Counter-Currents
2,359 words
In the distant and ancient era we now call the “mid-2000s,” there arose a phenomenon we now call New Atheism. New Atheism was militant; its adherents not only rejected religion, but actively sought to expurgate it from society, usually by haranguing the religious online. The idea was for humanity to reject all irrationality, delusion, and superstition and bring about an era of enlightenment and progress through reason and evidence.
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Left without…instruction…it’ll just sit there doing nothing, especially if it is highly intelligent.
Thank you for that validation.
This is really excellent, and for me it deserves another thorough reading, or two. I’m intrigued by the story of Stefan Molyneux saying belief in God is a practical good, even though God does not exist and all theology is bunk. Wut?
One wonders at the naïvete of such remarks. You throw someone a life-raft while saying, it’s not really seaworthy, but HERE, if you’re stupid enough you might actually survive to landfall, however fortuitously.
Also put me in mind of Edward Dutton, of whom I recently became aware. His name pops up frequently here and on kindred sites. He often relates statistical evidence that devout religiosity is a positive good, for happy marriages, for reproduction, for mental stability in general. It sometimes sounds like a strangled rationalist argument that would never sell, for if you pretend to “believe” when really you don’t, does this not defeat your argument? Because you’re saying it’s all just a parlor trick, like hypnotism. Maybe that’s the Moly approach too, and if so it’s really shallow.
In Dutton’s case I suspect he is a fervent believer, but he doesn’t think he can easily get his ideas through, at least not in our globalist soviet regime.
They’re putting it out there as a statement of fact, that religious faith is good for people. This doesn’t mean they themselves believe. Pascal’s wager doesn’t work because man cannot force himself to believe, or rather, belief isn’t a voluntary act. For this reason, we must at least think about alternatives to religious faith which would provide similar benefits, seeing as how the horse of skepticism has already bolted on a civilizational scale.
Ed Dutton belonged to an evangelical student group while at Durham University. Although he wrote up his observations in a thesis or some such, I doubt anyone could endure such a three-year masquerade for purposes of anthropological fieldwork.
When one speaks of “alternatives to religious faith” one really means “alternative belief systems” which equates to “different religious faiths.” There is no definable class of “religions” beyond metaphysical and philosophical systems in general. Some people try to strive for a materialistic or solipsistic worldview, others stick with something traditional and transcendent. In the end it’s all one form of mysticism or another.
If religion in general is good because it leads people to have children, does that mean that the particular religion whose believers have the most children is true? I mean, why waste our time with various forms of Christianity if Orthodox Judaism, Islam or even Mormonism have higher rates of reproduction? Asking for a friend.
“If religion in general is good because it leads people to have children, does that mean that the particular religion whose believers have the most children is true?”
It suggests that religion is beneficial rather than that it is true.
“I mean, why waste our time with various forms of Christianity if Orthodox Judaism, Islam or even Mormonism have higher rates of reproduction? Asking for a friend.”
There is still the question, “beneficial for whom?”
Orthodox Judaism leads to Jews breeding more, not to non-Jews breeding more.
Islam typically leads to Whites getting blended out; Whites have not usually thrived under Islam. “Reproduction, but not of the same kind” is not what we are looking for.
Mormonism once led to better reproductive rates for some Whites, but it has changed, apparently permanently and for the worse, from the point of view of what is good for the Whites.
Choosing between Protestantism and the Catholic faith based on the success of White reproduction (and White state-formation) in new Protestant lands and the blending out of Whites in new Catholic lands would have been reasonable once, but the various versions of Christianity have changed too, apparently permanently and for the worse, from the point of view of what is good for the Whites.
Reproductive success is a reasonable test of the benefits of religion. It would have been reasonable for a White woman desiring children to avoid The United Society of Believers in Christ’s Second Appearing, more commonly known as the Shakers, simply because they forbade reproduction.
Actually existing religions are mostly failing the test of reproductive utility for Whites. (Fedora atheism fails even harder, though not as hard as the Shakers.) The problem is with the religions in their current forms and not with the test, which is reasonable and even necessary.
Ackshually, atheism is the most pro-reproductive view. The Chinese had to institute infanticide to keep their numbers down.
FRIDAY, JAN 13, 2023 – 05:00 PM
“In China, the highest percentage of people among the 56 countries and territories included in the Statista Global Consumer Survey is non-religious or atheist, the latter describing people rejecting the idea that there is a God.”
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/how-do-you-feel-about-religion
Jesuit to Chinese: What is your religion?
Chinese: What is “religion”?
I am not quite sure that I understand your point. It might be different for Mormons in other countries, but I have lived in the so-called Mormon Corridor all my life with the exception of a stint in Georgia while in the Army. I am not seeing a lot of miscegenation, although there is a very slight amount. Idaho is like 95 percent White, although brown migrant farm labor seems to be settling in the farm belt permanently now and not “migrating” like they have for the last hundred years.
At one time Mormons were fascinated by Noble Savages and our family even had a Navajo boy stay with us for a year. I guess it was better than learning English in some boarding school, but the idea that boarding schools were like Death Camps, even when mandatory and run by the Latin Rite Church, is, I think, a bit overstated.
My pioneer ancestors got medals for fighting Injuns but these conflicts are also overstated in modern myths. “Natives” usually showed up dirty and threatening and asking for food and liquor, and then they left you alone (mostly). Mormons fed them but didn’t provide liquor ─ and somebody else must have provided them with the guns and horses.
Anyway, Mormons do use birth control and have modern ideas, and since their worldview and concept of salvation is very family-oriented, they have many children (within reason). Women need to get good educations and some work experience in case something happens to the man.
I can remember good LDS families with nine or so children when I was a kid, but today that is very unusual. Today it is rarely fewer than four, and sometimes five or six kids. My Mom and Dad are devout LDS and they had five children with two stillbirths. Mormonism also allows no-fault divorce ─ you don’t have to turn the children against the other spouse in order to end it. Both of my sets of grandparents were divorced and they did not do that to their exes. The splits definitely affected my parents negatively but probably could not have been avoided without more hard feelings. They have been married now for over sixty years.
The problem with Mormons (or LDS as they prefer) is that they are Christians who have a fundamental belief in equality before God and not just “blindfolded” equality before the Law.
The LDS also believe in global Christian missionary work, which I think is ultimately futile for the interests of the White race. It is a form of cultural imperialism, although who am I to say that White New Zealanders can be “Latter-Day” Christians but not Māoris? Mormonism is pretty strong in NZ and my roommate at BYU-Idaho was a New Zealander. His Dad was in fact the principal of the Church College of New Zealand, although the LDS Church rarely owns parochial schools and hospitals these days ─ which is now true of most Christian churches. For example, when my sister lived in Los Angeles at the time of the riots and the O.J. affair, she had to send her kid to a Lutheran primary school to avoid the public school Poz (and he tends to be a little shit-libby now ─ but you didn’t hear that last part from me).
I think it is fine (maybe essential) for White people to have freedom of their consciences, and I do support White people being Christians as long as they follow their own hard-earned principle of the Separation of Church and State.
When Junior Bush answered in his debate with former Vice President Albert Gore that his favorite “philosopher” was Jesus Christ, I cringed. It probably put him over the top in the razor thin and contested 2000 election. Junior then went on to parlay his support with Christians after 9/11 to a Neoconservative wet dream in Afghanistan and Iraq and two decades of pointless intervention.
I hoped that Junior Bush would get impeached for lying about Weapons of Mass-Destruction, but Congress prefers to impeach on silly things like Presidential affairs with skanky Jewish interns and “mean tweets.”
In 2020, all it took to secure a Democrat win for President was to leak that the Supreme Court had finally undone Roe vs. Wade which then sucked out all the oxygen. In the 2022 Arizona governor’s race, Democrat Katie Hobbs refused to debate Trump-endorsed Kari Lake, and literally said nothing other than that she supports abortion rights and that the 2020 election was not stolen. Hobbs then won by a nosebleed, and the Red State that was the first to start countersignalling immigration, well, it looks like it has gone irretrievably Purple if not Blue
The Supreme Court changed its mind on Roe because Republicans have done nothing but nominate Catholics for the SC, and Trump was unexpectedly elected in 2016 on the GOP ticket ─ while Democrat Chief Executives have all nominated nothing but non-Whites and Jews to the SCotUS. And after two years of President Bidet, the GOP sabotaged any chance of a Red Wave revanche just by taking an extreme Chtistian position on Abortion. Kari Lake even countersignalled abortion when the fetus was retarded. (Come to think of it, so did Sen. John “RINO” McCain’s 2008 running mate, Sarah Palin.)
Jews and their army of non-Whites are far more disciplined in politics than Christians will ever be. We need to be neutral on Faith and very vigilant on Race-based politics. If Christians can’t do that, then maybe we do need to rethink it as a slave morality.
🙂
I like this article, and I don’t see much to argue with.
Kratoklastes over at Unz commenting on an entirely different article there seems a propos:
Is it a “Left/Right” thing though? This sort of ‘ardent belief’ – belief that persists despite evidence that the thing believed is likely false – can be observed across the political spectrum, and in virtually all areas of life where belief is the primary ‘driver’.
Some people continue to believe that there was a 1st-century revolutionary in Roman-occupied Palestine, who was the progeny of a Canaanite storm-god who god-raped a young woman (impregnating a woman without her consent is kinda sketchy, even if Yahweh didn’t actually bone her)… despite significant evidence that the bloke didn’t exist (and zero evidence that he existed).
…
Belief is the retarded red-headed cousin of knowledge, regardless of political stripe.
This has been known since early antiquity: it’s why the Sophists were derided by the other schools – their view was that persuasion through rhetoric was acceptable, whereas pretty much all other schools (the Stoics; Epicureans; Pythagoreans; Peripatetics) all understood that truth was far too important.
They all viewed belief (δοχα) as inferior to knowledge (ἐπιστήμη); belief could be the starting point for trying to understand a thing, but once the belief was ‘justified’ through evidence one could assert that it became knowledge.
Belief was – and is – for the proles.
The Livestock are actively encouraged to believe that if they believe a thing passionately, then that thing is true – that is, that the thing-believed becomes a fact.
St Gretchen of Aspberg, Patron Saint of the Cult of How Dare You!, is a classic example.
Ditto PIBs (“pronouns in bio“) and other forms of Reality-denier.
So are the Westboro Baptists; the (late) congregation of Jonestown; the congregation of Chabad (and Haredim generally); the Salafists… none of whom can serously be categorised as ‘Left-wing’.
Belief is very useful to those who want to live parasitically on We The Livestock – regardless of what colour tie they wear, or what silly hat or vestments, or which fictional Sky Maniac they pretend guides human destiny.
For that reason alone it is worthwhile to try to construct a worldview that minimises belief. It’s not for everyone: it’s actually quite hard. Nobody does it all the time, but it’s critical that it’s done for things that matter.
Try to catch yourself every time you’re tempted to write “I believe” (or even “I think“); it almost always means that you don’t KNOW.
https://www.unz.com/aanglin/elvis-presleys-daughter-non-fat-dead-at-54-after-cardiac-arrest/#new_comments
“Knowledge” is merely belief with footnote apparatus.
For more on Fedora, tune in tomorrow at 1pm EST:
https://www.wqxr.org/story/giordanos-fedora/
Soprano Sonya Yoncheva, one of today’s most riveting artists, sings the title role of the 19th-century Russian princess who falls in love with her fiancé’s murderer, Count Loris, sung by star tenor Piotr Beczała. Soprano Rosa Feola is the Countess Olga, Fedora’s confidante, and baritone Lucas Meachem is the diplomat De Siriex, with Met maestro Marco Armiliato conducting.
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