A miscellany of comments on Obama, religion, and other subjects

David B. writes:

People are telling me how bad the choices are in this Presidential campaign. I have had several Democratic voters tell me that they cannot vote for Obama. These are people who had no problem voting for John Kerry.

They say, “I can’t take that man.” It is the Rev. Wright racial remarks which are still coming out, if slowly. I would add that these people voted for Harold Ford, who is also a light-skinned black man and got around 48 percent for the Senate in 2006. Ford has a “down-home” manner and campaigned for “protecting our borders.” Obama is neither of those things. Being for gun control kills a candidate in Tennessee (and many other states), which is one of the few things Obama put himself on the record for while an Illinois politician.

There is another point that I would like to make. When was the last time the state of Tennessee voted for the loser in a Presidential election? The answer is Nixon, in 1960. Since 1912, John W. Davis in 1924 is the only other Presidential loser who carried Tennessee. Obama got around 36 percent in the Tennessee primary, and wouldn’t come close even against McCain. If a Presidential candidate loses “big” in Tennessee, he will also lose in states like Ohio, even if by a closer margin.

Tim W. writes:

Liberals think it’s okay to search for truth as long as you never find it. They dislike religion because it asserts revealed truth. To them, that is a heresy against the rationalism they proclaim.

There’s a contradiction built into their argument, of course. If God doesn’t exist, then the Bible and all other supposedly inspired works are really just the writings of men. So how are the ideals in the Bible disqualified from consideration? They’re just as much the creation of the human mind as any materialist argument.

The response, I suppose, would be that the argument that God exists may have been created by men, but it’s false. But can they prove it’s false? No. So again, why is it disqualified? It’s just their opinion that it’s false. There are those who assert that God created atomic particles and determines their behavior. There are others who say atomic particles just happen to exist and just happen to behave as they do. Why one assertion is permissible and the other disqualified is never explained, nor can it be.

Materialism involves describing things rather than trying to find meaning or explanation in them. Since the universe is infinite, we will always have things to seek, but can never postulate an explanation for them. We can seek truth as an abstraction, but we can never find the truth, and this leads inevitably to tolerance and relativism being a substitute God. And, as you’ve explained, that ultimately results in suppression and intolerance for anyone not agreeing. Hence the attempts, even on ostensibly conservative sites such as NRO, to shut down transcendent arguments as being unworthy of discussion.

James M. writes:

Obama is explained by Evelyn Waugh’s son Auberon here:

Politics, as I never tire of saying, is for social and emotional misfits, handicapped folk, those with a grudge. The purpose of politics is to help them overcome these feelings of inferiority and compensate for their personal inadequacies in the pursuit of power. (“The Power Urge”, The Spectator, 15 Dec 1982).

And it becomes particularly poisonous when race is involved.

Somalia supplies us with untreatable TB and untreatable Islam. From the Daily Mail:

Man diagnosed with first ever British case of ‘untreatable’ tuberculosis strain

A patient has been diagnosed with what is believed to be the first ever British case of a virtually untreatable strain of tuberculosis. The man—believed to be a Somali in his 30s—is in isolation at a hospital and being treated with a broad spectrum of antibiotics in a bid to control the disease.

Why is my country allowing “asylum” to anyone at all from countries that don’t neighbour us, let alone to those who harm us? Shakespeare’s eulogy is now an elegy:

This royal throne of kings, this sceptred isle,
This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars,
This other Eden, demi-paradise,
This fortress built by Nature for herself
Against infection and the hand of war,
This happy breed of men, this little world,
This precious stone set in the silver sea,
Which serves it in the office of a wall
Or as a moat defensive to a house,
Against the envy of less happier lands,—
This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England.

Dimitri K. writes:

What do you think about the idea of Christian nationalism, similar to Jewish nationalism. Jews think, that every son of Jewish parents (actually mother, but that may be changed) belongs to Jewish nation and as such have special relations with God from birth, even if he is not a devoted Jew or even converts. Thus, special relations with God are inherited. Jews also admit people from other origins, but in small numbers, only if they prove their willingness by flawless behavior.

I think this Idea could be implemented for Christians: Christian by birth. That would substitute for the secular citizenship. That would make everyone feel that they are really appreciated. I believe, the feeling that a Christian needs special conditions (being baptized) undermines the feeling of being the beloved child. That probably was the cause for emerging secular state, which offers citizenship by birth. The right to be Christian by birth will increase the number of Christians (like it is increasing the number of American citizens), whereas now it is decreasing.

Hannon writes:

You wrote: “But, given that we now live in the post-modern world, there is no social authority to guide us in these matters. You’re going to have search and figure it out for yourself.”

In this religion-rejecting modern age, smart and comfortable in its faith in science and rational thinking alone, might this mean that we in the West are collectively giving up the search for transcendent truth altogether? I don’t think that the difficulty of this quest is what motivates those who throw over (their) religion for more immediately gratifying secular values, but maybe this is a higher stakes version of throwing out the baby with the bath water. The bath water being seen as ritual, dogma, etc. Since this “hunch” about the transcendent is universal in mankind, can non-religious routes of inquiry suffice to take up this role for whole populations?

Earlier in this same post you intimated that the transcendent truth is a path rather than a destination. I think many doubters of faith fail to appreciate this and assume that Truth is somehow fixed or static for believers and that this is the source of the believer’s more alarming assertions. In some cases this would appear to be the case. But more generally, when we are following this path consciously we know somehow that we are not on another path, that, allowing for intermittent doubts common to all, we are not lost. Our existence is more harmonious than it might otherwise be. The difficulty lies in extrapolating this position from the individual to the social—without strong cultural ties we cannot be on that same path collectively as one group, let alone together as groups represented by any number of religions.

If we accept the idea that Christianity represents a primary pillar in the foundation of Western civilization, especially in cultural and spiritual terms, then we must wonder what might seek to replace it should it weaken significantly. This process is already underway, and as desirable as they might seem to be I don’t think scientism or materialism or atheism—or Islam—are suitable replacements for the faith that has brought us transcendent insight and so much more.

KMH writes:

The point that John Derbyshire (of course) fails to understand is: God (the infinite one) is so much greater and more powerful than human capacity can begin to comprehend or endure—that without his way of revelation in Jesus Christ, man never would understand anything about him:

John 1:18: “No one has ever seen God, but God the One and Only [i.e. Jesus Christ], who is at the Father’s side, has made him known.”

More than that—man would be destroyed if, in his finiteness and sinfulness, he ever could face him. Remember the Israelites at Mt. Sinai,

Exodus 20:18b: “[The people] stayed at a distance and said to Moses, “Speak to us yourself and we will listen, But do not have God speak to us or we will die.” And in Exodus 33:18-20: “Then Moses said, “Now show me your glory.” And the Lord said, “I will cause all my goodness to pass in front of you, and will proclaim my name… But… you cannot see my face, for no one may see me and live.”

Now what those who reject Christianity as “one undignified religion among many” want, is God on their terms, not his. But because he loves his creation—man—one of his conditions is that the full and final vindication of truth is to be delayed until the final judgement. God’s first direct interaction with mankind since Adam’s fall, was the Son of God’s first coming into the world, and this was a rescue mission:

John 3:17-18: “For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already…”

This means that at present, men can, if they choose, still live in delusion and believe lies. And the principal lie that men who reject God believe is: God is like themselves. Having believed Satan’s lie that they could become like God, and of course discovering that this is not so—they still remain limited—they now invert the truth: they make God in man’s image. No one is forced to face the truth in this present world, and so we end up with, “The cacophony of religious blather…”—whether Islam, any other organised religion, some sort of secular humanism, or plain atheism—which is worship of self. In fact all of this is worship of self rather than the one transcendent being. This is the real distinction: the one transcendent God of Christianity against the worship of self—however manifest.

In the end all who prefer the lie that they are equal to God (which is really what all the excuses add up to) will have all the evidence they need that this is not so:

Philippians 2:9-11: “Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, …and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”

This is the universal truth that Christians are obligated to proclaim to all mankind. Yes it is true that, “Men and cultures being very different in their mental constitution, acquired traits, history, social forms, and so on, will naturally see and express order in different ways.”, but this truth of Christianity is the “only one religion for the whole human race” because it is the one true religion expressing this one transcendent truth. It expresses it throughout the Bible. Immediately you say that of course, the same people who say they can’t believe Christianity because it isn’t clearly different from other religions, say you’re a bigot or a fanatic or a fundamentalist. I’m not denying that other religions may contain some imperfect understanding of truth, but Christianity alone is the fulfilment of the truth and the salvation of all mankind (including Muslims) requires that Christians proclaim that truth.

James M. writes:

A British liberal writes:

“It would be a tragedy if Barack Obama’s speech, ‘A More Perfect Union’, were remembered only as a tactical bid to smother a controversy in an election campaign. It was the most incisive account of race politics in America—and beyond—for a generation. Delivered with dignity, authority and humility, it deserves a place in history as one of the most impressive pleas for a new beginning on race relations since the famous orations of Martin Luther King.”

Liberals have no concern for what is true, only for what will make them look good to other liberals.

Paul T. writes:

Picked this up on the Dallas Morning News website

9:22 AM Fri, Mar 14, 2008

Religion News Service reports that a British couple who have been foster parents for 18 children have been barred from future service because they refuse to tell children in their care that homosexuality is acceptable.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at April 04, 2008 10:14 AM | Send