Censored, not. Watch the video and see what he says about the "Soul out of the body and does survive human death (via psychotropic drugs)" Very Dangerous.
Quote:
Published on Mar 14, 2013
Graham Hancock's TEDx talk censored by TED's science board.
"I am fighting these charges from TED's Science Board which in my opinion are untrue and amount to nothing more than an ideologically driven attempt to censor my work." - Graham Hancock
Do they realize that two Nobel prize winning scientists (Francis Crick and Kary Mullis) have been inspired by psychedelics to produce the work that got them the prize?
Obviously critical members of the TED scientific board have little or no literacy in the psychology, pharmacology, scientific research, and anthropology of psychedelic/entheogenic substance use. If they did they would realize that there is an overwhelming accumulation of evidence from scientific research for the medical and psychotherapeutic benefits of this class of substances, most of which are natural products that are far safer, physiologically, than alcohol and a myriad of drugs over-used in Western society much to it's detriment.
"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident."
Arthur Schopenhauer
Read 'The New Inquisition' by Robert Anton Wilson if you would like an intellectual understanding of why such so-called "scientific boards" think in this way about new paradigm ideas and methods.
Most scientists are still stuck in the Newtonian era of science, they do not understand quantum physics, what it implies, and the connection to consciousness as an animate meta-biological force that is primary to nature and timelessly extends beyond nature.
Transmission theory of consciousness is a new paradigm for understanding brain functionality that supports this new paradigm in science, it asserts that the brain is actually a confining receiver of consciousness like a TV set (signal still exists when TV is off), as opposed to a producer of consciousness (a theory that can't account for the mind).
Dr Stan Grof on LSD in 1956:
"I couldn't believe how much I learned about my psyche in those few hours. I experienced a fantastic display of colorful visions, some abstract and geometrical, others figurative and filled with symbolic import. The sheer intensity of the array of emotions I felt simply amazed me. I was hit by a radiance that seemed comparable to the epicenter of a nuclear explosion, or perhaps the light of supernatural brilliance said in oriental scriptures to appear to us at the moment of death. This thunderbolt catapulted me out of my body. First I lost my awareness of my immediate surroundings, then the psychiatric clinic, then Prague (Czechoslovakia), and finally the planet. At an inconceivable speed my consciousness expanded to cosmic dimensions. I experienced the Big Bang, passed through black holes and white holes in the universe, identified with exploding supernovas, and witnessed many other strange phenomena that seemed to be pulsars, quasars, and other cosmic events."
"I was able to see the irony and paradox of the situation. The divine manifested itself and took me over in a modern scientific laboratory in the middle of a scientific experiment conducted in a communist country with a substance produced in the test tube of a 20th-century chemist."
Shape-shifting Jesus spent his last supper with Pontius Pilate, claims just-deciphered 1,200-year-old Egyptian manuscript...............The text was rediscovered in 1910 and, the following year, it was bought along with other manuscripts by the wealthy Wall Street financier JP Morgan.
Morgan's collections were later given to the public and they are now kept in the Morgan Library and Museum in New York City.
Recently on MSM TV
David Icke on Russell Brand's Brand X (w/ Noel Gallagher)
The whole lizard thing reiterated. Shape shifting ayahuasca trips.
Same meme as Graham Hancock.
"Supernatural: Meetings with the Ancient Teachers of Mankind"
Graham Hancock
"Part One: The Visions, includes the author's experiences with the African hallucinogenic plant Iboga, looks at the cave of Pech Merle and then examines the theory of David Lewis-Williams. It also includes a section on Hancock's use of the South American plant ayahuasca."
I don’t think I’ve ever quoted a bible verse on this blog before, but I came across these passages today, having spent much of it reading about unjust decisions, people deprived of even the most meagre subsistence for months and even years for no sane reason. In the context of the things I’ve had to read, and to write about, lately they seem so apposite, so utterly appropriate, so evocative of melancholy, of weary grief and justified anger, that whatever your faith or if you have none at all, I think you’ll see their rightness. The first is from the book of Isaiah, chapter 10:
Woe to those who enact evil statutes, and to those who continually record unjust decisions, so as to deprive the needy of justice, and rob the poor of their rights… Now what will you do in the day of punishment, and in the devastation which will come from afar?
The second from the book of Job, chapter 22:
Is not your wickedness great?
Are not your sins endless?
You stripped people of their clothing, leaving them naked.
You gave no water to the weary
and you withheld food from the hungry,
though you were a powerful man, owning land—
an honored man, living on it.
And you sent widows away empty-handed
and broke the strength of the fatherless.
Could anything fit the triumvirate of obscenity with which we’re currently burdened better than these words? I’m tired, very tired – but I’m more angry than I am tired. A lot more.
From Rudolf Steiner's Spiritual Guidance of Mankind: Lecture III (1911)
"Let us imagine further that such a brain could be photographed in its complete structure so that one would have a kind of half sphere in which every detail was visible. In a series of such pictures each would be different according to the brains of the different individuals.
And if one were to photograph a person's brain at the moment of birth and then photograph also the heavens lying exactly over the person's birthplace, this latter picture would be of exactly the same appearance as that of the human brain."
Our Brain’s Neurons Look Exactly Like The Structure Of The Universe
At top is a microscopic photo of a few neurons. Below it is a simulated rendering of what astrophysicists believe to be the universe’s structure, with clusters of galaxies and dark matter.
http://disinfo.com/2011/07/our-brains-neurons-look-exactly-like-the-st ructure-of-the-universe/ _________________ "Soon after the year 2000 has been written, a law will go forth from America whose purpose will be to suppress all individual thinking. This will not be the wording of the law, but it will be the intent" Rudolf Steiner: Gegenwärtiges und Vergangenes in Menschengeiste (The Present and the Past in the Human Spirit)
Satan lies in wait for every comet that turns up. He wants to catch hold of it and use the direction of its momentum to disrupt the orbits of the planets and thus also of the earth. This really is going on in the universe: the satanic forces are lying in wait with the intention of changing the whole planetary system. If they were to succeed, the planetary system in whose orbits human beings are supposed to live would be taken away from those divine, spiritual powers and sent off in quite other cosmic evolutionary directions.
The Book of Revelation and the Work of the Priest" (Lecture 16, Dornach 20 Sept 1924,
In 1832 a well-known astronomer, Littrow, published a treatise that was very interesting.4 I can still recommend studying it, even today; it is most interesting and its complicated calculations are entirely correct. Here was someone who knew what he was talking about. He made a calculation that took every possibility into account. He worked out that in 1832 there could not yet have been a calamity caused by a collision, but he said that if everything remained as it had been when the comet’s course was plotted when it was still a single body and not yet split, then a calamity would definitely occur in 1933; 1933 is what he said. So if the comet had remained as it was, then there would definitely be a catastrophe in 1933 in which all the oceans would spread over the earth in huge floods, making life on earth die out. Instead, the comet has disintegrated; in tiny particles it has been absorbed by the earth, the earth has nourished itself on this cosmic substance.
In 1933, dear friends, there would be a possibility for the earth and everything living on it to perish if there did not exist also that other wise arrangement that cannot be calculated. Once comets have taken on other forms calculations can no longer be accurate. What needs to be said in the sense meant by the apocalyptist is:
Before the Etheric Christ can be comprehended by human beings in the right way, humanity must first cope with encountering the Beast who will rise up in 1933. This is what the apocalyptic language tells us.
http://uncletaz.com/priest/lecture16.html _________________ "Soon after the year 2000 has been written, a law will go forth from America whose purpose will be to suppress all individual thinking. This will not be the wording of the law, but it will be the intent" Rudolf Steiner: Gegenwärtiges und Vergangenes in Menschengeiste (The Present and the Past in the Human Spirit)
Starting around the year 1910, Rudolf Steiner gave lectures concerning the second coming of Christ.
This would not be a 'physical' incarnation,(i.e in a human body), but it would take place in the The Etheric World:
He also goes on to describe certain changes within the souls of human beings:
The first signs of these new soul faculties will begin to appear relatively soon now in isolated souls. They will become more clear in the middle of the fourth decade of this century, sometime between 1930 and 1940. The years 1933, 1935, and 1937 will be especially significant. Faculties that now are quite unusual for human beings will then manifest themselves as natural abilities. At this time great changes will take place, and Biblical prophecies will be fulfilled. Everything will be transformed for the souls who are sojourning on earth and also for those who are no longer within the physical body. Regardless of where they are, souls are encountering entirely new faculties. Everything is changing, but the most significant event of our time is a deep, decisive transformation in the soul faculties of man.
There would also be a counter force to the second coming by the triad of evil, Ahriman(aka Satan) , Lucifer and the true Anti-Christ Sorath the Sun Demon.(666) (60-6-200-400 in kabbalistic gematria)
Now this 666 has always been written in a very mysterious way; we shall see later on that there is every reason to wrap in mystery the facts with which we are now dealing. And for this reason it was written 666. In the mysteries from which the writer of the Apocalypse received his initiation, they wrote 400 200 660. This is written in such a way that the laity cannot understand it. This 666 was hidden; it was to remain a secret. By having 200 here and by the other figures being transposed, an illusion is produced. Now in the kind of writing used by the Initiates there is a certain principle which consists in letters being expressed by corresponding numbers. Several of the remarkable people who, in the course of the nineteenth century wished to unravel the mystery of the number 666, hit on the principle of expressing letters by numbers, but they have come upon it in such a way that one can say: they have, indeed, heard sounds but not in unison. For they have acquired in an unclear way that which I have now explained and which has always been taught esoteric-ally. They have found out that when one sets letters of the Hebrew alphabet in place of these numbers the result is “Nero,” thus they have concluded that 666 signifies Nero. This is not the case. 666 must first be written: 400 + 200 + 6 + 60, and then one can arrive at the meaning. Then one must write 400 as ת (Tau), 200 as ר (Resh), 6 as ו (Vau), and 60 as ם (Samech). These four letters express the four numbers 400 + 200 + 6 + 60. In a wonderful way they have been drawn into this mystery, wonderful through the ingenuity of those who have drawn them in because at the same time the sounds of these four letters have again a special occult significance. What must the number 666 actually mean if it is to express what we have explained? It must mean the principle which leads man to complete hardening un the external physical life, so that he simply thrusts from him that which enables him to strip off the lower principles and to rise to the higher. That which man has obtained as physical body, etheric body, astral body and lower “I,” before it rises to the higher — these four principles are at the same time expressed by these four letters, by Samech, the physical body, Vau, the etheric body, Resh, the astral body and Tau, the lower “I.” Thus we see that that which is hardened in these four principles before they begin their divine evolution is expressed by the four letters. The writer of the Apocalypse can truly say, “Here is Truth!” For wisdom is contained in it. “Let him who hath understanding consider the number 666.”
http://threeman.org/?p=1174 _________________ "Soon after the year 2000 has been written, a law will go forth from America whose purpose will be to suppress all individual thinking. This will not be the wording of the law, but it will be the intent" Rudolf Steiner: Gegenwärtiges und Vergangenes in Menschengeiste (The Present and the Past in the Human Spirit)
I am a member of a secret society.
It’s true. I am a member of a subculture of sorts, one which many dare not breathe its name in open public. It has become subversive, underground, silent and uncommunicative. It is necessary, of course, for me to keep this membership to myself. To make known my involvement with such a group would lead to questions in the society in which I participate in my daily life. Questions over my suitability to teach. Questions over my suitability to supervise children. Questions over my ability to function in a tolerant society. It is a secret society which is traditionally marked by several key criteria. This group is known by:
Belief in the literal truth of their holy text.
Belief in the authoritative nature of their faith to be the deciding governance of both public and private life.
Belief in the exclusiveness of their faith being the only true way of salvation.
In short, I am a Christian.
I recently came across the youtube video of Bear Grylls, speaking at Hillsong Church Australia about his faith.
I posted this video to my facebook profile a few weeks ago and it got a few obligatory likes from friends who were encouraged to see such a popular public figure profess faith on a large stage. I have watched his series on the Discovery Channel avidly as a former scout leader and BB member pining for former outdoors experiences! A friend had previously informed me that Grylls is in fact a Christian, from his TV show ‘Born Survivor’ I would have had no idea. To read the comments on the youtube video, others had no idea. Grylls has professed his faith publicly…on a church stage surrounded by thousands of other Christians and watched on Christian TV channels. You see, he too, is a member of this secret society. He refers to this secret membership as ‘a quiet faith’. It’s ‘unreligious’. I’m no fan of what people commonly associate with ‘religion’ (legalism, starched opposition to immorality, aversion to other people groups, insular thinking, etc.) however what I see in this idea of a ‘quiet faith’ I see as endemic to Western Christianity as a whole. We are members of a secret society....
Joined: 25 Jul 2005 Posts: 18335 Location: St. Pauls, Bristol, England
Posted: Tue Nov 24, 2015 2:19 pm Post subject:
Actually Christians really believe little of this - but it's nevertheless interesting to see the sarcastic tone of what the Muad-Dib - Tony Farrell - Ripple Effect crew think about Christainity
Much like the Federal Reserve Bank is NOT Federal, has NOTHING in reserves and is actually a private corporation instead of a bank, Christianity is a misnomer, designed to anaesthetize, deceive and control the masses.
BTW Zeitgeist the movie has no credits and their website has no contact information. It's a poorly produced badly researched piece of propaganda potentially put out by masons because it promotes egyptian gods. It is cowardly and unscholarly.
Shaking My Head Productions
Published on 6 Dec 2017
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Saturnalia was an ancient Roman festival in honor of the god Saturn, held on 17 December of the Julian calendar and later expanded with festivities through to 23 December.
Cronus is an alias for Tammuz. Tammuz was Nimrod reborn - alias, his son. His wife and mother was Rhea (Semiramis). Egyptian and Babylonian antiquities recognize his mother as Semiramis, and his birthday is celebrated on 25th December.
The first recorded date of Christmas being celebrated on December 25th was in 336, during the time of the Roman Emperor Constantine (he was the first Christian Roman Emperor). A few years later, Pope Julius I officially declared that the birth of Jesus would be celebrated on the 25th December.
The Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception is a prominent Roman Rite Catholic basilica located in Washington, D.C., United States of America, honoring the Blessed Virgin Mary as the Immaculate Conception, the principal Patroness of the USA.
The shrine is the largest Catholic church in the United States and North America, one of the ten largest churches in the world, and the tallest habitable building in Washington, D.C.[1][2][3] Construction of this church, notable for its Neo-Byzantine architecture, began in 1920 under Philadelphia contractor John McShain. It opened unfinished in 1959 and currently hosts an estimated one million pilgrims each year.
The basilica is designated both as the national and patronal Catholic Church of the United States,[1] honoring the Virgin Mary, under the title Immaculate Conception, by which Pope Pius XI donated a mosaic of the same image in 1923. The basilica is not the cathedral church of the Archdiocese of Washington as the Cathedral of St. Matthew the Apostle has served in this capacity since the creation of the archdiocese in 1939.
An exclusive look inside America's biggest Jesuit Temple in Washington DC.
The sheer amount of subliminal anti-Christ symbolism the Luciferians use leaves us without doubt at how important the Truth of Jesus Christ the Messiah is, as everything is centered around inverting Him!
Feast of Immaculate Conception 2017: What Is the Holy Day of Obligation and When Is It?
The Feast of the Immaculate Conception takes place on December 8, and is a day that celebrates the Virgin Mary during Advent, the season leading up to the Nativity of Jesus at Christmas.
The Virgin Mary was born to Saint Anne, the grandmother of Jesus, according to apocryphal Christian tradition. The Feast of the Immaculate Conception marks the day when Mary was conceived within Anne’s womb. It is celebrated exactly nine months before the feast marking Mary’s birth on September 8. http://www.newsweek.com/feast-immacul...
Revelations 12:9
And the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world: he was cast out into the earth, and his angels were cast out with him.
The former pope, who stood down in a controversial move in 2013, claimed that people who oppose homosexual unions in today’s world are “excommunicated from society”. He said that it was “the same thing with abortion and creating human life in the laboratory”, adding that it was natural for those who oppose it to be concerned about the “spiritual power of the Antichrist”. The comments were taken from an authorised biography of the ex-head of the Vatican, called ‘Benedict XVI – A Life’.
However, the remarks have sparked fury among Vatican observers, who say this is the latest in a long line of passages used as an attempt to curb Pope Francis’ liberal agenda.
Lynda Telford, author of ‘Women of the Vatican – Female Power in a Male World’, told Express.co.uk how she “pitied Francis deeply” after Benedict’s words came to light this week.
She said: “Benedict’s doing his absolute best to sabotage all the reforms that Francis is trying to bring in.
“Divorce reforms (so divorced people can take Sacrament), reaching out to LGBT people, contraception, the lot.”
Ms Telford added: “Benedict has no right to interfere.
“Putting him under the same roof as Francis, so he's never free of him, is appalling.”
The alleged dispute between Francis and Benedict emerged after the latter stood down as head of the Catholic church seven years ago.
It was the first time since the 1400s a living pope had stood down, but paved the way for Francis to take over.
Vatican news: Pope Benedict stood down in 2013
But as Francis embarked on a journey to revitalise the Vatican and draw new worshippers to the church, some experts have said that Benedict is still attempting to use his power to ensure his traditional principles remain.
In the newly published book, Benedict attempted to smooth these allegations by saying his friendship with Francis had “not only endured but grown”.
His comments on gay marriage and abortion, however, left many feeling like an attack on the liberalism Francis is trying to install.
The West Cannot Survive Without A Re-Energised Belief In Christianity
Greg Sheridan
Losing our religion | 8 August 2019
Most British people seem to take it on faith that to have faith is stupid
From magazine issue: 10 August 2019
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/losing-our-religion-8-august-2019
There is no faster way to get yourself classed as dim than by admitting that you hold religious belief, especially Christian belief. Anti-Catholicism used to be the anti-Semitism of intellectuals; now Catholics get no special attention. All believing Christians are regarded as stupid, eccentric or malevolent.
Some conservatives will make the case for the social usefulness of Christian values. The conservative asks: if society prospered with these traditions and customs, is it really wise to throw them away without a moment’s hesitation?
That is just what the West is doing, especially the Anglophone West. Britain, Australia and even the God-fearing United States are becoming atheist societies. Britain is more atheist than Australia, which is more atheist than the US, but the trend of radically declining belief is undeniable in all three.
This is historically new. As Nicky Gumbel from Holy Trinity Brompton pointed out to me recently, there have been periods of very low religious practice in Britain — the middle of the 18th century, for example — and other western societies, but never before of wholesale atheist belief (atheism is a faith like any other, only less reasonable).
It is a very eccentric position for the West to adopt. The vast majority of human beings who have ever lived, and the vast majority alive today, believe in God. Christianity is on fire in Asia — it’s the only social force the Chinese Communist party cannot control — and Africa and many parts of the world. It is also the most persecuted religion. From Pakistan to the Middle East, Christians believe so seriously that they accept death rather than disavowal.
The European Union famously declined to make any mention of Europe’s Christian inheritance when it produced a quasi-constitution. Modern liberal opinion is not only hostile to Christianity, it is positively embarrassed about any connection with it. If the EU holds the good parts of European history in contempt, it’s not surprising people are losing faith in the EU.
Most British people seem to take it on faith that to have faith is stupid
Two explanations for how we got here predominate — the long story and the short. The long traces an evolution over centuries of disillusionment with faith, from the renewed emphasis on humanity in the Renaissance through philosophical challenges to gospel miracles, the discrediting wars of religion, the disassociation of faith and reason in the Enlightenment and on to our own times of mass affluence and church child abuse scandals.
The other explanation is more straightforward. The West was still widely religious, and religiously observant, until the end of the 1950s. The sexual revolution, the extreme disorientation brought about by the rapid spread of information technology, everything from television to ubiquitous pornography, through to the new conventions of simultaneous abuse and narcissism on social media, mean Christian belief has collapsed in a couple of generations.
The prestige of the West has declined as its belief in Christianity has declined. The world is full of vigorous societies and movements — Chinese and Russian nationalism, Islamism in all its forms, east Asian economic dynamism — which no longer think the West has anything much to say.
I have come to a disconcerting conclusion. The West cannot really survive as the West without a re-energised belief in Christianity. The idea that we can live off Christianity’s moral capital, its ethics and traditions, without believing in it, appeals naturally to conservatives of a certain age. But you cannot inspire the young with a vision which you happily admit arises from beliefs that are fictional and nothing more than long-standing superstition. Christianity is either true, or it’s not much use at all.
That is why I finally decided to write about the truth of Christianity and why, now that I’ve ‘come out’, so to speak, I would encourage other shy Christians to do the same. Owning up to Christian belief is intimidating not only because the culture is so unsympathetic but because you realise how ridiculous it would be to have Christianity judged by your own life. That modesty, however, can also be an excuse for cowardice. And if we leave the defence of Christianity only to the morally qualified, it will be a small platoon.
Dawkins et al assume that faith is irrational. Most British people seem to take it on faith (ironically) that to have faith is stupid. But the way I see it, faith is not the enemy of reason but the basis of reason. First, to be reasonable, I have to have faith in my ability to distinguish between what is real and what is imaginary. Then, for almost everything I know, I need faith in other human beings. I believe I am the son of my late parents. I can’t prove it. It’s a rational belief but not proven. Much of the atheist assault on belief deliberately confuses what it is rational to believe with the much narrower category of what is rationally proven.
Religious belief, of course, is not just the absence of atheism. That belief in God conforms to our intuition, and to the overwhelming history of human experience, is the most powerful evidence for its being true. God is a God of experience. The long human experience of God, and the vast testimony of this, is persuasive.
The culture in the Anglophone West, and much of western Europe, declares this human evidence inadmissible, even as Christianity is partly replaced by every crazy cult you can imagine, from witchcraft to Gaia, with really wacky beliefs mostly given some measure of respect. I saw advertised on the BBC recently a documentary in all seriousness on contemporary witchcraft — exploring the dark side of feminist power, or some such drooling nonsense.
Incidentally, living in London these past few months I found it a bit more anti-God and generally PC even than Australia. At seminars people often approached to tell me they couldn’t say the things I said any longer. That is little consolation to me, however. Australia is generally just a few years behind London in these trends.
Most of the things alleged against Christian belief turn out, on closer inspection, not to be true. For example, religion is not oppressive but liberating. The most radical statement in favour of human dignity in the ancient world comes in the Book of Genesis — human beings are created in the likeness and image of God. When Christianity came along it provided the best deal for women history had offered so far. Each woman, like each man, possessed an immortal soul (though the doctrine of the soul took a little time to develop) and was involved in a personal relationship with the living God.
One of the main reasons Christianity spread so quickly in the years after Christ’s death was its treatment of women and girls. Christian families didn’t kill baby girls, so they had a lot more daughters. As a result they were happier. Christian daughters then converted the pagan men they married.
The Disneyland version of Christian history has it that Jesus was a kindly social worker or at best a political activist — a sort of Jewish Mahatma Gandhi — and the first disciples tried to follow his vague teachings. But then in the 4th century along came Emperor Constantine who made Christianity the state religion and there was nothing but darkness and rule by wicked priests and bishops for a thousand years.
In reality everything we like about western liberalism grew directly and organically from Christianity. Tertullian in 3rd--century Carthage declared: ‘Everyone should be free to worship according to their own convictions.’ Benedict in the 6th century established the first democratic, egalitarian communities — the Benedictine monasteries — which combined hard work, social welfare, profound scholarship and a life of prayer. The church wrestled the concept of sin away from that of crime. Both St Augustine and Thomas Aquinas argued that prostitution should not be illegal, because while morally wrong it was inevitable, and the law should not try to enforce every moral teaching.
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Across 2,000 years lots of Christians have done lots of bad things. Formal adherence to Christianity does not absolve anyone of the human condition with all its frailties. But Christianity always calls its followers back to the gospels’ first principles. You can read the gospels, or St Augustine in the 4th century, or Thomas Aquinas in the 13th, or John Wesley or William Wilberforce in the 18th, or Nicky Gumbel today, and recognise that you and they all inhabit the same moral universe, the same culture. That is astonishing.
Liberalism today, in rejecting its Christian roots, is cut off from all limits, all common sense, from a living tradition. It is careening down ever more febrile paths of identity politics, rejecting the Christian universalism from which it sprang. It is harming people in the process. Sociologists have established beyond reasonable doubt that religious belief and practice lead to the greatest human happiness.
There is, however, only one reason that counts for believing in Christianity: it’s true. Come on in, the water’s fine.
Greg Sheridan is the foreign editor of The Australian and author of God Is Good for You. He has been a visiting fellow at King’s College London this year.
WRITTEN BY
Greg Sheridan _________________ --
'Suppression of truth, human spirit and the holy chord of justice never works long-term. Something the suppressors never get.' David Southwell
http://aangirfan.blogspot.com http://aanirfan.blogspot.com
Martin Van Creveld: Let me quote General Moshe Dayan: "Israel must be like a mad dog, too dangerous to bother."
Martin Van Creveld: I'll quote Henry Kissinger: "In campaigns like this the antiterror forces lose, because they don't win, and the rebels win by not losing."
The West Cannot Survive Without A Re-Energised Belief In Christianity
Greg Sheridan
Losing our religion | 8 August 2019
Most British people seem to take it on faith that to have faith is stupid
From magazine issue: 10 August 2019
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/losing-our-religion-8-august-2019
There is no faster way to get yourself classed as dim than by admitting that you hold religious belief, especially Christian belief. Anti-Catholicism used to be the anti-Semitism of intellectuals; now Catholics get no special attention. All believing Christians are regarded as stupid, eccentric or malevolent.
Some conservatives will make the case for the social usefulness of Christian values. The conservative asks: if society prospered with these traditions and customs, is it really wise to throw them away without a moment’s hesitation?
That is just what the West is doing, especially the Anglophone West. Britain, Australia and even the God-fearing United States are becoming atheist societies. Britain is more atheist than Australia, which is more atheist than the US, but the trend of radically declining belief is undeniable in all three.
This is historically new. As Nicky Gumbel from Holy Trinity Brompton pointed out to me recently, there have been periods of very low religious practice in Britain — the middle of the 18th century, for example — and other western societies, but never before of wholesale atheist belief (atheism is a faith like any other, only less reasonable).
It is a very eccentric position for the West to adopt. The vast majority of human beings who have ever lived, and the vast majority alive today, believe in God. Christianity is on fire in Asia — it’s the only social force the Chinese Communist party cannot control — and Africa and many parts of the world. It is also the most persecuted religion. From Pakistan to the Middle East, Christians believe so seriously that they accept death rather than disavowal.
The European Union famously declined to make any mention of Europe’s Christian inheritance when it produced a quasi-constitution. Modern liberal opinion is not only hostile to Christianity, it is positively embarrassed about any connection with it. If the EU holds the good parts of European history in contempt, it’s not surprising people are losing faith in the EU.
Most British people seem to take it on faith that to have faith is stupid
Two explanations for how we got here predominate — the long story and the short. The long traces an evolution over centuries of disillusionment with faith, from the renewed emphasis on humanity in the Renaissance through philosophical challenges to gospel miracles, the discrediting wars of religion, the disassociation of faith and reason in the Enlightenment and on to our own times of mass affluence and church child abuse scandals.
The other explanation is more straightforward. The West was still widely religious, and religiously observant, until the end of the 1950s. The sexual revolution, the extreme disorientation brought about by the rapid spread of information technology, everything from television to ubiquitous pornography, through to the new conventions of simultaneous abuse and narcissism on social media, mean Christian belief has collapsed in a couple of generations.
The prestige of the West has declined as its belief in Christianity has declined. The world is full of vigorous societies and movements — Chinese and Russian nationalism, Islamism in all its forms, east Asian economic dynamism — which no longer think the West has anything much to say.
I have come to a disconcerting conclusion. The West cannot really survive as the West without a re-energised belief in Christianity. The idea that we can live off Christianity’s moral capital, its ethics and traditions, without believing in it, appeals naturally to conservatives of a certain age. But you cannot inspire the young with a vision which you happily admit arises from beliefs that are fictional and nothing more than long-standing superstition. Christianity is either true, or it’s not much use at all.
That is why I finally decided to write about the truth of Christianity and why, now that I’ve ‘come out’, so to speak, I would encourage other shy Christians to do the same. Owning up to Christian belief is intimidating not only because the culture is so unsympathetic but because you realise how ridiculous it would be to have Christianity judged by your own life. That modesty, however, can also be an excuse for cowardice. And if we leave the defence of Christianity only to the morally qualified, it will be a small platoon.
Dawkins et al assume that faith is irrational. Most British people seem to take it on faith (ironically) that to have faith is stupid. But the way I see it, faith is not the enemy of reason but the basis of reason. First, to be reasonable, I have to have faith in my ability to distinguish between what is real and what is imaginary. Then, for almost everything I know, I need faith in other human beings. I believe I am the son of my late parents. I can’t prove it. It’s a rational belief but not proven. Much of the atheist assault on belief deliberately confuses what it is rational to believe with the much narrower category of what is rationally proven.
Religious belief, of course, is not just the absence of atheism. That belief in God conforms to our intuition, and to the overwhelming history of human experience, is the most powerful evidence for its being true. God is a God of experience. The long human experience of God, and the vast testimony of this, is persuasive.
The culture in the Anglophone West, and much of western Europe, declares this human evidence inadmissible, even as Christianity is partly replaced by every crazy cult you can imagine, from witchcraft to Gaia, with really wacky beliefs mostly given some measure of respect. I saw advertised on the BBC recently a documentary in all seriousness on contemporary witchcraft — exploring the dark side of feminist power, or some such drooling nonsense.
Incidentally, living in London these past few months I found it a bit more anti-God and generally PC even than Australia. At seminars people often approached to tell me they couldn’t say the things I said any longer. That is little consolation to me, however. Australia is generally just a few years behind London in these trends.
Most of the things alleged against Christian belief turn out, on closer inspection, not to be true. For example, religion is not oppressive but liberating. The most radical statement in favour of human dignity in the ancient world comes in the Book of Genesis — human beings are created in the likeness and image of God. When Christianity came along it provided the best deal for women history had offered so far. Each woman, like each man, possessed an immortal soul (though the doctrine of the soul took a little time to develop) and was involved in a personal relationship with the living God.
One of the main reasons Christianity spread so quickly in the years after Christ’s death was its treatment of women and girls. Christian families didn’t kill baby girls, so they had a lot more daughters. As a result they were happier. Christian daughters then converted the pagan men they married.
The Disneyland version of Christian history has it that Jesus was a kindly social worker or at best a political activist — a sort of Jewish Mahatma Gandhi — and the first disciples tried to follow his vague teachings. But then in the 4th century along came Emperor Constantine who made Christianity the state religion and there was nothing but darkness and rule by wicked priests and bishops for a thousand years.
In reality everything we like about western liberalism grew directly and organically from Christianity. Tertullian in 3rd--century Carthage declared: ‘Everyone should be free to worship according to their own convictions.’ Benedict in the 6th century established the first democratic, egalitarian communities — the Benedictine monasteries — which combined hard work, social welfare, profound scholarship and a life of prayer. The church wrestled the concept of sin away from that of crime. Both St Augustine and Thomas Aquinas argued that prostitution should not be illegal, because while morally wrong it was inevitable, and the law should not try to enforce every moral teaching.
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Across 2,000 years lots of Christians have done lots of bad things. Formal adherence to Christianity does not absolve anyone of the human condition with all its frailties. But Christianity always calls its followers back to the gospels’ first principles. You can read the gospels, or St Augustine in the 4th century, or Thomas Aquinas in the 13th, or John Wesley or William Wilberforce in the 18th, or Nicky Gumbel today, and recognise that you and they all inhabit the same moral universe, the same culture. That is astonishing.
Liberalism today, in rejecting its Christian roots, is cut off from all limits, all common sense, from a living tradition. It is careening down ever more febrile paths of identity politics, rejecting the Christian universalism from which it sprang. It is harming people in the process. Sociologists have established beyond reasonable doubt that religious belief and practice lead to the greatest human happiness.
There is, however, only one reason that counts for believing in Christianity: it’s true. Come on in, the water’s fine.
Greg Sheridan is the foreign editor of The Australian and author of God Is Good for You. He has been a visiting fellow at King’s College London this year.
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Greg Sheridan
A Voice In The Desert
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Many people pay lip service to a few of the teachings of Jesus, but the words of Jesus that I discuss here are universally hated by those who claim to follow Jesus. Yet this one teaching actually defines what is a Christian. Hatred for this teaching has spawned many false gospels, including the heretical "prosperity gospel”, which is the exact opposite of Jesus' teachings.
A Voice in the Desert is anonymous. Its purpose is to point people to the message, rather than the messenger. Most modern day prophets promote themselves more than the teachings of Jesus and the true message of Revelation. A Voice in the Desert challenges that error and more. Some of the things you hear on this channel may be difficult to understand, and may offend you. The goal, however, is to sweep away dogmas and traditions to reveal what Jesus actually taught.
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