filth2
July 14th, 2021
This is resurrection from 2008. The quote is the best bit from a very long 2008 essay by Martin Amis in The Observer.
Latest book…
Random oldie…
February 14, 2018-
- NICE T-SHIRT (Thank you for not provoking my uncontrollable lust). Currently unavailable.
The Martin Amis article is worth reading.
Thanks! That this is one more good cartoon goes without need of specific mention.
He (Martin Amiss) is mentioned a lot in the book (Hitch 22) I am reading currently. I have ordered “The Satanic Verses” on the back of Hitchens chapter on Salman Rushdie….see wgat all the fuss was about…
M27Holts: Christopher Hitchens was still alive in 2008, the year of this strip. The book Hitch 22 came out just before he died of cancer in 2011. He was outspoken in his condemnation of religion and his death is a great loss to atheism. There are many clips of his speeches on Youtube which are well worth listening to. Ironically, his younger brother Peter Hitchens, a former atheist but now a right-wing Anglican, is still alive and well. (Martin Amis is also still alive and well.)
SOG. Aye. I read his “God is not great” within days of it’s release….certainly the best attack on islam I have read…
Sure, ignorance, reaction, and sentimentality are excuses…
Butv there also reasons, like racism and hatred: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_Identity
Laripu — Come on, let’s be fair. The ADL estimates that there are maybe 50,000 adherents of Christian Identity, which would put them at about .0021% of the world’s 2.4 billion Christians. They may be interesting in their own right, but they are so marginal that they have nothing to teach you about Christianity itself.
Unlike Islamic extremism, which is so not-marginal that ISIS, while openly espousing doctrines that are repugnant even to most Muslims, was able to take military control of a territory the size of a medium sized country, and still commands respect and influence among extremist groups all over the world. It seems obvious to me that the existence of such a powerful strain of extremism really does say something important about Islam. I see nothing comparable in Christianity, either today or in the past.
jb: “… nothing comparable in Christianity, either today or in the past.”
What about The Crusades?
I don’t know for sure Christian extremism is quite that marginal. Here in my state, we had a state representative who was planning to be regional government leader when the religious right took over after a civil war. Those who didn’t subscribe to the principles of the new government sanctified to Jesus Christ would be killed, if male. This is connected with a New Apostolic Reformation movement and other such wacko Christian “nondenominational congregations”, which altogether now account for 1 in 10 Americans and have taken a page from the advertising world and learned a lot of the science of manipulating people.
For more on this, see https://religiondispatches.org/convergence-of-far-right-anti-democratic-factions-in-the-northwest-could-provide-a-model-for-the-rest-of-the-nation/
and https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2021/07/11/mercy-culture-church/
Could be just more of the perennial nuttiness of the American religious right, but I think it’s going to get worse before it gets better.
SoG — The Crusades were wars of conquest launched by Christian rulers against Muslim rulers, motivated by irredentism: “You took the Holy Land from us. It is rightly ours, and we are going to take it back.” As such they don’t strike me as all that different from much of the warfare that was endemic worldwide at the time. I’ll grant that Christians were much more fervent back then, and much more similar to contemporary Muslims. But this doesn’t affect the main point I was trying to make, which was that violent Christian extremism today (as exemplified by Christian Identity) is extremely marginal, while violent Muslim extremism (ISIS) is not.
Donn — Your articles were interesting, and somewhat disconcerting, but the movements they describe are nowhere near comparable to ISIS in terms of violence or (as far as I can see) potential for violence. (I’ll also note that Religion Dispatches is a woke Social Justice site that seems primarily devoted to hyping the terrible evil of White Evangelical Christianity. This doesn’t mean it’s wrong of course, but it’s something you need to keep in mind while reading it).
Sure, the potential for violence is ultimately more a cultural factor than theological, so however far they’re able to go, that Christian movement isn’t so likely to lead to a bloodbath. (There’s a screed that used to be on the internet about how the middle east is home to the “World’s Most Toxic Value System”, I forget if that’s come up here.) Just wanted to point out that they’re plenty numerous enough to serve as some illustration of what Christianity is about. How violent they are, as far as I can tell, is a question you brought to the discussion, and I don’t know that anyone disagrees with your conclusion there.
Until Religion is fucked off as a “desirable” social construct we are stuck with religious knob headery for the forseeable future. Until a persons belief in the supernatural can be exposed as “delusion” we are destined for “Groundhog day” until everybody realises the Emperor is stark bollock naked”…
M27:
Aye.
But I have no high hopes to live long enough to see it…
M27Holts, Dr John the Wipper: You and me both!
SOG. I was looking at a review of Peter Hitchens book tgat he wrote to try and counter “God is not great” by his far cleverer elder brother. His main argument is Atheists commit genocide and mass murder therefor there must he a god. I reckon he mist have been the milkmans because he is as thick as pig-shit…
Well, it makes some sense, doesn’t it? What else could explain the existence of murderous atheists? There must be an intelligent, omnipotent deity behind it.
I anticipate a tribute to Kurt Westergaard this coming Wednesday. A brave soul, he.
Re postdoggerel July 20: Kurt W lived to age of 86, despite several murder attempts, thanks to protection by Danish secret service. Presumably death by natural causes. RIP.
Up yours, Islamist nutters hoping for fame in this world and 76 virgins in paradise.
Shirley, knob-headery is hyphenated?
^ probably. I think I passed o-level english with a C. Just goes to show it was an easy subject since I only revised my physics, math and chemisty….