Tossing the Baby Out with the Bathwater
Some atheists and irreligious people like to make an argument that people are only religious based on their upbringing. “You only believe in God because your parents did.” This is what is known as the logical fallacy called the “Genetic Fallacy.” It dismisses an argument based, not on its claims, but simply on the source. One reason this is a terrible argument for atheists to use, beside the fallacy element, is that it is thrown back at them even more strongly. Most if not all atheists in the world come from a very specific, limited number of places where atheism has emerged. Contrary to Christianity for example, that has adherents all over the world from thousands of cultural backgrounds, atheism is seen in just the cultures influenced by the secular west.
Additionally, that secular western culture is based upon the motivation to tear down and destroy cultural norms. Philip Rieff, an American sociologist, declared the destructive aims of secular culture unprecedented. It is the only cultural model built on tearing down rather than proposing any meaning. In his “My Life Among the Deathworks” he puts it this way:
“[Secularists] celebrate, as if they were creators, their talent for domestic ruination, a dynamic of spiritual self-defeat that the rabbis at Yavneh could not have imagined in their most terrible dreams of the consequences of political defeat by the Romans. A radically skeptical knowledge industry has been built upon the ruins of sacred truth. That industry creates high pleasure out of the low life in those ruins. In pursuit of that pleasure, the self that was found in its relation to highest authority, as faith, has been lost in roles played as if life were a succession of amateur theatricals, with an experimental laboratory as the world’s stage. On that stage—rather, in that laboratory—self identity is no longer inviolable. Each resembles every other as a player of role faiths. Sacred history becomes a series of scenarios, composed to fill time that would be empty if not recomposed out of the rubbish heap left behind by [faith-based cultures] as a legacy to the [secular].”
This cultural thinking that drives us all to one degree or another without our even knowing it, explains our obsession with fictions and stories, canons and artificial realities. We do not see them as representing anything symbolic, deeper, or real. There is no “real” for secular man. We simply tear all meaning down.
That is a tragedy, for even the pleasure and joy the fictions are designed to inspire is lost. In the case of reality, it is even more tragic, because we have been convinced to deny reality based on the fictions we create and the wars we fight over their inanities.
Consider: How foolish is it to stop liking or loving something because its fandom changes, or the stories told about it are no longer liked? Look at the fandoms of Tolkien, Star Wars, or Comics. New creators come up and add their own take, and that somehow ruins what has come before. “You ruined my childhood!” How?
Worse, is the way that this silliness has impacted reality, truth and meaning. People abandon, deconstruct, and tear down their faith because a church or a culture doesn’t see Him the way orthodox Christianity has. American Christian Nationalists are not Christianity. Their misguided adherents should not impact the way that Christianity is viewed. 80% of Evangelicals in the world are outside North America and Europe. Western flaws in evangelicalism should not paint the global movement. People toss Christianity, faith, and even God out like a baby with the bathwater.
And the worst of it all is that they do it, not because it is rational, but because they live in a culture that conditions them to think this way. It is genetic AND not based on solid reasoning.
Additionally, that secular western culture is based upon the motivation to tear down and destroy cultural norms. Philip Rieff, an American sociologist, declared the destructive aims of secular culture unprecedented. It is the only cultural model built on tearing down rather than proposing any meaning. In his “My Life Among the Deathworks” he puts it this way:
“[Secularists] celebrate, as if they were creators, their talent for domestic ruination, a dynamic of spiritual self-defeat that the rabbis at Yavneh could not have imagined in their most terrible dreams of the consequences of political defeat by the Romans. A radically skeptical knowledge industry has been built upon the ruins of sacred truth. That industry creates high pleasure out of the low life in those ruins. In pursuit of that pleasure, the self that was found in its relation to highest authority, as faith, has been lost in roles played as if life were a succession of amateur theatricals, with an experimental laboratory as the world’s stage. On that stage—rather, in that laboratory—self identity is no longer inviolable. Each resembles every other as a player of role faiths. Sacred history becomes a series of scenarios, composed to fill time that would be empty if not recomposed out of the rubbish heap left behind by [faith-based cultures] as a legacy to the [secular].”
This cultural thinking that drives us all to one degree or another without our even knowing it, explains our obsession with fictions and stories, canons and artificial realities. We do not see them as representing anything symbolic, deeper, or real. There is no “real” for secular man. We simply tear all meaning down.
That is a tragedy, for even the pleasure and joy the fictions are designed to inspire is lost. In the case of reality, it is even more tragic, because we have been convinced to deny reality based on the fictions we create and the wars we fight over their inanities.
Consider: How foolish is it to stop liking or loving something because its fandom changes, or the stories told about it are no longer liked? Look at the fandoms of Tolkien, Star Wars, or Comics. New creators come up and add their own take, and that somehow ruins what has come before. “You ruined my childhood!” How?
Worse, is the way that this silliness has impacted reality, truth and meaning. People abandon, deconstruct, and tear down their faith because a church or a culture doesn’t see Him the way orthodox Christianity has. American Christian Nationalists are not Christianity. Their misguided adherents should not impact the way that Christianity is viewed. 80% of Evangelicals in the world are outside North America and Europe. Western flaws in evangelicalism should not paint the global movement. People toss Christianity, faith, and even God out like a baby with the bathwater.
And the worst of it all is that they do it, not because it is rational, but because they live in a culture that conditions them to think this way. It is genetic AND not based on solid reasoning.
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