Tag: Culture

Why Liberalism, Progressivism and Communism Are Surely Wrong

Posted on by Lyle Duell in Apologetics, Christ and Culture, Liberalism

Why Liberalism, Progressivism and Communism Are Surely Wrong

  You might gather from the title of this article, that it would be of some length and quite deep, not so. The reason is that what I am about to say is a self-evident truth that anyone with a lick of honesty and an ounce of  awareness already knows.

How can I say that all these movements are wrong?   I can say it because their key assumption is flawed.  Therefore, all the models built upon their false assumption are flawed.  What is the key assumption, which all these movements have in common and form the basis of their philosophy?  It is fundamentally the belief in the goodness of mankind or the neutrality of human nature.  Some refer to this as the Blank Slate theory.  Because of this basic assumption, all these philosophies believe that with the right education and the power of the state, our flawed human nature, which is not natural to us, can and will be rectified.  This assumption then progresses into a corporate view that believes, that through the force of the state (which they call public education), an utopian state will be ushered in and all the wrong will be made right.The problem with this assumption is that there is not one bit of evidence to support it. To the contrary, all evidence points to the fact that it is a total fallacy. Science, history, religion and personal experience all stand against it.

Science

In his book The Blank Slate: “The Modern Denial of Human Nature”; author and scientist Steven Pinker demonstrates the basic error of these three philosophical ‘isms’. He repeatedly demonstrates that man does have an inherent nature and by no means is a blank slate  that can be written on by the state or any other elite educators who believe that they are going to remake mankind and restore him to the garden of Eden (Noble savage). Pinker also points out the great harm, which the Blank Slate theory has done to individuals and culture. He shows how it has led to moral and cultural relativism that has undermined Western civilization.

It is interesting to read some of the reviews of Pinker’s book. It seems that many in academia have accepted his views for some time and feel that he is simply rehashing something, which has already been accepted. However, I find it strange that the majority of those which have accepted his views have not rejected the philosophies which are grounded in the theory that he refutes. It seems that the majority of academia is still deeply rooted in liberalism and progressive ideology. In this, are they admitting that their philosophy is nothing more than a dogma?

History

In late 1800s and early 1900s, the three ism of liberalism, progressivism, and Communism were all-pervasive in Europe and the United States. All three were making promises of a new world order followed by an earthly utopia, which would shortly be ushered in. All of them preached the Blank Slate doctrine and that the demons of mankind would soon be driven out by the forces of the modern state and the progressive educational system. In this country, John Dewey was the champion of this movement and he predicted that a modern educational system would usher in a brave new world. His failed predictions have proven him to be a false prophet and a false teacher[1].

The first obstacle to the liberal progressive movement came when World War One broke out with Germany. The new heaven on earth was beginning to be tarnished by the hatred and cruelty of educated men. After the war, the movement began to pick up steam again and just as it was beginning to rise once  more to respectability it received another black eye with the advent of the Great Depression.

The Great Depression, which was caused by corruption and greed, again set the movement back to square one. It was hard to convince the masses that mankind was good when they knew that they could not trust their brokers, bankers or lawyers. Then on top of this came the second great war and all of the atrocities that were committed  by the highly educated Germans. Again,  this setback made it difficult to believe that education in itself and the goodness of man was anything but a myth.  Many of the leaders in the progressive movement and the communistic movements were disillusioned with their own ideology.  When Stalin rose to power in Russia many intellectuals in the West, were hopeful that his regime marked the beginning of the Golden Age and the fulfillment of the progressive era.  In America a number of our own intellectuals like John Dewy and Roger Baldwin[2] the father of the ACLU, were sympathetic supporters of the communist movement.  Of course, it was not long before human nature again raised its ugly head and dashed the hopes of the deluded. However, the reality of history has not broken the delusion of the true believers and to the present-day progressives and liberals continue to believe the great fallacy.

Religion

One of the strange things about the rise of liberalism and progressivism is that it rose to power in cultures that were rooted in Christianity. A religion that would emphatically deny the Blake Slate theory and the doctrine of the goodness of man. The Christian religion in all of its forms, Catholicism, Calvinism, and Wesleyans all teach that the nature of mankind has been tarnished by sin and the lower nature of mankind.  With this in mind, we must ask  “where did these modern philosophies come from?”  Of course, the answer is that they were all grounded in the atheism of the enlightenment and reflect a strong anti-Christian bias.

There really was nothing new about the thinking of the enlightenment. It reflected a mixture of ancient philosophies, Christian dogma, paganism and atheistic concepts cloaked in a new paradigm. Many of the teachings of the new paradigm were knavishly softened at first, to accommodate and expedite their entrance into Christian culture.  The men of the enlightenment had to deny the taint of sin because one of their presuppositions and dogmas was, and is still believed today, that man’s reasoning can be pure and therefore, it can be trusted to lead men out of darkness.  This is also a belief, which has  been debunked by science and history.  We now know that human reason is never alone nor is it ever pure.  It is always tainted by self-interest, finiteness and ideology.

Personal Awareness

If we are honest with ourselves, we all know that we and all humans have a propensity to carry out unrighteousness. We hear the ring of truth in Scripture when we read “All have sinned and have fallen short of the glory of God ” and “there is none righteous, not even one.”  The prophet Jeremiah said, “The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure”.  The truth of human nature is a self-evident truth, which no one could deny or should I say should deny.  In denying it one would only commit the greatest sin of all which is spiritual pride or self-righteousness. It is no wonder that the chief sins of liberalism and progressivism is self-righteousness, hubris’ morality and intellectualism.

Contrary to The Founders

One of the problems with any ideology that promotes the goodness of man is that it will invariably lead to a tyrannical form of communism. The reason being that these ideologies which herald the goodness of the individual will also promote the goodness and trust of the state, which from the liberal point of view is made-up of humanistic angels[3] looking out for the public good (rights). This leads to the state becoming more and more powerful.  We all know (or do we?) that power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

The Founders of our nation were not all Christian, but they all share the same estimate of human nature and its corruption. They were not humanists that put their trust in the goodness of man. Therefore, they set up numerous safeguards to limit the power of government. We should thank God for their skepticism of European progressivism and liberalism.

The great fallacy of liberalism, progressivism and socialism is still with us today and is growing in its popularity. If we continue on this course we can expect to receive a wake-up call from reality in the not so far off future. The horseman of the apocalypse will soon be riding again (Rev 6:1-7).

[1] One of the demons which John Dewey wanted to drive out was what he called the superstition. The superstition was Christianity.

[2] Roger Baldwin was a communist sympathizer until he was disillusioned by Lenin and Stalin’s reign of terror. Baldwin eventually left the organization that he had founded ACLU because of their extreme leftist views, which views many in that organization still maintain. The ACLU still supports their extreme leftist views by selectively supporting some liberties and playing them against ones they dislike. Therefore, they are more about supporting ideology than liberty.

[3] Most liberals and progressives have a high opinion of themselves and view themselves as more principled and moral than other men. They tend to be modern Pharisees.

The Great Myths of Modern Man

Posted on by Lyle Duell in Apologetics, Christ and Culture, Science

The Great Myths of Modern Man

The lawless man is produced by the spirit of evil and armed with all the force, wonders, and signs that falsehood can devise. To those involved in this dying world, he will come with evil’s undiluted power to deceive, for they have refused to love the truth which could have saved them. God sends upon them, therefore, the full force of evil’s delusion, so that they put their faith in an utter fraud and meet the inevitable judgment of all who have refused to believe the truth and who have made evil their play-fellow. The Apostle Paul

Before we can have a rational discussion on the subject of modern myths, we need to understand the terms and concepts we are using.  When I use the word myth, I am not referring to something that is false, but rather to a large explanatory story or narrative that gives us some insight into what stands behind the way we view the world.  In science they are called models or paradigms.  In religion they are called shadows, types, or parables.  In essence, myths are large metaphors that we use to talk about the things that we cannot see and yet believe they are there.  They are believed to be the truths that point to the truth that stands outside of man’s grasp.  All true myths in some fashion and to some degree, depict reality.  If this were not the case, they never would have been elevated to the place of myth.  With this in mind, we are ready to talk about the great myths of modern man.

In order to understand the making of the great myths of modern times, we have to understand the time of the Enlightenment in Europe which gave rise to the great myths of Western civilization.  The Enlightenment was a time of great upheaval and change in the thinking of man.  The old authorities in every area of life were being challenged and being replaced.  Feudalism was being replaced with democracy, magic with science, capitalism with socialism, and faith with atheism.

During this Enlightenment period there was a tremendous effort by the skeptics of religion to move the masses away from religion.  To do this, they would have to convince the masses that heaven could be created on earth by man and a transcendent God and a heaven up there was no longer needed.  If you recall, mankind had once tried to build a tower to heaven, which ended in Babel[1].  If man could not storm the gates of heaven, he would simply build his own on earth, while shaking his fist in defiance at the God of the true heaven.

However, to storm the gates of heaven and bring heaven down to the earth, mankind would need a huge amount of power; he would need a machine that could replace God.  He found his machine in the creation of the modern state.[2]  The state would be God walking on the earth creating heaven on earth, a heaven in which the God of heaven was no longer welcomed.  In the new myth of the state, it would be God who is banished from the new paradise, not man.  In this, we see the birth of the modern state and atheism, which are the two greatest myths of modern time.

In order for the modern state to become a god in the eyes of the majority of people, they would have to believe it had the power to save them and deliver them from the forces beyond their control.  These forces would include natural disasters, diseases, the very forces of nature, even death.  In order to accomplish this, the state would need to have a mechanism to convince the people that it was their true savior and not religion.  It would also need a discipline that could be used to support it. That discipline was found in the new field of science.  It is self-evident that science and the state have grown together and are very much dependent on each other.

And since the time of the Enlightenment the state has continued to annex more and more of the scientific enterprise for its own selfish ends, those being ultimate authority and domination.  In the last few decades science has been increasingly controlled by the flow of money provided by the state to support its research.

Another great myth of modern man is Darwinism.  The thinking of the Western world has been controlled by the concept or myth of undirected evolution since the time of Darwin.  In fact, it has become the dominating concept behind most science and thinking in general.  For many, the concept is now a self-evident truth.  To most, everything is getting bigger and better, moving from the simple to the more complex.[3]  Of course, this concept fits well into the ideological concept of progress that was implanted in the midst of the Enlightenment by Christian millennialism[4] and was the foundation on which they built the humanistic project of replacing the concept of a heaven up there with a heaven down here.  It also fit well as it supported the ideology of a capitalistic system, which was the prevailing economic ideology during the time of Darwin.  Darwinism has always been strongly supported by the ruling class, which maintains its place through the educational system of the state.

You could say that Darwinism was the missing link that the humanist skeptics of the Enlightenment (not science) needed to banish God from the earth.[5]  They needed a theory of how things could be explained without an appeal to a deity.  So the maxim was created that everything in the new discipline of science must be explained by natural causes without an appeal to a deity.  Of course, this sealed the faith of the new discipline of science as the weapon of choice for the skeptics and atheists to support and spread their unbelief or should I say their new belief?

However, true science was not created to banish God from the earth and many of the greatest scientists have been believers.[6]  Science as a discipline is the study of nature and has little to say about the existence of a God who stands outside nature.[7]  Science can make the statement that it has not found God in nature, which is a statement that theologians could make as well; on the other hand, many men of science can and do say that they see things in nature that seem to point to a deity who had organized all things.

To the thinking person and the person who truly understands science, science explains nothing; it only describes things.  It answers the “how” question not the “why” and “what” questions.  For example, when it speaks about light, it does not explain it but rather describes the way it behaves.  Sometimes it behaves like a wave and sometimes it behaves like a particle, but these are metaphorical descriptions and do not tell us what light is.  In fact, if we where to ask science to explain itself, it could not give an explanation without the aid of philosophy; in itself it could only tell us what it does, not what it is.

What are the great myths?  They are the myths of the mega state and the myth that it has the power to save, which is the myth of modern science-ism.  It is the belief or myth that everything in reality can wholly be explained by the theory of materialistic evolution.  Evolution is surely a large part of the circle of existence, but it is not the whole.  It may help us with a number of how questions, but it never answers the why questions of existence, and it is the why questions that gives life meaning.

In view of the above, the question must be raised as to how many of the new myths really square with reality and how many of them are simply illusions.

[1] Babel means confusion.

[2] Note: The Myth of the Machine by Lewis Mumford.

[3] This view of evolution is not based on science and is believed by the masses.

[4] The Christian faith believes that everything is moving toward perfection and completeness.  This concept evolved in the West into a strong belief in the concept of progress.  Without the Christian faith, the question must be raised as to whether or not there are any grounds for a belief in progress.

[5] Of course, true science explains nothing; it simply describes things.  When it slips into explaining things, it ceases to be science and becomes philosophy or something else.

[6] To name a few: Nicolas Copernicus, Francis Bacon, Johannes Kepler, Galileo, Rene Descartes, Blaise Pascal, Max Planck, and Albert Einstein.

[7] The US National Academy of Sciences has gone on record with the following statement: “Science is a way of knowing about the natural world.  It is limited to explaining the natural world through natural causes.  Science can say nothing about the supernatural.  Whether God exists or not is a question about which science is neutral.”  This was taken from Who Made God?: A Searching for a Theory of Everything by Fay Weldon.

Scared to Death

Posted on by Lyle Duell in Christ and Culture

Scared to Death

“Never miss an oppertunity to take advanage of crisis”

Rahm Emanual

I don’t know about my readers, but I am sick and tired of being scared to death by our government.  Over the last 60 years our government has tried to keep the American people in a state of fear.  In the 50s it was the threat of communism taking over the world.  In the late 50s, it was the threat of nuclear war.  I remember being told to go into the hallway of our school and sit with my back against the wall with my head between my knees to protect me from the building collapsing because of a nuclear explosion.  Today we would probably call that child abuse.

We were also told that the earth was becoming so overpopulated that people would soon not have enough food to eat[1]. Again, in the 60s, we were told that communism was going to sweep the world and we would have to stop it in some obscure place called Vietnam.  That time around, the government literally scared about 55,000 of us to death in that needless war.[2]  Then in the 70s, we were told that a new Ice Age was coming and that North America would probably be engulfed by glaciers.    It’s no wonder that the young people went  a little crazy in the 60s and 70s.  Could it be that they were scared crazy by our government?

In more recent times it’s been pandemics, epidemics, and catastrophes of all kinds, none of which have come to pass.  Do you remember the computer glitch of 2000 when we were told that when the clocks changed from 1999 to the year 2000 the computers were going to fail and time would stop?  That one was a good job creator!  I had a professional friend who bought into that scary false prediction, cashed in his retirement, and lost hundreds of thousands of dollars.  By the way don’t forget those weapons of mass destruction.

Now that I’m a young old man, these jerks are still trying to scare me to death.  They’re still using the fear of communism, but that is waning because a growing number of them are communist.  Recently they used the fear of another Great Depression to get a whole lot of money from us.  Now they’re telling us that the world is heating up and going to melt if we do not give them more of our money.  On top of all of this, they are also telling me that if I get sick, I will not have access to medical care and that I might die.  They assure me if I give them more of my money they will take care of me, of course I will still die.  Well, I’m not buying it.  I’m done listening to Chicken Little telling me that the sky is falling and the world is coming to an end.  One thing about the real Chicken Little, though he went around screaming that the world was coming to an end, he never offered to save the people for a price like our government and its experts always do.  I don’t know about you, but I find all this fear mongering despicable, and I believe that there’s something that we can do about it.  We can fire them all!  “Never miss an opportunity to take advantage of a crisis”. That’s code for never miss an opportunity to scare people to death so you can get more of their money and stay in power.

A word from the Lord, “Do not fear what they fear; do not be frightened.” But in your hearts set apart Christ as Lord.” (1 Peter 3:14-15).[3]

[1] This fear was use to promote the legalization of abortion. Resulting in the death of about 40 million infants.

[2] The democratic governments of the world seem to be usually wrong about who the real enemies are. Before World War II they were telling us that Hitler was no threat when it was obvious he was preparing for war.

[3] The fear of God removes all other fears and sets you free from fear and anxiety.

Why Does Our Culture Resemble a Loony Bin?

Posted on by Lyle Duell in Christ and Culture

Why Does Our Culture Resemble a Loony Bin?

 

“For as bats’ eyes are to daylight so is our intellectual eye to those truths which are, in their own nature, the Most obvious of all.” Aristotle

The above question is not hard to answer. If you came across a house that was built in such a way that nothing worked right and it was put together in an insane way, you would simply conclude it was put together by a madman who did not know what he was doing. However, what would happen if you had taken a course at the university prior to seeing the house and your professor had told you the builder of the house was creative and a genius? Would that affect your opinion of the house? What if everyone you know at school told you the same thing?  Might you not begin to believe that you were the lunatic?

Let me share a personal example. When I was younger, I believed that to be thought well of in intellectual circles, I should read about and have a working knowledge of Plato. Well, I got a copy of some of his works and began to read. In a short time, I decided that the man was somewhat of a sophist, and I was wasting a lot time panning for gold in a creek that had very little gold. However, because of the so-called knowers, I never aired my views, at least not around them. Then not long ago I was reading the letters of Jefferson and Adams and to my great joy found that they shared the same opinion of Plato. I was sane; the rest of the world was crazy. The emperor was naked.

Based on my experience, I would make the bold statement that our culture is crazy because we humans have a tendency to believe crazy things promoted by crazy men, who we call intellectuals.  We continue to do this, even though  history bears out that these intellectuals are more often wrong than right.[1]

Why are the intellectual and highly educated so often wrong[2]? One reason is that they tend to create fantasy worlds in their minds, which do not exist, worlds which are abstract with abstract people living in them[3]. It is in these abstract worlds that intellectuals create their systems of thoughts, which they then impose on the real world. It is little wonder why they so often fail e.g. Karl Marx and his system of communism.

After creating their systems the intellectuals begin to network, promoting themselves and their ideas somewhat like politicians or salesmen do in order to sell their ideas. The intellectual’s chief platforms are  universities and colleges where other lesser intellectuals eat up their teaching like children eating candy.  In most case their message is one of salvation from the human condition.

Furthermore, many intellectuals are easily deceived because they have no frame of reference other than themselves and the spirit of the age. Their ego blocks the awareness of the limits of their cultural understanding and the views of others who are their equals[4]. This is also true of many of their disciples, who without reservation accept their teachings.   In this, they are deceived by the master and their own egos into believing that his truth is the Truth. A great example of this is the large number of highly educated people, who around the turn of the 20th century, fell headlong under the spell of Karl Marx. Two examples of this are Charles Baldwin, the founder of ACLU, and John Dewey, the father of the American educational system. Both of these intellectuals failed to discern the problems with Communism. They only turned from it after Stalin revealed his true colors. Their level of discernment was no better than the common man’s, and yet we hold them up as two of our greatest intellectuals.

The intellectuals who have helped shape Western culture are Freud, Darwin, and Marx. All were reductionist who reduced the understanding of history and existence to  sexuality, economics, and evolution. In other words, they reduced everything to their system. All these men looked at the whole of existence through a single lens of their system or ideology, which narrowed their worldview. Many of their ideas have reaped havoc in Western culture and have brought it to the edge of the abyss. However, they are continuing to influence the so-called enlightened in our universities, and we have foolishly turned our children over to them. Our universities seem to be a nesting ground for men whose chief end is to debunk every virtue in our culture. Their favorite targets are morality, religion, and faith, all of which are needed to have a healthy culture. Nevertheless, we keep on listening to them and even worst; we keep on trying to implement their theories. Then we wonder why our world is so crazy. If we are looking for an answer, we might begin at our universities, which continue to give these intellectuals a platform to poison the minds of our young people[5].

[1] “Intellectuals” by Paul Johnson.

[2] My critique of intellectuals is not a putdown of education or knowledge. It is a critique of a certain kind of knower- the kind who goes beyond or even denies the cosmic order of common sense.

[3] Thomas Sowell expands on this in his book “Intellectuals and Society”.

[4] Paul Johnson gives a good critique of some Western intellectuals in his book, Intellectuals.

[5]  All this is done under the banner of academic freedom, which of course is a part of the rhetoric of the intellectuals.  They want to sell their ideas and influence the world yet have no accountability.