Christian fundies blow up WTC

Here’s a useful compendium of references to one sort of spin that’s been put on the attack on America last year: Christians blamed for September 11. The big problem is religion, you see, especially Christianity, so you should ignore who actually did the deed and their particular reasons for doing it. The real story is the eternal struggle between reason and superstition, and it’s the fundies and Catholics who are the big proponents of superstition.

We’ve commented before at VFR on this general line of thought, but each time it comes up different aspects of the situation seem more prominent. Here it’s the oddity of the view presented. According to these deep thinkers,

1. There are views about in the world that are absolutely fundamental to their holders’ grip on reality and that treat other such views as false, destructive and evil.
2. The mutual opposition of such views has led repeatedly to horrendous atrocities and conflicts that now threaten the very possibility of any tolerable way of life.
3. Therefore such views must be attacked, overthrown and extirpated for the sake of the salvation of mankind.

The oddity, of course, is that the view presented is itself an intolerant theory of human salvation, scientific atheism, one that is distinguished from the others mostly by the scope of its this-worldly ambition, the power of the weapons at its disposal, and the enormity of the atrocities to which it has in its brief public history given rise.

What we have here is in fact a particular application of a more general principle: the liberal Left, which sees itself as pure reason and beneficence, is simply unable to see anything it does as an instance of the exertion of power. They are only here to help you, and to defend truth and reason against the violence, bigotry and ignorance that oppose them. All legitimate thought must take truth and reason rather than violence, bigotry and ignorance as its starting place. It follows that left/liberalism cannot be considered on a par with other views, and the obvious resemblance between it and religious views that set the forces of good against the forces of evil therefore remains forever invisible.
Posted by Jim Kalb at October 01, 2002 09:15 AM | Send