You don’t go back to church because you believe in God.

The late Christopher Hitchens’ released God is not Great: how religion poisons everything in 2007. He coupled its publication with a series of live debates with various religious leaders where he used his vast oratorical skills to overcome his ideological opponents. But even though he was a masterful speaker and debater, his arguments on religion are weakened by a few fundamental flaws.

One of Hitchens’ core arguments was that he did not require a heavenly body to guide him on how to be a moral human being. He was able to be a good person in spite of God not because of His existence. But Hitchens was a product of his cultural and social environment, an environment which was firmly rooted in the traditions of Christianity. To claim that his civility was not a result of his civilization is pure ignorance at best.

Hitchens was born in 1949 and grew up in a period when the Church was still paramount in people’s lives. Almost seven decades later and we are witness to a continuing and escalating crisis in Western culture. Our leaders continually seek to make changes under the assumption that change equates by default to progress. Under this paradigm any change is thus seen as being good, and people who enact change are thus assumed to be good people. We have mistaken change for progress, and progress for virtue, and virtue for ethics. And we have done this because we have no faith.

Faith is civilization. Our laws bind our community together but it is our faith that propels us to follow and respect them. We cannot continue to enjoy the fruits of our civilization if we allow one of its core roots to wither and die. We have eroded our faith in our Church while simultaneously eroding our culture through the banal evils of multiculturalism. Australia is now a mishmash of different ethnic groups, and it is the fault lines dividing these groups where the cracks are beginning to fracture.

The catalyst for fracture was Islam. Nature abhors a vacuum and will seek to fill it. We believed ourselves to be too far advanced for the superstitious nonsense of religion, while ironically falling for the great god of climate change, and into the breach Islam has stepped. But strangely enough, the Islamic invasion may well be an opportunity for the West to rediscover its own faith. The only way we will prevail against an invading religion will be to strengthen our own. And by restoring our faith we will begin to regain our culture. The two are inextricably intertwined.

One of Hitchens’ other false assumptions was that since he himself was able to think rationally and virtuously then other people would naturally do the same. He projected his own personal traits onto the rest of humanity. Even if Hitchens was not a product of his environment and was essentially born a good and free thinking man, it is ridiculous to assume the same of men everywhere.

The seething mass of humanity has great need of spiritual salvation as history has repeatedly shown. It is thus precisely the responsibility of men who have no need of spiritual guidance to attend church in a dutiful manner so as to create a fine example for those that do require guidance in these matters. That is why atheists must go to Church. They need to understand that in order to enjoy their civilization and pass it on to their children they must by default preserve its cultural pillars and traditions.

You do not necessarily go to Church because you believe in God. You go because you believe in your civilization. And until we return to the Church then we are complicit in the invasion of Islam. You cannot be secular and simultaneously complain about the inroads that Islam makes in our culture, law, traditions, parliament, leaders, and culture. Islam will become our way of life until we wake up and rediscover our faith.

It is almost as if God has designed it thus. What better way to guide people back to the Church than by creating an invasion that forces us all to act.

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16 thoughts on “You don’t go back to church because you believe in God.”

Dan Flynn

Some interesting stats to chew on Adam:
1. ‘The Australian Catholic Church has released “grim” data revealing 7 per cent of priests, working between 1950 and 2009, have been accused of child sex crimes’.
2. According to the 2011 census the Muslim population in Australia is 2.2%
Cheers

I honestly would not have considered my comment as ‘trolling’. I am expressing an alternative viewpoint to the one you expressed. I had thought that you actually thrived on people expressing different views. However this is your space so I will happily respect your request.

Dan,
There are many and cogent arguments that would provide persuasive evidence that your casually-thrown-out “statistics” are quite irrelevant, even IF they were accurate – and they’re out of date.
Oh yes, “Cheers”.

You were not expressing any viewpoint that I could determine, you make no assertions or arguments. In either case, if one in 50 ‘Australians’ is part of an enemy ideology then we cannot act too soon to expel them AND those who would give them support and cover. Treason is still a thing I hope.

Your conclusions in the last paragraph are erroneous. The invasion of Islam proves nothing more than twisted evil people that mistake our tolerance for weakness run immigration policy behind the scenes.

Going to church is based on people getting warm and fuzzies from people they know combined with some appreciation of live theater and some degree of intellectual stimulation.

Church pedos are the problem. Congregations don’t have to subject themselves to child abuse by criminals masquerading as moralists. Is that your idea of civilization?

Your comment to the poster has you coming across as rude and overbearing.

Periodically the tree of liberty must be watered with the blood of tyrants and patriots. Australia is a nation of simps that allowed their gun rights to be stolen by the political class of psychopaths. At some point people realize that life is worth little without liberty.

Priests are often co-opted by the government and deserve the butt of a rifle against their craniums.

Hi Adam,
I think you are on to something here: “Faith is civilization. Our laws bind our community together but it is our faith that propels us to follow and respect them. We cannot continue to enjoy the fruits of our civilization if we allow one of its core roots to wither and die.”

One of the things about a genuine faith in Christ’s teachings is the relentless requirement to question your inner motivations, to repent, to strive to improve, to be moral, and to agonise before penitential action. I found Peter Hitchens comments about his return to the faith resonated with me. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=io1sNfw9-TA

Multiculturalism, in the Christian world, is actually ecumenical relativism. All religions become true. And therefore none are. The liberal takeover of the Church of England and the Roman Catholic Vatican take over by the gay lobby and a Left-Peronist is nearing completion. Even my beloved Orthodox Church has let the climate alarmism virus gain purchase.

There is some form of collective cultural suicide pack taking place. It goes far beyond an inability to distinguish between the socialist social gospel and the true Christian one. The cultural decline is accelerating. It is ironic that it is Stefan Molyneux who has been pointing out just how amoral, unethical and statist most atheists are.

It is clear that feminism has ravaged through Christianity. They have repackaged Eve’s rebellious hypergamy into victimhood, and the Theotoxus’ correction of Eve’s disgrace – via total obedience – into an “oppressive patriarchal domination.”

The eastern Europeans have of course seen this all before. A Transylvanian Orthodox friend of mine, who lives on the border between Hungary and Romania, sees glimmers of hope in Poland, Hungary and their neighbours.

I found myself recently saying it is obvious a brutal, cultural, spiritual, civil war is coming.

The question whether someone can be good without God is nonsensical. The answer is, “Sure.” That is followed by, “So what?”

Stated differently, atheists blithely describe morality as being a “social construct.” That’s all well and good until the society, i.e. civilization, breaks down. Then what? Without a transcendent morality–something existing outside of human agency, there is nothing other than power over others and its consequences.

As I’ve asked many atheists, whom would you rather meet on Cormac McCarthy’s The Road? A Christian or one whose morality is based upon a mere social contract?

“A Christian or one whose morality is based upon a mere social contract?”

I would frame it differentially: would you rather meet someone who’s morality is founded on, and connected to reality – or one that’s founded on arbitrary beliefs, that has varying degrees of disconnection from reality? I would put both religion and political correctness into the latter category.

When I hear someone proclaim “faith” as the foundation of their beliefs, it usually tells me they’re throwing the towel in, and can’t defend their beliefs rationally. It puzzles me in your case, because I think you are capable of defending (most of) your beliefs rationally. Relying on faith opens us up to the ravages of Islamists, because if all we have is a battle of different faiths, none of them grounded in reality, then who’s to say what’s right and what’s wrong?

This position does not rely on defending secular leftists; because as you point out, they have their own faith and religion. Whether the majority of people are capable of coming to the right position by themselves without guidance is beside the point. The issue is what sort of guidance should we provide them; a belief system founded on reality, or one founded on an arbitrary list of do’s and don’ts?

Hi Adam, fellow Aussie here. I followed the link from Dalrock’s blog and here I am.
My thoughts regarding this topic are as follows:
The christian church long ago saw the need for a separation of church and state. The object of Islam is to become the state, and this is always a bad result. Always.
I am convinced the short-term future will be state enforced atheism, with extremists jailed or executed.
The longer-term solution will be the fulfilment of the Lord’s prayer: “thy Kingdom come, thy will be done”.

Sorry for the confusion, but it is my belief that in the future governments will ruthlessly purge all extremists for all religions. That is what I meant by ‘state enforced atheism’. We are still a long way off that.
It would take a nasty long term grass roots religious war to impose such extreme laws, but that is where I think we are headed.

You give Hitchens far more credit than he deserves: it is trivial to disprove atheism on scientific grounds, and even easier to disprove it on philosophical grounds, which was his (supposed) strong suit. Even atheists don’t believe it, and Hitchens proves it with his own words. I have destroyed guys like him in debates more times than I can count.

This was a particularly good point, as well as a good jumping-off point:

One of Hitchens’ core arguments was that he did not require a heavenly body to guide him on how to be a moral human being. He was able to be a good person in spite of God not because of His existence. But Hitchens was a product of his cultural and social environment, an environment which was firmly rooted in the traditions of Christianity. To claim that his civility was not a result of his civilization is pure ignorance at best.

That is profoundly true, and Hitchens was an idiot to not see it. It also exposes an even greater flaw in his feelings on the matter (I can’t bring myself to call it his “thinking” on the matter): if there is no Transcendent Moral Lawgiver, than there is no basis for morality or ethics. Words like good, bad, moral, immoral, ethical, and unethical literally have no meaning whatsoever. Without a Transcendent Moral Lawgiver there is no Transcendent Moral Law against which to judge his claim of being moral and ethical. It is a transparent self-contradiction.

So the obvious question to a claim by an atheist that he’s a good/moral/ethical person is, “According to what standard?” His personal standard? Big deal: Ted Bundy, Pol Pot, and Joseph Stalin didn’t see anything wrong with what they did, yet Mr Hitchens would probably claim that they were “bad,” or at least that their actions were.

If an individual can be bad, immoral, or unethical, then the standard for good, moral, and ethical has to be something above the individual. Society? Law? Good luck with that: 1793/1794 in French society wasn’t called “The Great Terror” for nothing. The laws of Nazi Germany resulted in the legal extermination of millions of innocent people. So assuming one has a moral/ethical objection to mass murder and genocide, the basis for morality and ethics must be above society and law, too.

We’re running out of options here. Especially since there is no humanity-wide consensus on, well, anything. So if there is a standard that humans must adhere to in order to be considered good, moral, or ethical, than it can only come from something above humanity. That “something” must posses the ability to both form and convey the ethical standard Mr. Hitchens claimed to adhere to… and also possess the authority to make binding moral law.

In other words, God.

In other, other words, to say, “I’m a good person” is to say, “I believe in God.”

The obvious and inescapable conclusion when someone claims to be both a good person and an atheist is that the speaker is a fool, and a rather dim fool at that.

Hi Lyn, thanks for the excellent comment. You were right, it did go to spam for some reason which is unusual.

So the obvious question to a claim by an atheist that he’s a good/moral/ethical person is, “According to what standard?” His personal standard? Big deal: Ted Bundy, Pol Pot, and Joseph Stalin didn’t see anything wrong with what they did, yet Mr Hitchens would probably claim that they were “bad,” or at least that their actions were.

This. I hear time and time again from reasonably intelligent individuals that their personal standard is somehow the benchmark for the world. My time in Africa cured me of this mental affliction.