Saturday, July 30, 2011

The CBC Tries to Pin the Norway Murders on "Christian Fundamentalists"

Ezra Levant has a terrific 9 minute monologue on the media coverage of the Breivik murders in Norway. He shows footage from the CBC that identifies him as a "Christian fundamentalist" and then he gives quotes from his internet manifesto that clearly show (1) that Breivik knew what a Christian fundamentalist is and (2) that Breivik was not a Christian fundamentalist. Insofar as he could be said to be anything (because his manifesto is rambling and incoherent consisting of cut and paste excerpts from everyone from Dan Brown to Charles Darwin to Ghandi to Mark Steyn) he could more plausibly be described as a liberal Protestant.



Here is also a segment of Levant's show in which he interviews Michael Coren about the story. They make it crystal clear that this tragic event has nothing whatsoever to do with Christianity, fundamentalist or otherwise.



The liberal media coverage of this event has been downright creepy.

Friday, July 29, 2011

Political Correctness Kills Innocent People

The US soldier arrested the other day has confessed to wanting to attack the US military base at Fort Hood and is an Islamic extremist. So it is clear that the US military is infested with traitors and the Obama administration is unconcerned. It is another example of how political correctness kills innocent people.

On Wednesday, Private First Class Naser Jason Abdo was arrested and found with a large quantity of weapons and explosives materials. The incident is a classic example of al-taqiyya, the Islamic doctrine of lying to non-believers. He publicly opposed the 2009 Fort Hood shooting, and now has admitted to planning on doing a similar attack on the same target.

Abdo converted to Islam at age 17, and is described by his peers as being “kind of weird” and a loner. He joined the military, and became part of the 101st Airborne Division based at Fort Campbell in Kentucky. In June 2010, he tried to avoid being deployed to Afghanistan by applying for conscientious objector status. Major media attention followed.

“I began to understand and believe that only God can give legitimacy to war and not humankind. That’s when I realized my conscience would not allow me to deploy,” he wrote in an essay about his application. He also said in an interview that he cannot “involve myself in an army that wages war against Muslims. I don’t believe I could sleep at night if I take part, in any way, in the killing of a Muslim.” He also expressed his opposition to the Fort Hood shooting, saying it was “an act of aggression by a man and not by Islam.”

His request was denied at first, but then approved in the spring. However, things still didn’t go as planned for Abdo. His discharge from service was delayed after child pornography was found on his computer. It has now come out that the material was found after an investigation began when he made anti-American remarks in a language class. This is reminiscent of Major Nidal Hasan, who also made statements exposing his extremism in front of classmates before carrying out his attack and supported releasing Muslims from service as conscientious objectors.

What I would like to know is when the US military, for the first time in history, accepted the concept of "selective conscientious objection." Up until now the only person eligible for conscientious objector status in the United States is the person who takes the position that all killing in war goes against his conscience. He must prove that this is a longstanding and absolute rejection of war in its totality. Amish, Mennonites, Quakers, and others who take a totally pacifist position have been given this status on the assumption that there will never be a significantly large enough number of such people to affect the ability of the nation to defend itself. So respecting their conscience is a humane luxury the state can afford.

But soldiers, especially those who signed up voluntarily, who refuse to fight in one war or battle while acknowledging that they would fight under other conditions have always been dealt with harshly. It is sometimes execution (if it occurs on the battlefield), usually prison and just possibly, in the most lenient cases, dishonorable discharge. To volunteer to join the army is to give up one's right to decide which wars and battles one is going to fight in - for reasons too obvious to require elaboration.

The refusal to fight other Muslims should be a huge red flashing light for military authorities. A pattern is being established - we are now beyond the one, isolated case. A question for legitimate debate now is whether having Muslims in the armed forces is too much of a risk in a time of war against a Muslim enemy. Nobody has a civil right to be a member of the military. You have to qualify.

One also has to wonder where the order to give Abdo conscientious objector status came from. My guess would be that it was not a career military officer, but a political appointee of the Obama administration. I wonder if anyone will look into this question.

Thursday, July 28, 2011

The New York Times Continues Its Relentless Assault

The orchestrated campaign of villifying and smearing Christians and Christianity continues at the New York Times. Today in an op ed column Roger Cohen becomes completely unhinged.
"Breivik has many ideological fellow travelers on both sides of the Atlantic. Theirs is the poison in which he refined his murderous resentment. The enablers include Geert Wilders in the Netherlands, who compared the Koran to "Mein Kampf" on his way to 15.5 percent of the vote in the 2010 election; the surging Marine Le Pen in France, who uses Nazi analogies as she pours scorn on devout Muslims; far-rightist parties in Sweden and Denmark and Britain equating every problem with Muslim immigration; Republicans like former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and Representative Peter King, who have found it politically opportune to target "creeping Shariah in the United States" at a time when the middle name of the president is Hussein; U.S. church pastors using their bully pulpits week after week to say America is a Christian nation under imminent threat from Islam."
How delusional is Cohen? Consider this sentence:
European Christendom in this context is a mirror image of the idealized caliphate of Osama bin Laden.
European Christendom is the same as the idealized caliphate of bin Laden? There are only two possibilities to explain this kind of delusional statement. One is that Cohen is simply ignorant of history. The other is that Cohen is willfully distorting the facts of history in order to demonize the greatest culture in history so he can help destroy it and replace it with a Utopian dreamworld invented by some madman named Marx. If so, he wouldn't be the first.

If he really means what he says, he is an enemy of science, progress, reason, faith and all the blessings of the Western world. He and Osama bin Laden have a lot in common.

There is nothing new about these tactics. They are part of the playbook of the Left. As Timothy Birdnow notes:

So now Geert Wilders, Marine Le Pen, Newt Gingrich, Peter King are all the equivalent of Breivik and Osama Bin Laden; monsters itching to kill! kill! kill! Subhuman brutes on the verge of genocide. And any attempt to defend ourselves is an act of aggression against a harmless people who just happen to cut off heads, blow up pizza parlors and airplanes, etc. No! The real villains are those E-VIL right wingers who say "you will not destroy us".

We have seen this in liberals at least since the assassination of John Kennedy; Lee Harvey Oswald was a communist, yet liberals have invented all manner of conspiracy theories pinning his murder on the Right. Yet when John Hinckley Jr. shot Ronald Reagan it was a disturbed man to the media. We've had Timothy McVeigh pinned on Rush Limbaugh and conservative talk radio, yet Major Hassan's little Allah Akbar! moment was said to have nothing to do with radical Islam. (McVeigh was a Nazi, an atheist, and by his own admission a man of the Left.) Remember the leftist who flew his plane into the Texas IRS building? He was immediately linked to the Tea Parties by the left and their lapdog media. Remember the Missouri Fusion Center report? Remember the DHS report warning of "conservative terrorists", people like returning veterans, Christians, pro-lifers, etc.? There has been an ongoing effort to demonize good, normal Americans. And there has been an even longer attempt to destroy Christianity, the cornerstone of Western Civilization. Promoting the idea of a "parity of evil" between religions, the notion that Islam and Christianity are just as malignant, is a high priority for the Left, particularly the atheistic Left.

Somebody tell the Daily Worker it can stop publication; its role in American journalism has been taken over by the New York Times.

By the way, a Muslim soldier who was AWOL was arrested today near Fort Hood with bomb making materials in his motel room and a pistol and "Muslim extremist literature" in his backpack. As a Muslim he had refused to go to Afghanistan because it would mean fighting fellow-Muslims. He was also under investigation for child pornography.

The headline? "Soldier's Arrest Revives Fears at Fort Hood."

At least it wasn't: "Terrorist Belonging to a Religion Exactly Like Christianity Arrested."

The New Atheists: "Socially Awkward Iconoclasts"

Tim Stanley has some harsh but well-deserved words for the new atheists today in his Daily Telegraph blog on American religion. First, some background:
America’s culture war took an unpleasant turn this week. A group of atheists filed a suit to take down a cross erected at the Lower Manhattan memorial to the victims of 9/11. The cross was formed from two intersecting steel beams that were found intact in the rubble. Dave Silverman, head of the American Atheists, called the display a breach of the separation between church and state.
The fanatical, obsessive, anti-social drive to eradicate every vestige of Christianity from the world is a characteristic Marxist-Leninists and the new atheists. What does Stanley think of this attitude?
The story itself is a storm in a tea cup. The cross will probably stay because it has attained a cultural status beyond religious symbolism. To many viewers it is a physical reminder of the devastation and a metaphor for the resurrection of New York as a city. What is remarkable is where Silverman’s American Atheists have chosen to make their big stand. Picking on a memorial to the victims of 9/11 exposes the profound lack of sensitivity of the New Atheism and its obsessive, socially awkward edge. . . . The fact is that the New Atheists aren’t interested in either pluralism or being left alone. They are iconoclasts and they enjoy breaking things.
Yep. I'd say that is about the size of it: socially awkward iconoclasts who are anti-social and angry - the kind of people you hope don't move in next door.

Wednesday, July 27, 2011

More on the Mendacity of the New York Times

This time the Wall Street Journal points out the deceptive, manipulative, lies of the New York Times as it attempts to use the human tragedy of mass murder by a madman to discredit Christianity and conservative bloggers:
In an editorial today, the New York Times issues a demand to the anti-Islam bloggers whose work Norway terror defendant Anders Breivik cited in his manifesto:
Mr. Breivik appears to have been deeply influenced by a small group of American bloggers and writers who have warned for years about Islam's supposed threat to Western civilization. Their tendency to paint law-abiding Muslims with the same brush as extremists is repugnant. They need to categorically denounce Mr. Breivik's depravity.

OK, here's Robert Spencer on Saturday: "SIOA and SIOE [Stop Islamization of America and Stop Islamization of Europe] declare our sympathy for the victims and relatives of the victims of the heinous mass murders in Norway. We denounce the attacker and reiterate our dedication to the defense of free societies and opposition to all vigilantism and violence."

And here's Pamela Geller, also on Saturday: "He is a murderer, a mass murderer. Period. He's not anything else. He is sick, sick to death and he has aided the enemy in so many ways it defies comprehension. Anyone who would kill children is insane. And if he's a right winger who hates Muslims, how does that translate into killing a bunch of political youth party Workers' Youth League? . . . I despise savagery and inhumanity in any all instances. Period. This abject loser lowered himself to sub-human status."

One need not endorse Spencer's or Geller's views to acknowledge that they have already done what the Times demanded of them three days later. The Times's failure to acknowledge that is sloppy and dishonest.

A postscript: Yesterday we wrote that we did not know Spencer's religion. A reader points out that in a lengthy bio on his website, he says he is Catholic. If we'd have guessed, we'd have gotten it wrong. Another lesson in the importance of not jumping to conclusions.

I can only add this: the liberal attempt to blame conservatives for the Norway massacre has a secondary purpose besides the attempt to make Christians and conservatives look bad. It also deflects attention away from the culpability of the Left for the attack itself.

The mad policies of the culture of death and multiculturalism, which lead to the failure of a society to reproduce itself, and the naive Utopian belief that millions of Muslim immigrants can be brought into Western countries without being assimilated to the ethos of the West with no problems have created the conditions under which social peace is strained to the breaking point,. Those who have advocated such insane ideas should now take responsibility for the breakdown in social peace and civility. This is not to justify terrorism; it is to point out that the warnings conservatives have been issuing for years have not been heeded and violence has been the result. We wish liberals were willing to rethink multiculturalism precisely so that violence could be avoided.

When you meditate on the horror of terrorism - from both European and Islamic sources - remember that this is the entirely predictable fruit of policies the Left has convinced us to implement. So when will the editors of the New York Times apologize for their errors? When will they accept responsibility for the inevitable outcome of their policies? When will they apologize for mass murder in Norway?

What Stands in the Way of the Radical Homosexual Goal of Destroying Marriage? Reuban Diaz . . . and God

The radical homosexual agenda has come out into the open in recent years. No longer can an unbiased observer be justified in believing that the push for "same-sex marriage" has anything to do with tolerance for homosexuals. It clearly is all about providing a legal basis for the persecution of Christians, Jews and other conservatives who believe in traditional marriage. Consider what has been happening in New York since the Legislature made it illegal not to pretend that a man can "marry" another man.
Speaking of "crimes," on Tuesday, Bob Ellis reported on some of the very predictable fallout from the recent outrage of the state lawmaker-mandated forcing of homosexual "marriage" on the people of New York. Now appearing on the hellish stage is Nassau County District Attorney Kathleen Rice, who has apparently been threatening county clerks who are morally opposed to issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples.

As Bob Ellis reported,

"...[I]n the wake of New York's recent decision to allow homosexuals to counterfeit marriage, some not only want morally committed clerks fired, they want clerks criminally prosecuted who will not participate in the counterfeiting of marriage.

The National Organization for Marriage (NOM) blog highlights one NY state senator who still has a moral compass, Ruben Diaz, and a press release he sent out yesterday:

'...It is inexcusable that Nassau County District Attorney Kathleen Rice has publicly threatened employees by stating 'the law affords no discretion to public officials charged with granting marriage licenses. Therefore, any such refusal may be subject to criminal prosecution.'

Her press statement stated: 'The religious exemptions in the Marriage Equality Act are inapplicable to town and city clerks serving in their license-granting roles, and a public official's intentional refusal to issue marriage licenses to qualified same-sex couples may constitute Official Misconduct, a Class A misdemeanor defined in section 195.00 of the New York State Penal Law.'"
Link
Freedom of conscience? Freedom of religion? What in the world are you talking about? Oh, those United States of America constitutional rights don't apply here. When it comes to appeasing the aggressively radical homosexuals, yoLinku Christians can check your God-given rights with your coat and hat at the door.
So who is standing up to the "dictatorship of relativism," this fascist imposition of the will to power? A Pentecostal minister who also happens to be a Democratic member of the New York State Senate, Rev. Reuban Diaz, that's who. And if you are a black Democrat you can surely dissent from the party line on one issue and not get slurred and threatened, can't you? Well, actually, no - it is the lynch mob for you.
Sen. Ruben Diaz, a South Bronx Democrat is also a Pentecostal Minister and a charismatic and unshakeable man of principle. He refused to back down on what he considered a moral truth. As the 'gay marriage' debate heated up in the final week, he refused to be bullied into selling out.

... During his stand for marriage Sen. Diaz endured death threats which caused him to seek help from the police and FBI.


But now, two weeks after the vote, Sen. Diaz continues to be [the] target of a vile and disgusting campaign of personal attacks by the homosexual community. He receives a flood of vicious hate calls and emails to his home and office. The 'tolerant' homosexual community sponsored a 'F- Ruben Diaz Festival' in a gay bar in Brooklyn.

But Sen. Diaz is not backing down. Yesterday he published a press release, also posted on his web site, which re-stated his unwillingness to back down under pressure."
What does Sen. Diaz have to say? In a press release he says:
"On June 24th I voted my conscience and opposed Governor Andrew Cuomo's key piece of social legislation in the New York State Senate that redefines our marriage laws away from the traditional definition of one man and one woman. I was the only Democrat in the Senate to vote against this legislation, and I wear my vote as a badge of honor.

I have been congratulated by religious leaders and constituents not only from my district, but from districts all over New York State. I have received messages of encouragement and gratitude from people throughout the United States. Alberto Martinez tweeted: 'Jesus said: 'Whoever is ashamed of Him and His words, the Son of Man will also be ashamed of such person at His coming.' Bravo Senator Diaz.' All of these supporters know that I am unashamed to be a Christian. If we talk the talk, we must walk the walk.

Although Republican Senate Leader Dean Skelos ushered the gay marriage vote to the floor in order to make the 11:00PM news, and even though the vote passed, the hatred that has spewed in my direction before June 24th continues.

Yesterday I received a series of five emails in my Senate account from one person that read like homicidal rantings: 'You eat s-. You are s-.' 'There is no worse person on Earth than you. God has told me so.' 'You worthless pile of human excrement...' 'I hope you die. I hope you die soon. I'm waiting for you to die.' 'Satan would sooner nail a stake through your heart than admit to knowing you. Your very own lover...'

To err on the side of caution and especially since one of the messages awaits my demise, those emails were properly reported to the FBI."
The pro-homosexual movement is not about tolerance or justice or compassion for the underdog. Black Pentecostal Democrats are not the face of the Establishment; they certainly don't control society. But they have to be ruthlessly mowed down by the extremist homosexual movement as it seeks to consolidate power and eliminate all opposition to its control of our culture.

Where are the New York Baptists, Presbyterians and other Evangelical voices in New York? If it were not for the Catholics and Pentecostals the Christian voice would be practically silent. We Evangelicals are being weighed in the balance and found wanting. A hundred years ago there were no such things as Pentecostals. Now there are half a billion. Do we really think God is stuck with us and has no options?

In any case, the agenda is clear and the battle lines are drawn. Those who think there can be compromise and reasonable accommodation between Christians and Nietzschean homosexual extremists are being proven wrong systematically by events as they unfold. The agenda is the destruction of marriage and the Christian Church stands in the way of that objective.

Some liberal Protestants have been so frightened that they have scurried into line and so we witness the humiliating spectacle of so-called Episcopalian "bishops" dutifully marching like captives in "Gay Pride Parades." They are sell-outs who will do anything for the Nazis in exchange for being gassed last. The Church was built on martyrs not on pragmatic bandwagon jumpers.

For every traitor and heretic God has reserved for Himself a man like Reuban Diaz. Let us pray for him and may his courage inspire us to serve without reservation.

Tuesday, July 26, 2011

The Truth about the "West Bank"

Here is a great presentation by the Israeli government explaining why there is no such thing as "occupied territories" and why the term "1967 borders" is incorrect. The propaganda is the Western world is thick and toxic, but this clear presentation cuts through the haze with history, facts and legal reasoning.



Everyone who wants to be informed should spent 6 minutes with this informative video.

Liberal Media Exploit Mass Murder to Take A Cheap Shot at Christians

You knew it was coming. Yet when it happens you still shake your head at the hate-filled, extremism that seeks every possible way to attack Christianity.

The New York Times ran this headline: "As Horrors Emerge, Norway Charges Christian Extremist."

It does not matter than he does not belong to a church.
It does not matter that he is not a believer in Christian doctrine.
It does not matter that Christianity condemns murder.
It does not matter that Christians the world over condemned the actions of this likely insane megalomaniac swiftly, totally and without reservation.

No, none of that matters. If the NYT gets a chance to frame a story in such a way as to make Christianity look bad it just salivates with lust for defamation and condemnation. Its moralistic "We told you so . . . Christians are evil" tone is repulsive and should be condemned by all reasonable people whether Christian or non-Christian.

Bill O'Reilly has an eloquent and hard-hitting defense of Christianity from the attacks of those who wish the world was rid of Jesus Christ.



If the Antichrist appeared tomorrow and sat with the New York Times for an interview, he could count on their endorsement. Can there be any doubt of that?

By the way, here are three more reasons why Breivik could not possibly be a Christian.

1. If he really was a Knight Templar he would never kill innocent civilians; his job would be to protect them.

2. If he was a Christian and felt called to fight he would join the army and serve in Afghanistan fighting the Taliban and Al-Quaida, which are violent armed groups threatening world peace.

3. If he was a Christian, he would not have left the political party that opposes high levels of Islamic immigration to Norway, which is to say that he would use democratic means of persuasion to work for a cause in which he believed. By resorting to terrorism he became as bad as what he (supposedly) opposes.

Monday, July 25, 2011

Culture of Death Watch: Losing the Ability to Be Shocked

The Culture of Death grows stronger and stronger all around us and part of that process involves us becoming hardened by the constant refrain of praise for death and killing as the solution to all our problems. We hear a constant drumbeat of propaganda for ideas that are evil and anti-humanistic, but by which we are decreasingly scandalized and ourtraged.

One measure of the morality of a person or a people is what outrages and scandalizes him or them. And, conversely, a measure of the immorality of a person or people can be what fails to outrage or scandalize him or them.

When David and Victoria Beckham (celebrities in Britain, I gather, but they could have been Joe and Mary Smith for all it matters) had their fourth child, a promoter of the Culture of Death named Simon Ross had this to say:
The Beckhams, and others like London mayor Boris Johnson, are very bad role models with their large families. There’s no point in people trying to reduce their carbon emissions and then increasing them 100% by having another child.
(via Jill Stanek)

There are multiple layers of evil in this short statement.

First, the right to family formation is a private matter for each family. No one has the right to prevent anyone from marrying and having a family and that includes busybody moralists like Ross and also the State. Let me be absolutely clear: the Family precedes the State historically and ontologically and is not under the jurisdiction of the State. The State did not create the family and cannot abolish it. The right to marry and have a family is one of the most basic of all human rights and cannot be denied with justice, no matter how much some people would like to do so. Simon Ross should mind his own business.

Second, the population of all Western countries (with the exception of the United States) is well below replacement rates and this will create tremendous social and economic problems going forward. Japan's stagnant economy with fewer and fewer workers to support more and more retired folks is giving us a preview of what is in store for all developed countries (except the US) in the future. The population controllers, who are in the grip of a romantic Utopianism, do not understand the damage they have already done and are continuing to do. If they are not stopped, they will take us right back to barbarism.

Third, in the good old days the post-Christian liberals were merely secular humanists, meaning that they rejected revelation and orthodoxy but still tried to implement a Christian ethic in which love for humanity was central. Secular humanism had no basis and could not endure, but while it lasted at least it was pro-humanity. What comes after secular humanism, however, is truly terrifying. It is anti-humanistic - the will to power - the strong dominating the weak. Eugenics is a big part of this program and the population controllers lust after the day when the State will control the Family and they will control the State. They think they will be like God. It is important to understand that the Culture of Death is so regnant today because we have moved beyond theism and beyond humanism to an anti-humanistic, statist, elitist, amoral, will-to-power ethic in which the strong aim to dominate the weak.

We should not simply dismiss people like Simon Ross as "kooks with funny opinions." Such people are dangerous. Read C. S. Lewis' That Hideous Strength or Aldous Huxley's Brave New World if you need help imagining a world in which people like Simon Ross have seized political power and mowed down Christian opposition.

Saturday, July 23, 2011

Robert Reilly and the Closing of the Muslim Mind

Robert Reilly gets it. He understands that the civilizational crisis facing us today is rooted in theology. Here is a link to a terrific lecture he gave recently at the Heritage Foundation on his book: The Closing of the Muslim Mind.

Here is a synopsis of his lecture:
People today are shocked and frightened by the behavior coming out the Islamic world – not only because it is violent, but also because it is seemingly inexplicable. While many explanations have been offered as to “what went wrong” in the Muslim world, no one has decisively answered why it went wrong. In The Closing of the Muslim Mind, Robert R. Reilly locates the roots of contemporary troubles in a pivotal struggle that occurred within the Muslim world nearly a millennium ago. It was a battle over the role of reason – and the side of irrationality won. The theology that resulted, Reilly posits, produced a fertile field for Islamism, and now constitutes the chief obstacle to finding common ground with the Islamic world. In the view of former National Security Advisor John Poindexter, this book is “meticulously researched … must-read for today’s national security leaders.”
The lecture is well-worth the hour or so it takes to listen to. Reilly gives chapter and verse citations for some of the claims I lightly skated over in my last post.

What is God?

In the High Middle Ages there was a great deal of debate about the nature of God. The Great Tradition, rooted in Scripture and stretching from Athanasius to Augustine to Aquinas, said that God is Love and God is Reason (Logos). It is only possible to say this if one is a Trinitarian Christian.

Why? Because to say that God is unitarian is to say that His essence cannot be love without presupposing that God needs creation in order to have something to love; that God cannot be fully Himself (and cannot be fully actual) alone. The doctrine of the Trinity also allows us to understand that the Word (Logos) is the second person of the Trinity and thus fully God. The imprint of the Logos (through whom God made the world) is on the creation and thus the creation is both rational and rationally comprehensible. Man is made in the image of God and the image means that man's true nature is realized when he is both rational and loving.

Therefore, the Great Tradition was able to absorb Aristotle's rationalism into itself without losing its fundamental character. In fact, the Hellenization of Christianity was old hat for this tradition and it mainly involved Thomas Aquinas correcting certain Neo-Platonic aspects of Christian thought with superior Aristotelian reasoning and integrating faith and reason.

However, something different happened in the Muslim encounter with Aristotle. Islam proved incapable of integrating faith and reason and had to reject not only Aristotle, but also philosophy and science themselves in an act described by many observers as "intellectual suicide." The current fanatical Islamism that is reviving centuries old jihad against the West is rooted in theological mistakes made in this period which Islam has never, in the centuries since, been able to overcome.

The story does not end there with all the Christians wearing white hats and all the Muslims wearing black ones, however. It is much more complicated.

Christianity had no sooner achieved the fantastic heights of Thomistic philosophy and theology and integrated faith and reason in an intellectually coherent system of thought than it threw all the gains it had made away. Why? The disasters of the 14th century (the Black Plague, the 100 Years War, the Little Ice Age, etc.) created a situation of cultural decline and confusion in which the false theology inherent in nominalist philosophy was able to do what Arianism had just barely failed to do a thousand years before: become dominant in Christendom.

The dark and capricious God of nominalism was a God of pure will, an arbitrary Deity who is essentially unitarian. He is not a God of love or of reason, but of arbitrary, total will. This false deity, who bears a great deal of resemblance to the concept of God that won out in Islam, became the God against whom the Enlightenment reacted. This God is a threat to human freedom; freedom becomes a zero sum game in which the more God has, the less we have and the more we have the less God has. God is seen as a capricious tyrant against whom we must rebel if we don't want to be servile, dehumanized slaves.

Modernity is the project of rebellion against this God. Having rejected the God who is rational and loving, Modernity knows not how to relate to God except by asserting human autonomy and human will over against God. This is why Modernity must necessarily end in atheism. But Western atheism is a particular kind of atheism; it is not so much the absence of belief in God, but the refusal to bow to such a God, which is why it is seen as humanistic and humane.

The truth is that modern atheism has re-shaped man into the image of the nominalist God of will and the result is the triumph of the will described by Nietzsche and implemented by Hitler. One might call Nietzschean philosophy "Western Islamism with man in the place of God." Osama bin Laden and Adolph Hitler both put into practice the nihilistic, anarchistic, destructive, evil political practices that flow logically from a theology in which God and man are both reduced to nothing else in their essences but the will to power.

So it is a highly ironic twist of history that the rebellious liberal left of Western culture embraces Islam and rejects orthodox Christianity. The God of Islam is inevitably a violent tyrant because this God is not rational and not loving in His essence, which is another way of saying that He is not triune. Those who want to do justice to human freedom need to take another look at the Christian, Triune God and to turn away from the God of Nominalism and the God of Islamism.

God is love. God is the Logos. These two statements from the New Testament get to the heart of what makes the God of the Bible different from the idols and heretical understandings of God that have dominated the Muslim world and the Modern Western world.

The West has a choice: destroy itself in a fit of nihilistic rage, capitulate to Islam and worship pure will under Muslim rule or recover its Christian heritage. Modernity is collapsing under the weight of its own contradictions. Its poor theology is simply inadequate to support a civilization.

Despite the proclamations of the American government, the most basic issue at stake in the contemporary world is not how to fight terrorism; it is the question of the nature of God.

Why So Little Blogging Lately?

I apologize for the lack of attention given to this blog recently. I am immersed in writing right now and I will be blogging only sporadically on issues related to my book on the doctrine of God. I find it hard to think of much else at the moment.

If you are interested in the book I'm writing, you can check back periodically and I'll offer some thoughts and ideas from my reading as I think through the issues.