Category Archives: Christianity

The importance of the language of theology and millenarianism for the Marxist revolutions

In 1988, Dr. Gary North gave a speech on Karl Marx and Marxism. The portion relevant here starts at this point and extends to the end about 12 minutes later.

Here’s what he says: In 1660, when Charles II acceded the English throne, it was clear the Puritan revolution had failed. From then on, the language, but not the system, of political tracts was secularised. For example, prior to 1660 there was regularly talk of the three ages of man being the age of the Father, the age of the Son and the age of the Holy Spirit. After that date, especially in the 19th century, there was often talk of the age of religion, the age of metaphysics and the age of reason.

This fed into the Marxian belief in an atheist millennium that was about to be ushered in, in fact that it was assumed to be “inevitable”.

However, the professional revolutionaries hit a brick wall in 1965, North says. And that was the undeniability of the failure of a socialist revolution in Indonesia. In a strong counter-revolution, 100.000 ethnic Chinese were killed by “racial anti-communists”. These, I assume, were Muslims (North doesn’t say).

North goes on to say that from then on, communists realised they couldn’t take over a country with deep religious roots. They would have to restructure their ideology and pitch and re-write their pamphlets.

They realised that they have to have a religious and theological foundation if they wanted to capture the minds of the people.

Out of these thoughts was born the “liberation theology”, which was, or is, particularly active in Latin America.

North finishes by saying that recruitment for revolutionary movements is based on a vision of world transformation and whose side you need to get on to drive progress toward a “new world order”.

My interpretation of North’s words here: From 1965, “Stalinist” communists implicitly agreed with the early “cultural Marxist” Antonio Gramsci, whom they had up until then treated as a heretic. The Italian Gramsci had in the 1920s written essentially that in Europe a Bolshevik revolution would not succeed because of the “cultural hegemony” of the Catholic church. It was these writings that inspired the Frankfurt School a generation later to their – largely successful – cultural revolution which has totally marginalised the church, where it has not been co-opted.

The Glue Binding Democracy and a Free Economy Has Melted

Writes Charles Hugh Smith in an article with that title on the blog “Of Two Minds”.

Quote:

The single-minded pursuit of greed does not magically organize the economy or society to serve everyone’s interests equally. As Adam Smith explained, capitalism and the social order both require a moral foundation, which in a free society takes the form of civic virtue: it is the responsibility of every citizen who is able to contribute to the social capital that serves us all to do so not in response to an oppressive state but of their own free will.

Here’s the problem though: What if the citizen opts to use his free will to not contribute to the social capital? What if, instead, he opts to use his free will to exploit the social capital without giving anything back, ever? Who’s to stop him, and how and why?

This is where the force of religion comes in. Wherever we use the word “responsibility” we need to examine this: “To whom are we responsible”? In a society where we can assume the vast majority of members believe in a God to whom they feel “responsible”, we can assume that they will behave largely along the lines of the commandments handed down from on high.

This can no longer be taken for granted in erstwhile Christian societies. This general presupposition began to be eroded to a large extent during the (pre-French Revolution) Enlightenment (with precursors of this trend beginning in the Renaissance). The French Revolution massively strengthened and accelerated this trend. The logical end points of this trend were the concentration and death camps of the 20th century.

We have since taken one (!) step back from that abyss. But we haven’t “turned around” yet and walked away from it.

A Christian Libertarian View on Environmental Protection

I’ve just finished reading “Faith Seeking Freedom – Libertarian Christian Answers to Tough Questions“. The authors are Dr. Norman Horn, Doug Stuart, Kerry Baldwin and Dick Clark.

It covers 12 different subjects, plus one chapter on “Christian misconceptions on Libertainism”.

Here, I’m just going to concentrate on chapter 12: “What about the Environment and Creation?”

Here are a few quotes from that chapter:

The natural world in the beginning [of Genesis] is described as a garden. Gardens are meant to be worked, and that work inherently means that the garden is incomplete.

Therefore, the destiny of the whole earth is not pure wildland, but cultivation by its inhabitants.

Now, that does not mean we should be utterly wasteful and foolish with those resources, but it also means we do not have the right to assume we know better than our neighbor how he can use those resources that he rightfully owns.

As we use the resources that God has seen fit to grant us, we should use them as mindful stewards of a divine blessing (Matt. 25:14-30). The righteous take care to leave something of value for future generations (Prov. 13:22)

When property boundaries are clear and unambiguous, neighbors can more readily hold each other accountable.

Too often, in a system where environmental regulation is provided through government, political decision making can lead to wasted resources. Under modern environmental regulatory regimes, polluters and other bad actors may even be able to defend their harmful actions legally by pointing to government licensure and compliance with relevant regulations.

In a free society, property owners would have a better chance at holding others accountable for the environmental damage that they cause.

It is important to point out that governments do not just fail to protect the environment; in fact, they are among the worst polluters. A 2020 report concluded that the United States military is the “largest single institutional consumer of hydrocarbons in the world”.

Private property owners have a strong incentive to conserve their privately owned resources. Unfortunately, when government owns and manages natural resources, there is an incentive for private parties to attempt to get as much as they can until the resource is exhausted.

It is rational to maximise profits, and for as long as human beings live in a fallen world with scarce resources, they will seek to do so.

We must recognize that some pollution is inevitable simply because of entropy.

The bigger concern, though, is hazardous waste. [Whoever damages] someone else with their pollutant, they are liable for those damages in form of a tort (a civil lawsuit). The polluter would have to pay restitution for those damages and resotre the property (or health) of the claimant.

Models of the future are massively uncertain, and their predictions of global climates and the need to “fix” the predicted issues are dangerous at best and unjust to billions at worst.

Encourage efforts that move land and resources into private hands rather than the state.

Interview with Astrophysicist Hugh Ross

At Grace Church St. Louis, from 19th May 2024

Starts here.

Includes account of when he visited the Soviet Union. He says scientists there were researching “occult weapons”, because the leadership realised they were falling behind the US and were getting desperate.

He says some of the scientists there were “obviously demon-possessed”, and explained that in terms of their behaviour: Shouting at him during his talk, being very hostile, turning away, going into foetal position etc.

Atheist MIT Professor Converts to Christianity

Writes the video-maker “Daily Dose of Wisdom”:

In this video, Rosalind Picard shares the story of her journey to God. Along the way, she unpacks the critical realization that Science, as wonderful as it is, is not the only vehicle to bring us to Truth and that many aspects of human life simply fall outside the view of Science. She then explains her process of seeking answers to those huge Why questions that go beyond mere process or mechanism. I hope you enjoy!

Here is Picard’s Wikipedia-entry.