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| Olde Tyme Religion |
| Spengler: Hirsi Ali, atheism and Islam |
| 2007-12-03 |
| Interesting read. Excerpts below, but I recommend reading the whole thing. The implication that the West will crush Islam by force borders on the absurd. Western armies, to be sure, could make short work of the military forces of any Muslim country, but what would they do then? Would they order Muslims to abandon their spiritual life in favor of John Locke and Thomas Hobbes, the heroes of Hirsi Ali? The West cannot stop Muslims from burning in effigy the editors of a Danish newspaper in their own countries. Secular liberalism, the official ideology of almost all the nations of Western Europe, offers hedonism, sexual license, anomie, demoralization and gradual depopulation. Muslims do not want this. In Africa, Christian missionaries go to Muslims and offer them God's love and the hope of eternal life. But I am aware of no Christian missionaries active in the Muslim banlieue (outskirts) of the Paris suburbs or the Turkish quarters of Berlin. By contrast, there is indeed a war with Islam, and it is being won in parts of the world where Christians wage it on spiritual grounds. No Christian army has had to march in its support. Europe, meanwhile, is losing ground to Islam because it declines to fight. Allah is no more subject to laws of nature than the nature-spirits of the pagan world who infest every tree, rock and stream, and make magic according to their own whimsy. The "carried-forward idea of the unity of God" to which Rosenzweig refers, of course, is the monotheism carried forward in outward form from Judaism, but dashed to pieces against the competing notion of absolute transcendence. As Rosenzweig observes, "An atheist can say, 'There is no God but God'." If God is everywhere and in all things, he is nowhere and in nothing. If there are no natural laws, there need be no law-giver, and the world is an arbitrary and desolate place, a Hobbesian war of each aspect of nature against all. Contemplation of nature in Islam is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short. It is not surprising that Islamic science died out a generation or two after al-Ghazali. It is a commonplace observation that Islam is "fatalistic". Muslims typically conclude any statement about the future, eg, "I'll see you at work tomorrow morning," with the qualifier, "Insha'Allah", "God willing". Because God is everywhere and in every action, acting without intermediate causes, the Judeo-Christian concept of divine providence is inconceivable in Muslim terms. If Allah refuses to be entangled by intermediate causes, no divine plan could possibly exist that humankind cannot understand directly, but works itself out through God's intermediaries. Rather than providence, Islam believes in the old pagan fate, the summation of the innumerable capricious acts that Allah in his absolute transcendence performs at every instant. Allah is everywhere, which is to say that Allah is nowhere in particular. |
| Posted by:mrp |
| #6 The most peaceful, prosperous, and crime-free civilizations have been in countries where the Christianity was the dominant religion. The most peaceful, prosperous, and crime-free civilizations don't last for five minutes--- unless they can defend themselves. p.s. Christian Europe was about as peaceful as a bar brawl. And then they went and conquered most of the World. |
| Posted by: g(r)omgoru 2007-12-03 20:48 |
| #5 "Ideology counts---when it does the counting with a sword" Christopher Anvil That's a true statement, but one only need look at western civilization to see that it doesn't count for everything. jingoisms can't create a reality, they can only reflect it. The most peaceful, prosperous, and crime-free civilizations have been in countries where the Christianity was the dominant religion. The foundation of Jewish law and Christian charity are solid and enduring. You don't need to believe to be able to see that simple fact. |
| Posted by: Whomong Guelph4611 2007-12-03 14:52 |
| #4 "Ideology counts---when it does the counting with a sword" Christopher Anvil. |
| Posted by: g(r)omgoru 2007-12-03 14:29 |
| #3 Next the Muslims will appropriate the Many Worlds interpretation of QM, or maybe Julian Barbour's Time Capsules. |
| Posted by: KBK 2007-12-03 11:13 |
| #2 "An atheist can say, 'There is no God but God'." If God is everywhere and in all things, he is nowhere and in nothing. If there are no natural laws, there need be no law-giver, and the world is an arbitrary and desolate place" I always find it interesting that atheists want to keep their eyes and minds down here in this gutter we call earth. Mind you, there are many beautiful things in this world and I'm not complaining. That said, you'd have to be blind, deaf and dumb (or just intentionally look away) not to likewise see all of the cruelty, injustice and sorrow in this world. Religion allows the soul to be freed from the shackels of this earth, to look upward and above, like he beautfiul voices of a choir lifting their voices upward towards the heavens. It provides hope for the future and beauty for the soul. And in the process, this combined effort of mankind makes this world a better place on family, one neighborhood, one community at a time. |
| Posted by: Whomong Guelph4611 2007-12-03 10:56 |
| #1 There are in fact Christian workers among European Muslims. For obvious reasons, they keep a low profile but they're working. |
| Posted by: mom 2007-12-03 10:16 |