Religion Why are there still Christians?

[Stuvanè]

Vallicanus,

I already glimpse some crypto-Nordicism (or some naive form of Eurocentrism or some larval anti-Semitism) in those arguments according to which Christianity is based on silly Middle Eastern fairy tales etc. etc., which would have more or less tainted and corrupted the minds of Europeans for about 2 millennia. I have never understood whether this arises from a mania for imitating Nietzsche, whether from some anticlerical antipathy, whether from convinced atheism, whether from one of the many yearnings for ethno-cultural purity, whether from fashion (on this last I would be ready to do some bet), or for some other obsession.
Mind you, I for one have very little sympathy for those areas, they are not at the top of my thoughts, sometimes I think like Juvenal who saw the Levantines raging through Rome like smoke in his eyes. I too have my likes and dislikes, my prejudices (because in the end we judge with the eyes of a modern person the current degradation of those regions, which were then quite prosperous and probably - in the opinion of the ancients - not at all backward).
But we must strive to be objective, and we cannot ignore - whether we like it or not - that something also comes from those regions that has structured or re-structured our way of being Europeans as we know ourselves. It is not something we can discard as if we took off our coat or underwear. If what comes to us from there is really all junk, I wonder why our ancestors back then were so stupid as not to reject it sooner. An interesting thing would be to understand what really went through the mind of a Gentile in that hiatus of cultural limbo which was the transition from paying cults (no longer satisfactory for many reasons) to the Christian one (he described it very well, in a romanticized manner, Yourcenar in his Memoirs of Hadrian).
It is an exercise in itself to imagine a utopian/uchronic Europe, a direct offspring of the pagan world, which now wakes up, pretending that whatever is Christian in it is accidental to it. Europe does not exist without the monastic scriptoria which preserve and thus pass on the texts and culture of the ancients, without the cathedral and monastery schools, which are the embryos of subsequent universities, but not even without Lepanto or Vienna which form a wall against very dangerous expansions Islamic. The economic and cultural momentum of Northern and Protestant Europe is unthinkable without the mass literacy achieved by learning to read the Bible.

 

[Vallicanus]

Vallicanus,

I already glimpse some crypto-Nordicism (or some naive form of Eurocentrism or some larval anti-Semitism) in those arguments according to which Christianity is based on silly Middle Eastern fairy tales etc. etc.,

I would call it Eurocentrism, sometimes laced with Nordicism and anti-Semitism among certain internet extremists.

 

[norbert]

Norbert,

thank you for the comment. This is the kind of post I appreciate the most.
What has excited me is the gratuitous generalization that has been made here and there in the Christian world, regarding intellectual and moral abilities... I also read elsewhere in another thread that they have even become dangers to public order (!). Given the due proportions, a large part of Europe should be put in prison, according to some.
I will then reply to those in charge.

You see, I don't have a firm prejudice about atheism at all. You were right to quote Feuerbach who I believe has many merits in his anthropological reduction of religion. Just as I believe that Atheism has superior demonstrative tools (and demonstrated evidence) when faced with a naively creationist point of view, which in fact narrates a legend.
(Although, if we want to be philosophically fussy, proposing and explaining the concept of evolution, as a replacement for that of creation, has something of a sophistic feel to it, because the former does not exhaust the question of meaning of the latter. Evolution - which is a transformation, a mechanism of becoming - implies that there already exists something capable of said transformation. It therefore remains legitimate for me that man can continue to ask himself why there is this something we call "world" "universe"... )

I remain agnostic (perhaps for me it is personally more appropriate than skeptic here), when atheism - even with scientific instruments - aims to demonstrate the non-existence of God (or - on a smaller scale of the Soul, or of any hypothetical other transcenden entity). One of the reasons is the one already mentioned a few posts ago, so I will continue to refer to Kant until my death, who I continue to believe is unsurpassed in this regard.
What cannot be processed by our space-time categories is a candidate to fall into an epistemologically dark and mysterious area for man. In my opinion there is a sin of naivety on the part of the atheist here, since by using tools and procedures suitable for describing or measuring what is immanent, he suddenly wants to make an acrobatic leap and pretends that the same tools work to grasp or discover something transcendent. Obviously then nothing is found, how else could it end? where I come from they say "he's someone who tries to eat broth with a fork" (with the difference that here you don't even know if there is broth).

But there is another small sin of naivety that lurks in the atheist/scientist, and it is much more subtle to grasp. That is to say that he himself cannot exempt himself, in a very last step of his research or the formulation of a theory, from making an act of faith. I'm not saying this, there was Nietzsche himself, who stated that science also rests on a faith, that there is no science 'free of presuppositions' at all (from there he developed some ideas regarding the ethics of science). But I want to discuss it in its plainest and most elementary sense, and let's think about current research in physics. If you think about it, the processes for seeing one's studies affirmed are no longer those of demonstration and empirical verification, where the scientist tinkered with his instrument and felt what he was examining. Currently we rely (a non-random term) on calculations that are "made to fit" by inserting hypothetical or even "invented" terms into the equations (which does not mean found at random, but deduced logically/artificially in order to hold together the puzzle that is recomposing). These are passages in which the scientist is forced to grant himself an exemption from direct sensorial observation of what is immanent.
However, this potentially expands the margin of fallibility, and therefore skepticism - which you criticize as a sort of cowardice - becomes in my opinion more appropriate and healthy than ever, under penalty of the risk of not doing good science, but of falling into scientism. Which is what I instead glimpse in various atheists with the desire to prove believers wrong.

Without forgetting that there would also be fideistic attitudes towards science within the scientific community itself, in particular in those phases of ordinary science that Kuhn spoke of, with the group of gregarious scientists who would never dare of breaking the paradigm in which they carry out their good daily compilation job. That scientific conformism that marginalizes true discoverers and pioneers, as happened with Semmelweis, expelled from the medical community and dying madly, just for having discovered that washed hands saved mothers from deadly infections.
I appreciate science and I hope that it makes progress, but before adopting it as a safe guide to regulate my life and knowledge, I want to understand from which assumptions it started and who is guiding it in turn.

Unfortunately, much of what is considered debate nowadays mostly boils down to sophism and rhetoric. Those methods are employed by pretty much everyone, at least in the public arena. Evolution doesn't merely concern itself with the development of life from already existing organisms. It includes chemical evolution or abiogenesis, i.e. the emergence of life from inanimate matter, in an abiotic environment. So, it's not just about the evolution of life but its origins as well. The question why there is something (instead of nothing) is an age-old fundamental question. From a strictly physical point of view, the nothing in the sense as the human mind perceives it (a void, an absolute state of non-existence) does not exist except as a mental category. What physicists and cosmogonists deal with is the lowest possible state of energy in a maximally possible vacuum. Now this can be "nothing" if it remains dormant perpetually or it can become the basis for what we call the cosmos. We know what energy is. It's a physical quantity and there's nothing mysterious about it. We deal with it every day.

Atheism is not a philosophy or a worldview unto itself. It's just the non-belief in God, gods and the supernatural. Atheists can have this non-belief in common but their opinions on everything else can be radically different. However, there are philosophical schools that are inherently atheist, such as materialism. It gets more complicated among those who believe in God. Although there are people who say they believe in God but refuse to affiliate themselves with any of the existing denominations, the concept of God itself is not universal but has its roots in a certain religion, cultural environment and ideology. In the end of the day, it is a specific god they believe in, an old Canaanite deity that was elevated to the national god of the Jews and who subsequently went on to become the Abrahamic God worshipped by Christians and Muslims, too. For an atheist, it doesn't make any sense to disprove the existence of God. You don't disprove something that doesn't exist. There are no avampirists who are trying to disprove the existence of vampires. The burden of proof lies on those who claim that God, vampires or demons exist. As Carl Sagan used to say, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Atheists believe that there is nothing beyond the natural world, so they don't concern themselves with disproving the divine, the supernatural or transcendental.

I absolutely agree with you on the state of science today and have talked about this on several occasions here. Many theoretical and particle physicists seem to live in a world of mathematical solipsism, expecting nature to bend to their mathematical formula rather than describing nature as accurate as possible. They do this either out of epistemological disorientation or for opportunistic reasons. Sometimes doing perpetual research is more important than delivering results that could bring us ahead as it was once the case when scientists were only interested in how nature works, not their own careers, media presence and prizes. This is why you have a real flood of mediocre publications in all science, archeogenetics included. You can see that on the topic of the PIE homeland which is almost farcical. Either publish or perish and it makes you wonder if these people are even interested in scientific facts because they seem to publish for funds and grants. In the long term, this is going to destroy our scientific culture. Academia behaves like Big Pharma which is not about finding cures but endless treatment because the latter is more profitable. For a lot of scientists, doing research forever means a well-paid job and a secure pension. Universities act like corporations. Such conditions breed a culture of conformism and exclusion of those who dare question the current state of things. Some of the greatest scientific minds of the past like Einstein would be considered as crackpots today.

Almost forgot to say a few things about Nietzsche. He was extremely hostile to science, democracy, equality and everything Enlightenment stood for. Nietzsche rejected any notion of truth and reason, scientific or otherwise. What he aspired to was a world of aristocratic supermen who ruled over a mass of slaves like artists, thus his rejection of democracy, socialism and liberalism. He preferred the Dionysian over the Apollonian, a distinction he either coined himself or took over from Friedrich Hölderlin. Ironically (or maybe not), Nietzsche became an icon among the academic pseudo-left in France. Nietzsche is the great-grandfather of postmodernism and the latter's moral and cultural relativism.

 

[TetaEglantina]

Vallicanus,

I already glimpse some crypto-Nordicism (or some naive form of Eurocentrism or some larval anti-Semitism) in those arguments according to which Christianity is based on silly Middle Eastern fairy tales etc. etc., which would have more or less tainted and corrupted the minds of Europeans for about 2 millennia. I have never understood whether this arises from a mania for imitating Nietzsche, whether from some anticlerical antipathy, whether from convinced atheism, whether from one of the many yearnings for ethno-cultural purity, whether from fashion (on this last I would be ready to do some bet), or for some other obsession.
Mind you, I for one have very little sympathy for those areas, they are not at the top of my thoughts, sometimes I think like Juvenal who saw the Levantines raging through Rome like smoke in his eyes. I too have my likes and dislikes, my prejudices (because in the end we judge with the eyes of a modern person the current degradation of those regions, which were then quite prosperous and probably - in the opinion of the ancients - not at all backward).
But we must strive to be objective, and we cannot ignore - whether we like it or not - that something also comes from those regions that has structured or re-structured our way of being Europeans as we know ourselves. It is not something we can discard as if we took off our coat or underwear. If what comes to us from there is really all junk, I wonder why our ancestors back then were so stupid as not to reject it sooner. An interesting thing would be to understand what really went through the mind of a Gentile in that hiatus of cultural limbo which was the transition from paying cults (no longer satisfactory for many reasons) to the Christian one (he described it very well, in a romanticized manner, Yourcenar in his Memoirs of Hadrian).
It is an exercise in itself to imagine a utopian/uchronic Europe, a direct offspring of the pagan world, which now wakes up, pretending that whatever is Christian in it is accidental to it. Europe does not exist without the monastic scriptoria which preserve and thus pass on the texts and culture of the ancients, without the cathedral and monastery schools, which are the embryos of subsequent universities, but not even without Lepanto or Vienna which form a wall against very dangerous expansions Islamic. The economic and cultural momentum of Northern and Protestant Europe is unthinkable without the mass literacy achieved by learning to read the Bible.

You're right I don't care about nonsense middle eastern stories from 2000 years ago, what's your point? I also don't care about nonsense european stories, I care about real history and predominantly european history because I am european, if I was Jewish I would care more about Jewish history, if I was Chinese I would care more about Chinese history etc. If you don't like europe go live in another continent, and maybe you should get off this website

 

[Stuvanè]

You're right I don't care about nonsense middle eastern stories from 2000 years ago, what's your point? I also don't care about nonsense european stories, I care about real history and predominantly european history because I am european, if I was Jewish I would care more about Jewish history, if I was Chinese I would care more about Chinese history etc. If you don't like europe go live in another continent, and maybe you should get off this website

You don't even deserve an answer, but I won't deny some teasing to anyone.
From your anger I would say that I have fully guessed when I suspect a naive Eurocentrism more or less tinged with other paranoia. These are the argumentative skills of a 21st century European? Now I understand why people piss on our heads everywhere in the world.

And what would be the real European history and facts you say you are interested in? Only the strictly autochthonous one, perhaps not beyond the Mesolithic? I suspect you don't want to study much history.
Does it give you nightmares to know that many Europeans before you may have welcomed and assimilated things from areas of the world that you hate? Then, for maximum coherence, begin to do without the same agriculture that - much to your misfortune - they invented in those areas thousands of years ago and which the Christian monks preserved and perfected in the Middle Ages. Forget bread, pizza, beer. Go back to the paleo diet, to live in some forest or swamp there to pick at the reindeer's antlers, if you ever manage to find and hunt some.
Do you get sick? Your shit. It is forbidden to take medicine, given that even pharmaceutical sciences have passed through the heads and hands first of Middle Easterners, then of quite a few Christian monks, for a change. Since for your meter it would be Middle Eastern merchandise, make do with the shaman (as long as he is of pure WHG or EHG stock!).
Do you remember that even the characters you use to communicate this bullshit to me, going back from passage to passage, also come from those parts? And even before the Phoenicians, there were proto-Sinaitic characters. Yes, right there. If you ever answer me (but you are excused), do so with other Klingon characters.
Ditto for the numbers. Have you noticed that we no longer use Roman numerals as we used to? Pay attention, Taktika.
Listen to the music? I hope not, otherwise what a terrible idea and what an unforgivable weakness for a true European like you. It's already stuff that in its most archaic beginnings stinks of those parts. Then the monk Guido (from Arezzo or Pomposa) also invented musical notation and passed it down. We have discovered another follower of filthy Middle Eastern beliefs that pollute the European genius.
I won't go any further, because it would be like shooting at the Red Cross (oh God, another piece of rubbish with Christian reminiscences!).

Europe was great in the past because it was shrewd and without being too picky it intelligently collected and assimilated even those discoveries and elements that were not European, reworking them in an original way and developing them. This ability has been lost for a while, and this continent is now full of hams who idealize their supposedly Hyperborean pasts, censoring what gives them stomach aches, and recreating history for the use and consumption of their paranoia and narcissism. .
Study again. And a lot, not for pretend.

No, child. I'm not going anywhere else, forget it: it's too convenient to be a dandy with threads and your own claque ready to hold you accountable for every bullshit written. Understood?

 

[TetaEglantina]

You don't even deserve an answer, but I won't deny some teasing to anyone.
From your anger I would say that I have fully guessed when I suspect a naive Eurocentrism more or less tinged with other paranoia. These are the argumentative skills of a 21st century European? Now I understand why people piss on our heads everywhere in the world.

And what would be the real European history and facts you say you are interested in? Only the strictly autochthonous one, perhaps not beyond the Mesolithic? I suspect you don't want to study much history.
Does it give you nightmares to know that many Europeans before you may have welcomed and assimilated things from areas of the world that you hate? Then, for maximum coherence, begin to do without the same agriculture that - much to your misfortune - they invented in those areas thousands of years ago and which the Christian monks preserved and perfected in the Middle Ages. Forget bread, pizza, beer. Go back to the paleo diet, to live in some forest or swamp there to pick at the reindeer's antlers, if you ever manage to find and hunt some.
Do you get sick? Your shit. It is forbidden to take medicine, given that even pharmaceutical sciences have passed through the heads and hands first of Middle Easterners, then of quite a few Christian monks, for a change. Since for your meter it would be Middle Eastern merchandise, make do with the shaman (as long as he is of pure WHG or EHG stock!).
Do you remember that even the characters you use to communicate this bullshit to me, going back from passage to passage, also come from those parts? And even before the Phoenicians, there were proto-Sinaitic characters. Yes, right there. If you ever answer me (but you are excused), do so with other Klingon characters.
Ditto for the numbers. Have you noticed that we no longer use Roman numerals as we used to? Pay attention, Taktika.
Listen to the music? I hope not, otherwise what a terrible idea and what an unforgivable weakness for a true European like you. It's already stuff that in its most archaic beginnings stinks of those parts. Then the monk Guido (from Arezzo or Pomposa) also invented musical notation and passed it down. We have discovered another follower of filthy Middle Eastern beliefs that pollute the European genius.
I won't go any further, because it would be like shooting at the Red Cross (oh God, another piece of rubbish with Christian reminiscences!).

Europe was great in the past because it was shrewd and without being too picky it intelligently collected and assimilated even those discoveries and elements that were not European, reworking them in an original way and developing them. This ability has been lost for a while, and this continent is now full of hams who idealize their supposedly Hyperborean pasts, censoring what gives them stomach aches, and recreating history for the use and consumption of their paranoia and narcissism. .
Study again. And a lot, not for pretend.

No, child. I'm not going anywhere else, forget it: it's too convenient to be a dandy with threads and your own claque ready to hold you accountable for every bullshit written. Understood?

Maybe they piss on your head because of your weird mentality. Everyone wants to be in Europe, many places in the world are a mess

I care about having European kids just like my ancestors did. There is plenty of land for other people but they all want to come here, we have the smallest population and also the largest minority populations, we have enough minorities now - especially trouble makers that we don't need. Europe is for us, we don't have any other land. Minorities are fine as long as they remain that.

If these minorities respected their own countries and the future of their countries they wouldn't need to come to Europe, that is ultimately the problem. They could stay in their country and make it better etc. Look at Dubai or Israel for example

 

[Stuvanè]

Maybe they piss on your head because of your weird mentality. Everyone wants to be in Europe, many places in the world are a mess. Also Europeans are (usually) better looking imo, but maybe if I wasn't European I would say something else

I care about having European kids just like my ancestors did. There is plenty of land for other people but they all want to come here, we have the smallest population and also the largest minority populations, we have enough minorities now - especially trouble makers that we don't need. Europe is for us, we don't have any other land. Minorities are fine as long as they remain that.

If these minorities respected their own countries and the future of their countries they wouldn't need to come to Europe, that is ultimately the problem. They could stay in their country and make it better etc. Look at Dubai or Israel for example

So? What is the reasoning? Until a few decades ago, were Christians in Europe perhaps a minority and distinct ethnic group compared to the rest of the population? In your area, were Patrick, Bede or Alcuin mysterious extraterrestrials who came from very distant galaxies?

Have Europeans, whether beautiful or ugly, stopped being Europeans because they were Christians at some point in their history? Perhaps you and I came out of nowhere, in the course of a single night, regardless of dozens and dozens of previous generations who - through lazy tradition or true vocation adhered to the Christian belief -, but more or less all trying to live as much as possible dignifiedly possible?
Or did your parents, grandparents and mine still publicly and consciously celebrate pagan weddings or funerals in the middle of the 19th and 20th centuries, perhaps with a few pyres lit on a ship sent out to sea?

You say other places are a big mess. Real. But have you ever suspected that this also depends on a special conception and dignity that has been developed here in the West regarding humanity and the individual person, largely thematized in Christian thought, different from that of other regions of the world? Elsewhere they will perhaps also be more in tune with the world and humanity will not enjoy any special place in the framework and hierarchy of nature. But this also means that you take on the risk of being treated and killed at any moment like any other insect, or that a woman may be considered little more than a beast to be enslaved and impregnated.

You fear invasions. Well, here it's already a reality and soon they will also build a mosque a stone's throw from my home.
Perhaps Christianity, despite all its defects and bigotry, invited us to start a family and have children with more enthusiasm (which in the end remains the only safest and most practical method to avoid the extinction of one's group to which one belongs). Now people are little or not at all Christian - and between fashionable atheisms, more or less radical feminisms, wokeisms of various kinds and other gimmicks useful only to instill in you a sense of shock and disorientation - they want everything except making plans for the future . There are many people to blame for this state of affairs, but among these we must also and above all thank those who, out of ignorance or for a deliberate purpose, took steps to deconstruct what was the foundation of our past. And for quite some time, Christianity was also part of this identity of ours.

So they will continue to piss on our heads. And a few days ago an Islamic man actually explained it to a colleague of mine. He stated that it is useless to sit there and debate about integrations and similar policies. He told us that he doesn't integrate, because we no longer have anything to teach him or offer him. Because we are the first to be ashamed of ourselves and of what we have been or what we have believed, and we do nothing but self-censor, either to pass ourselves off as more modern or to flatter the next master.

It is the West itself that offers the noose to his executioner.

 

[Vallicanus]

It is the West itself that offers the noose to his executioner.

Exactly so.

Marxism in academia has won. It doesn't give a toss for any minority group whether religious or ethnic or sexual. Its risible "Woke" agenda is a power play which is winning.

Ironically it is Islamism's wooden horse too.

Liberals can't and won't fight for the West so we may have to fall back on Trump's Christian Fundamentalists.

O me miserum!

 

[TetaEglantina]

So? What is the reasoning? Until a few decades ago, were Christians in Europe perhaps a minority and distinct ethnic group compared to the rest of the population? In your area, were Patrick, Bede or Alcuin mysterious extraterrestrials who came from very distant galaxies?

Have Europeans, whether beautiful or ugly, stopped being Europeans because they were Christians at some point in their history? Perhaps you and I came out of nowhere, in the course of a single night, regardless of dozens and dozens of previous generations who - through lazy tradition or true vocation adhered to the Christian belief -, but more or less all trying to live as much as possible dignifiedly possible?
Or did your parents, grandparents and mine still publicly and consciously celebrate pagan weddings or funerals in the middle of the 19th and 20th centuries, perhaps with a few pyres lit on a ship sent out to sea?

You say other places are a big mess. Real. But have you ever suspected that this also depends on a special conception and dignity that has been developed here in the West regarding humanity and the individual person, largely thematized in Christian thought, different from that of other regions of the world? Elsewhere they will perhaps also be more in tune with the world and humanity will not enjoy any special place in the framework and hierarchy of nature. But this also means that you take on the risk of being treated and killed at any moment like any other insect, or that a woman may be considered little more than a beast to be enslaved and impregnated.

You fear invasions. Well, here it's already a reality and soon they will also build a mosque a stone's throw from my home.
Perhaps Christianity, despite all its defects and bigotry, invited us to start a family and have children with more enthusiasm (which in the end remains the only safest and most practical method to avoid the extinction of one's group to which one belongs). Now people are little or not at all Christian - and between fashionable atheisms, more or less radical feminisms, wokeisms of various kinds and other gimmicks useful only to instill in you a sense of shock and disorientation - they want everything except making plans for the future . There are many people to blame for this state of affairs, but among these we must also and above all thank those who, out of ignorance or for a deliberate purpose, took steps to deconstruct what was the foundation of our past. And for quite some time, Christianity was also part of this identity of ours.

So they will continue to piss on our heads. And a few days ago an Islamic man actually explained it to a colleague of mine. He stated that it is useless to sit there and debate about integrations and similar policies. He told us that he doesn't integrate, because we no longer have anything to teach him or offer him. Because we are the first to be ashamed of ourselves and of what we have been or what we have believed, and we do nothing but self-censor, either to pass ourselves off as more modern or to flatter the next master.

It is the West itself that offers the noose to his executioner.

Europeans leaving outdated religion behind is a good thing imo, the only problem is instead of doing just that some are allowing another (worse) religion to creep in. Most people no longer fear god, what they do fear is prison and the police, or at least we should make it so they do

I don't fear invasions, I fear the possibility of Europe going backwards and ending up like the middle east with the exception of Dubai and Israel. There is no need to make this more complex than necessary, it is just a matter of protecting what we have. Be it European cultures, be it European law and order, and yes also be it European genes. We are fine right now but shouldn't continue bringing millions of people in every year as there is plenty of land on planet Earth, not everyone has to move to Europe

Like I said minorities are fine as long as they remain so, here are a few negatives that some minorities have contributed which could affect your kids and grand kids -
1. Higher crime rate, some of this crime is due to racism and hate for Europeans/the country they live in
2. Nonsense rap music about shooting, "murder" etc. Why is this still being allowed to pollute people's ears, I don't understand what value this brings to society
3. Woke and anti white "male" propaganda in some western countries. This is the new extremism and the new nazis. We don't allow European Nazis but allow these weirdos to say whatever they want

 

[Stuvanè]

Europeans leaving outdated religion behind is a good thing imo, the only problem is instead of doing just that some are allowing another (worse) religion to creep in. Most people no longer fear god, what they do fear is prison and the police, or at least we should make it so they do

I don't fear invasions, I fear the possibility of Europe going backwards and ending up like the middle east with the exception of Dubai and Israel. There is no need to make this more complex than necessary, it is just a matter of protecting what we have. Be it European cultures, be it European law and order, and yes also be it European genes. We are fine right now but shouldn't continue bringing millions of people in every year as there is plenty of land on planet Earth, not everyone has to move to Europe

Like I said minorities are fine as long as they remain so, here are a few negatives that some minorities have contributed which could affect your kids and grand kids -
1. Higher crime rate, some of this crime is due to racism and hate for Europeans/the country they live in
2. Nonsense rap music about shooting, "murder" etc. Why is this still being allowed to pollute people's ears, I don't understand what value this brings to society
3. Woke and anti white "male" propaganda in some western countries. This is the new extremism and the new nazis. We don't allow European Nazis but allow these weirdos to say whatever they want

I can absolutely agree with what you say about Europe and its legitimate intention to preserve itself. What I don't understand is what the concrete solution is, and why residual Christianity in Europe could constitute an obstacle or a disadvantage in this sense.
By secularizing ourselves and/or even becoming atheists, have we found more adequate answers to deal with the problem? I have not yet seen effective solutions in this regard, indeed it seems to me that the West in general in recent decades has become even more confused and hesitant.

You must consider that religion is not just a question of a relationship with a hypothetical divinity to explain our origins and the world's with some myth. From a historical point of view, religion also "models" our way of behaving and dealing with situations, given that it almost always proposes a morality and a practice (on which its potential or actual hypocrisy can be discussed or not), which, however, exists and conditions the actions of the communities that adhere to that belief. And the most cunning rulers (who are not the current European ones) understand well how to exploit it. Religion used as an instrumentum regni reveals often practical and functional implications.
You see it concretely in Islam which, among other things, has proposed since its origins a theocratic and militarized vision of its beliefs, which facilitates its expansion to the highest degree. This determines a considerable advantage compared to other communities which generally, due to tradition or numerical decline, act more defensively (I would consider Christianity among these, and I would leave aside what happened in the past with the Crusades, which in fact did not practically no political framework of those regions has changed).

Muslims take advantage of this state of affairs, Westerners (or ex-Christians) do not. The latter have gotten rid of Christianity, but have not yet created or introjected truly substitute values that allow them to have a vision and a pragmatic about their future. Now I don't have a time machine and I can't guarantee at all that things could have happened differently. But with hindsight I would say that paradoxically some values advocated by Christianity in the past - although more defenseless compared to Islam - if implemented could have facilitated some solutions or lessened the seriousness of other problems.
For example, a vision of the economy that is not ferociously capitalist or exploitative of other areas of the world, and greater attention to the people of the non-European world could have led to better economic living conditions in their own countries in the medium to long term. And we would have avoided uncontrolled migrations here (or they would have become better controllable). Or, with a different and slightly more responsible vision of the relationships between men and women, our own demographic impoverishment would not have reached such dramatic levels, so much so as to make us become a minority in our own home. It may be trivial to remember it, but obsolete Christianity did not look favorably on killings, slavery or forms of racism. However - since it was set aside - the green light has in fact been given to racism from other worlds, exploitation, incitements to murder in various forms of expression. After all, if there are no longer even those who criticize them, why should they hold back? We gave them as much space as we could to take it.

Our actions have far-reaching effects over time, but infantilized Europe forgets about them, and if there are defects that almost constantly characterize current Europeans, they are impulsiveness and lack of foresight. The secularized West wanted to rid itself of some last weapons, which perhaps had already emerged, but produced some partial solutions.
Now there aren't even those tools anymore. If anyone has more suitable ones, please come forward

 

[Vallicanus]

I can absolutely agree with what you say about Europe and its legitimate intention to preserve itself. What I don't understand is what the concrete solution is, and why residual Christianity in Europe could constitute an obstacle or a disadvantage in this sense.
By secularizing ourselves and/or even becoming atheists, have we found more adequate answers to deal with the problem? I have not yet seen effective solutions in this regard, indeed it seems to me that the West in general in recent decades has become even more confused and hesitant.

We need to find a solution very quickly even if it takes the form of those US Christian evangelists who support Trump and Israel.
There ain't nobody else to do the job, certainly not the coffee and croissant liberal types in the EU.

Too many forget that from the 7th century to the 19th century, it was Islam that was bullying Christian Europe, first the Arabs of the Prophet and then from the 12th century the Turks loomed over Christian Europe and even reached the gates of Vienna.

For Pete's sake, it took the navy of a new Christian nation, the USA, to tame the Barbary Pirates of North Africa in the early 19th century. These Muslim corsairs terrorised the southern coasts of Europe. (From the Halls of Montezuma to the Shores of Tripoli).

They also demanded protection money from various European countries who sent ships into the Mediterranean, including Britain.

 

[TetaEglantina]

We need to find a solution very quickly even if it takes the form of those US Christian evangelists who support Trump and Israel.
There ain't nobody else to do the job, certainly not the coffee and croissant liberal types in the EU.

Too many forget that from the 7th century to the 19th century, it was Islam that was bullying Christian Europe, first the Arabs of the Prophet and then from the 12th century the Turks loomed over Christian Europe and even reached the gates of Vienna.

For Pete's sake, it took the navy of a new Christian nation, the USA, to tame the Barbary Pirates of North Africa in the early 19th century. These Muslim corsairs terrorised the southern coasts of Europe. (From the Halls of Montezuma to the Shores of Tripoli).

They also demanded protection money from various European countries who sent ships into the Mediterranean, including Britain.

The force that is prepared for war is usually victorious, especially if they catch the opposition by surprise. Islam spread in middle east and north Africa first, it didn't get far into Europe except for Iberia, until the Ottoman anyway. Same case with the Romans, the Romans were fully prepared for war while sometimes the people they conquered wouldn't have been as prepared, can go further back in time and it was the same case.

Muslim countries are not a big threat now in terms of war, even tiny Israel can take most of them - their threat mostly comes in the form of terrorist attacks which again is a prepared surprise attack. That's the not the point though, the problem is that instead of making their countries better for their people, they are letting their people leave and we keep allowing them into Europe. How many more do we have to take in? The middle east needs to continue improving so that more people stay there. I think their religion is holding them back because it is outdated nonsense, it's like someone using a wooden cart when they have a car.

 

[TetaEglantina]

The problem is that we are not just in a shooting war.

We now have woke Marxist-inspired Liberals who back Islamists in Gaza because they hate Israel.
Much of the EU, plus the UK, is trapped in a politically correct morass which has no effective answer to the spread of Islamic radicalism in certain corners of almost every city, not just London or Paris.

Islamophobia is a misnomer. A phobia is an irrational fear. It is only rational to fear the spread of an Islamic society that despises us and will certainly not integrate. We are foolish enough to allow Islamic migration to continue.
We must become like them. They will never become like us. No chance.

You're right there, people supporting terrorists is a disgrace. The territory of Israel needs to be sorted but attacking and kidnapping innocent people isn't how you do it, they have achieved nothing by doing that.

What kind of lesson are these terrorists teaching their kids and the future of their people? They have put their own people in danger and are to blame for kids getting bombed, I also blame the Palestinians for keeping Hamas in power. The Palestinians should be fighting Hamas, instead it's Israel that is having to do it.

 

[norbert]

The problem is that we are not just in a shooting war.

We now have woke Marxist-inspired Liberals who back Islamists in Gaza because they hate Israel.
Much of the EU, plus the UK, is trapped in a politically correct morass which has no effective answer to the spread of Islamic radicalism in certain corners of almost every city, not just London or Paris.

Islamophobia is a misnomer. A phobia is an irrational fear. It is only rational to fear the spread of an Islamic society that despises us and will certainly not integrate. We are foolish enough to allow Islamic migration to continue.
We must become like them. They will never become like us. No chance.

Most people on the Left are showing basic human compassion for the civilians of Gaza. Israel is committing unprecedented war crimes that are simply not acceptable, let alone justifiable. With every killed Palestinian child or woman, Israel creates at least three new Hamas members. About 33.000 people have been killed in Gaza in six months and for what? A little successful military operation by an insurgent paramilitary? The West helped destroy a number of Middle Eastern countries on behalf of Israel, led by the US. All of Israel's adversaries have been neutralised with the sole exception of Iran which the US dares not attack due to its defensive capabilities. One of the major consequences of this Western meddling in the Middle East are the mass migrations which affect Europe dramatically. These migrations and the uprooting of millions of people is also policy among the Western elites. Not only are they destroying entire societies in the Middle East (with the keen help of local Islamic fanatics), they are also destroying national cohesion in Western countries to disable any sort of effective opposition to their rule. You can't organise a "Tower of Babylon" against a ruling class.

All this woke stuff has nothing to do with authentic leftist politics but many people who identify as leftist fell for that trap. What you perceive as woke, which places its emphasis on race, sexuality and cultural matters, is forced upon us by the World Economic Forum and its main donors, the globalist billionaire class of Western oligarchs. They have discovered virtue-signalling as an effective mechanism to deflect any sort of criticism and scrutiny. They put a gay person or a person of colour in a position of power to shield themselves from criticism. If a black person orders the arrest of student protestors, mass evictions of people who can't pay their rent or an attack on civilians in some foreign war, you may be accused of racism if you criticise that person. This has to do with liberals but certainly not Marxists.

Our societies have been greatly damaged by neoliberal capitalism. Our industries have been destroyed through the off-shoring of production, so many of the well-paying jobs are gone. That means that the domestic working class has lost the means and incentive to reproduction. At the same time, mass immigration is encouraged and greatly subsidied with welfare money, whereas that money is not spent on the natives to have more children. So it's not simply a cultural thing, something you can blame on feminists or whomever, but a deeply economic problem, although Jordan Peterson would like you to believe otherwise. People like him have led a crusade against wokeness, cancel culture and for free speech. But we're once again reminded that the right only believes in its own freedom of speech. Peterson and many like him are silent about the attack on free spech that is coming from the Israel lobby. They are about to pass a law that criminalises any criticism of Israel. Where is Jordan Peterson now? Students are beaten up and incarcerated for taking advantage of a basic constitutional right, a right under attack by the Israel lobby. Ben Shapiro fired Candace Owens for disagreeing with him on Israel/Palestine. Where are the free speech crusaders on the right?

As what values should replace Christianity: how about reason, science, humanism and the virtue of culture, knowledge and education? We are supposed to grow as a civilisation. Most people who are secular, atheist or agnostic want to live normal lives, to have their own families and children. There are some feminist extremists who attack this desire by the great majority of people but they are a tiny minority, a sect and they're backed and encouraged by Big Money. We're not going to roll back our cultural achievements and revert to the Dark Ages just because some "Islamic man" doesn't want to integrate or show some respect to our cultures. He thinks we have nothing to teach him? Then why is he here? Why do millions of them want to come here? Besides, he didn't come to learn anything in the first place. Those people cannot be thought anything, anywhere. Carrot and stick is all they know and respect. That seems to be a reality and I don't want it in my country. But I also recognise that much of the evil in the Middle East is Western-made and I want our governments to work on the improvement of our societies, not the destruction of others. The best way to get people to respect you and integrate is to be worthy of imitation. There was a time when the entire world looked up to the West for modernisation: Japan did that, Turkey, many Arab states etc. But our societies are run by oligarchs who use the ressources of our societies for their own enrichment and who cause havoc worldwide in our name, with our money. Our so-called leaders are no longer independent-minded politicians but corporate shills who are chosen by the globalist, billionaire class for their malleability. All democratic control has been effectively rescinded. We just leap from one bogus election to another. People who protest high living costs, exploding gas prices, war or this irrational migration policy are accused of racism and antisemitism. All popular opposition is to be discredited and silenced. What does this have to do with Marxists and feminists? Women's rights should be self-evident. You don't have to support feminism to recognise that. Also, gay and trans people have a right to a life in security and without discrimination. I understand that we're all fed up with the aggressive LGBTQHKSNMDSGJLSG+ propaganda being shoved down our throats constantly. But I already said where all this is coming from. And we're not going back to the Middle Ages just because some disrespectful, ingrate "Islamic man" still lives there.

 

[Vallicanus]

. One of the major consequences of this Western meddling in the Middle East are the mass migrations which affect Europe dramatically. These migrations and the uprooting of millions of people are policy among Western elites. Not only are they destroying entire societies in the Middle East (with the keen help of local Islamic fanatics), they are also destroying national cohesion in Western countries to disable any sort of effective opposition to their rule. You can't organise a "Tower of Babylon" against a ruling class.

I have to admit that this meddling by the West's plutocratic elite is certainly the source of the massive influx of people into Europe.

Of course rationality would make the perfect substitute for religion, any religion, but most people are too emotional to accept cool Reason as a guide to their existence, their coping mechanism if you will.

 

[Vallicanus]

Furthermore, I do not condone any war crimes, from any side.

I don't support any attacks on freedom of speech from left or right, both of which offer unbalanced viewpoints on life.

However, Christian Europe should hang its collective head in shame for the centuries of disgusting persecution of the Jews.

Without Judaism there would be no Christianity and no Islam. Both religions have the blood of millions of basically duped people, its own adherents and its foes, on its hands. What blood has Judaism shed... in comparison to its oppressors?

 

[Vallicanus]

@norbert
I must admit that I have never read a clearer, more succinct analysis of the mess the West is in than post #54.

 

[Maciamo]

It gets more complicated among those who believe in God. Although there are people who say they believe in God but refuse to affiliate themselves with any of the existing denominations, the concept of God itself is not universal but has its roots in a certain religion, cultural environment and ideology.

In the Netherlands there is a new category of belief called Ietsism. The term derives from the Dutch word iets meaning 'something' and refers to people who are not religious but believe that "there must be something undefined beyond the mundane and that which can be known or can be proven." The word has been used in English since 2012. Ietism is not really the same as agnosticism. Agnostics doubt that we can ever know if God exists, while ietsists do not doubt that there is something, but it is something that is completely undefined and unknown. Both groups are non-religious but neither fits squarely as theists or atheists.

A 2015 survey by Radboud University and the VU University Amsterdam concluded that the Dutch population has 28% ietsists, 34% agnostics, 24% atheists and 14% theists. There is no data for other countries as it is a relatively new term that hasn't really made its way into other languages. But a lot of people who answer to surveys that they are 'spiritual but not religious', 'non-affiliated', or 'cultural Christians/non-theist Christians' (particularly common in Nordic countries) would also fit in this category.

Interestingly the same survey also asked people about their religion rather than belief in God and it turned out that there were only 68% of non-affiliated in the Dutch population. This means that 32% of the people see themselves as belonging to a religion (including 5% of Muslims) although only 14% of them admit to being theists! In other words 18% of Dutch people are religious but don't believe God or aren't sure. These are people who probably don't give much thought to their beliefs and appear to be confused, unless they are Theravada Buddhists (an atheist religion) but that's less than 1% of the Dutch population.

Stuvanè seems to believe that it is fashionable to be an atheist nowadays, but I've never felt this way. There may be more atheists now than 20 years ago, but true atheists like me have always been the minority of the non-religious people in most Western countries. I have lived in 5 European countries as well as Australian and Japan and I found that in Western countries It is often more socially acceptable to be vaguely non-religious or non-practicing than to unambiguously state that you are an atheist.

I absolutely agree with you on the state of science today and have talked about this on several occasions here. Many theoretical and particle physicists seem to live in a world of mathematical solipsism, expecting nature to bend to their mathematical formula rather than describing nature as accurate as possible. They do this either out of epistemological disorientation or for opportunistic reasons. Sometimes doing perpetual research is more important than delivering results that could bring us ahead as it was once the case when scientists were only interested in how nature works, not their own careers, media presence and prizes. This is why you have a real flood of mediocre publications in all science, archeogenetics included. You can see that on the topic of the PIE homeland which is almost farcical. Either publish or perish and it makes you wonder if these people are even interested in scientific facts because they seem to publish for funds and grants. In the long term, this is going to destroy our scientific culture. Academia behaves like Big Pharma which is not about finding cures but endless treatment because the latter is more profitable. For a lot of scientists, doing research forever means a well-paid job and a secure pension. Universities act like corporations. Such conditions breed a culture of conformism and exclusion of those who dare question the current state of things. Some of the greatest scientific minds of the past like Einstein would be considered as crackpots today.

I agree that this is a big problem.