The recent news that the Anglican Communion is still notionally Christian drew some sniping from Libertarian pagans on Twitter.
Readers familiar with this blog’s treatment on presuppositional apologetics will know where this is going.
The West is currently beset by outsiders who possess the corrosive combination of beliefs antithetical to our foundational morals and an unwarranted sense of entitlement. This is the force that is driving the West’s inversion from Christian civilization to Pagan dystopia.
Yet, as I’ve pointed out, the inverters always use appeals to Christian morals they don’t subscribe to as clubs to bludgeon Christendom.
This is the Caine-Hackman proof of culture war as holy war and diversity + proximity = war in one tweet.
In point of fact, yes, the Church claims universal moral authority. That is why she calls herself Universal. Christians hold that Christianity is true, Boomer-grade solipsism notwithstanding.
But more to the point, Christendom is Christian. It doesn’t take a genius to see why living within Christian society while denying Christian moral authority instantly nullifies one’s moral lecturing.
Expanding the First Amendment beyond the Christian denominations was a mistake.
The 1A was written to keep Christian denominations who are in 90% theological agreement from killing each other over what the sacraments mean. Anyone who thinks it suffices to keep adherents of alien creeds from over the horizon at peace is contradicted by logic and history.
I don’t yet consider effeminate replies like, “So you think that …”, “So what you’re saying is …”, etc. positive proof of witchery, but I’m noticing a strong correlation between Redditor speak and Witch Test failure. As it stands, trying that odious kind of psychological projection framed as mind-reading will earn you a swift block/ban.
The good news, as reported in the lead article, is that Christians are finding our spines again. And it’s got the inverters justifiably worried.
(((Buddhism)))
(((Practical atheism to allay guilt over indulgence while still craving religious meaning)))
Well done Brian.
As a Buddhist he tried use Christian morality to denigrate it and failed miserably. He can't even use Buddhism because it's totally irrelevant to Western civilization.
So yeah ignore, block move on
xavier
Western Buddhists almost entirely consist of Secular Humanists that hate God.
They want to appear "deep" and "spiritual" but don't want to actually do anything to earn a healthy religious dimension.
Scratch a McBuddhist, find a gamma. Every single time.
This.
I don’t know what it is about people who call themselves Buddhist. They annoy me even more than the nimrods on the Wiccan-Vegan Axis.
Spot on.
McBuddhists also love to point out that Christians fornicate, contracept, and divorce at the same rate as nonbelievers.
They conveniently forget that the Dalai Lama sounds like Benedict XVI on those issues.
It is just as true to say that members of civilizational Christendom who deny that their personal morality is Christian nevertheless behave exactly like Christians would under most measured circumstances.
Western Buddhism isn't Buddhism. It's just a shield for secularist/atheist/douchebag that Westerners use because they know most of their fellow Westerners are unfamiliar with what that word means or entails. They never espouse a specific branch of Buddhism they follow nor the leader/teacher they adhere to…because they always decide for themselves what they wish to follow. It's an ala cart "faith" dressed up in Eastern motifs to look cool, deep and mysterious.
In other words, it's a poser faith.
Phrased like that, it sounds like "Eclectic" Neo-paganism, minus the sorcery and demon-worship.
Meaning these folk wouldn't know the Eight Fold Path from a four-leaf clover. Or explain any of the most important sutras of Buddhism to Joe and Jane Average.
Durandel is right on the money here. McBuddhists are fakers.
A close friend of mine has made a deep study of Buddhism for years. He paints a picture of a masculine, serious religion which teaches self-denial, self-control, upright conduct, and rejection of all greed.
McBuddhists are not serious people.
The argument from hypocrisy seems like a dodge, more than a reason to disbelieve. It is like asserting that because the weeds are not wheat that therefore, the wheat is not wheat either and that also, there is no wheat, and no farm, and no farmer.
Brian
Benjamin Cheah at his website wrote a lengthy explanation at his blog some time ago. His Hollw city novel has a Buddhist character and his discussions with his teacher are quite thoughtful.
xavier
Speaking of:
https://twitter.com/GKCdaily/status/1221932250264227840
Works every time.
Lotta cope in that thread!
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Could you explain the Caine-Hackmann Hypothesis? I followed the link, and tried to read the post, but am sadly none the wiser. It looks like English, but I can't make heads or tails of it. I recognize most of the individual words, but something is important missing – English grammar, standard syntax, important words, or perhaps all three.
It's the senior thesis of the character Pigman from PCU. His hypothesis states that an any given time, a movie featuring either Michael Caine or Gene Hackman is playing on TV. Pigman finds his closing argument when A Bridge Too Far comes on, which stars both Caine and Hackman.
Never heard of that movie. Piven and Favreau…I like them from the 90's along with Vaughn and Livingston. I take it it is a cult classic similar to Office Space and Swingers?
Precisely right. It's a college romp in the vein of Animal House but with more prominent political themes.
That may sound disqualifying in Current Year, but PCU was made before SocJus and woke culture broke containment. It actually mocks the PC plague that was just overtaking academia at the time.
True, the movie adopts a "Pox on both their houses" edgy middle position. The College Republicans are as antagonistic toward the hip libertarian frat as the crazed feminists and wacko environmentalists. But PCU is oddly prescient in showing establishment Conservatives as the toadies of the woke administrators.
Ok children, can you say "disingenuous argument"? I knew you could.
Notice how he kept evading my point while trying to assert the moral high ground. Ceding frame and following him into the weeds would've been a rhetorically fatal mistake.
He should really make some attempt to understand what Buddhism is before declaring himself to be Buddhist. There's no reason for a Buddhist to reject any given moral authority, and further, Buddhism considers sexual good-conduct to be one of the basic precepts of the proper life.
Of course, addressing this would have been a rhetorical and possibly even dialectical mistake, but FFS. McBuddhists are such frauds.
Exactly. I could have brought up any number of public statements the Dalai Lama has made which reveal his position as total nonsense. But rather than score dialectical points, I wanted to let him make the rhetorical point that these people expect Western Christians to roll over and let weirdo outsiders dictate terms to us. It's a poor guest who shows up and demands you let him sleep with your daughter.
Christians get to determine Christendom's sexual ethics. No one is forcing non-Christians to live here. If they disapprove, there's the door.
I don't get how this happened in the Anglican Communion. Look at those Bishops…they all have gay-pedo face. Gay-pedo's hate straight people.
Did the African conference take over?
The Holy Spirit moves as He wills.
Interesting. Has the Church or her faithful theologians stayed the Holy Ghost is with and or assists those outside and opposed to the Church? I was under the impression that Protestant and Orthodox sects survive on the built up capital they inherited from before their breaks, much like former Christendom has been running on the fumes and ash of the Middle Ages.
Only the Magisteriumn of the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church has the divine guarantee of preservation from error when solemnly defining matters of faith and morals.
That said, God is not bound by the Church.
True enough. Current day Ultramontanism tends to forget that Christ does not need Rome, just as he did not need Constantinople, Antioch, Jerusalem and Alexandria. He just needs one faithful Bishop to keep it going.
There is something quite wonderful in being so superfluous and yet so deeply desired.
Ah, I've been mutuals with him since the early Sad Puppies days. A total lolbertarian Boomercon, not surprised he self-identifies as Buddhist.
That was how I became mutuals with him, too. Some of us modified our opinions based on new information, and some people got frozen in 2013. It's natural for those two camps to drift apart.