Christian nationalism

by Gaedhal

I was reading Bertrand Russell’s History of Western Philosophy (1946). According to Russel, theism died out amongst the best minds in Europe, by 1700. This is, incidentally, how we could have a secular government established in America in the 18^th Century. Aron Ra put a recording of Madeline Murray O’ Hare where she claimed that all the founders of America were atheists. In my view, this is an exaggeration. However, a lot of them weren’t theists. Thomas Jefferson called himself a materialist, as did Abraham Lincoln, four score and seven years later. John Adams wondered whether God even existed at all… which qualifies him as an agnostic. If only rich land-owning white men can vote—and, remember, white aristocrats have been having outbreaks of atheism since the Ionic Enlightenment, about 500 years before the common era—then the form of government that they would chose for themselves would be a secular godless government, in no way founded upon the Christian Religion, where Religion is only referred to as a negative phenomenon that must not be imposed, by the State, upon its citizens.

The reason why I am an elitist, of sorts, is because the mob is more than 300 years behind the intellectual elite in abandoning theism. Thankfully, some countries, like the United Kingdom, are transitioning into a post-theistic age.

The Philosopher Kings who established the United States, were non-theists. There might have been some sort of Aristotelian prime mover, who got the Cosmos started, however, this God no longer tinkers with or prods his creation. Thomas Paine, although a believer in an Almighty, of some deistic sort, nevertheless categorically rules out miracles. Paine thinks it absurd that a God would fix the laws of nature… and then break these laws through performing miracles. Paine does offer some positive arguments for God, such as the argument for God through mathematics/geometry/platonic forms… however, a god who doesn’t do miracles might as well not exist.

God used to have a lot of jobs to do. Prior to Newton and Galileo, objects were said to “prefer” to be at rest. Thus God’s might was needed to push the planets about the sky. If the planets are motoring across the sky, then God must be pushing them about. However Galileo and Newton proved that objects were utterly indifferent as to their being in motion or at rest. Thus, God was no longer needed to push the planets about the sky.

The motto of the Royal Society, headed up by Newton was and is: verba in nullius, which is Latin for: “We take nobody’s word for it”. In Christianity, we believe things because a holy-man said it. This is why Saint Paul is always vaunting how holy he is… how many times he went to prison for god… how poor and hungry he is for god. How many times he got flogged by the enemies of the Christian God. The holier one was, the more trustworthy he was meant to be.

Verba in Nullius is thus an antichrist saying. Scientists don’t give a fuck how holy you are. You either demonstrate what you claim, or it is not established. The Royal Society, thus, does not really care what God says, what Jesus says, what a Pope says, what a Holy Book says… Science is only interested in demonstrable reality.

However, another job that God had was to animate living things. Living objects, thanks to a false idea inherited from Aristotle, were also said to prefer rest. The fact that living things existed at all was proof—yes proof!—that God exists. However, the Biochemistry of which living things is composed is also totally indifferent—it has no preferences—whether it be at rest or in motion. Thus, there is no need for a god to animate our bodies through a magical object called a ‘soul’—or, in Latin: ‘anima’. Thus, there is no longer any need for a Great Cartoonist in the Sky to animate Aristotelian rest-preferring biological bodies with souls.

Hell was also disbelieved in by 1700, according to Russell. Newton was a Unitarian, and so, by rights, he should be shrieking up his bloody lungs in fiery torment, in Yahweh’s superheated torture chamber. However, the idea that Newton was in Hell was too much to swallow.

To recap: the elitists who founded America had all of this sussed out by the founding. They were deists, agnostics, materialists etc.

However, 300 years later, amongst the American mob, the Christian Superstition, is still rife among the populace. America is in real danger of succumbing to Christian Nationalism.

The mob will eventually abandon theism in America, though, just as they have already done in the United Kingdom… however, the mob always seems to be centuries behind the intellectual elite.

To me, the chapter: ‘The Rise of Science’ really demonstrates the gulf that exists between the elite philosophers, and the superstitious mobmen.

 

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Editor’s 2 ¢

In certain quarters of the American racial right, Christian nationalism is popular.

For someone who, like me, already admired pantheism since 1973 and 1974 when we were taught Hegel at school, and knew about the existence of the pantheist theologian Teilhard de Chardin, I am surprised by the atavisms that Americans still suffer from. If only the racialists would take Uncle Adolf’s after-dinner talks as their guidebook! But even before Hitler, philosophical-theological treatises had already been published in Germany, which distanced the readers from the theism that persists in the hemisphere where I live.

It is not surprising that Karlheinz Deschner’s work on Christian criminal history has been translated and published in Spanish but not published in English. And with such gross ignorance do the racialists pretend to lead their country forward?