Nuremberg Dan,

How fortunate for Australia, you are not running foreign policy, and ttbn is not running the country. We should give thanks for such small mercies. Is yellow your colour, is your campaign for the Trumpet Of Patriots up and running? Fat Clive forever.

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Dear Diver Dan,

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Thanks for that link to the Touchstone article entitled “America After Christianity”.

I must say I couldn’t disagree more with Archbishop Fulton Sheen and Pope St. John Paul II that Christianity is moribund if not already dead.

Christianity, like all things human, has done some good, some bad, producing, in my opinion, an overall neutral result.

J.D. Davidson, the author of the article, sees the end of Christianity as a regression to a form of paganism. He published a book in 2024 entitled “Pagan America: The Decline of Christianity and the Dark Age to Come” – in which he makes a sobering assessment of the threats to the American way of life as religiosity declines.

On the contrary, in my view, Christianity has served its purpose and accomplished its mission. We have received, understood, and integrated the essence of its message. Our laws, lore and culture are largely inspired by those imposed on us by nature, completed by others founded in religious belief or which are simply the fruit of our developing conscience based on purely humanitarian considerations.

A hallmark of such laws and regulations for most of Western civilisation is the Mosaic code, which, according to Christian tradition, is thought to have been compiled about three and a half thousand years ago. Paul of Tarsus, who appears to have been the principal promoter, perhaps the founder of Christianity, exercised a determining influence on the religious belief and philosophy of which we still find trace in modern, man-made law, today (known under its technical term of “positive law”), alongside traditional Mosaic law and Noahide code.

Christianity has been assimilated by Western civilisation and has become an integral part of our way of life. It has clearly attained its religious objective – unless, of course, some of its more ardent proponents, such as Archbishop Sheen, Pope St. John Paul II and the article’s author, attribute some additional objective to it – a political objective, perhaps ?

The author’s expressed opposition to the “wall of separation” between religion and politics would seem to indicate this possibility.

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Banjo Paterson

Glad somebody read the article. I think the significance of the content of it is quite profound.

I’m a believer in the significance of a religious belief system for a healthy society which rests on an assumption that man is dwelling in two different realms, one physical and one metaphysical, that is, in two parts but entwined and inseparable until death, usually described as body and soul.
So a religious belief based on a long tradition of Judo Christian traditions and instructions are the only proven method to me which holds the two together in some continuous fashion.

There is my symbolic validity that holds a course of reason against a Godless world order and its counter arguments, which as the article in my link points out, defends the same symbolism of religion in its argument of support for the key theory, society is a lost cause without its guidance.

Demonstrate to me if you can, any great civilisation that rose to prominence without a universal belief system, which credits a higher power supremacy.
The West is lost for a foothold on the slippery slope of personal interest and greed; morality built on the principles of religion has evaporated, replaced with Secular ethics which is changeable and unanchored and definitely not status quo and believable.

I’ll leave you with that.

DD,

Good article, the basic premise that its only through Christianity that our society can obtain a state of moral justice and equality is debatable. Christianity does not have a great track record on supporting society to achieve a reasonable state of morality and equality, well not as we believe such to be. Were slave owning Christians in the past, any less Christian than those of today doing humanitarian work in the world? They both justify their moral position by their own interpretation of Christian teaching. If what I say is true, then there is something inherently wrong in what forms the basis of Christianity, the Bible. Maybe its time for a new addition Bible 2.0.

BP,

You say; "Christianity, like all things human, has done some good, some bad, producing, in my opinion, an overall neutral result." That is only true if you believe bad is neutralised in some way by good, that good is a counter balance to bad. In my opinion bad is bad, and good is good, they are mutually exclusive, and one can't justify the other.

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Dear Diver Dan,

I wrote this before reading your last post but will come back to you on that tomorrow (it's bedtime for me now) :
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Jesus said : « Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and unto God the things that are God's »

Matthew 22:21 - Luke 20:25 - Mark 12:17
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Paul the Apostle states in Romans 13 that Christians are obliged to obey all earthly authorities, stating that as they were introduced by God, disobedience to them equates to disobedience to God :

« Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers. For there is no power but of God: the powers that be are ordained of God »
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Thus, politics (“the things that are Caesar's”) and religion (“the things that are God's) are separate realms – “and ner the twain shall meet” !

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Dear Diver Dan,

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You wrote :

1. « I’m a believer in the significance of a religious belief system for a healthy society which rests on an assumption that man is dwelling in two different realms, one physical and one metaphysical, that is, in two parts … entwined and inseparable … »
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I understand the god hypothesis was conceived by primeval man as a supernatural explanation of natural phenomena — a concept that successive generations refined and embellished down the ages, with all the frills of modern inspiration and scientific compatibility.

Religion has been a pervasive force in human societies for millions of years. As early as the Palaeolithic era, 3 million years ago, there is evidence of religious practices such as burial rites, cave paintings, and the use of sacred objects. Religion played a central role in the political life of primeval man. In Egypt, the pharaoh was considered a divine ruler, and the state religion was an essential part of daily life. The Mesopotamian civilisations of Babylon and Assyria also had state religions that played a crucial role in maintaining social order.

As Karl Marx later pointed out, "religion is the opium of the masses" maintaining peace and obedience to the rulers.

Civilisation is still very much a work in progress. It will be a long time before we can discard the crutches of religion and wander through life with confidence, unassisted.
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2. « The West is lost for a foothold on the slippery slope of personal interest and greed; morality built on the principles of religion has evaporated, replaced with Secular ethics, which is changeable and unanchored and definitely not status quo and believable. »
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Maybe it’s not the norm, Diver Dan, but in my experience, most people who correspond to that description are fervent practising Christians. In fact, they are the only ones I know like that.

The evolution of human conscience is ineluctable. We progressively gain a more precise understanding of our earthly condition, clarifying the obscure, piercing the unknown, and invalidating any previous hypotheses and assumptions rendered obsolete.

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