damage. The modern world is full of the old Christian virtues gone mad. The virtues have gone mad because they have been isolated from each other and are wandering alone. Thus some scientists care for truth; and their truth is pitiless. Thus some humanitarians only care for pity; and their pity (I am sorry to say) is often untruthful. —GK Chesterton, Orthodoxy (emphasis mine).
…Thus some social justice warriors only care for justice, and their justice is without mercy.
cheers
this week’s rotation
Recently fell into the Pageau rabbit hole (again):
And here are two liberal atheists discussing wokeism for 3 hours: