THE FUTURE OF ORGANIZED CHRISTIANITY: UNNECESSARY (from elsewhere) The question

THE FUTURE OF ORGANIZED CHRISTIANITY: UNNECESSARY

(from elsewhere)

The question is whether or not christian religion can function as a means of restoring western civilization. And my argument (and that of many others) is that it cannot. And for the reasons I stated: (a) that just as justification(rationalism) replaced mysticism, science(criticism) has replaced justification (rationalism), and people will not tolerate a return to primitive monotheistic mysticism. And (b) the forces that led to western success in the ancient and enlightenment world, were independent of the christian mythos – and much older. and (c) we cannot impose religious institutions, yet we can impose academic and legal institutions. (d) given that the differentiating feature of western civilization is truth, truth telling, jury, independent judges, and the common organic law, it is possible to use nothing more than the law to restore traditional values, and education to explain them.

We may need a new civic religion. But the few people who ponder that new religion all suggest that it will be much closer to stoicism, buddhism and nature worship than to christianity. And given that neo-puritanism is a christian heresy, and social democracy a christian heresy, it is certainly not a safe vehicle for the transmission of our civilization.

The germans almost exited christianity at least twice now. Had they done it in the Romantic period we might have had a chance to keep the best of old and new.

We need our churches. We need jesus as a philosopher of the poor. But Justinian imposed christianity by force and shuttered the stoic schools (the western religion), so that they could use eastern despotic central rule in the failing empire. And Caesar murdered all our Druids, to wipe out our culture, so they could impose roman imperialism. And the enlightenment was our first attempt to restoring our people to our original correspondence with nature, rather than with babylonian tyrants deified.

We have need of myth and ritual. We have no need for totalitarianism in our religion.