It’s been about a month since the Olso bombing/Utøya shootings. Now that the initial shock is starting to subside, many commentators are have put forth more detailed analysis based on what we’ve all read from Breivik’s manifesto. It’s been a rare and terrible thing. Most everyone has been too emotionally sickened to say much of anything. It has, however, brought to light a few interesting opinions of which we’d all do well to take note in terms of our broader discussion about secular society and religion.
Can we separate Breivik’s actions from his goals? There has been some murmurings from Conservative Christians which seem to suggest that while (to their credit) they abhor his methods and ideology, they don’t particularly disagree with his overall vision of what Europe should look like. I mentioned part of the following quote in my previous post about the shootings, and I’d like to expand on this kind of thing for a bit:
“Much of his analysis of cultural trends in Europe and the danger created by Islamic immigration and infiltration is accurate. But clear thinking Westerners and every Christian I know believes these problems can be solved through public policy rather than mass murder.” -Bryan Fischer, American Family Association
Such a statement appears relatively benign for those who haven’t taken the time to delve into Breivik’s manifesto. But Mr. Fischer has read the manifesto. (He even skipped playing golf to read it, such sacrifice! Way to take this seriously Bry-Bry.)
Fischer goes on to distance the Christian faith from Breivik, attempting to illustrate that no “Real Christian” would do what Breivik did. However, to me at least, such denouncement comes up very, horribly, short.
It isn’t enough to just denounce Breivik’s actions. His ideology is wrong, horrible, and misguided. If you believe that all people are free and have the right to live and work and practice whatever faith they want wherever they damn well please then Breivik’s beliefs (and the ideologies that drive Christian reconstructionists and radical Muslims) are evil. There’s no other word for it. People who think that the solution to cultural tensions between Christianity and Islam is to build nations with their basis in nationalized religion, forcing values and laws based on a small group of people’s interpretations of ancient texts onto their citizenry, are wrong. Full stop.
Of course, I am an atheist. So I don’t have any scripture to cite in an appeal to authority. I don’t have any quotes from the man-god hybrid they told you stories about when you were a kid to tug on your heartstrings. No commands have been handed to me from down from on high ordering us to treat each other with a little fucking dignity. I’m just an ordinary person saying it would be nice for a change if people would stop being dicks to each other, and the only way that I can see to do that is to encourage rational, secular government and society.
Segregating the world into theocracies (in this case Christian nations, Islamic nations, Jewish nations, et. al.) does nothing to settle divisive ideologies that keep people from getting along with each other. It just moves the boundaries. And once the lines are re-drawn the whole mess starts over again with both sides scheming and conniving to increase their territory out of an ultimate quest for total dominion, both sides believing that they’ll ultimately be successful because they’ve been told as much by their preachers. It doesn’t work, it’s never worked, and it never will work to just move the pieces around the board. We need to change the ideas that are causing all these conflicts in the first place.
None of this is to say that the encroachment of Islamic Sharia principles in Europe is not a very serious and disturbing issue. It may well be the major threat to secular culture in the West, but Christian reconstructionism (dominionism) or Christian-Nationalism or Christian anything is not the answer. It’s an equal threat whose methods are more surreptitious and less violent (at least for now). Many heads of state in Europe either have or are beginning to express their belief that multiculturalism just isn’t working out. The truth is that multiculturalism isn’t failing. We are failing multiculturalism. We, as a species, are the ones failing to live up to the expectations of our own ideals.
There’s no way to put this delicately: Islam and Christianity are wrong. They are fundamentally and inexorably incorrect. We don’t need to find inconsistencies in their scripture to prove that. We don’t need to prove that God doesn’t exist to validate it. People—large numbers of people—are willing to kill and die for them. That’s all the proof anyone should need.
It is true that the failure of immigrants to effectively assimilate can cause a good deal of tension. The United States has seen that time and again, but we’ve survived (Heck, as far as I’m concerned you’re not in a ‘real’ city in this country unless it has a Chinatown). Yes, there were lots of, and still are, racial and ideological tensions. That makes me kind of sad, but it’s true. You’ve got to admit that things have gotten progressively better though. And I don’t see any reason why we should let a bunch of assholes buck that trend for the rest of us. The only thing keeping Christianity and Islam, Islam and Judaism, Hinduism and Islam, Christianity and Judaism, etc., etc. from getting past their differences is each other. It’s their unwillingness to see beyond their narrow view of the world and do what is right for humanity even if it doesn’t line up with their scriptures. And that is just plain bad for everybody.
.
Showing posts with label Anders Breivik. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Anders Breivik. Show all posts
Tuesday, August 30, 2011
Tuesday, July 26, 2011
The Mad Norwegian
I suppose, in a sense, Anders Behring Breivik is a singular example of what atheists have been saying about the flawed nature of religious worldviews. How they can be used to justify anything no matter how heinous. I’ve spent a good deal of time looking through his manifesto over the last couple days though, I will say this: I think it's incorrect to put the blame squarely on Christianity for his actions, however Christianity was definitely an ideology from which he drew a great amount of inspiration. He wanted to kill and found association with a convenient ideology that in his mind justified the actions he already wanted to carry out. The ideology itself, in this case, is secondary. I don't think he's a killer because he's a religious zealot, I think he's a religious zealot because that allows him to be the killer he is without too much cognitive dissonance.
The most disturbing thing is that here we have a man who is so full of hate and disdain that he is capable of dedicating the better part of a decade to planning a single attack on innocent people in the name of God—and no one noticed.
No one noticed because he hid in plain sight. At church, in the Freemasons, he would go out with friends from time to time, appearing (at least by his accounts) to be sociable and jovial. He self-describes as "not an excessively religious man" and "laid back and quite tolerant on most issues", and there’s been little to suggest that anyone had the slightest idea that there was something terribly wrong with him, which means he must have been quite convincing. But given the depth of his obsession, it’s a bit hard to get your head around the fact that no-one noticed any red flags.
His writing is dispassionate. To hear him tell it, he doesn't hate Muslims. He ‘merely’ wants to create a nationalist-theocracy, which would ‘kindly’ help them to be displaced back to their ancestral lands, and kill them if they refused. He goes on at rather great length about his grand segregationist plan in such detail that it makes Hitler look like an under-achiever. He makes little mention of outright attacks on Muslims. Instead his targets are political as part of a culture war between Islam and Christianity as a binary. He seems to feel you are either on one side or the other. He accuses secular-humanist governments, and blames them for changes in his culture by allowing Muslim migration in the first place. By all indications he sincerely believes the only way to rectify this is to dispatch with those leaders so they can be replaced by members of the church to "ensure that a sustainable and traditional version of Christendom is propagated". His is a world divided that will never be whole.
Perhaps this black and white thinking is the most ominous and confusing part. He says on several occasions that he has no personal relationship with Jesus, but instead that he believes "in Christianity as a cultural, social, identity and moral platform", and that is why he calls himself a Christian. Clearly, however, his belief extends far beyond that invoking rhetoric not unlike that of Islamic suicide bombers: "How blessed to die a martyr! Rejoice, brave athlete, if you live and conquer in the Lord; but glory and exult even more if you die and join your Lord."
Now, many Christian commentators have already chimed in on this subject, and denounced him as a madman and ‘not a real Christian.’ All I can say about that is, much like I said about Obama, denouncing someone for their self-identification is just pointless. And further, it demonstrates a big inconsistency in current Christian dogma. If he is not a ‘real christian’ then why do they not accept that Islamic terrorists aren’t ‘real muslims’? To say that his beliefs are not in line with contemporary Christian ideology is ultimately meaningless because there are almost 40,000 different Christian denominations worldwide, and each and every one of them thinks they are the only one that’s absolutely correct. Yet, there’s absolutely no proof that any of them are correct about anything, much less that one of them is completely correct. So let’s put this ‘true christian’ nonsense aside. Christianity has been a justification for violence on many occasions in history (in fact, these are times which Breivik attempts to glorify), this is just one more time.
It's like that saying by Steven Weinburg: "With or without religion, good people can behave well and bad people can do evil; but for good people to do evil—that takes religion."
Anders Behring Breivik is a bad person, and no amount of secular culture would have changed that. He was, after all, born and raised in Norway by secular parents and taught in state schools. He found religion. It wasn't thrust upon him. It is clear that his beliefs most definitely added courage to his conviction. Religion inspired him. Religion allowed him to feel that what he was doing was right and moral. One wonders if such a religious infrastructure didn't exist if he'd have the drive, the rationale, and the single-minded sense of purpose that lead him to kill so many in cold-blood.
Yet it seems inappropriate to say that religion is at fault. If it wasn't religion it almost certainly would have been something else. But it was religion, which is far more ominous. If Anders Behring Breivik had written about orders from his dog, or that his victims were aliens in disguise we would all hasten to agree that he was a lone man plagued by delusions. Instead we are left with an horrible act which the stated justification is, at least partially, rooted in beliefs that many people share. Focus on the Family’s own Bryan Fischer went so far as to say that Breivik’s “analysis of cultural trends in Europe and the danger created by Islamic immigration and infiltration is accurate”. Which is to say he disagrees with Brevik’s methods and actions, but not necessarily with his conclusions. This might be the most frightening part of all. Breivik is delusional, yes. He is megalomaniacal. He is dangerous and his beliefs make him even more dangerous. Worst of all, with today’s over-amplified rhetoric, vitriolic commentary, and the ever more divisive cultures that surround the Abrahamic religions there is no way of knowing who will decide to share in the most wicked parts of his delusion with him.
See Steve's No True Christian? for a counter-point.
.
The most disturbing thing is that here we have a man who is so full of hate and disdain that he is capable of dedicating the better part of a decade to planning a single attack on innocent people in the name of God—and no one noticed.
No one noticed because he hid in plain sight. At church, in the Freemasons, he would go out with friends from time to time, appearing (at least by his accounts) to be sociable and jovial. He self-describes as "not an excessively religious man" and "laid back and quite tolerant on most issues", and there’s been little to suggest that anyone had the slightest idea that there was something terribly wrong with him, which means he must have been quite convincing. But given the depth of his obsession, it’s a bit hard to get your head around the fact that no-one noticed any red flags.
His writing is dispassionate. To hear him tell it, he doesn't hate Muslims. He ‘merely’ wants to create a nationalist-theocracy, which would ‘kindly’ help them to be displaced back to their ancestral lands, and kill them if they refused. He goes on at rather great length about his grand segregationist plan in such detail that it makes Hitler look like an under-achiever. He makes little mention of outright attacks on Muslims. Instead his targets are political as part of a culture war between Islam and Christianity as a binary. He seems to feel you are either on one side or the other. He accuses secular-humanist governments, and blames them for changes in his culture by allowing Muslim migration in the first place. By all indications he sincerely believes the only way to rectify this is to dispatch with those leaders so they can be replaced by members of the church to "ensure that a sustainable and traditional version of Christendom is propagated". His is a world divided that will never be whole.
Perhaps this black and white thinking is the most ominous and confusing part. He says on several occasions that he has no personal relationship with Jesus, but instead that he believes "in Christianity as a cultural, social, identity and moral platform", and that is why he calls himself a Christian. Clearly, however, his belief extends far beyond that invoking rhetoric not unlike that of Islamic suicide bombers: "How blessed to die a martyr! Rejoice, brave athlete, if you live and conquer in the Lord; but glory and exult even more if you die and join your Lord."
Now, many Christian commentators have already chimed in on this subject, and denounced him as a madman and ‘not a real Christian.’ All I can say about that is, much like I said about Obama, denouncing someone for their self-identification is just pointless. And further, it demonstrates a big inconsistency in current Christian dogma. If he is not a ‘real christian’ then why do they not accept that Islamic terrorists aren’t ‘real muslims’? To say that his beliefs are not in line with contemporary Christian ideology is ultimately meaningless because there are almost 40,000 different Christian denominations worldwide, and each and every one of them thinks they are the only one that’s absolutely correct. Yet, there’s absolutely no proof that any of them are correct about anything, much less that one of them is completely correct. So let’s put this ‘true christian’ nonsense aside. Christianity has been a justification for violence on many occasions in history (in fact, these are times which Breivik attempts to glorify), this is just one more time.
It's like that saying by Steven Weinburg: "With or without religion, good people can behave well and bad people can do evil; but for good people to do evil—that takes religion."
Anders Behring Breivik is a bad person, and no amount of secular culture would have changed that. He was, after all, born and raised in Norway by secular parents and taught in state schools. He found religion. It wasn't thrust upon him. It is clear that his beliefs most definitely added courage to his conviction. Religion inspired him. Religion allowed him to feel that what he was doing was right and moral. One wonders if such a religious infrastructure didn't exist if he'd have the drive, the rationale, and the single-minded sense of purpose that lead him to kill so many in cold-blood.
Yet it seems inappropriate to say that religion is at fault. If it wasn't religion it almost certainly would have been something else. But it was religion, which is far more ominous. If Anders Behring Breivik had written about orders from his dog, or that his victims were aliens in disguise we would all hasten to agree that he was a lone man plagued by delusions. Instead we are left with an horrible act which the stated justification is, at least partially, rooted in beliefs that many people share. Focus on the Family’s own Bryan Fischer went so far as to say that Breivik’s “analysis of cultural trends in Europe and the danger created by Islamic immigration and infiltration is accurate”. Which is to say he disagrees with Brevik’s methods and actions, but not necessarily with his conclusions. This might be the most frightening part of all. Breivik is delusional, yes. He is megalomaniacal. He is dangerous and his beliefs make him even more dangerous. Worst of all, with today’s over-amplified rhetoric, vitriolic commentary, and the ever more divisive cultures that surround the Abrahamic religions there is no way of knowing who will decide to share in the most wicked parts of his delusion with him.
See Steve's No True Christian? for a counter-point.
.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)